SaberFang

Thanks to the club that recruited him, if he's anything less than Stephen 2.0, he'll be a disappointment. You could not be more misguided as a club.

You're completely missing the point. What I'm getting at is we lose the games we're expected to win. Ergo, already talking this game up as a W is not only dangerous but incredibly arrogant. We are not at the stage as a club, culturally, where we have any right to think this way. In fact, it's this exact line of thinking that I'm convinced led to most of those losses last year.

Likewise, Carlton are doing it as well. They're already throwing Silvagni's kid to the wolves in the media. It's like the media and PR departments just can't help themselves. Anything it takes to get a few extra memberships, even if it means lumping unnecessary pressure on their 18 year old kids.

My point is that a football club should never have a culture where the players are walking up the race expecting to win. Yeah, 2016 is a new year, but so was 2015 after 2014 and we still had those cringeworthy losses that seemed entirely psychological. We routinely lost matches we expected to win while winning matches nobody expected us to. I'm not so naive as to start counting wins months out from the season, regardless of how inept Essendon appears to look. Carlton looked pretty inept last year too but they embarrassed us. Essendon were a basket case after their 100 point loss to the Saints and they came out breathing fire against us, due to a week of intense media scrutiny.

Yep, the parallels are amusing. I was listening to SEN this afternoon and the hosts were going on about top-up players. Eventually one of them said something like, "just get the kids in! Throw them into the furnace and see who thrives! They have some great young talent and this Parish kid seems like a future captain, so throw them in and see who stands up and leads their team, it'll be really exciting." I laughed. As a wise man once said, history is doomed to repeat itself.

Don't get me wrong, I hope we beat them to an absolute pulp, but I'm permanently scarred by match after match, year after year, of those so-called "shoe-ins" that almost always end up being catastrophically embarrassing losses. Yeah, 2016 is a new year, but last season was filled to the brim with some absolutely horrendous losses that clearly demonstrated a problem between the ears of our playing list. Hopefully by shedding types like Howe we've made real progress as a list of competitors.

We haven't heard much about Oliver. Conversely, Essendon can't shut up about Parish. Guess they need something for their members to look forward to.

I'll just bookmark your post and we'll revisit after round 2 then.

Anyone forgotten when we played them last year after they lost by 100 points to St Kilda? I haven't. Anyone forgotten that "absolute certainty" against Carlton last year? I haven't. Anyone forgotten the last time we played their top-ups team in the NAB Challenge? I haven't. You're a fool if you think we'll cakewalk them in round 2 and if anyone at the club is foolish enough to think this, player or coach, they are deadest fools as well. This game is the very definition of danger game for us.

According to those rules, we could skip the first round until the 2019 draft. We made two first round selections this year.

Wonder what the Bulldogs premiership odds were at the start of last season? Or Port's a few years before that? It's really irrelevant what the bookies think about how we'll perform. The fact they have Essendon above us is laughable enough, considering what CAS could smack them down with in a few weeks.

Awesome!

Work your magic, McCartney!

Hogan asked for help. Hogan gets help.

Only one midfielder so far? We're stockpiling forwards. Guess we're not expecting Dawes and Pedobear to stick around for long.

Noooo, not Balic!

Whoever we don't take at 3 out of Parish and Oliver will go at 4 to the Bombers. They'll then take Francis. So our options around 7 will be Weid, Ah Chee, Curnow and Milera. Sounds like the club will pursue a midfielder as they can be better judged from raw talent than talls.

So hard not to be nervous about him given his injuries. Fortune doesn't always favour the brave. Surely we have to get these early picks right eventually.

Because we could've just taken him at 6?

We'll most likely have our pick of Weideman and Curnow with 7 (and failing that, either Francis or Oliver will be available). There is zero chance we'll go after Collins that early; our defender stocks are perfectly sufficient for now. Our midfield is still our greatest weakness once injuries begin (see our second half this year).

Oliver's a bolter who could easily be available at 7 if Essendon take Francis & Curnow/Weideman and the Suns take Milera/Ah Chee. There's a far greater chance of Oliver slipping to 7 than Parish. Essendon will not let him past 5; they'll be struggling to select their 2 from Curnow, Francis, Weideman and Oliver which makes our choice at 7 all the easier. I've a feeling Dodoro, seeing so many deficiencies across their list, will want a midfielder and a tall. Francis almost seems a lock considering how much he wants to play for the Bombers; so would they really take two midfielders with two premium picks? Highly unlikely IMHO.

Parish was in the U15, U17 and U18 All Australian teams. He's been on our club's radar for too long to be jettisoned in favour of a bolter. My opinion.

Getting 2 of Francis/Parish/Oliver/Weideman is a fantastic draft for us. Gold Coast seem to be after Ah Chee or Milera. Here's hoping it works out.

Parish and Weideman is a great draft for us if it happens. We can't really afford the risk on pick 3 (Parish is almost definitely a sure thing), but talls are always a risk. Look how many talls at pick 1 never lived up to the hype? It's for this exact reason Roos encourages the "draft the sure thing, trade in the talls" strategy.

It's all definitely a gamble, but already having injury question marks at 18 makes him a huge risk for pick 3. Pick 7 though? Got no issues with taking him there if the club consider him a better prospect than the remaining mids (and I'm confident he'll still be there if Essendon are still taking Francis and Curnow). And sure, Stringer was overlooked due to injury concerns and look how that's worked out... but as a club we're still at the stage where we need to take as close to a "sure thing" in the draft as possible. Wines was a sure thing and we passed because we felt Viney already filled that hole in our list. The rest is history on that draft!