old55

Goodwin is a brave innovator. He thought there was an opportunity in this weird season to select a very pacy dynamic athletic line-up to get the jump on the competition, hence the selection of Hunt and Smith but it didn't work and he's reverted to a more traditional line-up with the talls at both ends - even then he's shown his courage to select Jackson ahead of Brown. I think the key thing is that with the "Richmond-style" gameplan you need footballers-first to execute because it's frenetic and you need to be able to rely on instinctive skills. I think athletes like Hunt, Smith and ANB who lack innate football skills are not suited to the style. We've been blessed/lucky that we have footballers we can bring in like Bennell, Lockhart, Langdon, Hannan, OMac, Weid and the return to desperation in Hibberd. Of course it helps when you add incredible athletes who can also play the game like Kosi and Jacko.

I'd just like to make a big shout out to Josh Mahoney and Jason Taylor - they work together very well. On the trade front Josh targets his man, convinces him to come to the club and then executes the trade with a minimum of fuss - Melksham, Hibberd, Lever, May and Langdon all essential pieces to the puzzle. And I think that Tomlinson and Preuss can still prove to be astute transactions. Josh gets the essential players resigned with a minimum of fuss too. Christian Petracca anybody? And when Jason Taylor alerts him to special opportunities at the draft he conjures the necessary picks and Taylor duly obliges with great high selections: Oliver-Weideman and Jackson-Pickett.

Massive challenge against fired up Hawks in Premiership mode.

To bring it back on topic - Kosi Pickett will too ... oh and you'll have a new user name and will have always been on board.

Yes Steven May will be an MFC Premiership player.

May needs to play in an MFC premiership team - that was the plan with the trade.

So 3 or 4 more good years left?

Small marking forward? 0 tackles, 0 goal assists.

What do you recommend - a time machine? As Charlie Pickering noted: "When I worked at McDonalds I only got 5 minutes of training on the deep-fryer but still I knew not to stick my d1kk in it"

The tale of two lists: Average Attributes Hawthorn Attribute Melbourne 187.2cm Height 187.4cm 85.6kg Weight 87.2kg 27yr 0mth Age 25yr 5mth 128.0 Games 83.1 Total Players By Games Hawthorn Games Melbourne 6 Less than 50 6 5 50 to 99 10 1 100 to 149 4 10 150 or more 2 Hawthorn need to win the flag this year or next. We've got a 5+ year window open. Only Geelong older than Hawthorn: Average Attributes Geelong Attribute Collingwood 188.2cm Height 187.0cm 88.7kg Weight 86.3kg 27yr 3mth Age 25yr 10mth 135.4 Games 104.5 Total Players By Games Geelong Games Collingwood 6 Less than 50 8 5 50 to 99 3 1 100 to 149 6 10 150 or more 5

Yes good point R&BR. The other small forward types I think were Liam Henry - tied to Fremantle and yet to debut, and Cody Weightman picked up by the Dogs and debuting this weekend - it will be good to see how he goes, he has some big wraps and was probably the viable alternative to Pickett. He'll need to be very good to be better than Picket.

Agree but it goes up a fair bit if they lose.

I wonder if we'll set up at Maroochydore like for the pre-season camp?

You mean Ben King at GC? Who debuted in R9 and had 1 kick, 4 handballs and 0 marks, 0 tackles and 1 Clanger? Edit: SNAP with R&B Realist

Pickett directly created 3 great goals against GC: The chip pass from outside 50 to Harmes. We've tried that at least a dozen times and failed every other time so badly I wince. But Kosi has the vision and skills to execute it perfectly. The tap to Fritsch when surrounded by 4 GC defenders was pure Cyril - that's what he built his entire reputation on. The pass to Bennell at the end was all class - vision and execution again.

It's early days but I'm prepared to bet that the difference between Young and Rivers will be far smaller than the difference between Jackson and any player available at or after the Rivers pick.

the secret is out!

Nobody reads your posts

This is surely why we picked up Brown? Time to use him.

I think the tighter dimensions of the Sydney Showgrounds work in our favour in this compared with the MCG.

I agree there are role players in every team but ANB's fundamental football skills are not AFL level and a key to his role, his tackling, is poor. It's something about #30 - Hoppy, Godders, ANB ... The problem against Geelong was not preventing them from scoring, it was us converting scoring opportunities. If we had played some combination of Weid and Bennell along with Kosi we could have won.

Talk about damning with faint praise. We'll never win a flag with players like ANB in the team. I agree that there's a question mark on AVB too, he's not a lock. Kosi's flag material and unless he's out of petrol tickets, and he shouldn't be by now, he must play.

One Kosi tackle is worth 5 ANB "tackles", one AVB tackle is worth 10.

That's true but since then they've been horrible and Bennell and Kosi are a massive upgrade on them. They've only played one game together so far. I'm looking forward to Krakouer brothers-style magic coming up. Yes it will be fascinating to see whether we are on a roll.

OMG that just totally confirms my view that you are a terrible judge. Kosi directly created Harmes, Fritsch and Bennell goals against GC. He is an absolute gun.