Axis of Bob

I think what I'd be trying to do is: 26 + 68/69 + Hannan for a future first. Why? Because the Dogs need points this year but not next year. Let's say that their first round pick next year is the same (ie, 14). That equates to them giving up approximately pick 44 for Hannan, but crucially it allows the Dogs to increase their draft points this year by 788. That will be important given that they need to use about 2000 for JUH. Importantly for us, it also allows us to have a pick in a much more valuable draft (ie, next year). A lot of teams want future picks and we'll have two first rounders which, more than anything, gives us a lot of currency for trade both this year and next.

My guess is that we'll use whatever we get from GWS for Preuss and pass that on for Brown. There are some teams with early academy players and also first rounders that need to get rid of them in order to get the points to match. Having our 2nd rounder plus extra 3rd rounders mean that we can move up the order, which may be one of the options we're looking at.

If you really wanted to do it, you could renegotiate with Treloar to have him on big money this year and then less in future years. I don't know if that's a great idea still, as you also lose the chance of being able to prepay money to free up future salary cap from for our important players. I think it would depend on our salary cap position and Treloar's salary. There's so much we don't know. All we know is that he's a good player on a lot of money and Collingwood are destroying their reputation in the industry.

Obviously.

Goodwin was employed as an assistant at Essendon prior to Brodie Smith's drafting at Adelaide. Not sure how common it is for an assistant coach at another club in another state to be mentoring a player that was drafted after he had already left. There's a fair bit of mental gymnastics required to get to square that circle.

This is a really terrible by Collingwood and it will affect them in the future. They chased him from GWS, asked him to re-extend his contract to help the club out, and now they're trying to move him on. Why would a player from another club choose to go to Collingwood if they can't trust the club to honour their commitment to them? Why would a current player help out the club with a contract when the club won't honour the term of that commitment? It stinks and the AFL industry isn't that big. This has the ability to turn really, really ugly.

It's your forum. Whilst I understand that it's a difficult line to tread, you do have the right and ability to warn/ban posters who are being obvious trolls. That way we can reduce the loss of quality posters from this site.

If this is going to be a place for good, constructive conversation then it needs to be encouraged, and the sort of rubbish we've seen here needs to be discouraged. It not only keeps good posters (which encourages other good posters) but it also attracts thoughtful posters who may be lurking and wondering if they'd like to make the step to become contributors.

I actually believe it is for other reasons than good/bad delivery, but we are very likely to be no better or worse than other teams at hitting leading forwards. I just find comments 'Not sure our midfield could hit a leading forward' etc to be unnecessarily defeatist and it tends to irk me. The fact that we were able to have good mark inside 50/retention numbers without a dominant forward tends to say that we certainly aren't much worse at it than the league average and certainly better than Brown's current club, North. I think it's because we scored a lot on the rebound where we were able to avoid contested situations inside 50 more often than many teams. The fact that a small key forward in Fritsch was able to lead our goal kicking probably indicates this, but it also points towards our delivery not being terrible. Why are we prioritising a KPF? I'd say it's to allow us to kick the ball longer into the forward line and not having to rely on our ability to spot up smaller targets. Some of the best teams with multiple big key forwards (Richmond and Port) actually ranked lower for forward 50 retention (10th - 20.7% and 14th - 18.4% respectively) because their big forwards create contests that their smalls can capitalise on. Our forward setup involves tall/medium forwards marking the ball or the ball being rebounded. Getting a big forward allows us to set up more defensively ie, lock the ball inside 50, inside 50 stoppages and repeat entries. Ironically getting a big forward probably will result in us marking the ball less inside 50! ?

It depends on how we want to play. If we play end to end transition football (like we did in the last two games this year) then he's a possible option because he is fast and gets on the end of handball chains to finish. But when the play closes up he's next to useless due to his lack of agility (he's a very straight line player). He won 13 contested possessions for the entire season (6 games) of which nearly half (6) came in a single wet Cairns game against Freo. He has also had just 7 tackles for the year, with over half (4) coming the Geelong game. So, in effect, he's a low possession finisher if we play a very specific way but offers nothing in any other way. If we choose to play the end to end footy we played in the last two games then I can see an argument to perhaps keep him on the list, although I think it would be touch and go. But under any other circumstances I don't think I'd keep him because I think we could pick up others that would offer us more of what we need from a small forward.

He's a good fit for the Saints. Their midfield is very ordinary.

Further to that, I think there are a couple of things that are really in Brown's favour. Look at the best big forwards this year: Hawkins, Kennedy and Dixon. They are 32, 33 and 30, respectively and you could argue that they are in the form of their careers because the game for forwards has moved away from speed and more towards strength and competing for the aerial ball. Ben Brown is 27 and arguably coming into 5 years of his best football. Another thing is that he's a really good converter. When the scoring is low in big finals this becomes more important. More so for low possession big forwards. Brown has always kind of annoyed me because I don't like how he exaggerates free kicks. I'm a bit old school like that. But there are good reasons he gets all those free kicks, which are as valuable as a contested mark when the ball comes in long: he's very tall, he uses this advantage by marking at the highest point, and he fights really hard for front position. Defenders get nervous around him because he's huge, has long arms and it's impossible to defend from behind unless you infringe (like holding an arm, pushing in the back, chopping the arms). His presence makes us immediately more dangerous up forward, allowing us to set our team up more defensively. I think this suits us, because we have some special players that can win us territory (Gawn and mids) and a strong defence that can push up to give us repeat entries. Our poor forward line hasn't allowed us to capitalise and we've had to score goals on the counter attack to be competitive. But with a genuine big forward we can play the territory game and wins games by attrition like, say, Richmond.

It's a hard one. I think it depends on a whole bunch of stuff that we just don't know. Things like our salary position, his salary demands, his injuries, what players we can move on, what other players are coming in, what it will take to trade for him, how we are intending to play next year etc. The most important things are his injury, our salary position and his salary. If all of that checks out then I think I'd do the deal because it's just so difficult to get players that fill the position that he does as an effective long ball target. Of the top 4, Lynch and Hawkins are in the GF and Dixon probably should have been, plus Brisbane is throwing a Hail Mary for Daniher. Who else is out there that can do this? Kennedy, the Kings, McKay .... Brown. Not much else. I think it would require a bit of a juggle to make our forward line work well but it's definitely solvable. Effectively we could make it the 2018 forward line (in style) with Brown/Weid instead of Hogan/TMac. I'd rather free Jackson of the responsibility of being a structural player up forward because it would detract from his uniqueness and flexibility. What it would require is a shift towards high pressure small forwards who can feed off these, lock the ball and force repeat forward entries.

This year we were ranked 5th in marks inside 50 per game (9.1 per game). We also ranked 6th in marks inside 50 per forward entry (marking on 21.4% of our inside 50s).

I can certainly see the argument. I think players also look at other things when they think about coming to a club. I think relationships are important, I think their football role is important (with how they see themselves fitting within the team), lifestyle factors (such as location) and also I think the list profile is important. Players go to work every day and want to get fulfillment from that. Different players play for different reasons and I don't think that $$$ explains all of it.

As a comparison, whilst Geelong has 8 players under 28 years old, in our final game against Essendon we had only 3 players older than 28 (Hibberd, Brown and Melksham), and none of them are critical parts of our future success. Geelong and us are a different points, where we are continuing to build and get better whilst Geelong are looking to succed in their Last Dance (or 2). We need to go out and get more mature players that can support our younger players and fill roles to help them be better because we already have most of the long term building blocks. Geelong is trying to use their current success to lure good players whilst they still can but, like Hawthorn, there will be a reckoning eventually.

@Lucifer's Hero I think I require a higher burden of proof on these things because nobody really knows and it's easy just to throw about statements like that without any evidence. We just get speculation from footy journos who have, kindly speaking, a pretty ordinary reputation for their ability to extract the truth. All of the things you said might be true but nobody has any way of knowing; it's just speculation and I think forms a pretty weak argument. My personal view is that, in the absence of credible information, people will project the narrative that they want to hear. I just don't think that the evidence justifies a view one way or another.

Geelong keeps fielding the oldest teams in AFL history. This is their time to go for broke because the edge is coming. It came for Hawthorn and it's coming for Geelong. Their average age is over 28 years old. They have Tom Stewart, who is 27, but then only 7 other players younger than 28, and the list of players isn't that impressive: Bews (26), Kolodjashnij (25), O'Connor (23), Henry (22), Parfitt (22), Simpson (22) and Miers (21). Their salary cap shouldn't be too bad now either, because the players who should be being paid the most are actually at the ends of the their careers and would be signing contracts far less than at their prime. Selwood (32), Hawkins (32), even Dangerfield (30) are their highest value players but shouldn't be on as big a salary now. The next year or two is their big shot at a flag with this group because they don't have the players to replace those stars, which is why they are going hard at free agency (Hawkins/Cameron, Selwood/Viney).

That's because there's no basis for your assertion. If you want to avoid that push back then you should provide some evidence to support your view.

Watching the games so far the main things that are common in the wins seem to be: High defensive pressure around the football. Winning contested footy. Clean hands. Being able to score against a well set defence. Effectively, the story being told about how to win a final is: Pressure the opposition so much that the game becomes a scrap, then win the scrap, move the ball forward (any way that you can) and then win those ugly contests inside 50 to score. Look at a Richmond game. Everything is at high intensity around the ball, which makes the game ugly. The get the ball forward and use their combination of big forwards and very clean small forwards against well set defences to win difficult contests to score, or pressure the opposition enough that a kick forwards goes to their excellent defence, allowing them to get the ball forward to start the whole process again. It's a very simple plan. Pressure the ball, get it forward, pressure the ball, get it forward etc. They set up their whole team to defend, but their best players are forward of the ball. The type of game that wins finals is the type of game we played in 2018. Strong, contested slogs where territory is king. Gawn, Petracca, Oliver, Viney, Brayshaw ..... our best players are around the footy, so we should be using them to pin the opposition inside 50 and then using them again to kick goals from clearances and repeat entries. We've definitely got it in us to play finals winning football, probably more so than any team outside the top bracket. We need a few tweaks to allow us to keep that intensity for longer, but we're not as far off as many believe.

Those things aren't mutually exclusive. You can win contested possessions whilst also costing your team defensively.

He was a good half back flanker for a while before moving to the middle and having a really fantastic year in 2000. His year was good enough to compete for a Brownlow in a year with no solitary standout, but winning the Brownlow did overrate his year. We paid very good money for his 2000 performance, but his professionalism outweighed his talent. When that caught up with him (almost immediately) he was a white elephant for the team. When the performances dried up everyone realised that he was a slowish toiler who used the ball nicely but only an average contested ball winner. If he signed the contract a year earlier or a year later then he probably finishes his career at Melbourne.

He's the sort of player we should be after. Not high production, but has pace, tackles and can do 2 or 3 things a game that create a score. Is older than you think .... 26.

I get this argument, and I agree that he's a natural forward. I think the role that best suits him is the role he played in the last two weeks as a defensive tall on intercept markers where he can use his smarts to find space on a non-defensive opponent. I'm just not convinced that his best role is the best role for his team.

As pointed out on the other thread, I copied the wrong graph. It should be this one: It still mostly says the same thing. Except that Geelong has fewer smalls and more Dangerfields.