Demons1858

Not great but could be worse. Most are replaceable with the exception of Gawn, Hogan, and maybe Lewis

He played 3 games and performed better than average in 1 pre-season tune up game. Not a big enough sample to say he has improved significantly. The MFC would have played him lasy year or in round 1, 2 or 3 as a forward/back up ruck if they thought he was good enough in that role. You seem to labouring the point, not sure why, he has other attributes and he deserves his chance

The players deserve some privacy. Clubs don't totally own them. I know this is not a conventional view and expected some negative posts. Agree with the health comments you make re smoking but its not illegal, lots of people do it, and its their lives. The club obviously aren't too concerned and they have watered down the issue. Drinking and gambling also lead to health issues so its all about moderation - note we have a wine sponsor and run a gaming venue. Lots of things in life have risks, we can't ask the players to be perfect at everything, the club certainly isn't. Its at the minor end of the scale for me. PS. I don't smoke, some might suggest I should start

No, talking about Petracca, he seems to have a great passion for the club, supporters and the game. I think Greene has had a few hiccups off the field

Spot on binman! Was wondering the same thing

Not sure why I need to be specific Satyrconhome, its obvious to anyone that has watched him play up forward. To play up forward you need some of these attributes: goal sense, goal kicking accuracy, forward pressure, strong marking under pressure, ability to evade, well timed leading patterns etc etc. He isn't particularly good at any of these but as I said he is serviceable in the ruck and think he will do ok and am happy for him to get his chance after all the work he has put in.

Interesting stats. Will be hard to replace his dominance as the charts and numbers highlight http://www.afl.com.au/news/2017-04-11/the-stats-files-are-the-demons-gawn-plus-make-your-september-plans

What I do like is his physical presence in the ruck and when the ball falls to the ground. He's a big boy and opens up space for the other onballers

Spencer now he is fit would probably get a game with some other clubs with poorer ruck stocks despite his deficiencies. He should be serviceable while playing in the ruck but is a burden if he needs to rest up forward. Good that he gets some reward for his efforts of the years

More annoyed with him missing the game on the weekend. Would have helped up forward, and despite the perceptions his kicking accuracy (not kicking style) isn't bad. Good on him for having some down time. Surprises me that clubs insist players don't smoke although I understand why they might.

Awesome talent. The best part is that he is suited to a role that is really hard to fill being a forward / mid. Toby Greene doesn't dominate possessions but has become super important to GWS. Love his attitude and way he embrace the whole aspect of being an AFL footballer

The knock on trealor from Collingwood supporters is his disposal. Gws pushed him out to create salary cap space and spread the age of their talent pool by using him and other picks as currency for the future

Don't need to. My comments were in reference to SOS and the drafting since he has been at the club i.e. 2015/16 drafts

Must admit I haven't gone through it in detail but I can't recall any major stuff ups that cost them anything significant under SOS. Happy for you to enlighten by you Skuit? Note that I'm not looked for example of players traded in that basically cost them nothing to recruit and helped pair back the list to bottom out

Think your underselling his efforts. Its true that they got plenty of assistance but they played it smartly just the same. Traded in experienced players that were done at top clubs at little or not cost to guide the youngsters and focussed top selections on future talent which the afl hadn't totally expected. You just need to look at the Gold coast to see how not to do it (although I acknowledge they got lesser concessions). All those talented draft selections which they now don't need are now used as currency to bring in even more selections and mature bodies at the point end of their list management

Carlton list was the terrible when SOS arrived and its profile suggested it was only going to get worse in the coming years. SOS has cleared out heaps of players quickly that might have got a game but aren't going to improve enough to play in a potential finals side. By clearing them out he helps them bottom out to get trade picks and to a lesser extent saves some salary cap money. They have rarely traded top end draft picks away only the bottom end ones if I recall correctly - although there was one mega deal were they traded in heaps of GWS players. So he traded in heaps of young cheap GWS talent and brought in the occasional players in place of late trades that go nowhere anyway. Whether the GWS imports work or not - that is a bonus. What's more important is what they do with the top end talent they recruit while they bottom out. They would want to get it right like Todd and Jason have. The GWS list he moulded looks alright so I think he knows what he is doing but starting from a long way back - time will tell

Its ridiculous that he can do this. Early call, but he's got the best hands I can ever recall from a player in the last 30 years. Seems better with his hands than Diesel Williams which is a big call. Sam Mitchell is also pretty handy under pressure but he has his measure as well IMO

Your so right SWYL. We had so many top 20 selections in recent drafts that we got wrong i.e. pre Todd Viney and then Jason Taylor afterwards. They rated talent too far ahead of competitiveness back then believing they could be taught. Simply not possible. Cale Morton running away along the wing from an angrier and bigger opponent was an extreme example of that. Can't image any of the recent competitive draftees doing that. We would have had better luck just selected randomly from the top 20 draft prospects each year ... which highlights to me that the player development and the environment (including but not limited to tanking) were far worse that the drafting ...

Granted that Hogan's kicking last year was average. I think history will show that last year was an outlier for Hogan. The whole contract thing seemed to affect him and his confidence.Note that I mentioned him as leading the next crop of forwards (up tp 3 years on the list). Overall he averages a healthy 62.4% overall which is pretty good compared to Daniher's 55.9%. Daniher's average has barely changed year on year so has little hope of him improving. At least Hogan has shown he can do it and he appears to have significantly fine-tuned his current routine and made a good start on the weekend

Upto 3 years on the list

I'm on board this year

Thanks for reading the post and discussing it. We can agree its still early on in the season and the. mfc list also looks great and I can see a promising year ahead on-field. Opinions sometimes backed by facts are what makes this forum. However, your issue with point 3 has been misunderstood. The fact the watts issue hasn't been properly articulated by the club is why I am still confused. Its a poor communication issue. It should have been clearly communicated a long time ago

Thanks Deeoldfart (felt weird typing you posting name). Makes sense. I do get a buzz out of seeing the girls sing it

Would be good to debate the best young forwards coming through. Jesse would be top of the list. Daniher can't kick and McCartin hasn't developed yet. Schache still has promise but is still unknown