old55

I think that was borne out when Petty was in there and playing at his optimum. We need to add at least one more great finisher to the mix.

No, the reason it failed was not to do with Grundy. It was because the FD and Max thought that Max could play an effective role forward, which he couldn’t do. Grundy was there to fill the ruck hole effectively. That's it.

I'm going for a different solution - acquire more elite forward talent. We have the draft hand and salary cap space to do it. It's a simpler fix IMHO.

Yes I'm a slow learner, but I think it's finally dawned on me. I thought "Defence and contest" - that must mean we need the best defenders and mids available. But no, they do have to be very good, but it actually means we need the best forwards available because it's so hard to score goals with 30 players in your F50. They'll get an absolute heap of nearly opportunities.

The compensation is based on size AND length of the contract, and also based on age of the player - more for younger players so this works in our favour with Jordon.

Great analysis. But the point is that pressure goes up in finals and our accuracy goes down. The Melbourne/Goodwin mantra is that we play a contested, territory winning, defensive style because that's what wins finals and I think that's reasonable, but when we get in inside crowded 50 as a result, we need a gun forward line to convert hard opportunities. Teams that play a more rebounding open style get more defensive one-on-ones and actually don't need absolute maximum class forward, but our game style results in congestion inside 50 and we're playing against the best defences - we need better converters under maximum pressure.

Essendon and Hawthorn in an auction for him. They still hate each other and there aren't any other KPBs left in the market.

Yeah, he guesses the first dozen draft picks in order each yeah, very good guesser old Cal.

JJ and Harmes will be gone for a start. McVee doesn't have to be promoted this year. McAdam coming in. That's 2 vacancies on the primary list.

Do you really want to risk him calling our bluff with Harmes and Dunstan leaving and taking 3 or 4 more years with us?

Chol appears to be the only realistic ruck/fwd available - what do you think?

True, but do you think he could have laid a tackle on Newman say? Maybe he was on Saad, there wasn't too much "woof" and Saad was kicking out after behinds so that inflated his stats. I'm not watching the replay to find out.

With the likely midfield exodus of JJ, Harmes and Dunstan we need to invest there. I think it would be a good idea and wouldn't be surprised if we were after Xavier Duursma at Port. He's been injured, hasn't been playing well and is behind Rozee, Butters, JHF, Wines and Drew, they also have Sinn who has hardly played. I believe we rated him in his draft year and he showed early on that he can play. He's stalled. Port have to acquire Ratugolea, Zerk-Thatcher and Sweet and are reported to be chasing Soldo - all with limited draft assets. They need some list turnover with their disappointing result yet again. Duursma is 23y2mo and is out of contract at the end of next year. Might be a classic buy-low play I think.

Their under 22yos are pretty ordinary or untried except for Ryan.

Maybe Yze can do us one last favour on the way to Richmond and tell them he wants to invest in youth and Lynch doesn't feature 😉 Seriously though Richmond would be heavily relying on Samson Ryan forward without Lynch. They probably need to keep him for transition.

That would make sense in a way because the AFL wouldn't have to break the Academy rules to do it and Sanders would be left in the pool which is already heavily diluted by Northern Academy and F/S. North might even be able pick Sanders with 11 or trade up with it to get him. It kind of has the same effect without breaking their rules.

Harry Petty = problem solved. He's got JVR in support who was incredible for a 2nd year player and Joel Smith who kicked 3 goals in the SF and should have had 4. Fritsch is an aerial threat and so is McAdam who's coming. Jefferson is developing at VFL level. Priorities are everywhere else.

60% game time, 10 possessions and 1 tackle. Zero impact as Gus's replacement. I think it was an opportunity to make a statement and he did.

I think a fit Tom Lynch would be great but 've seen two separate reports that he's still getting around in a moonboot ...

Joel Smith?

I'll make sure to look in future, thanks. 16.28 is not mainly about ball delivery.

I've seen the recent "analysis" that says we need to "improve our ball use" - that really mean reworking our contest and territory game style. Simon Goodwin is not going to change his fundamental philosophy so that really means replacing the coach. Apparently Max, Clarrie and Jack are among the "worst kicks in the AFL", are we confident that the new coach and game style are going to fix this or do we need to trade them too for "better ball users"? How many seasons is it going to take to find this out? I'm not in favour of either of these major changes. I don't think we need to "improve our ball use" because it has the above implications, what we need to do, as I have posted elsewhere, is improve our forward personnel so that they can convert the chances we generate. That's a much simpler and less disruptive change and we are in a very good position to make it given the players already on our list who didn't play finals, our strong draft hand and free salary cap to come (I'll make a separate post on this). We were missing a considerable number of our best converters at the end of this year: Petty, Melksham and Van Rooyen (in the SF); and unfortunately two of our best converters are now over the AFL hill: Ben Brown and Tom McDonald. That's the problem. Petty, Van Rooyen and TMac are our best 3 in goal scoring accuracy according to WheeloRatings. We've recognised this by targeting Shane McAdam who has a very good Accuracy Rating too, he's fourth behind the 3 above when you combine both Melbourne and Adelaide's lists - yes all four ahead of Tex! We've got an excellent draft hand. I know the Draft mantra is "best available" and I wholeheartedly agree that is the best strategy when you're building a list, but I don't think it applies when you've already built the list like we have. IMHO we now need to target "needs" to fill the holes - we did that with Kossie and we need to do it again this year. We need to draft the best forward converter we can get (and the best key defender to fill the Petty/May retirement hole). We can throw out the baby and the bath with the bathwater or we can get some cleaner bathwater and some bubbles. I know which one I prefer.

@WheeloRatings are the player stats for handball receives available?

Good start.

It's like how we got Oscar Allen for Jayden Hunt last year ...