Bring-Back-Powell

Did not have a good year at all after his return from injury. I wish he ventured up forward more often as he’s a tremendous kick on the run from around the 50 arc.

For those blaming injuries for us missing the finals, take a look at Brisbane Lions: 1) Lose Keidean Coleman to an ACL in opening round. One of the best players in last year's grand final and was a prime candidate to be an all australian small defender. 2) Lose Lincoln McCarthy and Darcy Gardiner on the same night to ACL's. Both were settled into their forward line at the time. The former a clear 30-35 goal kicker a year. 3) Lose their high quality Ruckman for the grand final of all games. No how's that for dealing with adversity. The only time I saw us dealing with adversity this year was the Adelaide oval business trip. We raised the white flag in Perth and Alice Springs when things got a bit tough.

An Essendon draw tonight is as good as a loss.

Someone over at Bigfooty who reckons he nailed round 1 last year prior to the fixture release reckons we’ve got North round 1, Sunday 4pm at the G. Given the fixture won’t be released until the final week of November, I’d take it with a grain of salt.

For the actual start to preseason, I reckon you’d be looking at 11 November for the 1st to 4 year players and 25 November for the balance. You’d imagine there will be a stack of senior players making early appearances for obvious reasons.

Onto football matters, one of Kozzie’s goals next season is not to get booked with the MRO. His absence will absolutely cost us at least one game early next year due to his ability to kick a 3, 4 or 5 goal haul every now and then. And we’re not in a position to be throwing away games.

He had a sneaky really good game that night. A pity for him (and us) that he couldn't help out our forward line this year.

The beauty about Max signing on for another 2 years, and Tom Campbell hopping on board is that it allows Verrall all the time in the world to develop

Served us pretty well in 2023 on the wing as it allowed Brayshaw to play defence and midfield that year. Did some underrated things in the Carlton final. The less said about this year the better.

Who's idea was it to make a recruit who was bereft of confidence (in his finals Saints days) the starting sub in the first game? Aside from that, he played a couple of ripper games against the Dogs and Hawthorn, could've had a 3.0 haul at Gather Round instead of 0.3, and then fell off the pace after that. Actually played some good footy in replacement of Windsor in the closing games against Port and GC. I think his best position is the wing rather than half forward as he's a terrible converter on goal. However, Windsor and Langdon will probably make Billings redundant next year.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but that’s a good result. Absolute nonsense having a player on the list that can’t play football. Now we can actually play 2025 and not have 2 players ineligible.

Taj Hotton at pick 9. Just so we can be the first club in history to have two Taj's on the list.

Goodwin should implement a new rule. If you’ve had an injury interrupted pre season and you don’t appear in either the match simulation or the practice match, then you don’t play the opening game like they did with Spargo. Spargo when he’s o. top of his game is a very useful asset due to his disposal and smarts in the forward half, but overall he’s a pretty inconsistent player.

I heard that Trac and Oliver will be the top 5 earners next year in the AFL. Clearly our success or failure will be defined by these two. No Trac and a hobbled Oliver resulted in a 4-7 scoreline from Kings B'day onwards, with the only wins coming against quite frankly rubbish or mediocre teams.

I actually have a very very funny feeling that Foxtel will provide it's own production, commentators and graphics, on Friday nights, and every other channel 7 game for that matter. Time will tell.

Confirming Teague’s a no according to one of the journos, think it was Tom Morris.

So just to clarify, on any given Friday night game next year we won’t have to put up with BT’s mistake riddled calls, and instead watch a Foxtel production of the same game??

Is he the bloke that kicked the winning goal against us late in the year?

The 1:10pm Sunday time slot is actually a great crowd puller for families and IMO would draw better crowds than Saturday night games in winter which we had a bunch of this year. Carlton V Hawthorn drew 84K for the early Sunday game and we also attracted a very surprising 32K to our early game against West Coast on the back of some very ordinary form. Had that game been a Saturday night game, we would’ve no don’t struggled to get 20K. I do agree with your point that attractive winning footy will see the crowds increase.

I’d imagine we won’t be be bending over backwards to assist GWS if they want another Toby Bedford from us. They turned a pick in the 40’s into a very nice player, and didn’t particularly repay the goodwill 2 years later.

The irony is our supporter base favour the 1:10 starts on Sunday.

100% spot on (and he also backed it up with 2 goals in the Hawks semi). According to the coaches votes Weid got 9 votes in the 2018 Geelong final and Harmes got 8. Pretty amazing to think that two of our lesser lights were our best 2 players in one of the club’s most famous wins this century. I also thought Weid was showing progression in mid 2020 season.

I don’t rate him but he did get a hold of May and Co this year with 3 snags and 7 marks. Wouldn’t be a better option than Turner in terms of best 23, but you can never have enough depth.

That absolutely stings as a Melbourne supporter to hear that. The media were spot on in July. Houston was all but coming to the Dees. Now we get to watch him rip it up for Collingwood and probably earn his third straight AA. Hopefully this closes the chapter on a diabolical year or 2 and we can now start to regain some respect on and off the field.

I assume it’s Tomlinson wanting to move rather for than us wanting him gone. If it’s the former, good luck to him and he should seek a regular spot somewhere. If it’s the latter and Tomo was willing to take a pay cut then it’s a poor list management decision given May and Lever are getting a year older and our defensive depth will be relied upon.