Axis of Bob

Freo has one tall forward on its primary list under the age of 29 ..... Jye Amiss. Freo probably aren't going to trade that player away.

Jackson's is currently 20 years old. Blicavs didn't even debut until he was 22 years old. He's the only player in the top 39 players for hitouts in 2022 who is younger than 22. The only player who has more hitouts who is younger than 23 is Bailey Williams, who has pretty much rucked solo whilst Naitanui has been out.

Daisy is an intelligent, thoughtful and insightful football student and is excellent at communicating that insight. She is the best special comments person in the game and one of the few reasons to listen to the commentary at all. But Daisy won’t appeal to everyone because a lot of people are not interested in being taught about the complexities of the game. In fact some people actively dislike being taught about the game. Maybe they feel like they know enough already, or the complexity is beyond their grasp, or maybe they just want to switch their brains off and watch two team smash the suitcases out of each other. Each to their own but Daisy is clearly the best at communicating the complexities of the game, which is exactly what a special comments person is theoretically supposed to do.

Kemp is someone who looks really good when you see the highlights but has a few holes in his game that don't show up there ... and they're pretty important ones. He's a great size and a nice, smooth mover with some toe. But he doesn't win his own football, which is a massive problem for a league footballer. Without fixing that he'll never become the 193cm midfielder that people were wishing for but rather just a marginal third defender who needs to improve his defence and kicking. For mine (and it's just my opinion) he's a player that reads like a champion except for pretty much the only non-negotiable of a good AFL footballer.

Freo traded their second round pick, but still have their first rounder.

And West Coast had a window of 2 years (2005-2006) despite their extraordinary midfield. They went out in straight sets in 2007 and imploded to second last in 2008 .... 2 years after winning a flag with a 28 year old Cousins, 27 year old Fletcher and Wirrpanda, 25 year old Cox, Glass and Embley, and 23 year Judd and Kerr. Incredible.

Good pick up. Interesting though that that Collingwood team really only a 3 year window (2010 -2012) to win a flag before they kind of imploded. Really interesting was their list profile when they won the flag: 0 players 30+ years old, 1x 29yo (B Johnson), 2x 28yo (Jolly, L Brown), 2x 27yo (Maxwell, Didak), 2x 26yo (Ball, Swan), 0x 25yo, 1x 24yo (H Shaw) 5x 23yo 4x 22yo 2x 21yo 2x 20yo 1x 19yo By 2013, only Leigh Brown had retired. They effectively fell out of their premiership window with a list that probably got better, with Pendlebury, Thomas, Beams, Sidebottom and Wellingham moving into their early primes, adding Grundy, and Swan still being top 3 in the Brownlow. They squandered a dynasty through their terrible culture.

Yep. Grundy is on a massive deal until the end of 2027, which is still 5 more years after this year. It's the worst contract in the AFL (outside the expansion teams) and is severely limiting what Collingwood can do in terms of building their list. As you say, if we were to hypothetically take that on (which is still silly from list management anyway, but still.....) then Collingwood would need to make the contract more reasonable for us by paying significant money, which takes away from the benefit from them doing the deal in the first place. A deal more akin to Will Brodie's Freo deal would be more reasonable for a team. In that deal (not including steak knives) Freo received Will Brodie plus an end of first round pick in exchange for a future second round pick (about pick 25 ish). In other words, Gold Coast paid Freo to take Will Brodie's contract. This is probably the first NBA style salary dump that I can recall in the AFL.

You can .... like your Carlton example from 40 years ago where success was largely determined by your zone and how much you were able to play your players. It was also a period where the quality of individuals was far more important than the cohesion of a team. As for the last 25 years, you could probably only really point to the 2006 West Coast team, who won a flag (although it could be argued that they vastly underperformed based on their talent - Cox, Judd, Cousins, Kerr etc - and it being a soft period in the competition between Brisbane and Geelong/Hawthorn teams).

Best case: He becomes a manageable issue internally and makes us marginally better because we somehow find a way to integrate someone of his style into our existing team by replacing a player (Fritsch, Jordon, ????) who is currently doing that at a reasonably high level. This takes us from competing for a flag with a decent chance of winning it ...... to also competing for a flag with marginally better chances of winning. Worst case: He can be managed and turns our club into a circus, taking human resources away from the other players as well as salary cap resources, and we are no longer competing for a premiership. This takes us from competing for a flag with a decent chance of winning it ...... to not competing for a flag. I just don't understand why you'd take that bet. The outcomes are so asymmetric.

The first step is asking the question: "How often do you score from a kick out?" The answer is "hardly ever". As a result why would you take risks from the kick out when the rewards are so tiny? So you kick it to a defensive part of the ground where you have more resources to win the next contest ... from where you may actually be able to score. It's all about winning the next contest, so if you are predictable then you can have the resources to win that contest whilst the opposition has to spread theirs it over the whole ground. It may look boring but I really enjoy winning.

If you want to be clever about it, you could probably remove Jeremy Cameron as a key forward because he's basically a tall flanker. He's not even in the top 50 for contested marks in the league, behind such behemoths as Callum Wilkie. We play Joel Smith on him. Most importantly, he can do that because Tom Hawkins exists, who is able to do the big man work whilst Cameron plays as a medium. Curnow is a bit different, but is greatly benefited from getting the second defender after Harry McKay. That allows Curnow to be one on one a lot more because McKay is doing the pack work. It's the same with Riewoldt and Lynch, or Membrey and King, or Fritsch and Brown. Whatever the case, the most functional forward lines tend to be built around a really tall forward who can create opportunities from the long kick forward (to the wing or inside 50) because defences are so good at forcing long kicks to outnumbered forwards. That's the role JVR is probably going to do but like TMac, he's going going to have to fight very hard to impact as a shorter key forward in that role. The style of the game is what's trending the requirement for taller key forwards, rather than vice-versa. Just in the same way that the 'switch everything' style of NBA defence has made wings and tall, long guards (like Giddey) more valuable.

Deedubs' point isn't wrong, you've just misinterpreted it. If you're talking about key forwards then it's disingenuous to include small or medium forwards in that number too (like Charlie Cameron and Bayley Fritsch). The top 10 key forwards goalkickers (plus ties) are: J Cameron (196cm), C Curnow (192cm), Hawkins (198cm), Naughton (195cm), Lynch (199cm), M King (202cm), Wright (203cm), T Marshall (198cm), Franklin (199cm), Chol (200cm), H McKay (204cm), M Lewis (198cm). That's an average height of 198.7cm and a median of 198.5cm. Only one of them is a smaller key forward (Curnow) who is also the most mobile one. The other interesting thing there is that the top 2 goal kickers are 2 of the 3 smallest on the list (Cameron and Curnow) and play the least like the big key forwards we would be asking Van Rooyen to play like. But what those two do have do have is a second key forward who fits the definition of the taller key forward (Hawkins and McKay) that can do the heavy pack work whilst they play as a second tall. There is a definite trend towards very tall key forwards because the role of those forwards has changed. They are now asked to be able to halve contests whilst being outnumbered without being able to jump at the ball. This is different from the Neitz era where he was afforded leading space and played a lot one on one. Tall key forwards play better than smaller ones against zone defences, which Neitz (and Ablett, Dunstall and Lockett) never had to play against. Van Rooyen is a big boy who competes hard and attacks the ball, but he's going to have to work hard to play above his height against zone defences. That's not to say that he won't be able to do it, but he may be more Brody Mihocek than Max King.

Nothing wrong with his talent. Has all the the talent to be a really good player. He probably will be one. However AFL football is really hard.... a lot harder than schoolboy or junior footy. To be a really good player you need to work really, really hard and make sacrifices to achieve success in a league where the talent gap is a lot smaller than you're used to in juniors. Some players are able to make the transition from juniors to AFL quickly because it comes naturally to them (like Viney), whilst others struggle to do so after being drafted (like Max). Some of those players then slowly learn how to make the step up, others learn enough to get by .... and some of them never make the leap.

My point was that, even in an emergency, Bradtke still wouldn't be the answer to any of those questions. His VFL form also reinforces that delisting him was not a mistake. Of course we will have to look at additional ruck depth for next year.

Only if you think he'd get a game and be better than the alternative.

That article is genuinely hilarious. I don't applaud people for just having an opinion. I could say that Clayton Oliver is a hack and only gets cheap, easy possessions. I'd be a f#@$%ng [censored], but you'd applaud me for having an opinion. That's pretty much how I rate David King's opinion.

Adelaide lost Dangerfield, lost the GF the next year (plus Lever) and cratered thereafter. Geelong lost Tim Kelly, lost the following GF to Richmond and received draft picks that turned into Cooper Stephens, Ryan Angwin, Jeremy Sharp and Ronin O'Connor. Fremantle lost Lachie Neale to Brisbane for, effectively, Jesse Hogan and Xavier O'Halloran, and did nothing for several years. Gold Coast lost Dion Prestia for Jack Scrimshaw and did nothing since. Port Power lost Shaun Burgoyne, made 3 finals series in the next 10 years, and got back Jay Nash, Andrew Moore and Jasper Pittard. This isn't to say that thing always turn out badly, but saying that "clubs who lose big name players never end up really losing" is not correct.

Melbourne's very own Bartolo "Significant Seductive" Colon.

He laid 12 tackles in his 54 game career. That's an average of 0.2 per game. He had more Brownlow votes than tackles and he had 10 of those Brownlow votes in his first 9 games. He had more scoring shots in a game on 9 occasions than he had tackles in his career. He average 17.3 goals per tackle. Hilarious.

There is a distinct difference between key forwards of the past and key forwards now. It's about how you win the football and the skill set needed to be successful at that. In the 80s and 90s, the game was one on one and key forwards had to beat their opponent one on one. In 2022 a key forward needs to beat a system of defenders, so beating your own man isn't enough. Instead you need to win the ball against several opponents at once. The skills needed by Dunstall were to win a strength contest with his opponent to either take the mark or beat them on the lead into space. To do this all he needs to be is really strong and fast on the burst. He rarely had to jump at the ball because all of his work was being done whilst on the ground (pushing, leading etc). In 2022 a key forward needs to be able to mark against multiple opponents, or at least create a contest against them, since there simply isn't the space up forward to be able to get consistent one on one contests. As a result the skills set required is people who can jump at the ball and mark it high in a pack. This means that key forwards are getting taller because this helps them with the skills they need now. Van Rooyen got several one on ones against North because they are terrible (and Majak cleaned them up in the ruck), but he did it well. However he probably wouldn't be able to do this at AFL level because he wouldn't get the space. Weideman took a few excellent contested marks against multiple opponents, which is more of an AFL style skill. That's not to say that Van Rooyen won't be a good AFL player, but it will probably be once he becomes a genuine big body so that he can be more of a super hard working battle axe who is super competitive and halves a lot of contests. More of a Tom McDonald or Jeremy McGovern style of player (up forward).

"Hello sir. I see that you have a nice, healthy cow and all the ingredients needed for the future except for milk ....... but would you be interested in selling me that cow for some magic beans?"

I haven’t seen the game yet, but it may be worth noting that Weideman had the most tackles of any player for Casey today.

Don't worry, it's an education not even worth the paper it's not printed on. 😁

Not entirely true. Demonland just moved to these message boards in 2005. There are a few around here still that predate that move and deanox is one of them.