Neil Crompton

I was from the camp that said we shouldn't be trading Hogan unless he wanted to leave. Well it seems he wanted to leave. And to me, given Freo's back peddle, i think this is now a major problem for us. If i was a player at Melbourne, i would not want to be going into battle with someone who no longer wants to be there. And if I were our coach, I'd be telling management to get him out of the club. For this reason i don't think our management are at all happy with Freo.

Ethan, what has given you this though?

As we appear to be going round in circles, I’d like to ask a more pressing question. At what point in time would it be tactful to delete Jesse from our DL banner and who do we replace him with? Not sure when, but my vote would be Gus.

Yep you are correct. But if you want facts here rather than opinions, then here’s one: Gaff committed an act of undisciplined thuggery. Bugg lost me when he flipped, so too has Gaff.

I’m in the minority but I’d prefer us not to chase Gaff. IMO he is damaged goods. WC won a premiership without him. So can we

Interesting to note that this thread started in mid July when some pseudo jurno had the audacity to write that he thought Hogan would be gone at the end of the year. Our members jumped all over him - typified by this comment by our DL Administrator: “This isn't even a rumour. It is an unfounded and uninformed opinion from an irrelevant ex-footballer.” Did he really know something back then, or was he just shooting the breeze?

So sorry to see Jesse go. But unlike one particular poster I wish him every success in the West.

Hasn't everyone?

Trying to make sense out of all this discussion, I only see a couple of reasonable scenarios: 1. If another club offers big money to Jesse: If so, and he wants to leave, then we get as much as we can for him. If he wants to stay, we negotiate a new contract for him now. 2. If no offer forthcoming, we keep him - no way we sell him IMO. We certainly don't go pawning him off. Everything else at this stage is just wild speculation. Let it play out.

I think if you'd put Spargo's football brain and determination into Petraccas body you'd have Dusty Martin.

Totally agree. But 3 more pages and we break the Jack Watts' post record.

Wow! With runs on the board like that, our football department would be mad not to take you on as an adviser! Send them your CV

After the Brayshaw mugging, I'm glad he wont be joining us. The money saved is far better spent on keeping our our superb young talent at the MFC.

That's 9 posts on this topic now Beelzebub and while i respect your right to your opinion, i'm sorry but you will never convince me, no matter how many more you post. Jessie has to stay - for the good of the club - in my humble opinion

IMHO there is so much wrong with the proposal to "sell Jessie". Why would you discard a player who opposition coaches think so highly of they always double team against him? And that's despite the fact that we crucify Jessie every time we bomb it in long. He is not a pack mark but he is fast and if we lowered our eyes and learnt to hit our targets he'd get more confidence in leading. Buddy is not a pack mark either - in fact he would have dropped more marks than Clarry has had handballs - but the swans are always lowering their eyes to his leads. Why would you throw away an established key forward who is your leading goal kicker, and near top goal assist player, for a first round pick that may or may not pay off a couple of years down the track? Does not make any sense. We are now on the threshold of becoming a great team (for many years i believe) and that is being built around the young talent we have, so why would you break up that talent? Jessie was the first of this young group and the key man around who we built our talent pool. The team culture we have built to date with this lot would be destroyed if we were to sell Jessie. Weiderman may or may not become a good player. Jessie is a very good player now. Do we need another mid so badly that we'd take this risk? I don't think so! Our mids are good and will only get better, as will Jessie as we mature as a team and feed him properly. Sell Jessie? FFS give me a break!

DV8, there is no way i'd trade Hogan to get better midfielders! That's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And i never once said we are not good enough through our midfield! I said our disposal - from all parts of the ground - is poor, causing Hogan to have little confidence in leading.

I think its our delivery that's the problem, whether be mids, forwards or backs. Hogan appears to have no confidence in that delivery, so he hesitates. Put Hogan at the Tigers, West Coast, the Cats or Giants - teams that can hit a target - and he'd be a superstar.

If we had mids and half forwards that could actually hit a target when they kicked, Jessie would have confidence in leading, would kick 60-80 goals a year and be an absolute superstar. Spend our time improving the delivery of the likes of Jones, Tyson, Petracca, Brayshaw, Spargo, ANB, Viney et al, and our game plan would work, our forward line, and Hogan in particular, would be almost unbeatable, and all this ridiculous chat about trading Hogan would disappear.

A lot has been written on this post about what a nice guy Gaff is, how uncharacteristic his attack on Brayshaw was, and how upset he currently is about his actions - almost to the extent that the authors are looking for reasons, in their own minds, to excuse his actions. I use the word “excuse” because those characteristics certainly don’t explain his actions. But they do offer a good number of Demon supporters some justification for still wanting Gaff to join the Dees. But why did he do it? He didn’t try to chop an arm that may have been hindering him or use a “don’t argue” to gain some distance - the methods most players use to escape. He deliberately chose to use a forceful closed fist punch to break away. In terms of intent, where he hit Brayshaw is irrelevant, he chose to punch him. The pressure of the game situation couldn’t have caused this - WCE’s were winning comfortably, Gaff was playing very well and their top 2 position was not being threatened. The only explanation offered, because of his good character, is “brain fade”. A layman’s definition of brain fade could be an unconscious act or desire escaping the prison of the brain unfiltered. Minor brain fades occur all the time - he kicked when he should of handballed, or went for the mark when he should have punched. Players are skilled in what to do and what not to do every single week of their playing careers, it’s ingrained, and because of this, of all the thousands of players who have played AFL/VFL football, there have only been, fortunately, very few who have had brain fades of this magnitude - Bugg, Hall, Mathews to name some more recent players that come to mind. In fact a player of 170+ games, who knows how important he is to his teams success come September, would know internally that you don’t make stupid decisions that will jeopardise your teams chances. Yet he did. Is he likely to do it again? Probably not, but who knows? Hall and Mathews certainly did. Bugg hasn’t to date. And quite apart from his impact on Brayshaw, his actions have certainly affected his team. And that to me is a huge issue. We appear to have a wonderful group of current players and coaches who are developing our own unique team culture, and for me Gaff, post incident, and as good a player as he is, has shown that he could be a risk to that culture. So for all of that, and I know I am in the minority here, I would prefer if we didn’t chase Gaff.

I think the title of this topic “Go and get Gaff”, may have just taken on a whole new meaning since the events of the weekend.

Brain fade maybe, but a cowardly dog act just the same. If he was on our “wanted” list, he should be wiped off now. End of story.

OD it was my spelling. I said resign, but meant he will re sign with the eagles. So we agree

Each team would be a player down from their 22. But on field it would be 18 vs 17.

I think now that Gaff will resign with WC. He will feel he has let them down by his actions and will have to make amends.

I don’t think that’s correct. That was simply a Talking Footy opinion of what they thought GC should do.