At the break of Gawn

This is pretty close I think, but surely Melksham can't survive another game. I can't recall the last time a 150 game player was so ineffective for 4 games straight - even JW only survived 3 bad ones in a row last year. Goodwin will drop him. Mine are: In: Tyson, Hunt, Pederson/Weid, Hannan Out: Bugg, Frost, Harmes, Melksham.

I normally can't stand anything Robbo says, but he made a good point on AFL360 before... "Jake lever is the second highest paid defender in the AFL (behind Alex Rance)... and he's not even in the top 15 of best defenders in the league". I really hope he turns into a superstar, but right now it's looking like a really bad deal.

Yep, was mentioned a heap on MMM, too. They used that tactic all day.

Pretty much sums it all up

Agreed. He's very poor with ball in hand and I think a few supporters need to look past his only strength which is his pace.

According to Goodwin, it was more of our forwards that caused the defensive issue as they failed at locking it in so we got caught up too much on the rebound. Hence, blame Garlett, Hannan Fritsch, etc for the poor defence.

Well he wasn't voted by the other coaches as the hardest to coach against. Chris Scott was voted no. 1 and Goody lost again. Not evening up the numbers to make Tuohy accountable to stop the 2 on 1s in the last qtr is as easy as it gets when it comes to tactics.

Agree with the review on Melksham. His preseason form went completely missing. Harmes was disappointing for mine, not sure if he'll ever go to another level. Pedo tried hard all day and was unlucky a few times. Gawn was probably BoG if he had kicked that. Super game. Jones worked himself back into it I thought. Lever had a mare for the first half but his second was much better.

Didn't Goldstein do the exact same thing last year or the year before? Unbelievable from Gawn; I thought he had worked on his set shot routine? That was just a shocker

Gave up a truck load of our salary cap for a loose defender who can't play one on one...

Harmes offered nothing so far.

Got a bad feeling about tomorrow with our outs. Cats will fire for Selwood's 250th and that spud Menzel will kick 5 (3 of them on Wagner). Cats by 30pts... But will be very happy if I'm wrong!

It was a standard Watts game. He had plenty of those games for us as well. He probably still would have delivered the same for us this year but he wasn't in Goodwin's plans.

It'll be great to see him play finals at Port if they are good enough. Watched the highlights of that and his skills were as good as ever. The club has pretty much rid itself off that era apart from Jones (I don't count Gawn due to his injuries) so all we have to do is to look onwards and upwards and see what this team can achieve.

Yeah, just saw on Hogan's Instagram story. Edit - was just a joke I think

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/jack-watts-needed-to-leave-his-demons-behind-20171020-gz4u1r.html Quite a good article from Pete Ryan.

I don't think that's necessarily true, nor is Jack's approach wrong. There are plenty of players with 2 or 3 kids who would consider their family as the no.1 thing in their life and can still manage to give 100% intensity. It's all about the focus and bringing that intensity when required. Unfortunately for Jack, he's never been an aggressive player and for a coach who's asking for a fierce competitor he doesn't fit the bill. He can still be a very useful player in the right team with enough competitive beasts to allow him to add that layer of polish.

It was a sad day for the club (well, for most supporters). I feel it's just now or never for this football club. You [censored] off a heap of your fans by trading a favourite son, and for some people, it alludes to the fact that we got the 2008 draft wrong. If they don't make finals next year they might as well shut the doors, because good luck preaching hope after what we've endured over the last 10 years.

I'm waiting for it to hit AFL.com

I'm waiting for the autobiography "Watts happened? - The real story of my footballing escapades"

Tmac's leading patterns were woeful in half of the games he was forward. It's why Roos didn't have him in there for long stints when he experimented it in 2015/16. He's a better contested marker than Jack, but to claim that he's a better forward than Jack just because he has had a 5 goal game is laughable. It's like saying Scott Cummings was a better forward than David Neitz because he kicked 10 in a game once.

The only real blunder was the Josh Kelly one, but the whole FD had input on that.

Yep, and tried to do it to JJ and then Beveridge took over and now he's a norm Smith medalist. In the right environment, Watts will flourish. Roos had it, and hopefully for Jack's sake, Ken will be the same. 2018 is going to be a fascinating year to see how the players respond to Goody and the coaching group after what's happened over the off-season.

So are you saying they're trading him because he doesn't live and breathe football (i.e. a cultural misfit), JJT?

If he ends up staying, we might as well create a sub forum for Jack. Do doubt there'll be a 100 page thread on how his pre-season is going and critiquing his daily decisions like doing bicep curls rather than Romanian deadlifts in the weights room.