Bring-Back-Powell

An absolute freebie for Collingwood assuming his publicised mental health issues are under control. I wonder if we pursued him during the year (we've been unofficially linked to him for years) and he turned us down, or if we decided that our forward line is sufficient without him - which it isn't.

Cannot like this GIF enough 👍

Yeah I was being a bit kind. 9.15 is quite frankly a disastrous return for a full time forward with the odd cameo down back. I would like to know how many forwards in the league managed to kick single figure goals from 20 games this year. He had a severely interrupted summer so we cut him some slack, and it's pleasing he signed an extension.

An ok year up forward, however there was a four week patch between the Carlton and Freo games where he had a grand total of 18 possessions, 5 marks and 1 goal. That is so poor that you couldn't even accidently get that kind of output in 4 full games. If he's not kicking goals then he needs to be clunking 9/10 marks a game like he did in the Geelong win when he polled the 3 votes. Given we retained T Mac, I expect he'll train and start the season up forward again. Who knows how the season will evolve though?

Yes please.

Hopefully he can teach the boys how to nail a set shot consistently. He was a good exponent of that craft.

Both player and club ought to be extremely disappointed with one another that he wasn't called up for the Essendon and Freo games when Gawn was out. Probably sums up where he sits in the depth chat.

Surprised he played as many as 15 games which generally means that if you compiled our best 23 starting line up for 2024, Howes would be in it. Started the season well in the first 4 or 5 games as a medium defender who was capable of a good intercept mark. However after that he progressively got worse by the week. He was visibly cooked by the time of the round 10 West Coast game as he jogged rather than sprinted in his pursuit of his opponent who ran into an easy goal. His late season game against GC where he had 22 touches and 10 marks was promising. Given the mixed bag, I'm none the wiser if he's a long term prospect or if 2025 will be his last on the list.

I could be wrong but wasn't our overseas form pretty damn perfect. I remember us also winning a game in Toronto in 1989 after which Steven O'Dwyer invited the whole crowd to the club's hotel and then beating West Coast in 1990 at possibly the same venue? We also beat Adelaide in London in the early 2000's.

Looked better in his first year in the seniors compared to his second.

Had me excited in a match simulation at Casey Fields in late January with 2 goals and had the ball on a string in a near BOG effort. Have to remind myself to take match sims with a grain of salt.

Genuinely thought they would get rid of it. Reckon Melksham should be the semi regular sub next year. Can see him having impact in the last quarter of games, and I doubt at his age he could play week in week out of 24 rounds of footy. Let's hope the Turner on / JVR off sub was a Goody one off!

That was me who stated Brisbane's injuries and I wholeheartedly agree with you that they have a clearly better list than us with an abundance of "non top 10 draft picks" youth that stepped up big time in the likes of Lohmann and Morris. However, they'll clearly welcome back McCarthy and Coleman next year.

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.