Skuit

Not sure if anyone else here has played footy in the tropics? It's truly horrible if you're not accustomed to it. And it's not like wet weather footy where you're bent down with a heavy ball and you adjust to that type of wetness. The ball moves at pace and slips right through the hands when you think you've done everything right. On top of that, it feels like you can't ever get in enough oxygen. I know it's not the wet-season, but that's the slipperiest I can recall it for one of our matches up there. Never mind the comparative humidity figures or Uncle Bitters rolling around in the dry grass - the proof was there in the vision and the post-match comments. Oliver, Salem and Fritsch were simply outstanding in their control of the ball tonight. Stretch was clean too.

Gosh, you blokes are being a bit harsh on J. Smith. Sent forward where he hasn't played before and competed. Sure he didn't completely gel. 'The ball was like a bar of soap tonight' - Max Gawn. The reason he was sent forward was that in the slippery conditions we needed extra focus on the deck. Hogan and Tmac don't have the burst or agility to trap it in. Smith's second efforts were notable. Seven tackles. Tackles inside-50 aren't just an individual thing. Pressure leads pressure and everyone has to work together at once. We doubled our inside-50 tackle count from last week.

And I agree with this. But lets make our incremental upgrades incrementally.

And Hogan kept getting in his way.

I agree. But not all cogs will always fully contribute at once. The improved balance allows our important ones to though.

No change. This is the right balance.

These aren't votes but it's so pleasing to see Oliver, Brayshaw, Salem and Petracca all feature in here together. 125 possessions - 65 contested between them. Not one of them has reached 60 games yet.

Now you're even writing in some ancient language.

I think it best we both just agree to 'Lismore'. On an another note, the actual Lismore prevented me from seeing the drawn 2010 AFL grand final until the final five minutes - which were admittedly pretty exciting after a three-hour [censored]-around. On an another another note, the town also saved me from viewing 186 until after the fact. Go Lizzie! My e-zine is by paid subscription only. P.s.: it's still Thursday night where I am at the present.

Careful timbo - I was condemned recently as a fair-weather band-wagon jumper for not knowing of some MFC bloke who was recruited thirty-odd years prior to my earthly emergence - by all geriatric reports a true champion of our club - despite having comprehensively researched and incorrectly concluded last year that Tim Smith was our staggering first ever inclusion of your name-sake. Some other guy named Tim briefly played for us in the 20s apparently (from faulty memory) - which I'm sure those castigating parties from the comparative 50s fan-club knew absolutely every last detail about.

I've come to the conclusion now that if we win enough games to do so we'll make the finals.

It's actually me. In publishing and readership data, the left-hand page is skipped over a lot faster than than the right (more complexly so, after a certain number or combination of pages). Hence both a completely incorrect and highly obscure and abstract reference to your speed-reading as a metaphorical suggestion of benefit to a lacking right-side book-page impact/football wing in the AFL. If it helps to explain my general air of confusion, I achieved under-graduate accreditation up around your way in Lismore.

[censored] man, that's some serious speed-reading. If the AFL were a book, you'd be perfect for us on a right-side page.

Underwhelmed and slightly alarmed seems a reasonable response (and apologies if I went a bit too far in my 'investigative' hinting). To be perfectly honest though, I haven't seen enough of the Swans over the last year or so to make a fair assessment of his serious form plunge and the potential reasons behind it - shifting balance/game-plan etc. The last I can recall (sometime around the start of last year), he had claimed to be unencumbered by injury but the visual (and statistical) evidence certainly suggested that was indeed the case. A quick Google squizz just now and these theories and denials appear to be ongoing. He was, as you said, at least verifiably injured and missed a pre-season this year - which may be still hampering him to an extent. Assuming the injuries aren't chronic (which they very possibly are), and the decline in form not completely terminal - such that he may regain at least some of his dominance but maybe not to extent of his absolute peak - then the broader picture prospect of him coming to the Dees is an interesting one with a number of multifaceted elements. I say that after taking a big objective step backward after my initial reaction to your confirmation of my hunch and personal hope that the mail was the snail-mail version of the rumour-mill referencing an offer we'd supposedly put to Hannerbery a couple of years back. That said, everything fits and is completely consistent with our recent history to suggest that this is bona fide current development - particularly with respect to player profile and our evident long-game recruitment approach to targeted players. Taylor and co. (of the Roos' legacy) have shown that they will eventually get their man. So, on the basis that he can improve again to at least some level of his capabilities; the first question is obviously that of our need for outside-leaning runners - a specific bugbear of yours as a certain recent investigation has revealed (Dan doesn't have the dash but at least he can run all day). I'm immediately more comfortable with getting Hannerbery if we get Gaff at the same time. It then strikes as a pretty major off-season coup. Without Gaff, it would feel entirely flaccid - strange that. But once we address our primary need, I would then suppose Hannerbery takes on Jones's inside role as Jones transitions to Lewis's duties off half-back. This makes us an instantly better team, and we're lacking age-bracket balance in the middle - the maturity combined with the necessary endurance etc. to impact from the centre all day with Vince on his last legs and Tyson a spent force. We have precisely no one outside of Nat who has played more than 100 games and who will appear at the bounce this week. Compare with practically every other team in the league. With Gaff (160-plus games) and Hanners (~200) added it becomes a pretty potent and balanced mix of some very talented youth supported by a touch of experience with remaining legs (and final's experience at that). Then of course there's the cost - both as to the cap and trading capital. I've held the belief for a long time that we've been pursuing a Cats/Hawks dynasty model - giving the playing group (as close to possible) an early taste of success in the hope that we can keep all the accumulated talent together on reduced financial reward - one of the few levers (no pun) outside of father/son bonuses left to gain a competitive edge in a tightly controlled competition as to equalisation measures. A play for DanHan, on 'serious' coin, together with Gaff and Lever last year however suggests we're instead making a dive for the line in what we believe is our best window. Yet, in a broader business sense, that acquisition of young talent over the past few years is basically an accumulation of tradeable currency. I have no idea what it would take in terms off offloading and to where to bag a pick in the late first-round range to satisfy Sydney, and whatever it is it will no doubt hurt for supporters in the short-term, but it would effectively be a sell-off of stocks to aid the longer-term agenda. I.e. too expensive for Hannerbery on the surface, but an investment strategy. While many here have baulked at the prospect, Brayshaw would be the most likely option with value around the required range in this regard. In: Hanners & Gaff, out: potentially Gus, is a win on balance despite the immediate bitter pill (and likely ongoing flourishing of Brayshaw elsewhere - a footballer who I once considered a future club leader and probable Demon for life). Despite that, my conclusion is that the risk of Hannerbery being permanently crippled and never returning to anywhere near his best is far too great for the gamble - although, despite again my very reasonable MFCCS in this regard, I trust that our recruiters are across the issue in this instance and not just seeing stars (Sydney, however, being so readily willing to dump is a concern). Hopefully, his recent form-slump is just a matter of of the supposed in-principal agreement and best-case Hannerbery preserving his body for our charge to the flag! Mega-TL:DR (apologies) - maybe, but I'm an optimist and really have no idea.

Just as long as the public aren't leaving their random sprinklers on the track then it should all be fine.

Playing like his mind is elsewhere . . .

Frost will spectacularly [censored] up on numerous occasions. Stretch struggles to make the transition to the AFL. Garlett will have little impact if it's slippery under foot. And Spargo is just about due for another rest . . . But I desperately hope they now lock down this team. Pedo, Vince, Hannan or Kent in the case of emergency. Tyson only if it's to replace an injured inside role. Hunt to be worked back into the team on his return.

I love that the press conference thread has gone all meta with everyone dodging questions.

So your mother married into the Tremblay line?

As posted elsewhere, we've conceded ten goals less this year than at the same stage last year. However, we've quickly gone backwards without Lever's increasingly growing presence. The game-plan is the game-plan - we're a highly offensive team and we're going to leak goals. The idea is simply to leak a little less the best that we can manage: small margins tipping the offensive/defensive ledger in our favour. The problem as I see it, it's a tentative and difficult plan to execute requiring a high level of familiarity and defensive cohesion. This is one of the reasons we recruited Lever - among the strongest intercept and organisational players in the league. That also then freed up Tmac (our previous best intercept defender) to move forward on a permanent basis, while defensive regulars form last year - Hunt, Frost and Wagner - have all been jettisoned from the team. But with Lever going down, we're now trying to plug gaps or rebuild with inexperienced 'role' players rather than reset according to individual strengths - with not enough consideration for the difficulty of our set-up and need for maturity and cohesion. Establishing a role-based methodology with personnel understudies and a one-in-one-out capacity is great in a general regard, but you can't expect to replace Lever with J. Smith in such a finely-balanced system, and you can't have the inexperienced and ungelled Omac and Petty alongside him as your three tall prongs . The defensive game-plan needs a serious rethink due to Lever's absence, or otherwise the reintroduction of more experienced and familiar players in this form of defence in order to carry it out. I don't expect the former, so the latter has to include Tmac as a real consideration - however damned much it hurts. The current path isn't the one we cultivated when we originally set out the plan. We now have to back-track if we're going to figure a way forward in the less than half of a season still left to do so.

Talk is cheap! What I want to hear is the coaches saying this; '(insert contradictory comment)'.

No wonder we can't follow instructions with that hand-writing.

That Hawks team already belongs to a different era with far less pressure being applied to the contest - more space for the kicker and less need to take riskier options to clear the congestion. All teams since the 90s have also looked to attack off half-back, and supporters of all teams since forever think that their team's skills are the worst. We rank ninth for turnovers (or seventh for the least turnovers) while Richmond rank as the fifth worst and Carlton the third best. Meanwhile, we're one of the best teams for creating opposition turnovers, and are the highest scoring team in the league, due in part to prioritising players with contested skills over foot-skills.

Simon told them that we're planning to do away with defence altogether in a couple of years so only one set of posts would be necessary.