rpfc

Watts has not been the most disappointing player this season. He started well against St Kilda in a new role but couldn't sustain it, he has had his moments in defence and behind the ball - like against PA - and has done some good things as a high leading HFF, he has had an up and down season but the number of terrible games he has played has come down from previous years - he has found ways to contribute when not finding a lot of the ball. And yet - who gets it every time we lose? Who is the one that just has to be traded? We talk about a lack of loyalty in Frawley and don't acknowledge Watts' illustration last year. We gush about Roos' ability to develop players but we won't give him Exhibit A in the case against this clubs ability to develop players for more than a season. Frankly, I knew Roos was going to need more time than 1 season and I look forward to seeing what he, and Stone and co., can do with a few misguided talents. Including the most maligned player I can recall at the club.

Yes, it was. Maybe it is the confusion of what was 'supposed' to happen this season. We came into this season with our eyes wide open, OD, and I knew that while Neeld was a terrible coach, he wasn't a Disney villain that we would shed and suddenly make the finals. Even with a great coach like Roos in tow. We just do not have the list to do, and sustain, damage in this league at the moment.

That extra mil is the Scully concession...

How about this for an epiphany - Jack Watts isn't the reason we lose games. He isn't what we thought. And his physicality is disappointing to say the least. But he gets attention and blame outside of what he deserves. Bernie Vince said this a few months ago. If we got rid of Watts, all we would be doing is getting rid of a scapegoat and moving onto the next one.

I would have to be one of the most down about our chances this year, and up there with Old Dee with my opinion of the list - but I seem to be far more bullish about the immediate future than a lot of you. So many to delist and trade... I think there are some obvious decisions to be made but the gutting some of you think is necessary won't happen at the end of the year. It is just not feasible, advisable, and it won't happen.

Nah, that's BS. You just don't want to understand what we care about. You care about embarrassing wooden cutlery - my concerns are a bit more evolved...

How do you think you win games? What are games made up of? If you won 4 quarters, do you think you would win the game? Answer the rhetorical questions at your leisure.

We all enjoy the rumours but the desire to see 11-12 deletions is just a morbid belief that the grass is greener on the other 'hypothetical' side. ND3, 4, 21, 41, 60, 80, DFA, DFA, and Jetta is 9 spots on the Primary List. To get more without using ND95, 110, and 120 (or more likely the last three picks in the draft) will take several trades where we 'trade down' and get a player. Frankly, it would be unprecedented in trading in the AFL for us to turn 3, 4, and 21 into 6 players which is what I think some of you are envisioning.

Criticising the ethos of our rebuilding strategy is absolutely fine. The lack of success of the post 2007 rebuild is obvious, the culture it engendered is less obvious, but no less odious in my opinion. We got rid of too much experience and talent in the years after that and we bottomed out to a point where we had a very small window to meet to keep the improvement going. And when some stalwarts left after 2010 and 2011, the bottom fell out of the list and married with terrible recruitment (and almost entirely youth, no established pros) and hopeless coaching - the disaster of 2012 and 2013 occurred. Isolating one game that we were in front of at the final siren is missing the point of why we are where we are. If you think the bottoming out (or tanking) strategy began and ended on that day you are kidding yourself. It started at the end of 2007 and the youth fuelled bottoming out didn't stop until Neeld went after 'established' recruits at the end of 2011. Dawes was his only recruit that panned out and fast forward to Tyson, Vince, and Cross as the most successful recruiting off season in living memory. Hopefully, Roos can do it again, and we can begin looking forward rather than constantly bringing up the past 'sins' as the cause of present ills.

Who is we?He was highly rated from all the usual noise makers. Teach him how to run properly and you have a player from what I have seen. And Toumpas and Trengove have close to zero trade value. Some of you would decimate this list (even more) with your Neeld-like trade outs of players just to get rid of them.

Clark, Byrnes, Frawley, Tapscott, Strauss, Blease, Terlich, and Nicholson gives 8 vacancies. That's enough. Jetta, ND 3, 4, 21, Stretch, 60, 79, and a DFA will see us mine as much talent as we can get. Any more vacancies and we will be getting in some very speculative talent. Hopefully, 60 and the DFA can get us Malceski and either a Riley type or an O'Keefe type. And trade the 4 and the 21 for some established players I hope. This October is again, a very important month for the club.

6-8 deplorable efforts... I don't know about that... Also, if I can't isolate the Adelaide game as a sign of improvement on 2013, then surely isolating the Lions game is not right. What has been the rule? I would say - excellent defence, unenterprising attack, and an inability to win games that we have fought hard to be in a position to win. I would say that is better than 'the rule' of 2013.

They should give us 2nd rd pick and say that they will take another look next year when - god willing - we are decent. That still gives them the option of PPs and all we get is Pick 20. I don't like it though, the rules should send Pick 1 our way. But what are rules and policy to the AFL? Mere suggestions to be massaged by public opinion.

Brand already smashed. Enticing players to play for us has been up to Roos alone after the 2013 Debacle. The members who signed up after the aforementioned debacle of 2013 are stoic Demons. The bandwagoners turned off after the WCE game and aren't watching how we limp to the end of the season. Again, Roos is the drawcard for sponsors after 2013. The group is damaged, as Roos has said - how they play against Haw, NM, and WCE is more important than where we happen to plop out in the last three at the end of the year. I hope they can develop some of our stoicism and put up a show against these three teams. You want to finish with something positive - finish the season with some good performances against teams that we have been BLOWN AWAY BY. I have seen the abject abyss that was 2013 and I came into this season with my eyes wide open - we have improved - there is reason to hope for all concerned but the performance of the team in the last month is far more important than the embarrassment of the spoon. The TL;DR version: If you want people to care about the last month of footy - imagine what gets more news/positivity/care factor - a scrappy win over GWS to avoid the spoon or the scrappy performance against Hawthorn this week where we fight and compete and the players give themselves some belief against the best? I just have the latter ranked above the former - that's all.

Can we keep this thread from being another Watts bash thread?

If we played Ice Hockey we would be in the hunt for the Stanley Cup! (They play 3 periods)

This was Demonland at its finest. I lol'd.

Thank The Lord for Free Agency hey?

Yes, that is what I am saying - apparently I have offended Mr Burgundy to the point where I cannot give examples of players that have waited until their current contract is nearly up before signing the next one. I am not going to read malice into actions that may be benign. Kawhi Leonard was the Most Valuable Player in the most recent NBA Finals, he comes out of contract at the end of next season and he has until October 31 (3 days into the season) to sign a contract extension for July 2015 onwards. If he doesn't sign by then he will be a RFA in July 2015. Essentially, if you didn't sign your player by the start of the season - the rules preclude you from extending his contract until he becomes a FA or RFA at the end of the season. This is coming, and I welcome it.

So he's stupid? Because he hasn't decided yet? Or are you implying he is not stupid because he has? Cloke and Boak - both in the stupid column... I know there are players who have already 'signed'* somewhere else during the season, but the inference that that be applied to all who delay talks is pretty 'simple' - especially in the today's landscape. *Contracts are essentially just a signal of intent, they are meaningless until the actual contract is signed at the end of the season.

I once had similar reservations and the breach of individual rights is an obvious one and one that led to the Bosman ruling in International Soccer. But we are already there with the draft - it is an instrument that infringes a persons right to choose their employer... Essentially, the employer is the AFL and the contracts that a player signs is with the competition. This should allow the trading of that contract without the need for the player to agree. Now, that is a jump from what we currently have but keep in mind the scenario where we trade Frawley last year or mid-season does not mean that he has to sign a new contract with the team we trade him to - if he wishes to not sign a new contract and become a FA at the end of that season - he can choose to do that. That is how it is run in the US. Just yesterday - two of the best pitchers in the MLB were traded months before they are to enjoy FA. As for the 'teenagers don't have the right of veto because they are apart of equalisation' argument - I largely reject it because if trading players against their will is a 'breach of individual rights' so is the draft concept. The Hogan deal would be fine as he had another 15 months on his contract - the extension rules only apply in that calendar year. Players like McDonald would get closer to 'market value' because more teams are 'in his ear' and he is more likely to get what 'the market' is willing to pay if 'the market' has been able to propose a contract to him. A moratorium on contracts being signed won't stop speculation, but it would calm the constant back-and-forth between the media and players on their decision to leave it until October. Essentially, if you and your club can't decide before April/May, you can't sort it out until the end of the season. This is something FOR the players really. This is a balance between what clubs want, what players want, and what the AFL wants (an equalised league). I would envision what is called a 'train-on squad' that can balloon out to 10 to 15 for about 4 or 5 spots (or however many spots are yet to be filled) and that the list is then finalised approx. mid-season. Players in that squad are given contract for that period and paid enough to allow them to do it full time, but also have the right to sign anywhere else while not officially on a clubs list. This would replace the rookie list and would mitigate the situation we had this year when all our tall forwards went missing. I understand the desire to do it this way but FA is also supposed to be a way for lowly clubs to get (an, yes, overpay) talent from clubs above them. To take something from the teams getting these FAs is something that I think will hurt the system in a few years time when players become more professional, see their opportunities with more clarity, and ask for their market value in a league that wants to have an even shot a the flag for 3 quarters of the league. This is all very new to the AFL and AFL fans but I would remind people that a US sports construct we have made our own that didn't start at all well is the National Draft; NRL fans still look at it like a confused blue heeler but I think we can all agree that it is something that helps the league as a whole and spreads the talent around the clubs? Remember, it started with players selected who didn't agree to come to those clubs (see: Darren Jarman to the Dees - sigh...) and with some clubs treating it like a foreign and malignant artefact (Fremantle giving away Lucas, Lloyd, etc)...

Yes, but your version would have give pick 18 yet, if we recruited the same player we would be forced to give Pick 3.

The effect FA has had on the AFL landscape means that the remedies to what people are worried about require an holistic view of the whole list management and recruitment structure. 1. Players standard contract should preclude vetoing trades, if a player wants to negotiate a 'no-trade clause' they can. But we don't allow draftees to choose where they go, why should a teenager not be given that right but when they are on the list they suddenly can choose where they go? 2. Contracts not being signed until October means that the player is more inclined to get market value for their services, there are far too many players signing well before their contract expires on far less than they are worth. Equalisation demands talent be paid market value, delaying signing has proven to have this effect in the NBA and NFL. 3. Lists not being finalised until two months into the season will give a benefit to the teams that struggle to attract talent by traditional means and allow them to sign players (and trade for in a subsequent in season trade period) that others wouldn't have a spot for. 4. The injury replacements are an extension of that, and at the heart of it - it is about giving teams more options and to use the MFC and Frawley as an example: We could trade Frawley to his club of choice (or not) and he could decide whether to still become a FA or resign at that point with his new club. OR we could let him have his FA, which he signs in October, but we could have signed a back from outside the AFL during the season as the chances of him re-signing diminish. I mention the injury replacements here as players who have left through means like this tend to end their season early through injury... The answer to these issues are not simply contained within the FA policies, they require a structural change to how players move and how lists are formed.

You can argue the merits of his NFL idea of the top 4 being restricted from involvement in FA but you cannot argue that he is not right about the AFL being half pregnant in its FA model. There is much they have taken from other equalised sports that has merit as an equalisation measure as well as a way for players to have more freedom - but there is much they have left on the table that would make FA a more worthwhile experience for clubs down the bottom that the league wants to see up the top. The FA-related Mechanisms to install immediately; 1. Players cannot veto trades. 2. Contracts cannot be signed until the October they expire. 3. Lists are not finalised until two months into the season. 4. Injury replacement players can come from outside the AFL. At the moment the AFLPA has got what it wants without giving much at all - the AFL needs to make sure it doesn't relent on more freedoms without thinking about what effect it will have. Frankly, the AFL has been making up this stuff as they go and it has been embarrassing to watch these people free jazz their way to policy.

This has happened about twice but I have to agree with wyl - if we were close to being 10 and 7 we were even closer to being 0 and 17.