SaberFang

Barrett had the "exclusive" that there was an "incident" (a popular journalistic term to exaggerate and incite something of little consequence) involving Hawks players sledging Clark on Monday. It was never stated that the sledging was depression/illness related, but Barrett left it vague for people to draw this conclusion. Could just as easily been sledging for the way he royally [censored] us over, but the bleeding hearts all defended Mitch while Sam called a spade a spade. Never agreed more with Newman in my life but he basically said "fair dinkum, why don't we just ban players from speaking? Will that solve the problem? If he put himself out there after doing what he did then he leaves himself open to criticism on the field." Then Selwood waffled off some rubbish, clearly rehearsed line about how much Clark has brought to their club, and that their culture allows them to protect and nurture Clark through issues like this (geez, thought he got over those just in time for trade period!). Gibbo claimed ignorance but danced around the issue and seemed mostly unapologetic. They aren't soft at the Hawks and there's a reason they're such a good team. Gibbo would dish it out as good as anyone on the field to throw off his opponent. In summary, Clark knew this would follow him after what he did and can't cry foul now. Zero sympathy for him. The fact that he went and cried to the club about it just reflects how narcissistic and toxic he is. Everything's all about Mitch and he deserves the red carpet to be rolled out. Classic attention seeker.

Apparently Gibbo knew nothing about it. My respect for Chip just went up if it was him.

Apparently Clark was getting sledged on the footy field Monday and had a cry to his new club about it.

I've no doubt Clark will contribute in spades to this newfound cultural black hole.

Fox panel thinks our forward line will be top heavy now, and fiddling with our forward line after that win may be a mistake.

In: Dawes, Vince Out: Toump, JKH

Frost will know their running patterns and arguably they'll know his. Nonetheless, no chance he plays anywhere except defence against his old teammates.

If it's down to keeping one of JKH and Kent you almost have to pick Kent just for the additional experience. When he was dropped last year, JKH did an excellent job fighting back into seniors, so I've got no doubt he'll do it again.

We start winning, we get our members back.

And everyone's off chasing Rance. LOL And what good fortune to end up with his brother against the odds. Delicious!

They looked very rusty against the Saints, whose defence was simply embarrassing on Sunday. Even still, GWS only scored 80 something points, so if we can limit them to 60 with our superior defence and maintain our attacking form of last week, I really rate our chances.

We'll make a play for more GWS midfielders long before we throw over $1M at Dangerfield. Can't think of a more irresponsible use of our salary cap. For a few hundred thousand extra, you could probably land two far younger mids with as much potential.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth but was not implying bias at all, rather who Roos felt was the better GC player.Nice try though.

I hope Hawthorn absolutely obliterate the drug cheats by over a hundred points, to keep the demoralising culture at Windy Hill intact. Love that the AFL tried to rig the fixture with the expectation of a topup team playing the early parts of the season, only to end up giving their full team the hardest start to the season one could imagine.

Wonder who gave the GC players votes?

They don't even seem to be bringing in players they need to fill holes in their list. Are they still actually so clueless as to think they have a squad that can compete in finals? Mick is so far behind the eight ball it's.. delicious.

Party pooper. Rumours about gun players wanting to come to the MFC are so much more exciting without logic ruining the fun.

Just text him with instructions to get on Mick's bad side, and they'll be offloading him in no time. Eating his morning bagel before training should do the trick.

Might be a fitness thing? Training reports said he'd shed a bit more weight but maybe they're not satisfied with his endurance.

Well they were more than happy to offload Garlett for peanuts, almost out of principal. I think there's some severe cultural issues at Carlton, something just stinks like sewage down there. I reckon they have the least prestige and pedigree of any Victorian club these days, a far cry from their glory years. I did enjoy reading through the wallowing and tears of their fans at BF forum, after Garlett's blinder on Saturday. Lots of head scratching about just what the hell is going on at Visy Park (other than Judd stuffing brown paper bags into his pockets).

Well that'd be the icing on the cake for Mick's tenure.

Legit question: did he become a vegetarian before or after he was drafted? If he converted a few years after being drafted and playing some of his best early games, then the solution seems bloody obvious to me. I'm assuming this means he isn't partaking in the high fat paleo diet, either? Would be pretty displeasing to the coaching group to see that. Leadership is about winning at all costs and making great sacrifices. With all due to respect to Jack, can anyone name a single other captain who's a vegetarian?

Sorry, but giving us the best chance to win two games in a row with the best possible team far, far outweighs considerations of Toumpas' confidence levels. That's a long-term problem for the development team to be concerned with. Getting two wins in a row and helping the team's mindset has far wider-reaching implications than whether Toumpas builds into his game this year. Throwing him to the wolves against Adelaide/Hawks/Freo/Syd/Port over the next month will do far more to hinder his development than improve it.

Would just hate to see the team go back in their shells if we get belted by the aforementioned teams over the next two months, just a shocking consecutive run of difficult matches. We have to soak up the positive energy from this win for all its worth. Get through this with an upset or two under our belt, and we can focus on knocking off the Lions, Carlton, Collingwood twice and Saints twice (and hopefully GWS in the final round).

A win next week is vital. The fixture does us no favours after GWS, with Adelaide, Sydney, Hawks, Freo and Port all before Round 9. You could really only pencil in Richmond (R4) and Bulldogs (R8) as winnable matches amongst that lot (but based on round one displays, even they'll be tough). Fortunately we follow that up with a much easier drawer mid-season, but I worry the first 9 matches will knock the stuffing out of us if we keep up the intensity of round one.