The Taciturn Demon

I'm interested in this, as well. Dropping Lever but not replacing him with McDonald suggests to me the idea that the same 26 to 27 players will come good and turn the season around is starting to erode. So why not take another slightly more adventurous step and give Brown a run? Is his disposal really so bad he's just not a chance? Tholstrup may end up being a player, but at the moment I haven't seen much to warrant being right on the edge of selection all the time. I'm not as down on Sharp as others, but he's in the same category as Tholstrup for me.

Spot on. In footy discussions everywhere, supporters are assuring themselves that their kids are particularly good. I reckon North fans would be saying, we're starting to put together a list of under 24s that complement each other really well: Sheezel the class, McKercher the speed, Wardlaw the grunt, Curtis the forward line brilliance, Comben the aerial strength in the backline - all capable of making a difference with Xerri and LDU still at their best. Richmond fans would be saying we went all in on what we thought was a super draft - and all indications point to it being just that. Brisbane fans would be saying we just won a flag and have three gun father-suns and a gem of a tall(ish) forward under 22. And we're right to be hopeful about our lot. The idea that we have no or very few good young players is just wrong. But exceptional relative to everyone else? I'm not so sure.

I don't think you can underscore this strongly enough. Zach Merrett has career disposal efficiency of 71% listed at "average". His kicking efficiency, also "average", is 62%. Kozzie has "below average" career disposal efficiency of 63% and "below average" kicking efficiency of 56.5%. Jayden Hunt has "average" career disposal efficiency of 73% and "above average" kicking efficiency of 67%. Oscar McDonald is "elite" in both categories.

I agree that our FD's ideal 23 has to change next year. But what kind of trade do you have in mind? I think the problem is good kickers who are also reliable all-round footballers are much rarer than most people think. Our club spoke very openly about how excited we were to get Lachie Hunter and Jack Billings to the club precisely because they were such good kicks or "had high footy IQ". To a lesser extent, I think decent disposal skills played a part in the Grundy and Schache acquisitions. Unless you take a "worth a throw at the stumps" attitude (I don't), none of these trades have worked out. Good clubs know the value of good disposal and don't give up solid footballers with above average skills. It's made all the more difficult by the fact that few players (no matter how disgruntled) would be considering our entreaties at the moment and thinking they're more likely to snatch a flag here than at an alternative destination. I much prefer exploiting Jason Taylor's skills in the draft to giving up low draft picks for players who can kick but are well past their best or never quite AFL standard.

HA HA HA HA HA!

There's a grass is always greener element to this conversation that makes me wary of saying I'm fully in the "goodbye Goodwin" camp. Quite a few people now have talked about the Bulldogs as having done what we can't. And of Luke Beveridge being a really good option to replace Goodwin. Unless I'm misreading the numbers, the Bulldogs have won fewer finals than us since 2016. Since their flag they've either missed finals or lost elimination finals. I do understand one part of the admiration for the Dogs, though. My biggest criticism of the club at the moment is they seem to be in denial about the state of the list. From the outside it seems the Dogs have been under no such illusions. They've changed their list quite drastically over the last ten years - in some cases very bad injuries have forced their hand. But those changes haven't led to good results. For a while I was optimistic about 2026. I didn't think we could race back to the top of the ladder, but I did think it could be a stabilising year, and maybe even a launching pad for a sustained tilt at finals with a refreshed list. My hopes have dimmed significantly, and that's the problem I see for Goodwin. He'll almost certainly coach beyond this year and on the face of it, I think that's OK - it doesn't upset me (if we finished the season with six or seven wins, I'd probably change my mind). But with the list at his disposal, is there any chance of a strong showing next season? Would he maintain the line that he has absolute faith in "this group"? EVERYTHING would have to go right, including some miraculous resolution to the bomb-it-long midfield and the discovery of a solid 30-goal-game contest winner up forward. The other option is that the club makes a big shift and concedes the list isn't right. It makes significant changes and internally lowers expectations. It might be too little too late, but it's probably the right thing to do. But is Goodwin the person to guide us through this rebuild?

I saw Derksen came up on the Harry McKay thread. He seems to have been moved into the backline in the VFL, reflecting the fact GWS has almost as many tall forward options as the Bulldogs. Any VFL watchers know if his form has been good? Would we still be interested in him?

This thread has got very loose. Not long before someone earnestly suggests dropping 12 to 15 players, resuscitating the supplementary list and bringing in 17 and 35 year old from the ammos and Division 3 suburban leagues. Here's my attempt to make it looser still: The two players I'm keenest to see get a game as we limp to the end of the year are Brown and Sestan. Sounds like Sestan's hamstrings will make that unlikely, which is a real pity. Interesting to see whether they keep him on for another season. In the few games I've seen him play at Casey his kicking looks really strong. Brown looks like someone who just goes and goes and goes. Far better judges than me say his disposal is well below "the level" (as Goodwin would say), but three or four players who sit in this category are first-picked for our AFL side. If we can forgive them, can we forgive one more and just see how his intensity looks at the top level? Not averse to Jefferson getting a good AFL run, either, but I just don't think he'll come into his own until we sort out who our number one forward is - the bloke who refuses to get pushed aside by his opponent and even takes a couple of contested marks a game.

I have some fond memories of Jayden Hunt. This may be the fondest. Threw caution to the wind in the last quarter - his run and courage got us over the line.

Nah. Kicking skills were conspicuously absent in just about every media soundbite from the club. I don't think any draft watchers thought his kicking was anything above average and some said it was below average. I really like what he did in his first season. I have high hopes still, but he's not a great kick.

It was a cracker of a thread - a bold idea well argued. I don't think the name is true any more, but it has got some interesting conversations happening.

That's my answer, too. I still hold out some hope. But if the answer is no, you probably need to cut deep. Does that then guarantee you numerous bottom 4 finishes at a time when the top of the draft will be filled with Tassie picks?

I think this is so important. I still have some optimism for 2026. But goodness, if we missed finals three seasons in a row while merely tinkering with the list and saying "We're still working on better forward entries", we're doing a huge disservice to the players. I'm not viciously anti-Goodwin, but I do think the coach, and everyone with an influential role at the club, has to avoid the permanently in-between state of a club like St Kilda, Essendon or Fremantle. If you're not confidently building towards finals with your current list, you've got to be reworking a list so it will in the future. Obviously, nobody ever sits down at he start of the year and says "Let's be mediocre", but some sit down at the start of the year and are completely unrealistic about the state of the list.

Corporate speak is almost always about evading or hiding something. "We're not interested in the outcome" is a fairly transparent way of sidestepping the fact the entire club thought they were a finals contender at the start of the season.

Possibly ridiculous idea: could Langford play the Melksham role - or something like it? He's quite a bit taller and good over head and although he doesn't have good agility or acceleration at this point, neither does Melksham. He doesn't have 15 years in the gym, and so may be too easily pushed off the ball, but he can certainly kick a goal. Pull Windsor back up onto a wing. Rivers to the half back flank (his 50 percent game time on Sunday suggests to me he's in no-man's land at the moment after being sixth in the B & F last year).

The conservatism in selection has been obvious for a long time. But there have been (admittedly less and less) plausible excuses. Now, after 14th last year and at 5-9 this year, staying wit the same rotation of 26-odd players would be wild. The list is thin, but for goodness sake, give us a look at Sestan (once his hammy's right), Adams, Brown, Jefferson.

He's been terrific this season. I wonder if Chandler is better suited to playing the ANB role not from the wing, but from the old CHF, which Neal-Bullen did so often, and which Langdon is currently trying to do. He can still push high, just as ANB used to, but should have licence to be dangerous forward as well. If he gets someone like a Wanganeen-Milera would he be any less accountable than Langdon two weeks ago?

Oh geeze. This is grim.

I find this fascinating. Clearly Petracca had the same opinion when he blew up at the end of last year: we're far too good to be finishing 14th. But are we? For one, lots of players peaked between 2021 and 2023. That's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's something to take seriously. We seem to be in strict denial about it. For another, the list is extremely thin. We traded away several handy depth players after the flag. I think there were good reasons for most of them. But what we replaced them with old C- and D-graders and then persisted with them in the 22 as if we might be able to magically wring out some kind of 2015 form from each of them. Grundy wasn't a D-grader, but his was definitely the worst and most wasteful acquisition of them all. I totally agree. St Kilda is the absolute worst place you want your list to be. We're at risk of that for sure, although I think very good drafting of players in the top 20 makes it less likely. Collingwood in 2020 is such a fascinating case. I thought they were insane at the time for trading Treloar. They weren't well compensated (they received a middle pick in the first round of the COVID draft and used it on Ollie Henry) but obviously cleared a lot of cap space and knew that even if he was good at the Dogs, which he has been, they could comfortably replace him. Stephenson looked like a strange one at the time, but was a sensible trade in hindsight. They knew he had peaked in his first year. It looked tough, but it was just clear-eyed list management. Grundy was very good trading. As with Treloar, they could comfortably replace him and use the cap space to improve their list elsewhere. It's sad that he was pushed out of a club he wanted to be at, but that's what happens when you get paid a fortune and don't live up to it. The whole thing looked like a disaster when they finished 17th the next year, but the decisions (if not the treatment of Treloar) were vindicated in 2022 and 2023. I'm all for making tough decisions about player we know are not as good as everyone thinks. I'm even open to making a Treloar call. The question I'd have is are we confident we can replace them with anything like the success of Collingwood.

It was shocking. I just don't think we were good enough to win that game, but going in to three quarter time just two goals down would have made them nervous.

I definitely fell into this trap, mainly because I saw decent turnarounds in form from individual players. But it turns out we're the team I thought we might be at the start of the season: below average even at full strength and fairly easy to play against.

I'm with you on the consistency, but I don't put it down to steel. If we were capable of building ourselves for the odd game, there's no way we would have lost five in a row at the start of the year. We'd have responded after the North debacle and beaten the Suns. I think we're a below average, but not terrible, team, which means when a day or an opposition style happens to suit us, we can look OK - sometimes really good. But when a team has our measure, we're not good enough to course correct mid-game and bring the arm wrestle back in our favour. I didn't watch the Port game and think we were sagging after a big effort the week before. I thought that, yet again, our opponent was too quick, moved the ball far better than us and took their chances. We had no response.

There's no way he's going. The interesting thing is how the bloke who puts so much store in his relationship with players deals with the list at the end of the year. He talked in the press conference about having changed a lot recently. He was talking about the way we play. But what the club hasn't changed a lot is the list. We've traded up in the draft really effectively, and brought in some good young players, but we haven't made big shifts. We've managed the list like we think it's capable of playing in prelims. Surely we have to disabuse ourselves of that notion now. But... ...it also seems like the draft is one you wouldn't want to trade into. It's not a draft where you can confidently rub your hands together with a pick in the teens. So what will he do? (I know he's not responsible for the list, but he would have a huge say in whether we say goodbye to big names.) It seems several of the players that have made his tenure successful are now incapable of playing in the same team and giving us a chance to be consistently hard to beat. Some of them still have years and years left on their contracts. Will he continue to attempt a miracle in teaching his old dogs new tricks?

Maybe the only bigger gap is between supporters' memory of his best and worst. Close to the most senior player at the club endlessly taking the [censored].

Yep. We [censored] so hard today, we blasted a hole in the bricks.