Matsuo Basho

He won’t.

A club in the 5-8 range on the ladder would go for him thinking he can help unlock their premiership window. Port Adelaide under Hinkley comes readily to mind. We can still get pick 13-16 for him if we trade now. Hardly SFA. Its a tough call I get it but the right one. He’s never going to be the player you dream/hope he will be. Doesn’t have the right mindset. Col Sylvia Mk2.

Disagree. He’ll learn nothing getting humiliated at AFL level week after week, if anything it could permanently wreck his already brittle confidence levels. Plus it sends the wrong message to the playing group. He has been persisted with for six games in a row and has produced nightmare performance after nightmare performance. He’s got no timing, no physical presence and no idea when the ball is on the deck. He’s not on his Pat Malone in terms of poor form sure but if this kid is the best the MFC can muster to hold down a key post in the forward line we are in for a world of hurt for the remainder of 2019. You’ve got to have some kind of minimum level of output. Forget his high draft pick status, right now Sam Weideman is embarrassing the jumper out there. Must be dropped.

He still has trade cachè by virtue of reputation and rare flashes of brilliance. We can get a decent pick for him and trade/draft a better player, perhaps in a position of more pressing need. My view is twelve months from now he will be worth less than we can get now.

Relevance?

It’s player development as well of course but they know what they’re doing re recruitment. No-one’s perfect but Clarkson’s as close to a footballing oracle as there has been in this business over the past twenty years.

They’ve got no idea have they. One recruiting blunder after another.

Lolz at anyone who says we’ll beat Hawthorn next week. They’ve got Breust, Wingard, Poppy, Gunston, Roughy and others to kick their 15-20 goals. Where are ours going to come from? Plus they’ve got pace on the wings to cut through lines in guys like Scully, Smith and Impey. We’re rolling with old man Jonesy and grandpa Lewis. Forget it.

What an incredibly arrogant statement. Mocking a club that wins flags at the same rate as we win spoons.

Weideman has not shown enough (yet) even with the relative poor quality of entries that he can hold down a key position at AFL level. Nowhere near it. And TMac is a backman turned defender who although very serviceable is going to be prone to the kind of form slumps we are seeing now. Go again with those two in 2020 and won’t matter if we have Josh Kelly and Andrew Gaff delivering it to them. Fix one fix the other is faulty logic. You must fix both.

No anger. Just exasperation and frustration at the losers mentality which permeates the club, both on field and off it. Apathy is the problem, not anger. And your comment reeks of it.

Correct!!

Prefer him not to mention or even think about guarantees or non-guarantees. Winners don’t talk like that. Second guessers do.

Prelim to spoon chance in 7 games. That’ll do for a definition of mental fragility for me. What’s yours?

It’s both.

It’s not about that. It’s about confidence. Not a moment of self-doubt or disbelief. Gawn’s words belie a player and a club that still don’t understand the mindset it takes to be a winner. A real winner. Not a one season wonder.

It was an odd article. Would the Geelong, Collingwood, West Coast and Richmond senior players held such doubts and fears going into 2019? What a pathetic, poxy mindset to think “there were no guarantees of finals again” as Gawn expressed in that piece. Can’t imagine Pendles, Danger, Cotchin or Hurn ever even entertaining such feelings. It’s the fragile club culture that allows for self-doubt like that.

Have to have a red hot crack at this bloke too. Jack Martin and Jon Patton. Number one trade targets.

No doubt. The need to recruit outside class is beyond obvious. Need a Jack Martin type delivering it to Weideman as opposed to a Jack Viney. Let the bulls get the thing. Leave the silk to others.

You’re right with your earlier call AF about it being a ‘dagger through the heart’ and just psychologically deflating to see attacks repelled with such ease in our forward 50. Any midfield group is going to subliminally drop off if they keep pumping the prune down there with nothing to show for all the hard work. Our forward line is just diabolical.

Disagree. A fit Lever and May changes the whole complexion of the backline and the side in general. Last line players and flankers walk taller and play with more confidence when the pillars in defence are rock solid. Without a decent spine in a football team the whole organism turns to jelly. As we are now witnessing. Key forward is therefore right now our biggest and most pressing concern.

$700k is not high stakes these days for a 25yo key forward. ‘High price tag’ is the $1.2-1.5m it would take to get Jeremy Cameron’s manager to answer the phone. Patton’s injury history is a risk but again the Hawks aren’t baulking at it and Patton himself seems brimming with confidence. Risk v Reward. The bigger risk is doing nowt and expecting a different outcome in 2020 IMO.

It concerns me that he thinks the problem is a defensive one when we have a forward six who can’t buy goals for love nor money. We sold the farm to get Lever and May. Look no further for the issues in that part of the ground. Forward of centre however the problems are very real. There are personnel issues there that must be solved!

The list has also been overrated. Depth non-existent. Guys like Oscar, ANB, Frost, the Wagners, Kennedy-Harris etc are not AFL standard. High draft picks Petracca and Weideman are looking like busts, ageing warhorses Lewis, Jones and Jetta have fallen off the cliff. Cracks were papered over last season with the finals wins. This is a necessary bushfire to clear out the dead wood.

Go get a key forward and two outside mids, get Lever and May fit and firing, retire Jones Lewis and Jetta, tweak the game plan ... we can bounce back into the top eight next season and contend for the flag. Believe it. This season however ... shot to ribbons. We will finish bottom four. Play the kids.