The Taciturn Demon

I assume clubs privately talk about serious and reasonably specific expectations for what their list is capable of in the coming season. And what they determine presumably informs all sorts of decisions - list management being at the top of the list. First, am I wrong? And if not, what do you think the honest consensus would have been inside the club in October?

Yikes.

My apologies. I thought you meant accepting we're completely buggered and basically starting again. You're talking about not standing in the way of very good players wanting to leave as Richmond did with Bolton, Baker, Rioli and Graham, so long as the price is right. Although, I would argue they did that because they realised they were completely buggered and needed to start again. I generally agree that if a player depserately doesn't want to be at your club, forcing them to stay becomes more and more unproductive as the years progress (and the resentment builds). I do think, however, that if all the cards fell a certain way, and as you've suggested we ended up trading out Petracca, Oliver, Pickett, Rivers, JVR and Fritsch, we'd then be relying on mostly kids (Langford, Windsor, Lindsay, McVee, Turner, Jefferson and some high picks from the coming draft) and players very close to the end of their careers to keep us competitive. This may be unavoidable and even preferable to dabbling with mediocrity for five or ten years, but the 2008 to 2014 period taught me that throwing kids into the deep end doesn't always work.

This news really brightened my day. Although, to be honest, I'd already been buoyed when on Sunday morning, during my kid's praccy match (during which I was sulking silently on the boundary, thinking about Saturday's debacle) I overheard another parent proclaim that the reason for Carlton's start to the season was they were "too woke". A fellow Carlton supporter, apparently able to comprehend what he meant, said "Except Patrick Cripps..." and the bloke responded. "No, he's woke as well." I quite literally had to stifle a laugh. Immediately brought to mind the "this engine is woke" meme.

Whoa. Richmond have cut to the absolute bone. The only reason Taranto and Hopper are there is because they signed them to long deals in a moment of madness, believing they were a chance to win a fourth Flag in the era. Cutting like Richmond is the definition of bottoming out.

I'm interested to see what we do here. I'd have him in the middle as much as the fitness team say is safe. We desperately need everything he has: speed, precision by foot, evasive skills, tackling ability, quick hands, ability to win clearances, etc. But it seems like he's a certainty to leave the club. Does that just become a band aid? Do you keep him forward and try others in the middle, knowing he's not a long-term fix?

I think when your champion ruck and two of your gun centre square midfielders are either mediocre or poor by foot, your wingers need to be more Zach Merrett than Taylor Adams.

We recently signed a player for a further four years who can't, and has never been able to, handball. His kicking is well below average as well. He's beloved on this site and has finished top 10 in the B&F multiple times. As a club we don't tolerate awful disposal. We embrace it.

As bad as everything feels at the moment, this situation PLUS Houston but no Langford or Lindsay would be so much worse.

You might be talking about the Lachman test. You lie on your back with your knees bent at a certain angle and a physio or doctor holds your thigh and then tugs your shin bone forward, hoping to feel what they call an "end point". That's the ACL doing its thing: keeping your knee stable. If there's no obvious feeling of the ACL 'resisting', it could suggest it's ruptured. You're right. It isn't always conclusive. I remember when I did mine, the physio on the boundary said they felt something and thought I'd be fine. Then a week later, I went and saw another physio and they thought they felt something as well. But whatever it was wasn't the intact ACL - the scan showed I'd done it. But I still think letting a player run on it is unusual unless the medical team just don't suspect it at all.

It's true that you can often quite comfortably run in a straight line after rupturing your ACL. But as GS said, it's unusual for fitness staff to let you run on it if they suspect it.

I feel the same. I've never warmed to him, but I think he's a genuine person and I admire his refusal to resort to public tantrums in difficult times. It is, as you say, sad to see him front the media after such a bad loss and talk as if he is still in charge of an exceptional side.

Comfortably. Missing ANB terribly, but that doesn't account for just how bad we are when the opposition have it.

It's been a long time since I knew from the first five minutes or so we had close to zero chance of winning. The midfield has gone from brilliant to a concerning to catastrophically bad in the space of four years. Everything else is a mess - but it all starts with the midfield.

I'm a Petty fan, so this is biased, but I thought he was fine against North.

This was very good. I laughed.

I wish Damian Barrett's editors would take a tough love approach with his copy. Spout and sprout are two entirely different words. As verbs, they don't mean anything like the same thing.

Goodwin's love for Melksham is pathological.

Good [censored] lord.

Really good call. Yes, his chasing and tackling is below average. It always has been. It's highly unlikely to change after a stint in the VFL. His goals have dried up because our system for getting the ball inside 50, which has been suspect for ages, is now terminally bad.

Fair call. Seeking a change from the status quo is completely understandable. I just think he comes up an extraordinary amount for a player who, as you say, is 34 and injury prone. I would add that even at his very very best he has never been an intense, agile lock-it-in forward. There's no better example of absence making the heart grow fonder in footy fans than Melksham. They can play a huge part. I just don't think these particular injuries explain losing so badly to a team with the youngest average age and the third least number of average games in the league.

This is such a good point. Reminds me of the rapturous applause West Coast supporters gave Andrew Gaff every time he got the ball after breaking Andrew Brayshaw's jaw and knocking out his teeth.

I'm struggling to get my head around a few repeated ideas in this thread: 1. Rivers has failed as a midfielder and must return to half back. Rivers has attended 8 centre bounces over two games - 14 percent of all centre bounces. He was at zero centre bounces in the North game. As far as I could tell he played on the half back flank. 2. Charlie Spargo was rushed back in and was a liability. Spargo, a bloke who lowers his eyes, hits targets inside 50 and makes himself an option at half forward, is very close to the least of our worries at the moment. Did you expect him to get 25 and kick 4? 3. Melksham will make a huge difference when he returns. No he won't. 4. It all comes down to injuries. I'd love Windsor, May and McVee in the team (and Pickett makes a huge difference) but if you can't cover three or four best 22 players, you have a major problem with depth. North belted us without Logue, Wardlaw and Archer. Brisbane are winning without Coleman, Cameron, Lohmann, Doedee and McCarthy. St Kilda beat Geelong without King, Owens, Howard, Butler and Phillipou. The Dogs are more than competitive without Bont, Treloar, Weightman, Johannisen and Jones. Hawthorn haven't had Mitch Lewis since the end of the last ice age. They're making do without Calsher Dear. Injuries make it tough, but unless half your best 22 is out, that can't be an excuse for ten goal losses.

Gosh this is depressing.

My |d|ot's understanding is that instead of slowly moving the ball, kicking down the line, scrambling to create a stoppage and then getting the ball inside 50 by any means possible, the new system involves chipping around half back (or going the full switch) to move the opposition around and find an angle, preferably a player in the centre square, then using fast, aggressive forward handballs to break into the forward 50. I think we all saw the sideways chipping in the GWS and North games. Against GWS the aggressive handball chains weren't numerous but they seemed to work reasonably well. Against North they almost seemed almost accidental to me - when they happened it was messy and panicked and even big turnovers never led to easy goals.