Mach5

Interesting? No contest!

Top 5 pick actually, not sure why some continue to relegate him to only top 10 status.

Happy to stick my neck out with a few bold opinions, but I don’t think I’d touch Curtis Taylor or Valente. Not blown away by Jackson Hately, Ely Smith or McHenry either. Collier-Dawkins & Bailey Williams could be anything, but are high risk prospects. Butters could also be one of those if-only-it-clicked types, but I’d roll the dice. Rate Stocker & O’Halloran, I think they’ll be locks for 150+ games. I really like the look of McKenzie if we can get him a bit later. I think at junior level, unless you’re really new to the game, a player really has to have shown an ability to win his own footy & cant purely be an outside accumulator. If you can’t win contested footy as a junior, how will you manage to do it at AFL level? Every player on the list needs to be able to win the footy when it’s their turn, no exceptions.

My semi-realistic preference for pick 23 would be O’Halloran, Butters, Duursma or Luke Foley, whoever slips through. Fraser Turner would be a decent result if the others are gone, as generally predicted. Bailey Williams at pick 28 would be good, but I’d prefer to chase a small with 23. I get the feeling Bedford will be picked up around 35-40.

I’ll put it this way - he may show leadership skills, but he’s more like a poor man’s Luke Dunstan. Would you recruit Luke Dunstan to MFC? I wouldn’t.

No chance, he’s a lot slower than those named & doesn’t have enough of the other attributes to compensate.

I just don’t see it with Valente. I think he’s too slow to be an effective AFL player. A bloke like Jordan Lewis might get by at that speed now, but he hasn’t always been that slow.

Not too surprising when you consider the leadership credentials of Valente and Duursma. Character, professionalism, work ethic, etc. are all KPIs for draftees probably moreso than pure talent.

Get the feeling that teams like the depth of talent in this draft, judging by the number of surprise delistings and list spots being made available.

Yeah, that’s not correct.

Completely agree. I see Preuss used at FF and taking ruck contests in the F50, maybe beyond, limiting the amount of ground Gawn has to cover and letting him consistently set up a kick behind play for intercept marks. I can see Gawn & Lever getting in each other’s way.

This is pure speculation and I’m not referring to Jesse specifically at all, but if you consider the circumstances he is in and the events that have occurred in his life in recent times... I can imagine a man of that age might be going through an emotional rollercoaster, that footy might not seem the most important consideration in his decision-making processes, and he might make some poor decisions off-field, with all the trappings that come along with being a high profile footballer. He might indulge in certain things he shouldn’t, possibly far in excess of the odd cigarette, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that those tendencies might become “open secrets” that would even make it difficult to get a great return for him if you were to trade him. Especially if he were to be careless about who witnessed these indulgences. Compound that with a “go home” tendency, a dodgy injury, and an aloof character, and it’s not painting a great picture. Just imagine for a second that all those things were to eventuate for this hypothetical player; do you think that what Mahoney received in return for Hogan might be actually a great result? Maybe worth considering. We don’t all know the full details at play here, so maybe we’ve done pretty well out of this. Hogan is a cleanskin to my knowledge however. Beware worshipping false idols.

Very happy to have Kade on board. Long & gangly, covers the ground very well, long penetrating kick. Will break lines and gain a lot of metres for us.

Haven’t heard anything regarding Hunt, but it would make sense to include him to get a Hogan trade over the line in a 3 way trade with Brisbane & Freo. As an example: Melb lose Hogan & Hunt, gain pick 5 & 11 & a 3rd rounder Brisbane lose pick 5 & 2nd & 3rd rounders, gain Neale & Hunt Freo lose pick 11 & Neale, gain Hogan & 2nd rounder Some more swapping of 2nd & 3rd rounders probably needs to be built in, but I could see it happening. Our footy dept really rates Hunt however, and would do it reluctantly. I think we’d at least need to get a 2nd rounder for him.

I knew there was a reason for this absurd suggestion...

Could be a good low risk roll of the dice. Would expect him to look for a club able to provide greater opportunity however.

I have to feel for Brisbane: paid through the nose to get him, and had the assets to do so. Now Collingwood will want him back, and he is (allegedly) trying to force a move, but they don’t have half the assets Brisbane were forced to hand over. I can’t see the pies giving up anything equitable if such a move was forced. For the record, he was a few years younger, but they handed over Jack Crisp, picks 5 & 25.

If a straight swap isn’t a win, then what is? Tyson for Preuss plus a 4th rounder we won’t use..?

I don’t see how GWS can possibly hand over Settefield to Carlton for only pick 43. Injuries issues don’t devalue him that much. One of the 2 clubs is out of their minds.

Sydney want picks for Blakey and I think we’ll hand over a couple of 2nd/3rd rounders for pick 12... and AVB of course.

Probably little more to say at this stage, we both know where things sit and we need to work on other avenues before giving Gold Coast our attention.

Yeah, the club really suffered by having picks so late that we had to settle for Fritsch and Spargo as our first couple of selections. Disasterous.

How can Hawthorn possibly trade enough for Shiel? If GWS are forced to offload him due to salary cap constraints, then they have just been very very lucky to be able to exploit GWS’ inability to manage a list properly.

He might reconsider based on offers coming from elsewhere. I’m sure he’d take 4 years at GC at the pay scale he’s accustomed to, rather than 2 years aand a healthy pay cut to stay in Melbourne. I suppose.

Christ, it’s bad enough when they think they’re a bloody expert on anything to do with football just because their team happens to be winning, but do you really need to lend credence to the idea? There was a bit more than just Lake involved with those wins.