Thrice

At the risk of giving this thread more credibility than it deserves, I cannot take any prediction serious that has Essendon missing the eight. Whilst it is likely we will be a better side in time they are a year ahead of us in development and just recruited three best 22 players.

I would be interested in a comparison with Jack Petruccelle who has been named in connection with our picks also and has a fair bit of pace / line-breaking ability. @stevethemanjordan I believe you've seen a bit of Petruccelle and might be able to add some insight?

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/afl-fixture-2018-saints-in-mix-to-play-on-good-friday-20171020-gz5e40.html The Pies have formally requested this. The proposal is tied to alternating the QB match and the season opener each season. You know you're doing something right when the pies are requesting 2 matches a year against you

I respect that you have some cachet as an 'inside source', so to clarify for everyone: That is verbatim the Jon Ralph quote from the article posted by Abe yesterday.

There was no 'toss up'. Whilst he was available as a mini draft pick we were only ever going to take Hogan. We picked Toumpas over Wines thinking we were getting a Kelly-style player in him.

You heard it hear first...

I reckon Frost is part of the deal. It's the only plausible reason he would have put contract negotiations on hold till the end of the season. Frost, who would be around the mark of their best 22 without Lever, and out first round pick this year would easily get it done.

Baseball doesn't have uniform grounds either. 99% invisible did a podcast on baseball 'ball parks' just a couple of weeks ago: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/in-the-same-ballpark/ I think it's great: it adds some uniqueness and favours certain players / games styles across the different grounds.

We were keen on Lever at 3, however that was if the Saints took Petracca at no.1. We would then have gone Brayshaw and Lever. Ergo, we rated him higher than McCartin; which would've been considered a highly left field choice (as was Clarry at no.4 a month prior to the draft). Taylor and co at very astute judges of talent.

Relax WB... He's covering for talking him down before he pulled on the jumper for us. He's right at the upper ceiling of expectations when he came in. At the risk of derailing the thread, Melksham's game tonight was at that level too: if he can maintain that then he's parked himself in the 22 for the rest of the year.

As he builds a tank he'll be able to get that balance and find more footy in space. The kid is still only playing about 70%TOG. He'll be the new perma-captain in fantasy footy once he has an AFL standard tank.

He would be far more expensive than a third round pick, even if he nominated us! A third round pick is speculative and he has a solid 150 game career ahead of him. Even accounting for a discount because he's being squeezed out for salary cap it would still take a pick in the late teens or early 20s and late pick exchange in their favour to give them some more academy points to get them interested.

He's not eligible as he's played more than 10 games before this season.