FlashInThePan

Interesting, no sign of Sam Murray at all.

Funny, I don’t feel negative. I don’t even feel negative about Hannan. I just don’t know if he is the real deal or not and since he comes out of contract at the end of the year I think it is safe to say he needs to show something this year to keep his spot. I am not talking about this year as his biggest problem, I’m talking about his total body of work. No doubt he can do some great things in bursts, also no doubt he can run and mark. I have just watched him float in and out of too many games. I can’t tell if it is just needing some time to get used to the pace at AFL or a constant string of injuries, some of which we may not know about, or maybe he is just always going to be a burst player. I’ve never commented on Spargo but since you mention it, I think he too will be watched this year. He showed some good progress in his first year but has shown a woeful lack of both effectiveness and pressure this year and his stats are abysmal. I’m of the camp that you need to give players a chance to showcase a body of work before you can properly tell. Probably the coaches get a lot of that knowledge from watching them train as well, for me I only get a good look on game day so that’s all I can judge by. I’m no footy guru, but even I know that to improve year on year, you have to keep separating the wheat from the chaff. It has to not be personal. I would love to see both Hannan and Spargo really take a step and cement their spots this season, I just note that If they don’t, they should expect that their places in the side will be at risk. Neither of them has shown enough yet to be spared the reaper’s blade due to past greatness.

I just don’t know about Hannan, clearly he had injuries most of last year. I’ve not yet seen him play a full game of football even when fully fit. It is like they take him off the ground for 2 - 3 quarters and then pop him on to do some great stuff and then vanish again. He needs to find some consistency or he will be out. He has the skill and I suspect high half forward or wing is where he can have the most impact. Fitness will be a big factor so perhaps Burgess can get him set up for a good season. As others have mentioned, this is probably it for him. If he can’t sort himself out this season he will be lucky to get another contract.

Neither, I'm just playing back a number of news items that came out at the time. They too may not be fact, footy news can be like that but what else did we have to go on? There was a fair bit of commentary on fan forums saying the same but you take it all with a grain off salt. As for Lever, I don't think you will find too many defenders his age being included in the AA first 40. I have watched most of his games since he came to the dees and my opinion is that he is significantly more skilled player than most of the people around him, ours or opposition, once he gets a few games under his belt. Not only that, though, I just prefer to focus on the positive things rather than hate on the club and players. It doesn't make my opinion right but it let's me enjoy the footy more.

Actually, Howe was the marking equivalent of Frost when he was with us. I lost count of the number of times he would take an amazing mark in defense, go back and kick it directly to the opposition. He always wanted to go to the club he barracked for as a kid, nothing was going to stop that. Ben Kennedy was the sad part of that trade but perhaps that was the best we could do, at least it rid is of Toumpas at the same time and got us pick 29. Strangely, pick 29 was a key part of getting Clayton Oliver since we traded 6 & 29 for 3 that year (along with a lot of other complicated deals) As for Lever, let's just wait and see. When he gets even a little continuity he looks a cut above everyone around him. It's possible that injury will cruel his career but if it doesn't he is going to be s star, no doubt.

I can't even work out what this is supposed to mean. You don't think half back is important enough to commit a high draft pick on? Do you only like good footballers in the midfield or full forward? Teams like Geelong and hawthorn have developed their entire game plan around rebounding from half back, in the case of hawthorn specifically with elite foot skills. I get that you might not rate young, for all of us this is just opinion on very limited data. But not rating half backs at all? You've lost me there.

I don't know the answer here. I love his 2 way running and filling holes for the team. In general he is a strong tackler too. His goal kicking and finishing overall really killed us this year. He wasn't the loan ranger but I just don't think we can persist week on week with players that are that out of form. Still deserves a spot on our list imo but really needs to work on his goal and field kicking. Hopefully with a bit more depth he can work on it in the 2s until he really has it sorted and come back to provide something more like his 2018 form.

I'm with you fork. There is no way we traded out next year's first and this year's second for weightman. I'm hoping it was to get Kemp but maybe Stephens.

Yes, but the OP was suggesting rookieing a delisted ruck as backup. Presumably a delisted one, since that would be all that would be available and prepared to be rookied. That being said, I also don't think now is the time to spend draft picks on developing another ruck option although I am open to developing a versatile tall forward. Right now we need some elite kicking and some more outside run. Even a quality crumbing forward is a significantly higher priority. Using draft picks on some possible far future need seems like a really bad idea.

I really don't know why we would waste a list door on another developing ruckman. Gawn is AA, Preuss is very serviceable and will certainly improve with more time training with gawn. Both Weid and Tomlinson can provide a chop out and Bradkte is developing on the wings. Why exactly would we want to use a draft pick or a list spot on yet another Rick development project right now?

I think in the depths of rehab one would be better recalling that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.

This kids kicking is absolutely elite. Not only that, he is a good intercept mark and can make space. We need to keep pick 3 and take this kid. As others have said, 8 can be Kemp if he is still there or Weightman/Stephens if he is not. Cannot let this kid get to another club.

With a bit more in the tank and another preseason with max I think Preuss could surprise a few people. Just having him on the team makes me feel better, if we were to lose gawn for any decent length and we didn't have him, we would be in big trouble. I'm hoping he can improve his leading patterns and forward craft. He is huge and can kick straight.

This is such a huge win. This kid can seriously gut run. I love the highlight where he kicks to someone at half forward and then goes on running to receive it in the forward 50. This is what we need

There is no way they will trade with Adelaide. It doesn't get them what they need, we'll just bid for green at 3.

Yes, I have heard this every year that the draft has been going, except for the years where next year is going to be a super draft.

It won’t matter, even if there were a trade it would be a token one. At most late pick or pick swap, he is effectively a delisted drug cheat. Although how residual Cocaine from the night before can be considered performance enhancing is an interesting one. As a side note, just because he has had some problems doesn’t mean he is irredeemable. He has an exciting turn of speed but looks far too one dimensional and predictable. We saw Hunt going this way as well. He needs more strings in his bow. I personally find it hard to tell what his kicking is like, he puts himself under so much pressure by always trying to run the ball through congestion that even the best kicker is going to end up with a messy disposal. For the right price I think he would be an interesting experiment.

You are right, if it is just going to be about opinion and 'your own eyes' then we're done. People often don't like statistics, curiously they often don't support our opinions and the narrative we are trying to drive. It is much easier to drive a narrative out of pure opinion and gut feel. Interestingly, when looking at historical events and trends, a surprisingly large part of the scientific community supports strong statistical data as the way to do effective analysis, go figure.

Well then you should be happy already, without even recruiting we can add: Tmac Weid Vdb May Hannan J smith Possibly KK From the team playing in the back half of the season and a different but just as big list from the first half. Looks like you can add Langdon and Tomlinson to that along with either our 2/3 pick or the suite of picks we get if we split it in trade with GWS. I am personally in the Carey camp. When nearly half the list had surgeries in the already shortened preseason and got bugger all preparation for a season with rule changes that required significant structural changes things were always going to be tough. Wins wise it turned out worse than I thought but we were still a long way from the Melbourne teams of the past 10 years. There is no team that can survive the lack of preparation and huge injury list we carried this season. We could barely field a Casey team some weeks. Some so called supporters on this site will turn on their own with the speed and ferocity of a feral animal. We have plenty of talent on this list, champion data rated us the number one team at the beginning of the year. We under performed big time but that talent hasn't just vanished. We can, and I would argue will, bounce back next year.

He seems like a great kid, can run all day and has a terrific work ethic from all reports. Unfortunately he has bigger problems than inconsistency. He generally looks like a deer in the headlights at afl level and takes far too long to make decisions about what to do with the ball. He's not terrible or anything, just a bit too far off the pace. Here's hoping a fresh start with a different gameplan works out for him

No offence intended Lucifer but I get really frustrated with these kinds of glib disparaging statements about the club and its players. People seem to constantly misunderstand how much of skill execution, particularly under pressure, is in the head. We didn't just spend 3 years in a linear progression only to fall off a cliff this year because we don't have any skillful players. We played and won 2 finals games last year and fell in a heap against a side we beat 3 weeks before. Our skill didn't vanish in that 3 weeks or evaporate. Nor could we have gotten into the prelim without skillful players. What happened was mostly mental, coming off the back of some initial tactical errors. Our skills actually deteriorated this year as we fell further into a hole. That began because of the million reason that have been explored on DL ad nauseum, but it continued, and got worse because of loss of confidence and the inability of whoever does our sports psychology to help the players to refocus on the now rather than get drowned in negative self talk (christ I sound like a new age pop psychologist but hopefully my meaning is clear). We don't have a bunch of unskilled nuffies, we have some excellent players and some fairly decent role players and some gaps like most teams. When they lose their confidence they stop playing instinctively and start making rudimentary errors because they are over thinking things. That got us in spades this year, you could see it every time we got in front of goal. We went from one of the most accurate, high scoring teams, to one of the most inaccurate and low scoring ones. Because of confidence. Interestingly richmond turned this around in one year, in no small part due to a new mindfulness coach.

We are just seeing the second half of the $cully trade. There was always a really big whiff around what the hawks paid for him last season, regardless of his injury status. My guess is that this trade for Patton was always part of it.

Lewis already retired, let's call that $400k Garlett, probably another $400k Jones 1 year deal with a haircut (somewhat ironic), probably another 200k I'm guessing we already had some wiggle room, we don't have any million dollar players.

This doesn’t surprise me. I doubt he was talking about the beginning of the season so much as when it became clear that plan A wasn’t working and we started making adjustments on the fly to turn things around. Goody has said on a couple of occasions that he though that they tinkered too much with the game plan. None of that would have been bedded down and we were implementing it with a team down on confidence. Although the midfield group was fairly intact for the season both forward and back lines were in constant flux and often in disarray. In the forward line TMac played poorly in the beginning of the year and seemed to go into his shell, not that uncommon when poor form hits. When he did start to turn things around he got injured. Melksham was out most of the season, Weid was struggling, Hannan wasn’t around, there were a lot of youngsters effectively trying out without any real leadership around them. You knew there were problems when they moved Lewis down there to provide some leadership. In defence there was at least Frost, Salem and Hibberd as stable players but the structure around them changed virtually every game. Lever joined only later in the season, May was in and out as was Hore and Jetta. Teams tend to play best when players are able to play their natural game and the coach puts in structures to support them, that was a big part o f the Tigers turn around. Dimma realised he was over coaching and concentrating on what people couldn’t do rather than what they were great at. Look at how much better Fritsch looks in the forward line playing his natural game. When you try to force an unnatural structure onto people they need significantly more coaching and management, without runners I can’t see that working. Imagine if you tried building a game plan that forced Clarry to play on the outside? You would have to send a runner out every 5 minutes to remind him not to dive in and put his head over the ball. It is too easy and simplistic to just blast coaches and players for being terrible teachers and leaders. The truth is far more complicated, and improvement is not going to be about sacking all the on field leaders. It is far more likely to come from building a game plan that lets players play their natural game and simple rules and strategies to implement when things are turning against us. That allows everyone to be an on field leader. Having a stable team with key people on the field week in week out will also make a big difference, along with an uninterrupted preseason where they really embed the game plan and lock in player roles.

I didn’t mind ANB in 2018 and I still love his two way running. He fills holes where they need filling and helps with our structure. I have really gone off him this year just because his disposal and set shot kicking have been so bad. We had the opening game with Port won if he had kicked the 2 sitters he missed in the first quarter. That became a big part of his game this year, momentum killing misses. You may be right that his natural position is midfield but he would have to compete with Clarry, Brayshaw, Viney, Harmes and Trac to get that spot. I have never noticed him being a particularly great extractor at AFL level but perhaps that is because that is not the role he gets. I would like to see him make it but to do so would mean significantly cleaning up both his field kicking and his set shot kicking. Having him in the forward line, or anywhere near goal is just a disaster ATM. A kicking efficiency of 57.6% is just not good enough, lets not even talk about his goal kicking efficiency, arghh.