titan_uranus

Oh wait, I thought you meant Pick 1 in the ND, not the PSD... In that case, that's not as ridiculous an idea as it sounds. Unless there's another Liam Jurrah-type player who doesn't nominate for the ND.

Firstly, I don't think draft picks from different years are tradable. I think only draft picks from the one draft can be traded. Secondly, why would we want to trade pick 1 away for pick 6? And we lose Petterd in the process? Sounds ridiculous HT.

The midfield is worse. If we had a decent midfield the forwards would at least have a chance to be good. As it stands the delivery is so crap the forwards don't get enough opportunities to do anything. There isn't a midfield in the competition worse than ours.

He's a great mark, loves the contested work, seems to put his body on the line when required, and runs all day. Good qualities. He is let down by his disposal at times, but overall I think he will make a more than adequate replacement for Whelan. Should keep his spot in the team too whilst we continue down the youth road.

Needed a laugh...thanks Hannabal.

Good post. I'm looking forward to mo's response to this.

Exactly. It doesn't work, and I don't want to see it happen again.

Very true. His kicking isn't fantastic. He just has the ability/tendency to kick it long (which is a nice ability to have, but it's not enough to warrant selection on its own).

8-10 wins next year. 10-12 in 2011 (possible finals) 12+ in 2012 (and finals) 2013-2015 is a chance for a premiership.

In your opinion mo, why is Carlton doing as well as it is this year? They might have had 2 good trades (Judd and Stevens), but it's safe to say their climb up the ladder is being led by their youth. Their repeated losses over the 2004-2007 period haven't hampered them, have they? I want us to win as bad as you do, but there just is no benefit in winning 5 games and getting 1 top-10 pick compared to winning 4 games and getting 2 top-10 picks. You make a good point in regards to pinning our hopes on these draft picks. These players aren't the be all and end all of our chances of winning a flag.

Robert Walls on One Week at a Time highlighted that Davey is third in the leage for handball received, and said that we are over-relying on Davey to bring the ball out of defence. I think that's clearly the case, and we have to look at ways to ease the reliance on Davey.

I'm more worried about the potentially abysmal crowd than the result. We must get 20,000+ to this game. And the next week vs Port. And the later match v Fremantle.

Morton is one of the major disappointments of this year for mine. I guess I was expecting him to really develop and no longer be afraid of the contest. Have a look at Mitch Robinson at Carlton. He's a pretty skinny lad, but he never shirks a contest. I don't know what it is with Morton, but it frustrates me that he seems so weak and so unwilling to get the contested ball or take a contested mark.

I doubt you'd hold that view if you'd seen his efforts at Casey so far (of course, I'm assuming that you haven't...). He isn't doing enough to warrant senior selection, and Bailey seems to prefer to play those who are in form.

I guess this is where we disagree rpfc. I don't think the experience of the group should matter: if a group of players has obvious strengths, the team should be playing to them. If a group of players can't do certain things as well as others, then they shouldn't be trying them in matches. Insightful stuff. What do you think teams would prefer: Davey providing precision kicks off half back, or being wasted in a forward line where the ball doesn't come in often enough. To me it is the former. Don't forget that we haven't had Wonaeamirri all year, and he showed last year that he has no problem with finding the goals. You're just proving to everyone here that you haven't seen more than 1 or 2 game this year. Stop basing comments on the past 2 weeks and go and have a watch of the first 10. In particular, look at the West Coast, Western Bulldogs, Richmond and Geelong matches. You will see in whose games the reasons why we should be able to climb up the ladder next year. Jones is somewhat questionable. He's had some good games this year (West Coast for example), but there isn't much consistency. Spot on with the other 4 though. And I reckon you can add Green to that list (in that his football of 2008-2009 is at least as good, if not better, than it was prior to 2008). This is a big reason why we have sucked so much over the past two seasons. To boast a senior list of Bruce, McDonald, Robertson, Whelan, Wheatley, White, Yze and Holland shows just how bad our senior players are/were in comparison to other teams.

As far as I know the demon is back. Alternate strip being one such example. The previous administration made a huge mistake by ditching the demon in favour of that pathetic square logo.

Flat-footedness is a huge problem at this club. Too often the player waits for the ball to come to them. And we all know of our problems when kicking out. Winning mightn't be the highest priority for the next 10 weeks, but those 10 matches should be used to practice simple things like providing moving targets and working on a way to move the ball from full back to full forward.

People should think about Bartram's effort and role in the team before they comment. He isn't in the team to be the flashy midfielder that racks up 30 possessions and dominates. He's in there for his toughness, his commitment to the task (which was to tag Stanton, which he did well) and his consistent effort. Gave much more to the team on Friday than others (e.g. Whelan, Robertson, Jetta).

I'm going to assume that Watts gets rested for the trip to Brisbane, however this isn't a certainty. In: Warnock, Jones, Maric Out: Watts, Whelan, Jetta If Watts stays, then Robertson goes. Warnock and Jones should be right to come back in. Connolly said that they only missed out v Essendon because it was a Friday match.

I just wish that, when we play interstate, we were on free to air. None of our interstate matches are on Ten/Seven this year, and we play 5 of them.

It's an interesting argument, isn't it? On the one hand, he doesn't look capable of playing AFL football at the moment. He's not having too much of an impact. And we have other players running around in the VFL who are much fitter (e.g. Maric). Plus, as Nathan Thompson said, in his physical state it wouldn't take much to get an injury that could stall his development. On the other hand, he gets the experience of an interstate trip, he gets to play against some huge bodies at Brisbane, and he gets more AFL experience. I'm not sure where I sit on this one now that I've thought about it.

Agree. When we go man on man, we look better.

My thoughts of Leigh Matthews as a commentator have taken a sharp decline following his comments on Game Day this morning. He begins by saying that Friday night was the first time he'd seen the Demons live this year. So, based on that game, he then went on to say he cannot see how we are going to climb to the top. Quite incredulous, really. Clearly doesn't pay much attention to any game other than that which he commentates on. However, whilst some people here cannot/will not agree with him, his comments about Watts are correct. He is a boy playing against men, he isn't fit enough, and he's had minimal impact on either game he's played. It doesn't matter what we think/know about him, Watts hasn't shown the football world why he went number 1. We all know here that the football he's playing at the moment isn't indicative of what we're going to get from Watts, and none of us should have expected anything from a school kid without a pre-season and without proper weekly training. But none of that makes Matthews comments on Watts wrong. Personally, I'm glad we played him. I'd rather a not-yet-ready Watts getting invaluable AFL experience than a has-been like Bell, Newton or Dunn.

This is the other side of the argument. We screwed around with Miller, to no avail, and I worry sometimes that switching Martin from one end of the ground to other within the course of a quarter of football isn't allowing him to learn enough about either end of the ground.

Disagree. I think the game plan should suit the players, not vice versa. We should be playing to our strengths. Making players adapt to a game plan takes out their intuition and, as we're seeing at the moment, it isn't working. The way I see it, our game plan involves getting numbers behind the ball and bringing it out through the corridor. The problem is that, when a player gets free and looks up, he sees nothing. There is no forward line to kick to, mainly because the forwards are coming far too far up the ground. So the ball carrier looks sideways/backwards, we flip it around as we wait for the forwards to make position, and we turn it over because our skills are poor. So the game plan falls apart.