Thrice

2015 AFL Draft: 1. Carlton: Jacob Weitering 2. Brisbane: Josh Schache 3. Sydney: Callum Mills (Academy selection - matched bid from Melbourne) 4. Melbourne: Clayton Oliver 5. Essendon: Darcy Parish 6. Essendon: Aaron Francis 7. GWS: Jacob Hopper (Academy selection - matched bid from Gold Coast) 8. Gold Coast: Callum Ah Chee 9. Melbourne: Sam Weideman 10. Carlton: Harry McKay (12. Carlton: Charlie Curnow - the only other player in the draft to go close to Clarry's impact) ---- Essendon were extremely keen on Oliver. One version of events had us trading up to Pick 3 from Pick 6 to get ahead of Essendon to ensure we got him.

Freakonomics podcast did a great series on CEOs a couple of months back. Both empirically and anecodotally in almost all cases it is better to recruit from within for a CEO. In a business sense, companies that do have stronger growth, shareholder confidence etc than those that recruit from outside. Those that recruit from outside tend to change the rest of the executive, and a whole heap of corporate knowledge, strategy and culture walks out of the door with them. Then people further down the organisation are left rudderless unless the change is managed well (always incredibly hard to do). The only attraction for recruiting from outside is if the organisation is a basketcase and the culture needs to be turned around. This was true pre-PJ but, at least from the outside, the opposite seems to be true. If Josh Mahoney or George de Crespigny are being groomed for the role and then we would be mad not to appoint them unless an absolute superstar candidate is available. Look at how the AFL has appointed it last few CEOs, by grooming through the head of football operations role, during the period where the league has expanded from a parochial Victorian league to the dominant sporting code in Australia: then compare that to NRL which recruits from outside and hasn't grown at anything like the rate of the AFL.

Yet he was 26.6 last year. It's in his head because his technique is actually quite sound as he demonstrated last year. Melksham has an 'idiosyncratic' technique that he seemed to be able to tame last year but is struggling with this year.

Tommy McDonald has only had 9 shots for 8.1. Petracca was in the top 10 most accurate last year, as was Melksham who has also struggled this year. McDonald and Hogan were also in the top 10 and look to have kept up their form (touch wood).

He looked underdone on the weekend and Saints put a lot of time into him when he was on the ball: I reckon that incident with the 50 was the frustration boiling over. It was the first time I'd noticed him commit an undisciplined act on the field in his career. He is a brash character off the field but tends to contain that very well on the field. Oliver and Hogan are far more hot headed than these two.

The way I see it is that he is that his role is highly structural. We want to play a territory game and he creates a contest every time the ball comes near him. If he doesn't take a mark he is quick at ground level and instinctively tackles to force a stoppage and reset. He rarely gets beaten. As his confidence and strength grows he will clunk a few more marks, he has decent timing in the air. His chop out ruck work is serviceable, which frees up Tommy to roam the wings when going through the midfield. I have a feeling the coaches would be quite pleased with how he is going.

There wasn’t an article on the AFL site this morning which confirmed that he has the worst conversion.

Actually we would’ve taken Brayshaw and Lever. Fact.

Does it help that this use of Dusty and Cotchin was first noticed by Daisy Pearce last week?

Balic is injured - hammy tightness. I wonder if Stretch is a clear in or designated emergency?

Joel Smith is a similar size and type and the coaching staff rate him highly as well. Has greater athletic talents too. It's great to have depth.

Nought supporters had it penned in as a win as well on BF, cos yannow, it's Melbourne and did you see they way we belted the Saints and they nearly lost to the Lions. Means nothing.

He got pushed aside by Acres pretty easily in a marking contest. Probably partly due to positioning but it would be the sort of thing that could play on his mind if he has doubts.

Unfortunately I was not born with the pithy one-liner gene such as your good self Mr Tremblay. Ironically I am quite direct when speaking, some (over the age of say 50) could say laconic.

Perhaps middle aged blokes should stop getting so hung up about language change and just accept that it happens. The meanings of words constantly shift and evolve - even dictionaries note this and are constantly updating definitions with new usages and noting older, now archaic meanings. A couple of great examples are the words gay and [censored]. a generation or two ago they mean happy / carefree and unusual respectively. Now they almost exclusively refer to homosexual men (or homosexuality more broadly) and even people who grew up using those terms in their original meaning hardly use them in that way. So accept that laconic now has a second meaning of laid-back, your kids will ask which team the Dees are versing on the weekend and that millennials will refer to everything as awesome and there is nothing wrong with any of it. In fact, the advent of widespread literacy has actually slowed the historical rate of language change.

The first 15 rounds of 2017 we were the highest pressure side in the comp before falling away due to injury etc. Our best footy last year was streaming inside 50 in waves and scoring through general play or hit ups to free players. Goody has shown his hand on this one. He's looking far more closely at Beveridge and Hardwick than The Gospel of Chazz. We've got quality KPFs but I doubt we'll see more than 2 in there too often this year. And mobility / forward pressure will be one of the main KPIs of those that do play, something TMac has especially.

The Dogs won a premiership on the back of small, high-pressure forward line in 2016 also. Boyd and Cordy (both spending time as relief rucks), Stringer a mid-sized marking option, with Dahlhaus, Dunkley McLean, Smith etc rotating through bringing the manic pressure. Ignore the lessons at our peril.

I'll go round again: Lever to Beaver is ready for another choke fest come finals

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.

This is the one point of the rest that is harder to substantiate. As the season progressed and Oscar become more comfortable at AFL level his judgement around intercept marking / spoiling improved markedly. He is actually a strong mark and added intercept marking - through better positioning - to his game. He could work on spoiling to advantage - Lever is the competition benchmark for this - although he isn't poor in this facet of the game.

For much of the season he was rated as on of the top 10 midfielder/forwards in the comp by champion data. The final standings for the year are: C Petracca C Wingard M Walters S Menagola D Mundy S Edwards T McLean C Daniel K Lambert L Dahlhaus Not ordinary names. And it was only a flat end to the season that cost him from finishing top 10 for the season. Daniel, McLean and Petracca (who dees supporters chronically under-rate, but that's for another thread) are the only others on that list at the start of their careers, the rest are well-established and important members of their teams.

So basically what happened to us this year. The biggest factors with injuries are: - In game injuries that leave you down 2 players early: Against Richmond in Round 5. Lost Gawn early in Rd 3 against Geelong. - Injuries to multiple players from the same position group: Jones, Viney, Tyson, Salem. Bugg suspended. - injuries to groups of players at the same time that leave you short handed and also struggling to get recovered players back in to the team at the same time. Round 14 onwards, with the above group. Watts, Jones and Gawn were all short of a gallop when they returned.

It is a matter of intensity as well. No disrespect DC but I doubt you were doing AFL player-level training loads! It does sound like they are being ultra cautious, and with good reason. This bloke is an 8-year blue-chip investment. Playing the long game: we'd take one season at 85-90% output due to a delayed pre-season if the next 7 are at 100%.

Strictly speaking there would have been a few weeks in 2010 after James McDonald was delisted (contracts end on 31 October) and Tom McDonald was drafted on 18 November 2010.

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?