old55

James McDonald #38 - it's all wrong

I disagree if we think he'll be a star - I'd trade 2 mid 1st rounders for a top 3 pick in a heartbeat - but apparently the FD feel differently or felt too uncertain about his development.

I'd suggest a vote but I hate democracy.

However, obsessing about 36 grown men chasing inflated pigskin around on grass ...

You don't need picks to target free agents and that market is open to every club. The picks are good for attack on players too young for free agency - if we can convince them to join us then we have the ammo to deliver a trade. See Essendon last year with Josh Caddy - they couldn't get the job done with pick 19 in a weakened draft but our compo picks could do it. We will be competing with GWS (uncontracted player rules) and the other clubs who have mid 1st round compo picks in this market - Dogs and Geelong. We need to be pushing the "go home" factor - Gaff for example. There's really 3 ways we can use them: 1. in the draft 2. trade into the GWS mini-draft (altho we refused to pay market value last year for Crouch and offer both) 3. trade for a pre-FA uncontracted player I like plan 3 if we can identify the right player, I'd prefer that to more 17 or 18 yos.

Quick - get the fire extinguisher for TimD's stake.

I imagine they're hoping to recruit a new capatin this year as an uncontracted player.

Be careful what you wish for - not sure if forumland is ready for my kind of "moderation" which description is close to an antonym for my likely approach. I can see the logic though ...

There's no rule against "Who Is Your Preferred Running Half Back?" threads - they're great and should continue. It's when there 5 training treads all debating Cale Morton's physique that a problem is occuring.

I call closing the training thread because it too became about Cale Morton is fairly broke. The general idea is to make it easier to keep pace with topics because they're more centralised and there's not repeat contentt in 3 parallel threads - yes there are grey areas like game reviews and injury occurences - when does it warrant transferring to conversation to the player thread? It needs to be on a separate board beacuse it will be impossible to find the James Strauss thread on the main board amongst all the other threads when you want to continue it.

Good question - right now I reckon GC and Brisbane will win 5 games or more, I'm not confident about Port though - they only get GWS, GC and Brisbane once and GWS and GC are away games. Will be interesting to see if there's any tanking.

Cale's so thin he doesn't even show up in the photos!

Possible useful info here: http://demonland.com...__fromsearch__1 1st round after club =============== GWS (after Crows/Davis for Crouch) Bulldogs (after Dogs/Ward) Melbourne (after Melbourne/Scully) Geelong (after Geelong/Ablett) Mid 1st round after non-finalists ======================== GWS (Geelong/Ablett via Gold Coast for O'Meara) Melbourne (Melbourne/Scully) End of 1st Round ============= Gold Coast (Adelaide/Bock) Gold Coast (Brisbane/Brennan) Brisbane (Brisbane/Rischitelli) * Brisbane (Dogs/Harbrow pick) - pick 30 in 2011 ** North (Hawthorn/Brown) - used in 2010 2nd Round after club ================= Richmond (after Port/Krakoeur) 3rd Round after club ================ West Coast (after Collingwood/Fraser) Bulldogs (after Bulldogs/Reid) Plus 2012 GWS uncontracted player Plus 2012 Free Agency compensation

I'm suggesting it runs permanently. I think it would be organic - present players would become past players on the board and discussion could continue - the Scully thread anyone? There'd be no reason we couldn't start the Robbie Flower thread in there though. I think the Garland thread would provide amusing reading if it had been running since he was drafted. If the threads get too long then we split them every thousand posts - we'd be up to "Cale Morton - Part 14" by now I suspect, but I unless there's some system problem with huge threads then I think it's better to keep eveything in one place even if they do get to 300 pages - you can just read the bits you want - and if you want to go back and find where I said "Tapscott is over-rated" it would be a lot easier. If there's an official season review that could be dropped into the thread. Mods would have some post moving to do to keep threads on track and there'd no doubt be vitriol in the threads that need cleaning up, so it does put extra load on them.

I suggested that we should have a separate board with a separate thread for each player so conversation can be conducted there in a continuous and "on-topic" manner. Mods apparently think it's unworkable but IMO what's really unworkable is that other threads (training thread) are getting closed because they veer off to discuss (usually the same) players in detail.

I'm really talking about a premiership winning structure - that's what we're here for. We need to maximise our strengths and I think if we can free Frawley to play an attacking role in the backline that will give us a real boost. It might be the difference between top 4 and flag.

Luke Ball preferred to go to Collingwood and used the leverage at his disposal to get there - he only spoke to them, stipulated a contract amount $900K over 2 years, I don't see anything heinous in this. We still could have selected him and we could have done it on the back of Collingwood's due diligence - they checked him out medically and they were prepared to pay the $900K. That doesn't make a mockery of the draft. The price they ultimately paid was diluted because they are only paying him $90K this year so they effectively got him for $330K/year across 3 years and we would've had to pay $450K per year over two years. He never said he'd stand out of football if he was selected by a club other than Collingwood as stated by Range Rover in another thread - that would be draft tampering.

It only appears to get further away to you who somehow thought it was closer in the first place

Those posters saying Neeld would've insisted on Darling ahead of Cook, would he have insisted on Ball ahead of Tapscott? We're you insisting on Ball ahead of Tapscott at the time?

It was demoralising to see Bailey bashing the long queue of quality experienced players wanting to join us with his "you're not needed here" sign. Apparently we should've recruited "more experienced types" but it was "no good taking Ball because he didn't want to come to our club" - well he was one we could've made join us.

I never thought the flag window would open before 2014 at the earliest and you can check my post history. Last year's antics didn't accelerate it. Neeld has the luxury of building on Bailey's foundations. Sellar, Magner and Couch aren't going to win you that flag - Blease, Scully (or his replacement picks if used wisely), Trengove and Gysberts will. Bailey was the fall guy the club needed - he did exactly what was required, Neeld's gig is 100x easier than Bailey's was. The only experienced player I regret us not recruiting is Luke Ball - he'd be captain now and that would be one big problem solved (and the Saints might have beaten the Pies in that drawn GF too!).

I've posted the same thing 10 times (too many) in the thread already - more fool me, I'm a slow learner.

Mooney retiring, Pods turning 30, Hawkins questionable and Brown always injured, even if they didn't want another forward how could they overlook Darling? My natural tendency is to support those who give their all for the club and those who've been around long enough will remember that I was strong supporter of Neale Daniher, gave Dean Bailey the benefit of any doubts, same for Tom Scully, got behind Craig Cameron and now support Barry Prendergast. It's a path with pot-holes as the Scully experience shows. I don't think we'll know what Barry Prendergast's legacy was until late in this decade - to suggest that he screwed up taking Cook over Darling is premature.

I mean then of course - various posters on here have questioned how BP could have chosen Cook when Darling was available, one even suggested that BP was sacked because of this. I simply pointed out that Scott Clayton, Wayne Hughes and Stephen Wells - all highly rated, experienced recruiters with good reasons at the time to pick a player like Darling also decided not to take him. I think your 2nd paragraph sums it up.

You make agood point about Brown and I did overlook him because he has hardly played. The argument from the pro-Darling camp is that he's so good overlooking him is a sackable offence. With Brown and Hawkins doubtful and Mooney and Pods old how could Wells overlook the sure thing?