old55

The arguments about the various merits of the football games will go on forever. Fans of each code have their legitimate reasons for loving it and some love mutiple codes. However there is a reason why soccer wont challenge AFL in Australia. It's because the athletes participating in soccer here in Australia are at best 2nd rate and and the standard of the game is therefore 2nd rate - it's like watching the VFL at best. AFL and NRL still attract the best football athletes, and the elite athletes that play soccer do so in lucrative off-shore leagues - sure Kewell or Viduka may be AFL stars if they played the game - but because they play soccer they don't play here and we don't get to see them on any regular basis. The players playing soccer here are the battlers. No local league players get a look in for the World Cup team. If AFL was the world game Judd, Ablett, Franklin, Hayes, Rioli etc etc etc - every elite player would be playing somewhere else. Watts, Scully and Trengove would be off to EPL or Serie A before you could blink. So long as AFL continues to attract elite footballing athletes in Australia it will be the superior game regardless of unresolvable arguments about the respective beauties of the various games.

National average 178cm for males - "3 cm shorter than the national average at 175" http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/featu...6-1111115975557

If you look at MFC Yearbook 2009 list you'll find there's 3 players less than 178, one at 178 and 12 players between 178 and 184 i.e. 6cm taller than the Australian National average. Look at it another way, if you take a point 3 cm shorter than the national average at 175 and look at players in a range 6cm around that from 172 to 178 you'll find 4 players, if you look at the point 3cm taller than the national average at 181 you'll find 13 players in the 6cm range around it. That's 13 players to 4 or 3x as many because of the 6cm that apparently doesn't matter. If you set the point at the old 6' mark, i.e. between 182 and 183 cm you'll find 11 players on the list within 6cm below 6' and 16 within 6cm above or 1.5x as many. All things being equal - ball handling, pace, agility, endurance - it's a significant advantage to be 6cm taller.

Both of your positions in this thread are nonsense: 1. "6cm doesn't matter" - all other things being equal it matters a lot, it gives a lot more options for creating mismatches or match-ups forward, mid-field and defence. If 6cm doesn't matter how come there's so few players 178cm (the average height for an Australian male) and less? Try telling Shane Valenti when you see him at TEAC Oval that being 182cm instead of 176cm wouldn't have helped him. 2. "Gysbert would have been available at 18" - The fact that we took him a 11 means that our recruiting team thought it was most likely that he wouldn't have been available at 18. Otherwise they would've taken Lucas at 11 and Gysbert at 18. I trust their judgement more than your reading of BigFooty phantoms.

No thanks, you've got that covered

probably definitely almost certainly possible

Who's on who and why? I'm uneasy if it's in the order you've listed.

I saw in another thread some discussion about 1st and 3rd forwards, it really depends on matchups not numbers. Here's a possible MFC forward line - it's a bit of a summary grab from the R1 2010 thread: Sylvia, Watts, Bate, Jurrah, Martin, Wonnaeamirri What's your best MFC backline matchup for the intraclub?

promo "Denim & Lace" - that's revenge enough! KB, Fatprick and Denham - "when I am king ..."

1-4: Dogs, Pies, Saints, Cats: Boring I know, but each of the first 3 have made definitive immediate improvements to their lists and the Cats are just sooo good. Any one of them can win the flag 5-7: Crows, Hawks, Lions Can't win the flag but wont miss the 8 8-9: Blues, Eagles They'll be fighting out the last place in the 8 10-16: the rest Any could finish bottom 4 and none can make the 8 but it's impossible for me to put them in order Bookmark it! It's guaranteed to be wrong somehow.

Wilson said FA was inevitable in the next AFLPA agreement which comes into force in 2012, right after the GWS draft concessions. It seems the battlelines are drawn on: - AFL want 10 years service - AFLPA want 7 years service - AFL want the current club to have the final bid to match the acquiring club's offer - ALFPA, I'm not sure of their position on this - AFL want the acquiring club to give draft pick compensation a la trade - AFLPA want new picks created for compensation a la GC and GWS (or perhaps no compensation at all) - AFL want to tighten up payments outside the salary cap - AFLPA say this is not a problem because the gap between 100% TPP and 92.5% TPP is bigger than these payments Whatever happens as Hoopla points out, it's bad for clubs like MFC - quite frankly this current cycle is a last chance to win a flag and vault out of the "struggling clubs grouping" - it's now or never.

Jnr Warnock Rivers Grimes Frawley JMac Morton Moloney Davey Jamar Bruce Jones Bate Miller Sylvia Garland Jurrah Trengove Martin Green Bennell Scully There's going to be some fearsome competition for places - cannot get Watts in yet for team balance.

Newton definitely showed improvement in his defensive game last year and that's all about work rate and attitude. I'm just as happy to see him on our list next year as I am to see a speculative rookie tall. Toby Thurstans kicked 4 goals in a winning GF side. Meesen's engine is an appealing attribute, he could ruck all day enabling us to play a part-time ruck forward as relief. He was making good progress before his injury last year. If he's over that then I'm happy to see him have another year too.

Quick scan of BF ladder predictions has us 13th, 14th or 15th - no-one has us last and one had us 12th.

We'll be able to find out if Bailey can't coach in the next 3-4 years if we're not playing and winning some finals in that time. Unfortunately we probably wont find out if he can coach until we really become contenders in 5-8 years and need to win flags.

Even if they took Cloke it moves Meesen up the pecking order for GC or first round rookie. They seem to be trying to get in ahead of someone and that someone will make next best selection.

Port made a delist so they can take an AFL ready in the PSD

Murderers make the best judges too.

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Morrish medallists do not automatically go on to become AFL stars, in fact some don't play AFL at all. http://www.afl.com.au/Season2007/Awards/Mo...70/Default.aspx Even All Australian U18s and Larke medallists are not certain stars http://www.afl.com.au/Season2007/News/News...px?newsId=12911 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFL_National_...8_Championships It will be interesting to track the AA U18 talls from the past few years: 2005: Lucy, Bower, Hughes, Kennedy 2006: Thorp, Hansen, Gumbleton, Hawkins 2007: Rance, Collier, Walker, Cornelius 2008: Hurley, Lisle, Johnston, Watts 2009: Wilson, Talia, Darling, Panos

So this turned out to be Butcher and Moore for Trengove (altho we may have picked differently) and Sydney's offer to Richmond was Rohan and Jetta for Martin. Will be interesting to see how it al pans out.

deegirl has 5 = Trengove, 31 = Scully - so they're locks Joel McDonald was 26 at Brisbane - that number is not finalised yet. I like Tapscott for 9 and Gawn for 1 or 44 for no good reason.

FMD seeing Scully and Trengove in the MFC gear is exciting - even for a jaded old stager like me. The only way is up, baby!

Everyone in this year's rookie draft?

I like the idea to incentivate GC to pick them, I agree that it's most likely a win for Meesen and Newton. While I think GC are flush for cash this may be our only offer. What sort of player swap do you have in mind? GC said in that same article that they're targeting 8 uncontracted players with their 16 options next year. I think they'll be gunning for one of Blease, Frawley, Garland, Jones, Jurrah, Strauss, Warnock or Watts. There's no way we'd want to entertain a deal with any of them. Our Qld players Petterd, Miller, Spencer and Bail are all OOC next year but I doubt they'd use an option on any of them. They could just get them to go into the draft and draft them if they want them. It seems a high price to pay to pre deal a trade with them now just so we can rookie Grimes or Daw.

Take a look at Warnock, some players mature a bit later and Hughes has had injuries. You're clearly off the pace - the FD rate Hughes or they wouldn't have re-contracted him. His style of player has made an impact in recent times.