Rodney (Balls) Grinter

While on the topic of the new assistants, can someone who's somewhat 'in the know' please give their views on what distinct qualities they see Matthew Scarlett bringing to our coaching group and the team? I know a little of the champion player he was and my own superficial understanding is that he was also regarded as a great leader at Geelong during their period as one of the greatest teams of the modern era, but would be interested in some more specifics.

I thought it was interesting that he had that time in the ammos. Thought that he'd been in the AFL coaching system all this time.

Agreed that it would have been good to see him get a greater run, although I also thought his positioning and ball use as a half forward was quite good. It's just a pity that a whole bunch of those 21 games would have been as a sub, where he got very limited or possibly no game time. Thought he showed a lot more in his breif game time at AFL level than Laurie who has been given significantly more time on the list for somewhat lack luster performances at the top level to date.

Honestly I'll be stoked to see big Max represent the Big V and yet again follow in the footsteps of his early mentor Jimmy. It baffles me that he wasn't in the first batch announced, like how would the current All Australian ruck and all time most capped All Australian ruck not be an automatic selection for the Big V. While I wouldn't begrudge The Bont being named as captain, I really think it should go to Max this year. Bont will get future opportunities and I think Max would have the better presence on and off the feild for this rebirth of Sate of Origin. They'd just better not name Jerremy Cameron captain. Seeing Kossie and Jessy line up with other greats and favourites like Charlie Cameron will be something of a treat. I'm actually really looking forward to them bringing back State of Origin footy, but must say I'm disappointed that the AFL have gone about it somewhat half assed in a several respects: It should have been mixed in closer to or in the middle of the season proper They should have played the first one back for a while at the MCG. A packed house of 100,000 screaming Vic's would be a much better spectical than 60,000 in Perth

Was it like a match worn jumper?

Was also my thoughts. Hopefully we've got a good succession plan in place as it's bound to occur at some stage sooner or later.

Perhaps time may yet tell a different story, but I think the big failure wasn't so much the recruitment of Laurie that JT was responsible for, its that we have continued to give him contract extensions well beyond what is justified by his AFL level performances. It's like we're giving him all the time of a key position player to develop, when small-mid sized players like him are a dime a dozen and we've had plenty at the club in his time that have actually shown more, that have come and gone. Either way it pans out, I hope his list clogging days at the club are soon coming to an end.

Lol. Would like to know the story behind that one!

Lol Ghosty, now I know you're really delusional 😜

I don't want us to just beat Collingwood though. I want us to absolutely smash the fkers.

I don't think I see any issues with this. If it's not making them money and has no tangible benefit to clubs, then it's just another overhead we could all do without, along with the AFLs bloated corporate / executive management payroll. Really actually wounder if the whole league management could do with a massive overhaul.

Who taps it over the top to Picket who dances gives off the hands to Picket who slots through a miracle goal from hard up against the boundary! These DEMONS ARE ON FIRE!! 🔥🔥🔥💙❤️💙❤️

I'd have to say very closely followed by Allan Jackovic. 201 goals in 47 games would be unheard-of these days and certainly not by a MFC player. Came as close as any MFC player in the modern era to matching Fred's record of most goals in a game. To think that in this same period in the 90s, we also had Garry Lyon and Darren Bennett, Martin Pike as key forwards and later David Neitz and Shaun Smith, Jeff Farmer and Russell Robertson as talls smalls and mid sized forwards. Was such an exciting era. If only we could boast that sort of forward line over the past few years.

They we pretty obnoxious throughout most of the 90s when they were a force as well.

Imagine all those booing fests. I think it's tonned down since their expectation is they will loose any week anyways.

Give them another decade or so of irrelevance and hopefully that changes. Maybe even more so if Freo can actually be half decent in that time.

And so what if one of these clubs that did a trade for better picks on the premis of not bidding on the club they were dealing withs player then double crosses them and bids on them anyways? I know it's unlikely and that club would never receive that same sort of trust in a deal again, but it it could set your club up better and seriously push back a close rivals recruitment, then surely you'd actually have to consider it right? Similarly, I think the AFL should be holding players that nominate for the draft and then nominate a club or their terms to account. I'd also love to see a rival club draft someone like a Luke Ball or Jack Martin, then just offer them a contract of whatever they could afford and say, don't like it, don't play for us and get nothing for a season.

"...man it sucks to be an Egales fan right now". I think it just sucks to be an Eagles fan full stop.

We were red hot going into that finals series. If only we'd won a few more games earlier in the season and got ourselves a top 4 spot. Travelling to Perth to play a rested, well drilled West Coast in the prelim killed us, just like it did in 2018.

Yep, those guys were great, Pike and Jacko were definitely also personal favourites of mine, but to also have stars like Lyon, Stynes, Wight, Tingay, Viney, Neitz and also some really serviceable depth and quality role players beneath them. Just check out the team list from that season. I had to search it up as my memory was somewhat letting be down beyond Lyon, Schwatz: 2 Stephen Tingay 24 8 3 Garry Lyon 24 79 4 Chris Sullivan 11 3 5 David Schwarz 25 60 6 Glenn Lovett 11 11 7 Darren Kowal 14 2 8 Graeme Yeats 19 0 9 David Neitz 24 2 10 Martin Pike 16 25 11 Jim Stynes 25 10 12 Todd Viney 25 3 13 Allen Jakovich 13 51 14 Rod Grinter 9 2 15 Paul Hopgood 6 1 16 Andy Lovell 24 29 17 Brett Lovett 25 14 18 Sean Charles 13 24 19 Paul Prymke 24 1 20 Matthew Febey 22 4 21 Steven Febey 25 3 22 Jeff Hilton 19 9 23 Kevin Dyson 18 6 24 Phil Gilbert 10 5 25 Jason Norrish 15 1 26 Greg Doyle 13 8 27 Sean Wight 24 0 28 Glenn Molloy 6 1 29 Andrew Obst 16 3 34 Dean Irving 6 2 35 Bradley Campbell 1 0 37 Andrew Lamprill 4 1 41 Peter Rohde 14 2

Two of my favourite games of footy. That team was good enough to win a grand final, if only we could have kept them all on the park.

I think most people could reasonably differentiate the fans and their team mates from management. There were alot of fans that had nothing but love for Clarry, similarly Max and I really think he should have been able to compose himself to at least thank them - surely that's something a half decent player manager would also have a bit of a word to him about. Who knows maybe he'll acknowledge the MFC faithful at some point, but if he doesn't, then I think that would be pretty poor form.

Agreed. I'm not saying they won't be best 23 at some stage soon, but I'd be looking for at least some kind of stand-out performance in practice matches against other teams to say that the new recruits are seniors ready. To me this goes for L.Pickett and Taylor. Based on his AFL/senior level performances to date and a good preseason, I'd be quite happy to have Culley in the 23, but honestly I think he's got to put in a string of consistent high quality, high output games before he replaced Langdon in the starting 18.

@Demonland updated the title to: 2025 Player Reviews: #4 Harvey Langford

And then you have 'The Moose'