old55

Keilty is good but I'd pick McInerney ahead of him if it came to the crunch.

What is the point you are trying to make? The players have been found guilty by the relevant tribunal of breaking the regulations of the sport they signed up for and have been punished accordingly by being banned from participating. This is all entirely appropriate. The "court", the regulations and the punishment.

No-one is suggesting the Essendon 34 are convicted criminals. They are convicted by a tribunal of breaching the regulations of the body concerned i.e. WADA via AFL. It's like players found guilty of striking at the AFL tribunal. Are you saying they're are not really guilty because it's not a court of law?

What does the C stand for?

Jake Melksham is a convicted (subject to appeal to Swiss Court) performance enhancing drug cheat, he has to live with it and no amount of rationalisation can change that. He has also served his significant penalty and deserves every chance to create a new legacy for himself to be remembered by - hopefully as an MFC premiership player.

Based on selection preferences, roles and VFL roles in 2016, with Bernie and Salem in the midfield as you suggest, and with Hibberd and Melksham in the back 7 this is more or less how the list looks, with the / at depth:: Tall Backs [3]: T.Mac, O.Mac, Frost / Dunn, Garland Small Backs [4]: Jetta, (Hibberd), Hunt, Melksham / Harmes, Wagner, White, Michie, Smith, Lumumba Ruck [1]: Gawn / Spencer, Mitch King Mids: [9]: Viney, N. Jones, Tyson, Oliver, Brayshaw, Petracca, Stretch, Vince, Salem / Vandenberg, Bugg, M.Jones, ANB, Trengove, Grimes, Newton Tall Fwds [3]: Hogan, Watts, Weidemann / Pedersen, Hulett, Dawes, Max King Small fwds [2]: Kent, Garlett / Kennedy, Kennedy-Harris, Terlich

I'm not against it. I wonder about Hibberd, Hunt, Salem, Vince, Melksham, Harmes, Wagner and White all off HB. Sure 1 or 2 may be able to move into the midfield but we have Viney, Jones, Tyson, Oliver, Brayshaw, Petracca, Stretch and Vandenberg in that rotation already - not sure who they are going to force out?

I agree with your position. I'd only trade those player to significantly improve our list. For example if we could acquire some midfield class, a forward-ruck, retain a pick around the 2nd round (assuming ours goes for Hibberd) then I would be open to a trade of Dunn, Garland, Kennedy-Harris, Neal-Bullen, Harmes or Wagner. I'm definitely not interested in turning them over for picks beyond 40, I'd like to see another year development into Kennedy-Harris, Neal-Bullen, Harmes and Wagner to see what they can deliver, but if you want to bring in quality then you have to be prepared to give something. If ANB could get a trade for Hartlett across the line, if Geelong was interested in Wagner (to replace Enright) for Vardy (if we thought his body was OK), if Brisbane would give their 3rd rounder 38ish for Dunn or Garland - edit: Brisbane have 28 and 47 (traded 38 to Geelong last year), maybe we could upgrade 44 into 28. If we did bring in some midfield class and a fwd-ruck then I think M.Jones and Pedersen would be delistable. Mitch White has played well in the VFL but he was fumbly at AFL level against St.Kilda in the extra pressure, he might make it, but with Hibberd and Melksham coming in and Salem coming back he's a long way down the HB pecking order.

If we can pick up a fwd-ruck then both Dawes and Pedersen can be delisted IMO. If not then we must retain Pedersen. Stuck with: Lumumba Delistable: Dawes, Newton, Terlich, Michie (R), Max King (R) FA leave: Grimes Possibly delistable depending on who comes in: Pedersen, M.Jones, White (R) Tradeable: Dunn, Garland, Kennedy-Harris, Neal-Bullen, Harmes, Wagner (R)

With Max and Mitch King both on our list it's hard to see much Spencer clogging going on.

I expect he'll have one somewhere if not at MFC for quite a few years. Valuable commodity capable depth ruckman. It's a specialist role. Dan Currie, you've probably never heard of him?

I'm guessing you don't have any forms of insurance? If Gawn got injured, without Jake, we would have been rucking Pedersen, Dawes and Watts. It's great that he played 0 games and Max is AA. He's still providing value even at Casey. It's clearly a concept beyond your comprehension.

The inclusion of Spencer in your team shows you have absolutely no idea about depth players and their necessity. No surprise you're wrong about M.Joness too.

Matt Jones played some good footy in the first 5 rounds up to his injury. Your preconceptions about him and gold fish memory seem to be preventing recall. He's no world beater but we need a capable squad of 30 and he qualifies.

Could easily have played 18. Got injured early when his form was very good and missed a block of 4-5 games. When he came back he played well in the VFL but we had almost a full list to choose from.

Is that the sound of a bell? You seem to be only able to comprehend "attractiveness" as a binary concept - not attractive or attractive, vacuum or black hole. But attractiveness is a graduated interval scale. It is clear that Simon Goodwin's peanut butter on toast is more attractive than Mark Neeld's [censored] sandwich even if Patrick Dangerfield prefers crayfish on brioche served by Moggs Creek mermaids and wont eat either of them. [censored] sandwich - Peanut butter toast - Crayfish on brioche. Get it? Anyway, you wont be the last dueler whose hand was blown off and face was blackened by the back-fire of his own malfunctioning ill-maintained muscat. No, the fact that Jesse Hogan has not yet re-signed does not refute my argument that we are now more attractive. In fact it's quite possibly the reverse - that he'd already be gone if we weren't. The indisputable, uncontradictable, empirical evidence of this that you're looking for is that Jack Watts and his father both said that he would have left and not re-signed if things hadn't improved at MFC. Apparently Michael Hibberd likes peanut butter.

I said "we improved our attractiveness", I didn't say that "we are a preferred destination for a high profile player". Are you seriously suggesting that we are not now more attractive than we were at 2 wins and 50%? News report of Collingwood interest in O'Meara apparently passes your stringent evidence based approach though? I said "WE improved OUR attractiveness" i.e. relative to our previous unattractiveness, not relative to Essendon or Richmond.

10 wins 90+% is more attractive than 2 wins 50% - I'm keen to hear your argument against this? We don't have a 1st round pick, our 2nd round pick is destined for the Hibberd trade and we don't have any players with obvious value that we'd be prepared to trade, therefore we don't have a lot of currency to trade.

I believe Bernie won last year's B&F. You may not have noticed but when we were winning 2 games a year with a percentage of 50% we weren't a destination club. Even though we have improved our attractiveness, we don't have a lot of currency to trade this year. We traded our 1st rounder to get Weidemann to the club who has now had a pre-season and 3 AFL games. We can make further incremental improvement with Hibberd and natural improvement in our young players and play finals in 2017. We can land a "big fish" to ice the flag cake when the time comes in a couple of years.

I'm willing to accept that Hibberd makes us better but I continue to believe HB is not our area of greatest need. We've got Salem, Melksham, Hunt, Harmes, Wagner and Vince (who increasingly out of the centre square equation as he ages) - together with Hibberd that's 7 into a maximum of 3 HB/bench slots. Posters say that Hibberd will free players like Salem and Hunt for other midfield roles but there is probably only "wing" roles currently occupied by Stretch and Bugg - maybe Bugg will be pushed out but that only frees one slot I've left out White, Lumumba and Michie who don't offer enough and will probably be gone. I think we should be factoring a trade of HBs into the Hibberd deal - maybe Wagner or even Harmes. Essendon get a younger like-for-like replacement which may appeal.

Looked like it didn't it. I'm pleased to say they've done nothing since then. Long may it continue.

Grimes is a Restricted Free Agent - it amazes me how posters continue to bring up trades involving him. He is free to go to any club he wants to and we would need to match the contract to force a trade. This is not going to happen.

The problem with trading is that you can't trade picks you don't have and your picks are (at least) 18 positions apart - so it's pretty easy for a players value to fall in the middle. We'll have something like pick 26, we can't give them pick 20 if we don't have it. Pick swaps is the only direct way to fix this, yes other clubs can get involved but that is usually not straightforward.

No way that's massive - we should have showered you with Gatorade in the middle of the circle!