titan_uranus

I'm stunned at Richmond's concessions, revealed by Caro in The Age today. I can't understand on what basis the AFL agreed to improve their draw to the extent that it has been, given they finished 15th this year.

No way Moloney misses out. Swap him for Jones and you're OK (though I'd have Rivers instead of Spencer).

I didn't think of that. Makes that option a little more enticing, as you'd expect the Gold Coast to make him a sizeable offer if he's OOC at the end of next year. We're talking Melbourne, not St Kilda. The kicking got better as the year went on. The slowness is a problem, yes. Just because he's at his best in the rain doesn't mean he's inept in the dry. If there's another player in the PSD who's better than Ball, we'll take him. But there won't be. People should stop intimating that there's a chance that there'll be another Jurrah in the PSD. That only happened through special consideration, and is the only instance of that occuring. It's only happened once, it's not going to happen again.

It's not that odd, really. We had 3 consecutive away games this year in rounds 2-4.

I'm thinking the same thing. If he doesn't like us, he can take a 1 year deal with St Kilda and look to go to Collingwood next year. Similar to what Essendon did with Lovett (though I'm not sure he was OOC last year, just that they agreed that they'd look to trade him this year).

This is typical HUN sensationalism. The journalist asked the Carlton guy (Icke?) if there was a chance they would look at Roberston, and he didn't say 'no', which the journalist constured to mean 'yes'. If Carlton think Robertson is the answer to their forward line problems they've got rocks in their head. If I was a Carlton supporter I'd want Henderson and Kreuzer playing at FF and CHF respectively, with Walker, Betts and Garlett supporting. Hampson and Warnock to ruck.

Seems like, in most people's teams, there's no room for Maric. I wonder if he'll come on like expected. At the moment I have him behind numerous other players (Petterd, Wonna, Jetta, Strauss). Hopefully he gets back in.

Yeah there's some record of looking at the top 8 after 9 or so rounds: it hardly ever changes from then on. It would definitely be nice to win in Round 1. We haven't done so since 2005.

Amazingly tense finish to what should have been an easy win. In the end we only won by 4 runs. Kumar and Harbhajan tonked us around, 20 runs off the second last over. Siddle, who'd been crap most of the time, held his nerve in the last over, but Watson cracked. Why wasn't Lee used?

Time for another seven ODIs, this time against India. Woohoo. With Ferguson out, and Marsh available for selection, I'd be opening with Watson and Marsh, push Paine down to 6, and bring White up to 4 (absolute waste of talent when he bats at 6. He showed vs England at 3 how good he is). Edit: Well, they've actually started. 2/108 after 20 overs. Voges gets Ferguson's spot, Paine opened (and made a good 50). White's batting at 4, which is good to see.

The Shane Woewodin Award No reason except that he played for both teams.

Which club in their right mind selects a 30-year old who doesn't want to play for you? He has said he wants to play for Sydney because he wants to live in Sydney. If you're Melbourne, Richmond, Fremantle, West Coast or North Melbourne, you shouldn't be even thinking about him. Which means he gets to Sydney.

But what if we don't win those early games? Plus, if we play Hawthorn away, we mightn't play them at home. We want to play as many of our 10 Victorian home games against Victorian teams. In 2009 we played 4 homes games against interstate teams (WCE, Adelaide, PA, Freo). IIRC only 1 of those got above 20,000, and I highly doubt that those kind of games would be drawing big crowds even if we were winning. We need to be playing home games against Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, Hawthorn, Richmond, Geelong and St Kilda. If we could get all those at home, I wouldn't care if we had to travel interstate 6 or 7 times. From a financial point of view, that's what we need. If we were in the fortunate position of not having to worry about finances, and we were looking to solely get an easy chance to make finals, then having Hawthorn away at the G is a good thing.

Same here. That's the thing that disappoints me the most. I would have prefered a home game against Hawthorn. Hopefully we get one later in the year.

Over-optimisitc, I would have thought. Surely they realise that, since Collingwood doesn't have any picks before 30, he has to survive 29 other picks, including North Melbourne and Essendon in the mid-20s.

Agree. If he picks Carlton, though, Sydney will have a hard time stopping themselves from taking him. He'd have to convince them that he really wants to set up in Melbourne, not Sydney.

Not so sure it is rubbish, [censored]. By 2012 we should have found 22 players who are better than Bartram. If we haven't, then we won't be very good, because Bartram isn't very good. Hoopla is right.

Great news Two Sheds. We're all behind you.

At VFL level, maybe. At AFL level, I saw slowness, no awareness, not the best footskills, and little leadership. But a ton of endeavour. Of course, he only played, what, 15 games. But from those 15 games, I've seen basically nothing of what you've seen. And I'm sure if the FD saw all that, they'd have kept him.

Wow. You might be the one and only person here who likes it.

All true, but I don't rate our batsmen much behind the NSW batsmen, yet most of us struggled to get in. Bowling obviously had a part to play, and NSW are lucky to have so many international standard bowlers (Bracken would be there too if he wasn't injured), but with Hodge, Hussey, White, McDonald, Quiney and Blizzard in the team, we should have done better (not necessarily a win, but not as bad a loss).

Hopefully within the next 5 years that kind of talk will be non-existent. You don't hear that kind of crap about teams who are winning.

Jimmy was interviewed by Neil Mitchell this morning on 3AW. You can catch the interview here.

There was a NAB cup game in Dubai a couple of years ago (Collingwood vs Adelaide, 2008). Collingwood was also scheduled to play West Coast in South Africa in this year I think, but it was canceled.

Do we? Or does the Gold Coast? Welcome aboard Cheesecake (a bit weird coming from me since you've been a member here longer than I have...). Nice work with the maths there. Agree re: Bate. Doesn't get the kudos he deserves. Had a few bad games early, but for the most part he had a great year.