titan_uranus

I'm really keen to see what the entirety of Demonland thinks. I personally cannot believe anyone thinks that we should be giving Dunn a new contract, but it seems there are plenty who think his last few weeks have earned it, so I really want to know what the general consensus is.

Yeah! And I'd be rich because I'd be able to go forward in time, work out what is going to happen int he world, and then make the best decision now! How easy is that!

Huh? Whose twin brothers? I think you're actually supporting my argument, which is to say that we've taken talented players and injected them into a sh*thouse club, with no facilities, no heart, and no development process, such that the talent we've taken has gone to waste. Thanks!

Agree with the sidetracked bit, I was just trying to convince another silly person that there is no point in the whole 'We took X but look who was available after him' exercise, or the 'why didn't we take player x with pick x' whinge. I still apportion the balance of the blame with our coaches and development staff, as the evidence tells us that the players we picked were not regarded as being devoid of the requisite talent to be drafted where they were at that time. But, whilst it's clear now that, if we'd picked differently, we might have won a few more games here or there, I guess people just want to use hindsight to condemn the drafters because that is the simple and easy option.

I've always liked him, but I haven't been following his progress this year except to note he's been in and out of the side. Don't know why, and it might be because he's had a shite year, but still, if he's cheap I'd take him, as the one thing he does have is a strong, accurate kick.

Apparently also breaches of every other club's code. It's not like we overlooked him and he was snapped up a pick later. He went a full round later, after the rest of the competition also decided that he wasn't worth their first round picks. He was more than just a delinquent. There were question marks over whether he could be a serious AFL player and whether he'd have the right attitude. Yes, so far he's proven everyone wrong. But that's the point. Everyone. Not just MFC.

That doesn't mean Neeld hasn't learnt anything. He'll know a lot more about which players meet their pre-game targets and KPIs and which respond to instructions than we do.

Well then he has a vast array of knowledge of what doesn't work! I guess by process of elimination we'll get there eventually haha

Clark - he is an absolute star, and every game we play with him we play 50 times better than a game without him. Watts - improved measurably this year, and will build on that next year. He's a good HB, and hopefully will strengthen his core and become even better. Blease - we need a speedy crumbing forward, and in modern football that player has to be able to play midfield too. I see that in Blease. Needs to get fitter and gain more stamina, but that will come with more training. He can only get better Trengove - can't play worse than this year. If it was the captaincy, then that hopefully will have settled. If it was OP, then hopefully that too will be gone. Either way, I think he can do a lot better, and hopefully he will McDonald - already a gun, but with some stronger arms and legs, will only get better against the power forwards Howe - can't kick a set shot to save his life; if he works on that over the summer, he'll be one of the competition's best mid-sized forwards Having less has-beens/duds/won't-bes/those coming to the end in the side - less games played by Dunn, Bate, MacDonald, Moloney, Green, Morton and Bennell means more games in Strauss, Blease, Spencer (maybe), Gawn (hopefully) etc. Neeld will have an idea after this year of what works and what doesn't, both on game day and during the week.

You're assuming they have currency. I think going to the trade table and saying 'I've got a Dunn, a Bate and a Morton' is akin to going to the table and saying 'I've got a pile of horsesh*t, a sack of coal, and a twig'. This is such utter rubbish. According to you, the coach does nothing. The recruiters draft exceedingly talented players and then cop the responsibility for ensuring they take us to a flag, whilst the coach is just a puppet of the board. Wow.

I'm not trying to validate him - heck, I thought he was as rank a player as anyone else. What I'm saying is that in 2007 his performances in the lead up to the draft suggested he was going to be good. In that regard, his school performances stood for something, unlike you seem to suggest. I think that's fair, and I think my argument would thus be that the 'development' and 'culture' percentages would well outweigh the 'recruiting' percentage.

It happens far too often though. You actually think our drafters did no work, and based it on the HUN? Now that's ridiculous. And I'm happy to discuss Maric. Maric was regarded as a quality kick, and was drafted at 21, which is early, but not so early as to call into question every part of the process. Obviously he was neither a quality kick, nor decent in any facet, but in 2007 I know for a fact, from speaking to people my age who were at PEGS with him, that he was dominating his games as a kid and was a clear AFL candidate. Then he came to us, and went nowhere. No, what I'm saying is that it's incorrect and unfair to blame our current position solely, or even mostly, on our drafting. Obviously it's also incorrect to absolve them of all blame, but the way I see it, most if not all our picks can be justified as being sensible at the time. For mine, the majority of the blame rests with Bailey and his team. Second-rate coaching and player development is, in my mind, the biggest issue.

Don't be stupid RR, you know as well as I do that people continually say 'we stuffed pick X up, check out all the players that came after him'. Not saying that's what you do, but it happens, and happens far too frequently. Because, when you have a mediocre club development squad, there's really nothing to separate the good from the bad. This is hilariously stupid for a couple of reasons: 1) When, at all, did I make any reference whatsoever to other pick 4s? 2) How, at all, do other pick 4s have any meaning in this debate? You can't compare players across drafts, that serves little purpose given each draft is different (we all rate 2001 as a super draft and 2003, for example, as a dud. So you can't draw comparisons across the two, or across any other drafts). You said we took a 'punt' on Morton at 4. I said that was incorrect, because Morton was highly regarded and was deemed by experts to be a top 4 pick. You have nothing to suggest otherwise. So stop trying. Because they're no good. I'm not saying they're not. What I'm saying is that it's far too simple to just say 'Player X is crap, therefore we stuffed up in picking him'. Until people can show me the evidence from the year of drafting that says the player shouldn't have been taken then (i.e. information that was available at the time), then I won't just jump on the drafting team. Our drafters have made mistakes, yes. But I don't like how people say 'player X is crap, we made a mistake taking him, especially given who came after'. There's so much more to it, and IMO, the majority of the blame in our circumstances lies with DB and his coaches. Who said that? All I said was that whilst you can end up with a player picked early who doesn't end up being any good, you can similarly pick a player late who ends up being great. Point is, sometimes players look the goods in their youth but just don't work at AFL level, and some are vice versa.

I would start by not referring to individual selections. 'Oh, look, we took Morton at 4, but Rioli went at 11, so therefore Morton at 4 was a mistake' does not work for me. I think our 2007-2011 drafting was unfortunately forced upon us by our 2002-2006 drafting, where under ND we looked for bigger bodies and athletes at the expense of skill (e.g. Bate, Jones, Dunn). As such, we spend a lot of 2007-2011 picking quicker, lighter players with skill (e.g. Morton, Blease, Strauss, Gysberts). At the time, each one of those players was hard to fault for being picked at that point, so the recruiters did, in my view, as good a job as could be expected. In my view, the problem is threefold. One, the Bailey era was a disaster for player development. For whatever reason, our players have not come on like their debut years may have suggested. Two, the game has changed, in my view, right at the wrong time for us. We drafted players which would help us play like Geelong, but now we have to play like Collingwood, which is tough for some of these players. Three, these players were talented for their youth, but were injected into a shite team. You try playing your best when your team stinks. I also think there's a fair argument to offset early-pick players who don't come on with late-pick players who surprise, and we've managed to find a few rookies/late picks who have done well. It cuts both ways. So I guess to answer your question: I don't have a problem with our recruiting. I have an enormous problem with our coaches. That line about Morton is utter tripe. He was not a 'punt', as you put it. He was a legitimate top 4 pick. It is not a cop out to blame development. In fact, I'd say it's a cop out to blame recruiting. Agree. I'm not saying BP is a genius, and a lot of the players he picked may not end up being any good. But I don't blame that on him, unless someone shows me evidence that when he picked them, they weren't expected to go there, there was no basis for picking them there, and there was a reasonable alternative. Agree with this too. I wonder if Steele Sidebottom would be as good as he is now if he'd been drafted to us.

This is the perfect example of why hindsight ruins arguments. You cannot state that our recruiters made a mistake in 2007/8/9/10/11 by examining the impact our coaching staff, players, funds, facilities and anything else that has impacted on the player, by looking backwards. What happens if a player comes and breaks his leg on day 1? Fail of the recruiters? Obviously not. Point being, recruiters don't control what happens post-draft. They obviously make their choices with a view to how that player will respond to the AFL life, but in the end, that is a tough call to make. That's why every club passed on Darling: he ended up being picked late, and has so far played well, but all recruiters were concerned about his lifestyle and ability to be an AFL player, as opposed to a football player. It's far too easy to just say 'Morton sucks, therefore we made a mistake in recruiting him', when the real problem lies in the terrible coaching staff who attempted to develop him from 2008-2011.

No, that is entirely the point. You use Darling as an example. Every club, all 16, had the chance to take Darling, and didn't. We were not the only ones. If a player is drafted late, then by the very nature of that player being drafted late, there must have been something up with him to warrant all 16 clubs choosing to skip him. So to then whinge and scream about how we could have had him is just ridiculous. Anyone could have had him, but everyone passed decided to let him slide. We had the same reservations the rest of the competition had. The only thing that can be said about drafting is that, almost always, we have picked players where the general consensus suggests they should be picked. No one questioned taking Cale Morton with pick 4 in 2007. It was a question of which of Masten and Morton WC would take with 3, and we'd take the other (given Kreuzer and Cotchin were going to be gone already). No one complained. Now, of course, we can see that Morton has not worked for us. But in 2007, that was a pick that was totally fair. I'm happy to call drafting choices into question - when there is evidence to suggest the drafters made a choice that seemed odd at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and with hindsight we all become geniuses. And in most of our cases, if not all, there wasn't a howling at the time that we'd made a mistake, or that we'd picked someone from left field, or that we'd made an obviously dumb choice. Moreover, we have managed to pick up Tom McDonald with pick 53. You win some, you lose some. All you can do is pick the player you think deserves to be picked with your selection, and then hope that a combination of work ethic and training gets the potential out of the boy. That's where we've failed.

Clark Jones Watts Howe Frawley Jamar Rivers McDonald Garland McKenzie Jurrah Edit: Forgot Jurrah.

It's going to be a great finish to the year, with so many close match-ups which will end up shaping the finals: Essendon-Carlton North Melbourne-Collingwood Richmond-Essendon Sydney-Hawthorn West Coast-Collingwood North Melbourne-Fremantle Hawthorn-West Coast Geelong-Sydney Carlton-St Kilda It's still hard to pick who will finish top 2, top 4 and top 8. Hard to read Essendon; depending on who they get back from injury, they are definitely good enough to beat Richmond and Carlton (Carlton may have won three of its last four but they're still terrible; beating WB, Richmond and Brisbane says nothing really), but only if they are at their best, which they haven't been since we beat them. St Kilda weren't impressive against us, but have beaten some good sides this year (e.g. Sydney) and have been competitive for most of the year. North Melbourne is peaking at the right time, but I still don't know if they're really that good. Fremantle has been mediocre at best but keep winning their home games and have a soft draw. Carlton is close on points but are just terrible. As for the four, I think Adelaide and Collingwood will round out the year without losing again, and finish top 2, which makes Hawthorn's job to get to the finals tough. But I think Collingwood v Hawthorn will be the Grand Final.

That decision was no good. He should never have gone across goal with any sort of pressure on the receiver. That's just a dumb kick, whether you're Tom McDonald or Luke Hodge.

Both, I reckon. His decision making is terrible at times (e.g. kicking across goal yesterday in the fourth), but his skills are no good either. He ran out of defence yesterday, saw a player free, went to handball, and completely missed him. He's 19, so there's obviously plenty of time to fix these problems, and there are far greater concerns at our club than McDonald, but I hope he can work on these two aspects because they might hold him back from being an absolute star.

What's important for players is not necessarily (or often, even) what's important for the AFL. In the end, the AFL seems to class jumpers as 'dark' or 'light'. Both St Kilda and Melbourne have 'dark' home jumpers, and since we were the away team, we had to change to 'light'. Our 'light' jumper clashes less with their home jumper, as they only have a bit of white. They told us we couldn't have nothing but red as an alternate to blue, so we made the white one. But we realised that there's no need to have the red one if we also have the white one, because the white one satisfies the AFL's criteria. So we don't need two. The EPL is totally different. Clubs over there wear colours, not designs, and multiple clubs wear the same colours with not a lot of difference in designs. So they have many more clashes and thus need more jumper options. Here, there are plenty of clubs who only need a light/dark alternative to avoid all clashes (e.g. Gold Coast, GWS, Fremantle). So the AFL is never going to implement a three-jumper rule, especially when there are clubs like Collingwood and Essendon who whinge about having two.

True, but he's not giving 100%, or at least doesn't look like it. Sylvia has talent that most people on our list don't have. But you look at Spencer, at Sellar, at Jetta, at MacDonald, at McDonald, at Grimes, and you see players giving 100% week in, week out. Sylvia doesn't look like that at all, which just isn't good enough.

Lol, true, they both are.

I get it. I see the point, but I also see where the issue arises with black vs blue (looking at players from the back), and I think that one is as bad as any clash there was today. So I guess I disagree. Wouldn't have been less of a clash at all, really. My point was that people wanted a red clash jumper, which doesn't solve the AFL's problems, so doesn't exist. No, you didn't. But you said we should have a red one and use it against St Kilda. Which I don't think would work, given we were told to change it originally. And because we're not allowed red against Essendon. In the end, we had a red one, but we were told to change, so we did, and now we have white, which removes the major clash with St Kilda (whether people think so or not). I don't really see how this debate could have any more legs in it. And I was incredibly surprised to hear people, including you, talking about a red jumper, as I thought we'd all realised that any debate on that topic was futile and thus over.

Really? Don't see why. He's dominating a FB. Let him stay there. Can't see a forward in him as yet. Or ever.