titan_uranus

If this is the end for him, it's a sad finish to what's been a fine career. If it's not the end for him, I hope he continues somewhere other than Melbourne. His form this year was not good and he is 35.

I'm not sure it tells us anything about the club's thoughts. Papley sought a trade at the end of last year. Didn't mean Sydney wanted him out the door. How long do you think Goodwin should have trialled the dual rucks for? And do you think Preuss can work as a second ruck, requiring him to spend long periods of time somewhere other than in the ruck?

Petty and Hore.

Where is there any evidence the club is pushing him out or wants to trade him? All we seem to know at the moment is a report from one journalist that says Preuss wants to leave.

This doesn't help the whole "he's contracted so let's drive a hard bargain for him", unfortunately. Also, what exactly did he think he was signing up for? Did we suggest to him we were going to go down the two-ruck path?

A bit like Sydney, who finished in the bottom 4 but haven't made a single list change yet? Or Hawthorn, who also finished in the bottom 4 but haven't delisted a single player yet? Or GWS (also no delistings)?

@Axis of Bob's post is exceptional work. Contrary to what some think, it isn't just a cover for "Viney is a flawless midfielder". As other stats AoB's posted show, Viney turns it over a lot. But none of our midfielders are flawless. Some of Oliver's clanger kicks this year were just absolutely terrible. But we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater on Oliver because there are so many other things he does that are vital to our success. This is the same argument for Viney. The difference is, unlike Oliver, most of us don't notice Viney's positive impact on the side live. So you just see the turnovers or the free kicks against for holding the ball. With Oliver, you see the clearances, quick handballs, etc. and you walk away from the game having seen how the positives outweigh the negatives. AoB has given everyone the opportunity to reflect on their views on Viney and his role within the side. Some, like @A F, are genuinely taking that opportunity to reflect. Others are, clearly, not.

Disappointing all round. I was all for taking him on, I was all for getting him into the side, and I was all for us priming him for a bigger impact in 2021 after a full pre-season. It's hard to understand what's gone wrong: various reports suggesting the breach was bad, or the breach wasn't bad but it's all about how he's responded, or that we'd already decided we weren't going to keep him anyway. I saw a future for him with us and I had genuinely thought he'd made improvements in the way he conducted himself to be past doing the sort of things that run you into this sort of position in the first place. I hope he's OK, I hope he can work things out in a post-football life, but the lasting feeling I have is disappointment: for him, for the club who invested so much into him and get left with a $50,000 fine to show for it, and for anyone at the club who might lose their income/job because of the fine.

This pretty much covers my thoughts on this right now.

Jeepers, if we had actually made the decision to give him another contract, we'd want to be 100% sure about cutting based on this incident. I'm not saying the incident couldn't be bad enough - we really just need to be absolutely sure this is the right call.

49ers, Titans, Packers

All the best to him, but it's a hard no from me.

I'm in favour. He clearly has pros and cons. IMO, we need the pros more than the cons hurt us. His outside run on a wing could be huge for us. If he struggles with contested ball or hard ball gets, we should be able to deal with that as we don't need 22 players who are contested beasts. Where it won't work is if he doesn't run two ways to defend. We've been plugging the gap on the non-Langdon wing with a lot of vandenBerg, Jones, Sparrow - not great for the role but at least playing a role defensively. Unless we dramatically reduce our turnovers, we can't afford to have a winger who doesn't defend. Assuming we can get him running both ways, and assuming we work out how to deal with his enormous contract (i.e. North covering it or we lose a player or two to make salary cap room), I'm in favour.

I agree with the OP's general argument. Every year we look to trades and the draft as the way to fix our problems. IMO, and this is something I've said before, the single biggest change we could make to our performance would be to find a proper tall forward to supplement Weideman. On our current list that would be TMac. If it's not TMac, it's unlikely to be Brown or Jackson given neither of them are a true stay at home marking forward. Maybe it could be Petty. Whoever it is, if someone was good enough to demand opposition attention it would give us a different dynamic forward of centre and relieve some of the significant pressure on Weideman to be the one to lead, create marking contests, haul in marks, and kick goals. If we had had half of our 2018 TMac this year we'd have won more games and made finals, I'm confident. Other than that, I agree with those who say Oliver's improvement doesn't need to be his kicking but, instead, needs to be the way he exits stoppages. Reduced frequency of in-close handpasses and increased running clear of tacklers makes him, and us, much better. Also agree with Fritsch. If he can work on his set shot goal kicking and become accurate, that will make a significant difference.

Aside from the general problems I have with your posting/complaining, I just cannot see how anyone can look at this trade and be upset. Rivers fits our needs more than Serong does (bearing in mind you yourself said during the lead up to last year's draft that we had no need for another inside mid like Serong) and has shown more than enough this year to suggest he'll be a really strong long-term player for us. And then we get Pickett on top of that (and also a 4th round pick this year, which I suppose we could still use). As far as I'm concerned it's a great result for us.

Yep I question this too. Saturday night the Dogs were yet to play, so we were still very much in the finals hunt. Even assuming Petracca was having those thoughts, would he really have called his manager on the Saturday night?

Well there you go. I've just learned something. (Not sarcasm - genuinely learnt).

That's not really fair I don't think. From memory he left Brisbane because of Brisbane being bad, they didn't push him out. He then left Port because, at least in part (if not entirely) because North gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. Now he's being pushed out of North and there's certainly discussion he hasn't fitted in or followed instructions, but one of the alleged instructions was to tag Cripps - that's like us asking Langdon to play an inside mid role and then getting upset when he struggles. Why would Shaw ask Polec to tag?

8 of those were in the last four games though, including 3 against GWS and IIRC each one was for holding the ball. So I think the recency effect has kicked in on that front. I also think it's correct to argue that Viney regularly takes on a tackler when he should instead have released the ball. I don't think that always shows up as a holding the ball free - it might result in a poor handpass or kick under pressure, or a turnover without a free kick, or even a free kick to him. I'm 100% in favour of Viney staying but IMO there is improvement in both where we play Viney (i.e. midfield/forward split) and how he plays.

Congratulations to Petracca and Gawn. I was surprised Gawn made the squad, let alone the 22, but that cements him as one of the best players this club has ever had, let alone one of the best ruckmen the game has ever seen. The 22 is pretty rubbish though. They insist on certain types of forwards and backs but then give up and just chuck midfields in on the wings and half-forward flanks. It's even more egregious this year when Butler and Papley both put together strong seasons and couldn't get a spot in a forward line filled with midfielders.

Agree. The gap between Fritsch in 12th and Melksham in 13th is 35 points. The gap between Fritsch in 12th and Brayshaw in 8th is 32 points. It was relatively even in that 8-12 bracket before falling away.

If someone puts a good offer to us, I'd be happy for us to consider it. I have no issue with Jackson being our back up ruckman. He can play forward when Gawn plays and if we need a different number 1 ruck, we can shift Jackson into that role. In saying all this, it's all about the offer. I'm absolutely 100% against letting Preuss go with two years to run on his contract for a third round pick. We have all the power in any deal. If someone wants him, make it impossible for us to refuse.

Sure. Same with me. But I don't think anyone reads Gawn's quotes and thinks "well that does it, we're clearly going to make finals in 2021". What he said was refreshing and candid. Rather than whinge about "talk is cheap", let's just accept the honesty of his quotes. You think what Gawn said was BS?

From memory, this happened last year around exit interview time. Rumours of players wanting out. None of which eventuated. Sometimes I think the issue is as simple as a player expressing disappointment about something in an exit interview which then get spread as a rumour and mutates slightly ("Petracca was upset we didn't make finals" becomes "Petracca's upset at Goodwin that we didn't make finals", for example). I usually take the view that where there's smoke there's fire, but nothing came of any of this last year so I am sceptical of these "X wants out" rumours.

Tom Browne's a terrible journalist so take anything he says with a grain of salt. Like, what does "support for four day breaks" mean? No one in the league would ask for a four day break unless there was context to it (in "normal" years clubs complain about five day breaks). So what's the context? In the event we have to hub again in 2021? To allow a condensed fixture if that's required in 2021? If there is no need to hub in 2021, I don't understand the need for four day breaks or same day travel. Those should revert back to what we had prior to 2020. Minimum five day breaks (which should be rarely if ever used at all) and why would a club be required to travel on the same day as the game unless it was their decision? Quarters should return to 20 minutes as well. Again, unless we're affected by condensed fixtures, there's no need to shorten quarters again. It robs the game of time for goals/advertising anyway.