Axis of Bob

This is a terrible take. You're essentially saying that attracting good people is an indication of failure and that trying to bring in good people is an indication of weakness. Should we be not trying to attract good people? You're just trying to shoehorn this information into your own personal judgement of Goodwin. Anyway, I'm very happy with the appointment. He's different from most, but he's a great teacher and an extremely knowledgeable football person.

Sad to see Mahoney go but it seemed like it was coming. He'll be a good fit for Essendon provided he is given the authority to do his work. Good luck to him.

Unpopular opinion: I enjoy watching the modern game more than the games in the 80s. There's more going on in the modern game, it's more contested, the pace is higher, the quality of the players is higher, the tactics go beyond 'ruckman behind the ball' or matchups, and the goals actually mean something. Looking back at those old games .... it just looks like glorified circle work to me now.

Jake Lever: 106 intercepts in 2020. Ranked 10th in the AFL. Steven May ranked 34th, Michael Hibberd 80th, Christian Salem 95th. So punching the ball isn't 'all he can do', although he ranks 10th for one percenters (May 9th), so he's still pretty good at it.

Based on how Collingwood has set their picks in the mid teens, there may also be a strong chance that Collingwood simply isn't much interested in McInnes. Effectively, they'll take him for peanuts if he lasts past their picks, but they aren't that fussed to miss out. They have history don't this too, as they passed on James Stewart back in the day.

Tasmania should already have a team but adding a team doesn't make sense. People in Tassie already follow footy, so most of the benefits will be cannibalised from existing (mostly Victorian) teams. The time to do it was in the creation on the AFL but it just doesn't make sense anymore. Adding a team to create a bye for nearly no benefit to the competition isn't going to fly. It will have to come from a relocation from Victoria. Throwing money at a 500,000 population (or, about 10% of Melbourne) in order to reduce the revenues for the rest of the clubs for no real benefit? It's a nice romantic argument of 'fairness' but, unfortunately, it just doesn't stack up.

If 2020 was a full 22 game season, the following players would have kicks 40+ goals: Hawkins, Kennedy, Gunston, Dixon. So you're saying that it's unacceptable if Weid isn't in the top 4 goalkickers in the league next year? Even though he'll be playing as a second tall with Brown? If you look at the second forward for each of the teams those players played on, only Darling was more productive than Weideman. So you're thinking Weid's production will increase when Brown comes into the team, and so much so that he will be one of the top 4 most productive key forwards, even though he will be playing as the second tall option? And anything less than that is 'not acceptable' ...... ?

I think Mitchell is a good chance to be drafted in the second round, from what I've seen. Excellent mover, good pace and kick. Plays pretty outside at the moment but he's got a heap of development in him.

But then that's the only thing that he'd say. His interview would last 5 seconds. And it would still be an empty cliche. He probably even said that we'll be judged on our actions, or let footy do the talking, or something equally meaningless at some point during his radio slot because it is also cliched nothing-speak. Even talking about 'actions not words' are just empty words. Gawn is actually one of the better footballers to listen to when interviewed because he's pretty straightforward with his answers. That's why there are a few snippets of interesting information that can be gleaned if you look past the standard offseason talk.

A week ago we acquired one of the premier key forwards of the last 5 years in exchange for Brayden Preuss. Now people are upset that during the offseason break Max Gawn is mentioning that we hope to be better next year when doing a radio spot, because he didn't do anything. Effectively offseason media is a Rorschach test for supporters. We just have a lot of supporters who think every ink blot is a mushroom cloud. What should he have said? Please provide an example that would be satisfactory, from your point of view.

I'm not sure that's a correct assumption. I see it more as being that the club saw 2021 picks as being overvalued by the market, and 2020 picks as being undervalued by the market. As a result we have sold our expensive 2021 pick for some bargain 2020 picks. I think it's a value trade, most of all.

I'm not sure about the bolded part. Last year we successfully traded up to get Pickett. We asked about trading up on draft night to get Georgiades (a future fourth rounder), but we didn't have any draft assets so it wasn't really a serious bid. In 2018 we didn't trade our future first round pick at all (which is lucky, because it turned out to be Jackson in 2019) so, whilst we probably liked Butters, we were obviously not that serious about trading our future first (along with a second rounder or two) to select him.

So people are upset that Gawn said that he had expectations of success next year in a radio interview? It's like everyone is trying to demonstrate their 'demon cred' by trying to show how cynical they are. It's lame. There are actually some interesting things that he says in there if you can get past the MFCSS.

Definitely an outlier, although he's still a fairly prolific tackler. He averaged 4 tackles a game last year in the VFL across 16 games. He was not a prolific ball winner up forward but he was a strong tackler.

9 tackles would have had him ahead of the following players in 2020: Bennell, Brown, Weideman, Hunt, O McDonald, Jackson and Jetta. They, as a group, averaged nearly 7 games each. And 6 of those were inside 50. As a comparison, that would have had him as the 10th best for us this year. Pickett had the most for us this year with 15 at an average of 1.07 per game. As a team we averaged 8.5 tackles inside 50 per game this year (circumstances notwithstanding). The most we had from any player in a game this year was 4 .... Oliver (Richmond), Petracca (Adelaide), McDonald (North).

I don't see the Chandler retention as being generous, more that he is exactly the type of player we would be looking to draft and we clearly think he has the potential to play a role at AFL level. We struggle for genuine small forwards and defenders with speed. He missed a lot of preseason with a broken arm (otherwise may well have played round 1 as a small forward) then he was switched to defence and apparently had good form in the practice games too. I've liked him as a player each time I've seen him because, even though he is is agile without being lightning quick, he still plays the game with intensity and speed.

In that case, it's unfortunate for him that he wasn't running against McCain or Romney.

Clinton called Trump on the night of the election to concede and gave her concession speech by noon the next day. She was obviously devastated but, full credit to her, she took her medicine and the transition was smooth. Trump lost in 2020 because he spent his whole time re-running the 2016 Clinton election, even though Biden is an old, white, male centrist who is an extremely non-threatening candidate. Biden's nothingness as a candidate, in effect, made the election a referendum on Trump and his record, which did not suit him well because he has made a lot of enemies outside his base. Gore actually did concede .... twice! Once early on when the networks called it, which he then had to take back, and then after the court ruling. The second time he promised Bush that he wouldn't take it back again. But that was, obviously, a very different election and much, much, much closer. The Floridian 'hanging chad' and the election coming down to a court ruling based on different counting procedures for them in different counties which produced different results. And that election came down to a single state with a 300 vote margin! The Bush/Gore cases were fought over something very specific (how to treat the ballots imperfectly punched by he voting machines in different counties) which would alter the outcome of the election. The problem here is that Trump's cases aren't based on anything, nor (even if they were) anywhere near large enough to overturn the election results, which would require him to overcome deficits of over a hundred thousand votes across multiple states to win. He's even trying to challenge Michigan, which he lost by 150,000 votes in itself! His lack of concession still (after the result have been very clear for weeks) is a bit sad and it's doing a great deal of damage to the rest of the GOP.

16 a side fixes most of the problems.

Hmmm, maybe not. Mahoney was talking about their intention to have those picks because of the lack of exposed form making it harder to assess a lot of the talent, especially Victorian talent. As such the hit rate on earlier picks should be lower and there should be more of that talent seep through to the second round. Basically it's saying that early picks are overrated this year (compared with 'normal' years) because there is less certainty surrounding the selections, but picks in the 20s will be somewhat underrated because the lack of exposed form means that differentiating between that top group of players will be more difficult. I expect that this draft will see some terrible (in hindsight) draft selections but also some absolute bargains.

I think we're a possibility to get into the top 10 with our picks. Turning more of our lower picks into fewer picks of similar value allows us to trade with teams that have very high picks and not that many available list spots. This is especially the case with list sizes reducing. For instance, you can't throw a million 4th rounders at the Dogs because they have only had 5 open list spots before the list reductions. That means that they only have 2 empty spots, effectively, so we can't give them more picks than they can use in the draft. For example (hypothetically), they may have 3 list spots going in to the draft, so they can't have 5 picks in the 3rd and 4th round to use for draft points. As a result we need to give them enough points that they can use in as few picks as possible. Pick 25 and 28 is the equivalent of pick 10. Add in 50 and it gets to pick 7.

I love that we traded pick 26 as part of the Brown deal, then traded to get a single pick ahead of that minutes later. Nice.

It isn't even our future fourth .... it's Brisbane's future fourth! North will be death riding Brisbane! That appears to be a good deal for us.

Like Pollyanna, I'm trying to help you understand that Dreamteam (AF) points are not very effective to compare players who play different positions and roles. To use Ohio examples, it's like saying that Odell Beckham Jr is terrible because he has a bad Quarterback Rating. Or that Shane Beiber is terrible because he doesn't hit home runs. You need to use the the right tools for the job, and Dreamteam (AF) points are not a good way to measure these things.

Dreamteam (AF) points in 2020: Harris Andrews - All Australian 2020: AF = 44.9 per game. James Harmes - Outside MFC top 20 B&F = 44.7 per game.