old55

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!

I know it's the Melskham thread - but I really like Kennedy. He's a great competitor. His kicking penetration really stood out to me in QBW match - twice he kicked very long to Hogan to create goals, once in the 3rd for a Hogan mark, and in the last resulting in a goal to Watts

Played his best footy at the western end - coincidence?

I think Hogan would be a massive loss and I'm 100% behind keeping him at the club. But ... If he is determined to return to Perth then the way the Dockers year has unfolded has significantly improved our market position. They will finish bottom 3, not top 4. if it has to happen we need to make it happen THIS year while that pick is there and they are not trying to improve their position. I think the market would be 2016 and 2017 1st rounder and possibly a player - Judd was 3, 20 and Kennedy (pick 4). OOC player value plummets - Freo will secure McCarthy for relative peanuts this year when they were offering 2 x 1st rounder last year when he was in contract.

Sum of the IQs probably around 180 though.

I think so. Probably greatest tennis player of all time. Possibly greatest female athlete of all time. If Usain Bolt wins the double at this year's Olympics then he's the greatest athlete of all time IMO.

That's not what the WADA code says, and that's what the players signed up to.

You're a harder man than me. I've followed this case reasonably closely and am satisfied that the players used TB-4 and therefore committed an ADRV and I think that the CAS penalty is appropriate because the players share fault. I won't labour the reasons here unless anyone really needs them. But on the other hand - Melksham was 20yo starting his 3rd year in the system. Hird and Dank told him it was all OK - even Dank (mistakenly) thought TB-4 wasn't banned. http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/danks-stunning-admission-20140613-zs7ea.html Watson, Fletcher, Stanton, Hille etc were all going ahead with it. Life ban - pretty harsh! I'm prepared to welcome him to our club and hope he can re-build his career, but like you said I'd like to hear more contrition and less "we're innocent".

So in effect, you think Melksham (and all the Essendon 34) should be banned for life and that CAS got it wrong? Because that's the natural extension of your argument. IMO, they have broken the rules and have received a significant punishment. I do think it's very unbecoming that the players involved and the AFLPA continue to maintain their "innocence" and agree with you that contrition would be far better - although I haven't heard Melksham's position on this yet. If the punishment is accepted and served in good faith by the players, then they should be free to re-commence their careers.

If each player is equally likely to be picked at the next 3 picks before ours then I make the minimum probability: 0.80 x 0.75 x 0.67 = 0.40 that we'd get our guy at pick 7 (each of those probabilities are the probability of not picking our guy from that set at that pick) The probability is actually better than that because Essendon and Gold Coast may select any other player, not just from that set, at their picks

Yes, they showed 6 players on the night? There's 15 possible combinations of 2 players from 6.choices (30 ways they can be picked taking order into account). Exciting times!

Thanks for the write-up Jack. I think Aaron Francis is the forgotten man because of his "type". I don't think we can count him out of our calculations.

Snoop Dog Phantom published yesterday: Snoop Dog 2015 Phantom National and Rookie Draft Lot's of detail, interesting picks for us.

Coach should not be involved in recruiting except in the broadest terms. Coach that is being phased out shouldnt be involved at all.

I donn't think Roos has got anything to do with it in any way. I be alarmed if he did.

As as been said by others - making judgement on highlights reel is not sound. And that video in particular has so little game action in it, it's ridiculous to draw any conclusions.

Missed it by that || much!