old55

Agree, the Hirds behaviour is incredible. Everything they've done is about protecting themselves at any cost. Demetriou may well have tipped Essendon off, which if proven will land him in a lot of hot water - but why would he do this - to try to protect the AFL and Essendon, really at his own risk. Now as Sue points out Essendon, the Hirds and Bruce Reid appear to be using this as leverage. I expect this whole saga will bring down AD and continue to significantly damage the AFL. I really would prefer that Essendon players aren't sanctioned because I believe they were mislead, but it appears thats what it will take to make Hird et al pay and I do want to see that.

Oh dear Tania more likely

great stuff thanks!

cheers thanks!

Good post Redleg, agree with all that.

Nice format - but classifying the players correctly is the whole point of a depth chart isn't it? Is Grimes a mid? Are Salem, Harmes and Michie outside mids? Is Kent a mid? Is Watts a forward? Are Jetta and Tapscott small forwards? If Garland's a key back how come Pedersen isn't? Are Hunt and Nicholson backs?

So Redleg, is that 176 serves x $6.6K/service in a year = $1.161M/year. If the BC3 stallion got that sort of return it's not terrible even on $5M investment depending on the costs to come out. Keen for further education please!

Some good choices from the MFC list there. In the broader AFL: Franklin - duh!, Jack Martin - could he really be better than O'Meara?, Joel Tippett - if he makes it he's a rare commodity we could have had.

As Rhino would say "sage advice": http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/get-demetriou-a-new-sport-that-is-hurting-bombers-20131205-2yu03.html

It does seems as though the AFL made a mistake not specifically writing in the condition that Hird should not be paid by Essendon while he's suspended - they mistakenly thought that Essendon wouldn't be brazen enough to do that - naive really after all that's happened, but hardly a firing offence. I'm amazed that Essendon would do such a provocative thing and further aggravate their relationship with the leagues governing body. They should be trying to build a bridge.

Cover up of what? The AFL and Essendon negotiated an outcome and an intermediary known to both facilitated it when it stalled. This has been common knowledge for 3 months.

Agreed.

The AFL negotiated a settlement with Essendon - wowee big breaking news!!! They negotiated a settlement with MFC on the tanking allegations as well. A total nothing story with News Ltd trailing Fairfax by 3 months that Wylie was involved in mediating the negotiations. What would be news is if the AFL negotiated a final outcome with WADA/ASADA in this matter.

Or 3 injuries to have him in the starting 18

The chances of him failing if he never made it onto an AFL list were 100% so to say they are now much smaller is indeed a ridiculous statement of the obvious.

All the numbers should be allocated now with the draftees arriving. They should have lockers. Rain people look forward to this information.

Prediction: http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/rookie-draft-discussion.1041998/page-5#post-31058318

We made 12 changes to the list of 44, that's pretty substantial. If we only made 4 and retained Jetta then I could see a case, but we've got a lot of new blood.

You need to understand that real inside draft information doesn't get written up on public fan forums. Well rarely anyway: http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/rookie-draft-discussion.1041998/page-5#post-31058318

It seems to me we could've gone: ND: Salem, JKH, Harmes RD: Tippett, King, Hunt, Jetta That has a nice balance of types. Best of luck to Alex Georgiou - WE picked him.

He will take time no doubt, but Fitzy has had other problems which slowed his development.

1 win is about as likely as 10 wins. If I have to zero in - 16th or 17th with 4 or 5 wins, but it's very hard to predict what might happen. St.Kilda is really the only club in our vicinity that I see being worse than last year - all the others should be equal or better than they were. I expect we'll be better but we were truly utterly woeful.

We could finish anywhere from last to about 10th with anywhere from 1 to 10 wins.

I went fishing at a trout farm.

Is that right? Well the Hawks took 4 rookie draft picks and none of them were Tsitas - who didn't get picked up. So that has to mean that the 4 players they picked up were rated 24, 25, 26 and 27 on their list. Wow are they lucky or what! I find that very hard to believe Max. How about you post the list?