deanox

i dont disagree, but i will be surprised if frawley can hold the mantle of 'best young KP defender in the league for the next 10 years'. Don't get me wrong, I rate him highly, but he will age like everyone else.

exactly what i remember too. what i liked about him was that he seemed to me a genuine crumber, who read the ball off the top of the play. he didnt have amazing pace, or super clever tricks, but he read it well. hopefully he continues on from where he left off, is a very promising player.

wasnt the jumper ALWAYS meant to be navy blue with a red yolk?

does anyone know if GC 17 have a ruckman lined up? Given that they can take 4-5 years to develop I would guess that they would be keen on having a senior ruckman ready to play round 1 rather than rely on draftees. could this be a risk/option?

i just had a look at the clubs lists on afl.com and it looks like there are 64 available rookie spots on club lists! thats a lot of player still to be taken, it really looks like clubs have cleared out to get as much youth into their lists as possible pre GC17. but how does it work RE meesen and newton? do we need them to sign a contract with someone saying that if they are available they will be picked? a verbal agreement isnt good enough, because if we select someone else and then newton or meesen is no selected that it leaves us in an awkward situation...

morton on the back line, morton on the wing, morton kicks to morton, and morton puts it in... if only we had more than one of him?

the MFC wont let him play, but they might give him a day off to come down and coach WJ, your position is looking under the pump. Lets just hope Andy doesn't come out and say that you have Demonland managements full support to fulfil your contract, because it will be like sharpening the axe!

is that the new umpires training outfit?

eraadyn, i dont think there was ever any plan to 'recruit for our future needs' so don't worry, it didnt get thrown out the window. we drafted best available at all opportunities, which was the plan.

interesting. if we pass to see what everyone else does we lose the chance of first pick. i think we are probably really hoping that meesen gets picked up by hawthorn now, we picked up a ruckman and a forward/ruckman in the draft so we are probably happy to let him go.

also why did AD have to read out the top 10? He just loves his face in the lime light doesnt he? The clubs should have read out their own players...

its not a rule change. previously rookie upgrades were sent in to the league seperately and with little fanfare. the change is that now, clubs can read out these rookie upgrades at the appropriate selections, so that the announcements are all in one package, thats all.

who is this woman interviewing? she is terrible? asks stupid questions, uses too many cliches, its a joke. what sort of question is, he has just got a big pay rise, are you going to put in an order for a christmas present?

my late mail from yesterday: DB wants to draft Ball. Tim Harrington doesn't. They were to discuss this yesterday to decide the strategy. No ideas of the outcome. I am assuming that there is some level of, Bailey thinks we will start to see results faster, even next year, if we can add someone of Balls quality to our midfield, while Tim Harrington is keener to focus on the 3-5 year bracket, which is when we would start to see a kid play some good football. My two cents worth, what they need to work out is:Is the long term potential of the untried player they are going to select outweigh the benefits of having someone of Balls experience and quality leading our young onball brigade for the next 3-5 years? Will Ball have a positive influence on the other members of our list? And then as well as that influence, does picking Ball make us more competitive in the next 3 years? 5 years? In 5 years he will only be 30, could he a leader in Melbournes next premiership in the twilight of his career? This is something that is very hard for us to judge as we have no idea how much effect a senior player could have on the young players. We have no idea what the effects of having a lack of leadership around the club is doing to the development of the current players. I trust the footy dept. to eventually make the right call. I just really hope it is for the right reasons, not just to get a few extra wins in the short term to give us a boost up the ladder.

i concur 100%. if you nominate for any draft you either need to make yourself available for all clubs or none. my suggestion is that perhaps the afl should do a medical report on all players planning on entering the draft which can be circulated to any interest clubs. while some may view this as an invasion of privacy, it is unfortunate but it is part of the game. As said before, the player chose to play for the afl, not for the vfl or the sanfl or the super14 etc and by entering the draft he has signed a contract to say he will play for whoever selects him. off topic a bit: if a player was selected in a draft and then elected to sit out the compulsory 2 seasons for whatever reason, could the player be liable for financial compensation to the said club?

we can bub, as mentioned above, but i only suggest it because it could mean we have a situation where we were not sure what other players were doing. say we wanted macdonald but he had not committed to us or the PSD yet, and we told mitch thorp we couldnt guarentee him PSD 1 but were keen on him pending this other outcome. thorp is going to then nominate for the ND while we wait on the decision of the other player. we could take thorp at 66 if the other player went earlier in the ND or we could pass on him to use PSD1. Where will thorp go in the ND? I'm not sure, having done nothing in his 3 years you would assume no higher than 30 at least, meaning 34 he should be around, but not sure if he would last to 50 or 66. it could simply be a case of us not having decided who we were picking and not giving assurances to multiple players.

if we want to take him it doesnt matter whether we get him at 50 or 66 either. if we decide we want him not macdonald we can take him late and not have a pick in the PSD. we might have been unwilling to commit to either just yet and as a result told thorp to go ND as he was less liekyl to get picked up than macdonald in the ND leaving him to go through to pick 50. Our options are open, but I think we are keen on macdonald and were more interested in securing him.

you get 38 listed players plus 8 rookie listed players. if you have players on the veterans list they are not counted in your 38, however you reduce your rookie list for each player. ie 38 listed, 2 veterans and 6 rookies. edit: that means we have 4 spots on the list and 2 rookie spots atm. 5 delisted of which one was a veteran. if another player is upgraded to veterans list (green or bruce? not sure if they are eligible) we then have another listed spot. and to the topic: yes i think we need a ruckman, but i still dont think ruckmen are THAT important so i am loath to use a top 20 pick when we could rookie or use late picks (which we wont have). dilema.

i dont think he has a long term future in the ruck (the only thing saving him atm is that we dont have any ruckmen that are any good, and that ruckmen are not cheap commodities). I would hope that he is focusing on these things over summer: -endurance (allowing him to run all day and follow around the whole ground without needing a much of a rest) -body strength (just getting him to run into people, throw his weight around etc) -handballing (his kicking is lovely, but his handballing is decidedly average, and because they are poor he costs us. he needs to learn how to get a qucik handball out to a running player) if he can improve on 2 of those three areas (all improvable imo, but i doubt he will improve that much) then he will have a chance of making it. ps itd be nice if he could take body on body pack marks, but he cant so...

wow, never realised id been around here longer than you nasher. like was said above, when i think demonland i think nasher lol

if anything i think it should be lengthed. allow everyone an opportunity to consider, discuss check up meet and greet etc, including the players and prospective team staff. start it the monday after GF day. no one will really rock up except the predone deals (ie brock) can be signed off quickly. a couple of emails can be sent and players can go and meet and greet etc over the course of the first week, and then when the coaches and list managers sit down to do deals they already know which players are happy to go where, and just concentrate on picks etc

i defs would not trade youngsters or picks for him, but if there was not much floating in the psd and ball was available, i would take him. he cant possibly be worse than brock has been at times, and we get him for nothing. we need to pay someone the money so we may as well. after all, even if he plays for the scorps for 3 years we didnt have to give up anything to get him.

look, jamar isnt going anywhere unless someone is desperate and wants to pay over the odds for him. as a ruckman (and mature aged)he is a sort after quantity which means he is worth more than his mediocre performances suggest. ie if he was a half banck flanker, and had an equivalent output aged 25, he would be delisted, but as a ruckman he is worth keeping on the list. because there are not many ruckmen out there he is worth more, so he is probably worth somewhere in the 2nd to 3rd rounds. for us to trade for that would be sensless, we dont gain anything, thus whoever wants him has to buy him at a premium. i cannot see us accepting anything higher than pick 20 because it would be a loss for us, and i cant see many clubs who were in the top 4 being particularly interested in him. thus the only picks we would accept, from clubs who would be interested in would be 14 or below. jamar is simply not worth that. so he performed well this year? he only played 7 games! so he kicked a bag of goals? has he ever done it before? if he had done it for 20 matches, or for 2 years in a row, clubs would be lining up for him, but he hasnt. for the record, i dont rate him, but at 25, he is at the right time for a ruck to really hit his straps, so if we keep him and he kicks on thats great. if not i dont think we're paying him much anyway...

Congrats to all the boys who got medals. Hopefully Newton can take some confidence from winning that type of award and step up in the last year of his contract.

not much to say here about cale, has it all been said already? i suppose everyone has watched him, he deserves his spot in the team, we know he is good enough to warrant the hype and most people believe it fait accompli that he will be a quality player, whether elite or just a grade most people believe he is/will get there. who thinks he will be an elite star? who thinks he will just be a good solid ball magnet? we know he can kick it, but hasn't used his disposal as well as he could thus far at afl level. he has also shown some signs of avoiding the hard stuff. will the hard stuff come as his body gets stronger and he puts on weight and gains confidence? does the gaining of confidence mean that his disposal improves? if the above scenario occurs he could well be elite as soon as he puts on a bit of weight, if not he will probably just be a very good player who gets lots of it. it just appears to me that anyone who finds the ball as easily and naturally and as often as morton has something special about him, and that that something special should take him to elite level one day.