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Ok, so the logic here is that UFAs make up 10 year vets who have already been FA once and players not in a team's top 10 paid players who are OOC after 8 years. So those players would be 28+ year olds that could be your best players and 26+ year olds who are outside your 10 most well paid. Situations like Frawley being UFA won't happen again as teams won't front end contracts anymore - and that is the sole reason Frawley was a UFA - his last year was minuscule compared to previous years when he was prepaid so to speak. I don't think removing UFA compensation is a bad idea, in fact it would mean we, in theory (the AFL loves making this up on their fly), could go after UFAs even if we lost a RFA and it won't affect our compensation. Which I believe is the impetus behind the AFLPA's desire for it.

The only thing to add to TimD's excellent post is to say that this is not a public forum, there is no licence for you to treat posters as you wish - Demonland is privately owned and liable to those selfless few who maintain and moderate it. So I suggest you start to not treat this site as the cess pool you seem to think it is and have some awareness of your own behaviour.

I once came back from the coast with an inflamed Achilles (tendonitis) and my physio said I stressed it out with the sand running (and the screwing around in the water when you are constantly losing your balance). Pick your poison...

Yeah, they are not trolls, or snipers...

You have a point about the FA Cup but, to some managers the FA Cup (and even Europe) can be a hindrance to a team whose sole desire is to be in the Premiership the next season. The league cup is a joke. Relegation keeps interest levels up for the most teams but that is devastating aspect to bring into an uneven league. I really think that the problems we are facing are not horrendous, the are always going to be bad teams - the problem has been there are perennially bad teams and that has jaded some fan bases. Oddly enough, a more lubricated Free Agency with some restrictions for the best teams will allow bad teams to aggressively chase talent and get better.

Welcome. Pull us up on it. When posters have said something reprehensible - let them know, when we are crapping on, point it out. The best posters on here don't involve themselves in the above, and don't deserve to be lumped in to the worst excesses of a few idiots. Please post more, ignore those you find nasty (literally using the Ignore function in your profile) and contribute to this mess. Again, welcome to Demonland - in more ways than one. Once you are a Melbourne supporter - there is no escape...(new slogan?)

I think that is just a situation where plural sounds better than the singular, Goodwin refers to one gameplan: “The majority of the time will be focused on our football game plan and really embedding that.” http://www.afl.com.au/news/2015-01-13/schools-in-for-demons In reality, you have one way that you play and a few changes at the edges for different situations, I would call them 'tactics' rather than Plan B but that is in the eye of the beholder I guess. Roos came to the club and lamented that the players had a too many ideas on the way they play football - he had to assure them that the game plan was THE game plan and they wouldn't be practicing a number of different styles.

There is only one other goal for clubs and that is to play in Europe, but that is reserved largely for the clubs competing for the domestic title anyway, all,other clubs are in a hopeless malaise only punctuated by the occasional years of overachievement which belie their actual desires - to win the premiership. Unfortunately, the only time a lowly club has turned into a perennial contender is when a shiekh took the club over and spent a billion dollars. We may look to the U.S. quite a bit, but with good reason; supposed lowly clubs can compete with the bigger clubs and markets. St. Louis, Oakland, Kansas City, and Tampa Bay in the MLB, Seattle, Indianapolis, Tampa Bay (under Gruden), Oakland (up to last few years) in the NFL, and the Spurs, Thunder, Warriors, and the Raptors in the NBA are all examples of 'lesser' markets and supported teams, competing well and winning.

You are describing a generational FB - one of the best the game has ever seen - a high standard that is unfair to hold any FB to, and you mention a teammate of his that also does it, and Mackie does it, and Enright, and Corey. Surely it would be easier for a FB/CHB to help set up play if the entire defence is adept at doing so. Perhaps they were able to do so because their teammates were so adept...

If your FB/CHB is 'setting up play' you may as well raise the white flag, inform the bookies, and walk off the field. His pertinent skills involve what you don't see eventuating, not what you see him screw up a couple times a game. I really don't think that you could ask for a better 22 year old defender and his exposed form over his overworked first few years.

Training is training I will admit, but when I went to a recent training session it struck me how easily I knew the 'point' of everything they were doing. It may have been basic (kick to kick with four players in a cross formation to make players 'meet' the footy with the dukes out and hand it to either side), or more complex (game situation planning with a short lateral kick to CHB and then follow up runs through the other wing and the corridor), but I could easily see what they were trying to achieve. When I went to a Neeld training at exactly the same time of the year (maybe a bit later in PS even), some of the drills were foreign to me or seemed 'pointless' to my eyes, players seemed to be just running through the motion of the drill, not much repeated by a majority of the players and I found it difficult to describe to myself what was happening.

You are if you want me to agree it's a problem. I have seen the more verbose and dim members on here say it a handful of times in the last decade, have not seen it recently and would make the person know it BS if I did. The only thing that has come close recently would be when opposition teenage supporters troll the site during trade week and some on here question the veracity of a one post supporter claiming Nathan Jones is off to Essendon...

How do you see that? Tall young defender that rarely gets beaten and has a facet of his game, his endurance, that is a major weapon against the best forwards in the comp. If you judge a tall defender on his basic skills, you are missing the point of; 1. What key position defenders should be primarily judged for, and 2. What makes skills so important for a team. Defenders do their job when the opponents are not winning the footy, and skills are important for the 10 players on a team that get more than a handful of kicks a game, if they get less kicks than that and are still in the team - then they are not in the team to get kicks. Like the excellent Tom McDonald.

Who would you rather have; Sylvia or Vince? In three years time, I wonder who we will prefer; Frawley or Brayshaw?

Show me one instance of that recently.

As an afterthought to the training session I went to in late December, I thought Frost looked like a poor mans McDonald, which is not terrible; I rate McDonald highly, but he was a tiny bit slow to read the play, know when to punch, mark, help out, etc. He is just 21 though and looked very solid through the shoulders and hips. Don't want to glean too much from training though, training form is a misnomer.

I will simply agree that Disposal Efficiency is a misleading stat. If Player A has 5 kicks that are under no pressure and are looking backwards or sideways - and he hits his targets - he will have a 100% DE. But does it necessarily compute that that player has good skills? What if a player handballs it every time but it is to players that are under pressure or in the wrong position - he has hit his target though, and also is rewarded with a DE of 100%. When it comes to stats - and this reminds me of another thread where someone lost their minds a little about this - you can't just pluck numbers and extrapolate without proper analysis and without dealing with contrary opinions. Subjective truth is an antithetical statement and that's what stats lead us to. Love them, don't trust them.

2019 Jones 27, Melksham 24 2018 Brayshaw 19, Petracca 19, Gawn 23, Garland 26 (UFA), 2017 Dunn 27, Hogan 20, Viney 20, Lumumba 28, Kennedy-Harris20, Salem 19, Vandenberg 23, Neal-Bullen 19, Stretch 18, Kennedy* 21, Bugg* 23, Oliver18, Weideman18, King18, Hulett18 2016 Trengove 22, Dawes 26, Grimes 25 (RFA), Watts 24 (RFA), Vince 29, Tyson* 21, Kent 21, M Jones 27, Spencer 25 (UFA), T McDonald22, Terlich 25, Jetta 25, Garlett 25, Frost 21, Newton 22, O McDonald 19, Pedersen 28, King ®19, White ®18, Smith ®20, Hunt 19, Harmes 19, Michie 23, OUT (8): Cross (Ret.), Jamar (Del.), McKenzie (Del.), Riley (Del.), Bail (Del.), Fitzpatrick (Del.), Howe (T), Toumpas (T) INS (8) : Melksham, Kennedy, Bugg, Smith ®, Vandenberg (Upgraded), Harmes (Upgraded), Oliver, Weideman, King, Hulett * = Require confirmation... Those underlined are player I think are the top 11 paid players; RFA is determined by players being among these 11 (obviously this will be wrong but hopefully indicative). Ages are from the 1st April 2015 - an arbitrary date fit for a fool...

lol Yeah, I should take more notice of stats like Inside 50 counts... Maybe I should do a few threads on important KPIs and stats and stuff, and when I see improvement I will put it in my sig... Or maybe I have been boring people for years with that stuff, I don't know, I can't remember, I cleared my cache...

I will pop it in the next iteration.

Would that message be: people like winners? Everyone already knows that. As I said - there is nothing wrong with the 10k (hopefully) bandwagon members out there, but trumpeting it and implying others are chumps for signing up before success is not going to go down well on Land of all places. We are pathetic Demon tragics, if it wasn't for the 30-35k members who sign up regardless - the club would find it impossible to function - there is no escaping that fact.

Best of some ordinary options, OD, I think the kids look great but not ready for a solid midfield contribution, and Michie, Riley, McKenzie, M.Jones, and Bail are the only ones beside Newton who are in a position to help more straight away. Roos likes Bail so that's where that is.

Really? Teams that kick the ball into their forward line more than their opposition win more games?! You've got to be kitten me!

I don't see him contributing much more than he currently has over his first two years - I love the way he plays, and he can get better and neater with his disposal and I think he can push Jones and Tyson in the next few years, but I am talking about team improvement to push us up the ladder and those three and Vince and Cross need help. Viney is already at that 'regular, consistent, hard working midfielder with solid skills and footy brain' plateau with the other four - I don't see anyone else reaching that plateau in 2015.

Is it? And you don't have to buy a membership until you desire to (if ever), I know there would be a lot of people waiting to buy memberships but you are baiting and flaming those on here who have already paid up by inferring we are a bunch of losers for paying up to watch a bunch of losers. The fact is that thousands of us, deep down, would never not buy a membership - call it an idiot tax, I don't know. I believe that success is the reward for my support, not the other way around.