Lord Nev

Tom had the boots off quicker than ever on Monday. Given the likely nature of the injury I'm not sure if it's one they can operate on or if it's just one he has to manage, but if an operation is required I really hope the club sends him off for it now. The season is over for us, and it will be incredibly short sighted if we run the players into the ground in a desperate attempt to milk everything we can out of it and end up in the same boat preparation wise next year.

Love him. He has so many qualities we need, namely consistent effort and the investment in the club that sees him desperately want it to succeed, but you can't ignore that his delivery forward has hurt us this year, even more than previous years, after we've traded out so many of our effective forward users. I'm not sure if it's just a weakness in his game or is related to his foot problems, but either way we now have half a season of footy where results don't matter as much as improving problem areas so something needs to be done about it.

Not that I can mention other than what I said in the post. Just someone who has passed on good info in the past and I have no reason to doubt. The old someone who knows someone. I get that that probably doesn't cut it, but that's the internet I guess.

Haven't heard anything solid at this stage, just the same sketchy whispers you guys would have already heard . Hard to know exactly where our priorities would lay given how the season has panned out, needs nearly everywhere.

There possibly is an impact in the game plan, but not a change IMO. We did have the 2 players running off the back of the square last year, which meant we had more immediate forward pressure along with a line of players running through. That potentially helped with the "chaos ball" game plan through weight of numbers. I wonder if now with the 666 rule, we aren't able to get those numbers forward as quickly and by the time we've launched that quick bomb forward the players behind the ball aren't far enough forward to have any impact? I don't have the stats in front of me, but would have thought Hogan, Kent, Watts and Melksham have been among our best users going inside 50. I understand the differing reasons we don't have those players currently, but when their inside 50s are replaced by poor decision makers it has to have an impact eventually.

Yeah absolutely. Stats are always limited, and the forwards (and those responsible for their structure) definitely have their share of the blame. Since there's already rumblings about our onfield leadership this week, I'm wondering who we have that could (or is meant to) take responsibility for directing our forwards?

Just a related question, does it impact us that we have no forwards in the leadership group? For a part of the ground we are having so much trouble with, we have no recognized leader as such (at least officially). TMac was stripped of his leadership title so potentially would be hesitant to try and fill that void given his peers didn't recognize him enough to be in the group, (speculation only of course). Who is meant to be the director of traffic in forward 50?

Can't just blame the forwards. Kick inside 50 retention rate is a useful stat for us I think. Basically sums up the quality of our kicks inside 50. We are the third worst team in the league, but what is really telling is with the AFL average for players being 46%, we currently have Brayshaw (33%), Oliver (30%) and Viney (a league-worst 24%) as our main ball winners kicking it to our forwards. If Goodwin wants to find some solutions to our "connection" I would think he needs to start with our co-captain. Either he is not following instructions or is a horrible decision maker. Given how much Goodwin has talked about this problem, we can rule out that he's doing as told.

Hey guys, can pretty much confirm there's not much substance to this. The club would look at it for the right price (contract and trade wise), but at this stage this all at the doings of his manager who is trying to ramp up negotiations for his client. Not surprising Tom Morris is involved given the tone of his articles about the club since being basically shunned. Obviously I'm a random on the internet so take it as you will, but that info was passed on to me by someone who has got much right in the past. Cheers!