Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I'm simultaneously surprised and unsurprised by Marty Hore's performances this season. Surprised in the sense that his preseason and early real season games didn't give me much of an indication that he could really play and I wrote him off a bit based on that. But perhaps my initial judgment was partially due to an expectation that Taylor and Co have been pretty good at picking up quality diamonds in the rough from the VFL (i.e. Fritsch and Hannan) that I had put high expectations on Hore's potential to walk in and look at home at AFL level and in that respect I'm not surprised. The key thing now is, can he maintain it? There was a mature guy we got from SA a while back Alex Georgiou who put in a good string of early games for us and looked the goods to an extent, but couldn't maintain that form or rise to the next level. Dean Terlich was another mature age defender that showed early promise, but didn't have what it takes over the long haul. I really do hope that Hore can make it, as we will need some replacements for Hibbard and Jetta in a few years as age catches up with them. Oscar McDonald has been my biggest disappointment because he held our defense together reasonably well last year and I was expecting him to take another step forward and instead I think he has gone backwards. Some might say I'm delusional, but I still have hope that Oscar can step up and make it, but perhaps he now needs to do what so many of our other players did, but he always seemed to avoid and that's build on and correct deficiencies in his game at Casey. Asides from Oscar, my biggest disappointments for somewhat the inverse reasons to Hore have been Keilty and Petty. I sense that Petty has more scope and potential to further mature and make it, but that Keilty may be living on borrowed time as a MFC listed player. I'd love to be proven wroung on Keilty, because I like what he gives, but my perception is that you only get so long to develop, particularly as a mature age player and he has been with us a few years now.

His tap work is sublime, his marking is magnificent and for a guy that is well over 2m tall, he picks the ball up off the deck better than some rovers of a fraction his height. The guy is a freak. Love his sense of humor, love his compeditiveness, but beyond all else, I love his passion and loyalty to the red and blue jumper. Go Maxy - long live the bearded warrior.

Re the Weid miss I"m just as disappointed in Smith missing the cider a few minutes prior to Weids and Smith probably had even less pressure on him. Conversely I was stoked with the poise of Hore slotting through that pearler on the run against the GC a few weeks ago. You win some, you loose some, although as we move forward I would like to think that we will develop that confidence and poise that we win more than we loose in this situation.

Alot of players have a good look around these days though it's all part of the game. Doesn't mean all of the go.

Agree Re the set shot thing. I mean Weid is normally a pretty good set shot at goal and doesn't really need a Viney getting in his ear. It could have had the opposite effect of putting him off and/or eating into the 30 seconds he had for his set shot routine. Weids nailed a much harder shot from around 50 out against Sydney earlier in the year when they were comming at us in the last quarter. I also remember a really young Salem slotting through a goal against the Bombers to effectively win us the game a number of years ago. Weid is a professional footballer and I'm certain he has had pressure shots on goal before, so I'd think he would generally know how to handle the situation, but he just didn't on this occasion. In the grand scheme of things, I'd rather Weid miss this shot, learn from it and nail it for us when we have something more worthwhile ridding on it in another season. I hope you're wrong about Weid flying the nest though.

Yep. We should probably sell it directly to the Crows and let it be played at the Adelaide Oval: 1. We have a pretty good track record against the Crows there; 2. We wouldn't have to play in the heat and humidity and sucked our energy of the next week.

And the inverse is also true. Many of the great coaches like Leigh Mathews openly acknowledge that to win a premiership, you often need to have a pretty good run with injuries. Was a big part of Richmond winning the flag a few years back. Conversely we have been on the back foot injury wise the whole season. I do wounder if we played injured players we otherwise wouldn't have to try to go as deep as we could last September? I'm not saying that was nessasrily the wrong strategy, but we gave certainly paid for it this season. Some warned of it from early preseason, but I have lived in hope until around now that it wouldn't completely stuff our season, but alas. It seems like we started the season underdone and on the back foot injury wise and just haven't been able to have any run of luck or good injury management to be able to recover from that position.

Oh, yeah. Lol! Sorry about that one old chap.

Part of the opposition accuracy thing could be down to us letting them get the ball in good positions in their forward 50. Why our players/coaches don't say to hell with the high performance managers and spend more time on getting our goal kicking right astounds me as well. Though the inverse to the easy shots in good positions logic could be partly true for us as well, I recall far too many goals missed from near on straight in front 20m - 40m range, which should be givemees for AFL footballers. A bit more time focused on our goal kicking could make us a 4 to 6 goal better side each week, even without any improvement to other parts of our game.

I've always thought his set shots goal kicking was ok, but your points might be quite valid. Certainly what I would say is that compared to what we have had so far this season from many of his MFC peers, his goal kicking reliability makes him look like Locket or Dunstal by comparison.

Really looking forward to seeing what difference Hannan can make. Many here have sighted a lack of demonstrated from from Hannan, but I bet many would be happy to see Steven May back in next week simply on the proviso he gets through the game. Watching us this year I think we are missing many of the qualities that Hannan brings as a footballer: 1. Cumbing ability; 2. Good goal nous and the ability to pull out a goal from nowhere; 3. Marking ability, both on the lead and in a pack; 4. The ability to finds space and turn his opponent inside out on the flanks and then deliver quality inside 50 passes as you suggest. Put al this together and Hannan makes a 5, maybe 6 - 7 goal difference to our side and we win the last two games. Salem and Hibbard back to our defense brings it back from being a C grade to a C+ or perhaps B grade as well, so very happy with those inclusions. Carn the Might Demons - we can doo this!

I like the positivity and never say die Goofy. I'm just about at the point of thinking what can we salvage from this season. If we win tonight, then perhaps I'll keep a small glimmer of hope alive as well, but we would need to not only win, but win in a convincing manner that not only got us the four points, but gave us something to work with going forward as well. Just clumsily falling over the line in an error riddled game like most of our previous wins this year wouldn't do it for me. Even though we lost the game against the eagles, I thought our form had turned the corner, but then last week showed that just to be a mirage. Really hoping for any sort of win tonight as it sure beats loosing, but right now my expectations are not high.

On a related note, how badly did big Cam Pedersen time his career with us? We were absolute rubish when he first joined us, but then spent years on the fringe when we picked up our game. It's a pitty we don't have Pedo this year as I feel he could have played a role to bridge the gap while Weid matures a bit more. I feel that Pedo was more mobile than Preuss, but had a bigger presence than Tim Smith. This whole discussion begs two questions to me: 1.Is Weid going to become the player we had hoped when we picked him at pick 9; and 2. Are we actually going to play Preuss? The past several weeks seemed to be the ideal time to play him and at the moment he looks like becoming the next Pedo, the fridge player who gets half a dozen games a year and work almost be questioning why he made the move from North. If either of the above two can play that second key forward role for us sufficiently well, then I see Cameron or Finlayson as being fairly redundant to our needs and we would be better spending the money and trade capital elsewhere, unless he just fell into our lap.

A big problem I believe that Jessie faced taking big pack marks in our forward line was our habbit of blindly bombing the ball in, with blatant disregard to kick it to the advantage of our own players. That and combined with the high forward press that we played meaning our forward line was usually super congested and Jessie often double or tripple manned in marking contrsts. That all said, by definition, a pack mark also infers a highly contested situation fought over by a big group of players and I do feel that Jessie did drop off and never completely delivered on his potential for us in this regard.

And Jack seems to have inherited Todd's horrible goal kicking, which I recall being a particular deficiency. I don't think I was ever particularly confident when Todd was lining up a goal from anything outside about 35m out. Perhaps Todd's poor kicking was also worse at the start of his career and improved towards the end? It's going back a while and all starting to get a bit hazy. Earl Spalding was possibly another who's early goal kicking was very ordanary, but I think became quite a reliable shot for goal after he left us and joined Carlscum.

That's my reccolection. Surely we have a better kicking coach than Todd. Probably explains our rubbish team disposal. Christian Salem should be leading the kicking drills.

One thing I would say, is that I think it somewhat makes more sense to pick up a player in this mid season draft where I think you get a better opportunity to track development post U18 level, than it does taking a pick in the 80s in the national draft or last pick of the normal rookie draft. Those late picks, you could be taking more of a prospective stab at who might be any good out of what's left. Regards how good Dunkely may turn out to be, would we have used this same opportunity to pickup Freitch, Hannan, Vandenberg or Hore in past years? I think we probably would have and so, I believe there is every likelihood that Dunkley could end up best 22. It seems to me that recruitment works something like this: 1. The top end tallent both football wise and athletic stand outs go in the national draft; 2. Those with average athleticism, but good work ethic, commitment and good football brains and/or combined with a bad draft year go in the rookie drafts. Good footballers might not shine through at U18s level, because it's 'all about me' with the guns trying to show off their wears to recruiters and the good footballers team players are less valued, because the recruiters are by nature of the marketplace looking for the stand outs. Time at senior level post U18s gives those second teir players the time and opportunity to differentiate themselves from one another. From what I understand, the success rate of rookies once drafted in terms of senior AFL games played is pretty high and there have been a number of premiership teams with a high makeup of once rookie listed players, so no way am I writing off what Dunckley could be for us.

You might have started this thread, but you don't own it and other posters can take it in whatever direction they choose.

Sorry, I agree with @poita on this one. Steve May has been very ordanary in ever appearance he has made for us so far. Understand that he was comming off some injuries, but he still didn't put in the sort of classy, confident performances that many champion players often do off the back of an injury. So in that respects I think he has to stand up to the plate, show some form and start performing to his past record and capabilities before I'd say he's actually a better bet than Frost 'right now'. Totally reconise May has the proven past record and capability to be considered better than Frost, but right now, I don't think he is a walk up starter against Frost on current form. Of course that assessment could change very quickly if May steps right in and blitzes and I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Can't have too many quality mids. As Bernie, Jordan and now Jones have pulled out of our midfeild, I think we have actually looked a little lean there at times, when an Oliver, Viney or Harmes is rotated out of the midfield. Doesn't hurt to have the extra depth in case of injury or form slump either. Vanders made a huge difference to our game late last year as a powerful forward and impact midfielder. Who know if Vanders will be back or if Dunckley can be as good, but if he gives it a crack, then you never know. Chasing that classy outside mid, we could just have easily ended up with another Sam Blease or Jimmy Toumpas outcome if the right player wasn't available.

The other clubs mentioned as having speed bump years were Geelong 2006 and Hawthorn 2009. I could well handle us following that part of the model. I can excuse us having this one bad year, so long as we achieve a premiership(s) in the years ahead. What would set me off is to have another few decades of mediocrity like 1987 - 2006 where we were almost good enough on several occasions, but lacked the ruthlessness, intensity and professionalism to take it all the way to a flag.

SWYL, if you listen to PJs last Demonland podcast, he actually made the point that our virtually uninterrupted/steady rise up the ladder over the past 4 years unDer Roos/Goodwin doesn’t happen very often in AFL footy and that the club needed to be resilient enough to deal with speed bumps thar would likely happen along the way. Why did he have to be so prophetic?

Agree with the above to an extent, but FFS, can no a week go by when we actually get more players back than loose them to injury? I know finals are pretty much a goner now, but it would be great to see us be in a position to put a team of reasonable strength out on the park to start building some good form, cohesion and systems for next season. As much as I'd love to see one or two of the lesser names we have in the side right now take their game to the next level, I feel like the team as a whole is being held back by not being able to get a critical mass of quality players out on the ground at the same time to tip us over the edge from just hanging in games, compared to being truely compeditive. I guess some setbacks are to be expected for players comming back from long term injuries, but this one seems to be somewhat unrelated to the original injury and just a further demonstration that we just can't handle a trick this season.

6.Gawn 5.Viney 4. Hore 3. Harmes 2. Baker 1. Hunt

A third (/turd) WA team to weaken the Eagles dominance would be a good thing for the comp. The Sand Groapers would love the idea, until they realize the implications and then it would be too late and they would have fractured the Eagles support base, recruiting edge and finacial clout. Everything else about your proposal makes too much sense for the AFL to ever adopt though, although I'd personally still keep a top 8 with 20 teams. Making finals should still be an elite accomplishment.