old55

Nice dream - until the alarm went off!

Book early - Hawthorn and Essadon hate each other and it will be Tird's first outing - big crowd expected.

The McDonald decision was a tough one - but look at it this way - we currently have 2 other delists Miller and Bell. We want to elevate McKenzie and Spencer. The trade was going to give us plus one player, not minus one - we were hoping to add Hale, and didn't have Cheney traded. That gives 2 out and 3 on or minus one draft pick! Right now we still only have 2 picks, I'm hoping for four. I bet Bruce wants 2 years but we that doesn't mean we should give it to him. It's a tough world unfortunately as the McDonald retirement proved. If he's required in 2012 we'll give him another year then. The fact is he doesn't free a primary list spot this year or next year because he's a vet but we can elevate a rookie to play if he doesn't sign which I think could be an advantage given our current rucking situation.

Agree with that - and who knows - he might get lucky like Crawf did.

There's all different kinds of tests isn't there? Picking at 12 or trying to decide between Watts and Natanui are two of them - I don't think the second one is less of a test.

If you look through the thread, while almost everyone has a common top 6, they're all in a different order - what does that tell you about picking "best available"?

2 byes per team 17 teams = 34 byes required 24 rounds in total 19 rounds of 8 games (1 team has bye) = 19 byes 5 rounds of 7 games (3 teams have bye) = 15 byes

plenty of fertiliser though Best available is good in theory but there's a many axes of variation "tall"-"short", "guaranteed"-"X factor", "haven't seen enough of"-"seen too much of and focus on what's wrong"

You reap what you sow.

The best therapy for Petersen may be life outside the AFL without the advantages of AFL base pay and the social cred conferred by being on an AFL list. He needs to help himself first and want it - Krakouer appears to have made this step. Not everyone is cut out to make the very significant sacrifices required to be an AFL footballer.

If Frawley did a match day cameo I'd prefer to see him fwd a la Brian Lake than in the midfield.

Exactly! FFS! He thought a two year contract was better than one year just before we thought pick 66 was better than him.

Just post your list

Close to 100 players delisted every year - only a handful make it back.

I don't feel sorry for Chris Johnson but I don't feel mad at him either. It's not whether I thought he was going to make, it's whether he thought he was. I don't have remorse about cutting Daniel Bell and I wouldn't have minded if he had tried to make it at a different club a couple of years ago - in fact it would've been good if he did. I'm guessing none of you guys have any time for Joel Macdonald?

Completely [censored] thread. I was excited when CJ arrived because he looked the goods and every summer I felt it could be next year. CJ left because he correctly perceived he'd get more opportunity on a longer contract at Carlton. If he was still with us he'd be delisted by now. As Nasher says - another player who was not quite good enough. Do you feel remorse when we cut a player? You can't have it both ways. Good luck CJ.

What's a KPF? Is Jurrah a KPF? Does it mean you can take a contested mark - Green, Petterd and Sylvia can take contested marks in the forward line, are they KPFs? How many KPFs do you need? How many is too many?

No, not for me - cut by 2 clubs - spells T-r-o-u-b-l-e. These players take up too much resource managing them and your whole list suffers.

The net with Hale and Cheney coming on and Croad and Brown off is that Hawthorn will have 6 ND picks and 5 rookie picks. I expect us to have 4 ND picks and 5 rookie picks. They're only having 2 more picks than us and they are effectively their last 2 rookie picks because their ND picks will be before any of our rookie picks. It's not a huge deal. What is interesting is that they've turned over a lot of early picks recently - Dowler, Muston, Thorp

I thought Skipper was good against us fwd-ruck. He's not much use as a 1st ruck replacement for Jamar so I wouldn't rookie him for that purpose. If we rookie him as fwd-ruck I believe we can't play him because we can't elevate him unless LTI, mid year elevation (or Bruce doesn't sign?), same applies to Newton if we retain him as rookie. I wouldn't want to use an ND pick on him.

I think that's a good sign - Scully, Watts, Trengove drafted ahead of him. Frawley and Grimes were inspired CAC pick value and Jurrah is magic. Morton and Garland very hard to split for me, Garland more guaranteed but Morton has greater range and could join the elite.

Scully Watts Frawley Trengove Jurrah Grimes Garland Morton Gysberts Blease McKenzie Bennell Tapscott Fitzpatrick Gawn Spencer Bail Wonaeamirri Petterd Maric Strauss Jetta McNamara ========= B: Bennell Frawley Bail Grimes Garland Morton M: Spencer McKenzie Scully Blease Gysberts Trengove F: Tapscott Watts Petterd Fitzpatrick Jurrah Wonaeamirri I: Maric Strauss Jetta McNamara Gawn

What the expo game probably showed was that Newton does have some skills. His biggest problem is executing them under (mental) pressure. I can't see a role for him in the backline because of that. I'd keep him on the rookie list like Chelly says and play him fwd/ruck in the pre-season comp and the VFL and see what happens. The main thing he needs is confidence.

Just rank them in your order now Edit: Jurrah is actually the most interesting to place IMO

There's a lot of talk about "best available" when drafting and I confess to being a supporter - I'd prefer we choose the better player over the needs player, I think in the long run that should deliver a better result when combined with trading for need. But what really is "better" when you're not comparing the same attributes - there's talls, smalls, X-factor, sure things ... I thought a little exercise might be in order - we've had some early draft picks recently, how about ranking our players who will be under 23 at the start of the 2011 season in your draft order if they made up this year's draft pool. I've listed them in actual draft order: 1-Watts, 1-Scully, 2-Trengove, 4-Morton, 11-Gysberts, 12-Frawley, 14-Grimes, 17-Blease, 18-Tapscott, 19-Strauss, 20-Maric, 30-Petterd, 34-Gawn, 35-Bennell, 46-Garland, 50-Fitzpatrick, 51-Jetta, 64-Bail, 66-McNamara, PSD1-Jurrah, RD1-McKenzie, RD19-Wonaeamirri, RD34-Spencer Put them in draft order if that was this year's pool.