Lord Nev

You didn't say anything about intercept marking, you said "May has hard flat hands and drops a few too many marks he should take." His career average for marks is 5.2 per game which puts him in "above average" as per AFL player ratings. Intercept marking in the context of an under siege team is not entirely useful. There's too many circumstances that weaken that stat if you're looking deeply into it, rather than just cherry picking that one. Not only has he played forward, but there's also the rest of the Suns defence to consider (covering weaker defenders), his particular role with them (not an intercept style player) and midfield pressure (Suns in 2018 rated 4th worst for clearance differential, worst for intercept differential, 2nd worst for inside 50s, 2nd worst for contested possessions and worst for centre clearances). Your critique was on his marking technique, but I suggest the stats (when you look deeply) do not back it up at all.

His last (almost) full season (17 games in 2018) he was ranked 8th in the comp for marks.

Yeah that's the rumour doing the rounds currently.

8.

Split with Freo whispers are growing.

Strength and conditioning coach. Is he also the former WC Eagle? Bartlett connection potentially?

Sorry Saty, couldn't resist...

Don't take this as a slight on Weid, I think he'll be a player for us, but it was passed on to me that a few former Dees think Jackson would be a very good chance of starting ahead of Weid round 1 next year. They're not recruiters obviously, but have played the game at the highest level so I'd give it some kind of weight.

Love this. Melbourne have introduced a Saturday morning running session under new conditioning coach Darren Burgess as they set about returning to contention in 2020 after a horror 2019 saw them plummet from a preliminary final to 17th. The Demons had weekends off during last year's pre-season but in their preparation for next year they will instead have Thursdays off and train on Saturdays. Burgess said 90 per cent of the Demons' program will be focused on using footballs but the running component would "benefit them in the fourth quarter of games and the tough games coming up". The conditioning coach had Port Adelaide players believing they could outrun their opponents when he was at the club after instituting his fitness regime and he aims to inspire the same confidence at Melbourne. Running back on Demons' weekend agenda

Mate, I don't disagree with your point, just annoying to keep having to read it again and again in a thread about the member forum.

Can you start your own thread for this or something mate? Thanks.

Plapp is technically the forwards coach now, with Rooke as the development coach for forwards.

I think we pulled out. No idea why or even exactly when, it was buried in a few other articles about a week ago.

We're not taking Murray any more mate.

From the ones I've seen at least; the people who have been fired have generally had their workplace/employer listed on their social page, so they're not getting fired for making the comment as such, but getting fired due to how they're representing their employer.

Sure, and I'm not a big Wagner fan or anything, but the context is that he was a rookie pick, so I see that as a winning pick.

Officially a done deal. https://www.afl.com.au/news/2019-11-19/giants-to-give-up-two-firstround-picks-for-no4?fbclid=IwAR3jPZf4Bmn9IZWwDDpdz9GOU0mCdtVERT-sjTBWeG3mfvktMhhQe8NEks0

Sure, not many 'guns', but I'm talking from a ROI point of view within my context of which picks he's had to use. Looking at games played or quality of player vs pick used, I would argue all of them are winners in that way.

In related news... A source close to the situation indicated the Crows were on the verge of trading pick four to GWS, who will give up pick six along with a future first-round pick ahead of the pre-draft pick-trading deadline on Friday. Crows set to trade pick No.4 to GWS

I don't know enough about Jackson to know if I like him or not tbh. I just know the club are really keen on him and some better judges than me think he can walk into our round 1 team next year. I'm as nervous as you probably are about taking a ruck/forward with such a high pick, but I'm backing in the club this time to have a plan in mind if it happens. No knickers in any knots mate, just think sometimes here we can all not dig deep enough, and for me, this is one of those times (re: Taylor), and you can't blame JT for not having enough first round picks to use, that's not his job.

Are you guys actually looking into this properly or are you just assuming because we haven't had any absolute superstars since Oliver that all the picks have been fails? Context is VERY important when looking at these things. No club nails all their picks, and the actual picks Taylor has had at his disposal is the most important thing to consider. If you want to be talking 'Weideman onwards' (how convenient), then you need to take into account these picks that have been wins: Josh Wagner - Rookie Joel Smith - Rookie Mitch Hannan - Pick 46 Tim Smith - Rookie Bailey Fritsch - Pick 31 Harrison Petty - Pick 37 Marty Hore - Pick 56 Jury still out on a fair few that have shown signs (ie - Baker, Sparrow, Bradtke). 2015 we had 2 top 10 picks, but since then our highest pick has been 27 (which was last year). Oh, and how do you put in years of work on a player and then "fluke" the pick. How ridiculous.

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Fair enough mate, apologies for being a bit facetious, only had the 1 coffee so far. From things I've heard there has been a bit of a disconnect with some players from that era, but nothing really bad as such. Impression I got was a few of them would like to do more for/with the club if they can, but at the same time, the players themselves have a really good connection between themselves. A lot of the blokes network together and/or do business together. The ones I hear about ocassionally absolutely still love the Dees though, Yze very nearly joined us in the offseason so there can't be too many bad feelings.

Oh gee, must mean Chaplin is "pizzed off" with the Dees!

He's only just recently had surgery again so would think he wouldn't be doing much training now even if he could anyway.