The Taciturn Demon

One of the best wins I've ever seen. Incredible courage. That Shelley Heath game is one for the ages. Epic.

Stopped believing in conspiracies years ago, but umpire 9 is making me wonder.

When you're being loudly jeered off in the AFLW you know you're doing a [censored] awful job.

She's a keeper. Gun.

Umpire number 8 judging the game to two entirely different standards. We're stuffed here. Things need to change very quickly or this'll be ten goals.

One on five in our defensive fifty on a slow play is disastrous. We're looking very shaky.

Love Stinnear but it's a bizarre selection decision.

Darren Crocker and half the North team are here.

Crowd looks down on last week.

Definitely. And it's hard to be too sulky about it when we got Lever, but three years is just paltry.

I remember looking closely at that draft fairly early on and thinking we were a huge chance to get Noah Anderson. Then Gold Coast suddenly got a freebie from the AFL. That went away, but there was another Victorian who was a beautiful kick of the footy. It was never going to happen, though; Taylor was in love with Luke Jackson.

Good stuff. Great to see Jared Rivers back at the club.

That makes sense.

I find this so interesting. Particularly that a bloke can do a mock draft every year and get somewhere between 12 and 15 of the top 20 spot on. I don't get why clubs wouldn't keep their hands very close to their chests. Yes, as you say, maybe some bluffing or misdirection, but not "We love Player X and will take him at Pick Y". Is it simply that you can't keep those things quiet anymore. Will people always leak? In a league where teams have literally injected weird substances into the body of an entire list, where teams have blatantly tanked, where teams have done brown paper bag deals, where a coach like Simon Goodwin never EVER gave anything away, gameplan wise, during press conferences, why is such an important element of the game so open and collegiate?

Beautiful kick to a target.

Call Twomey hasn't even put out a phantom draft yet.

Are they? Many of them are absolutely miles off. This is also a draft where I think @ChaserJ said you can throw a blanket over them very early on.

Zanker is going to be a huge loss. The only consolation I can think of is that I thought losing Jesse Hogan would set us backs a decade, and we won a flag within three years of him leaving. Sadly, I think Zanker is, all things being equal, a much more important player for the women as Hogan was for the men.

Tend to agree. Watts' kicking was the thing that made it easy to turn a blind eye to how often he double grabbed in his Under 18 highlights. Fluent - textbook. He was easily capable of dobbing goals from outside 50. Nairn's ball drop looks jarring to me, but not Schubert/John Butcher/Tom McDonald jarring - not mechanically [censored] jarring. Just unorthodox. And Watts and Nairn are chalk and cheese when it comes to overhead marking. I'm borderline ignorant when it comes to judging talent, so this is worth as close to nothing as is possible, but Nairn excites me much more than five or six of the players mentioned as first round certainties.

Demonland: Did he choose Lachie Dovaston? Me: No. Demonland: Did he choose Sam Grjl? Me: No. Demonland: Then tell me. Me: He chose Cameron Nairn. He'll be taking eleven marks and kicking three a week. Demonland: [forced enthusiasm] Amazing! Were you pleased? Me: When I heard it I was like, YES! LET'S GET IN THERE! YES!

If we can't trade up, I don't mind this at all. Especially if we can trade into next year's draft with picks from likely strugglers and get picks lower down the order in this year's that let Taylor find a gem or two in the second or third rounds. Everything I see and read suggests that realistic expectatoons with players at 7 and 8 in this draft you're hoping become solid Bs but could be Cs, with the faint possibility they surpass all expectations. Surely the top 10 is for players you genuinely think could be A-graders and are confident will be very solid Bs. (In 2024, you might even have higher expectations than that.) I know not all top 10 picks turn out this way, but I'm not sure this draft even gives you the hope. So trade out, have a look at what the list can do in roughly its current state. Get 15 or 20 more games into Langford, Lindsay, Windsor, Turner, maybe Kentfield, Tholstrup, Adams and Culley. Find out what kind of influenceJiath and Steele can have, and whether Mihocek is good for three seasons or more like one and half. Then take stock at the end of the season - understand how far off we are and go hard in the 2026 draft. Of course, the other way is to say "Who cares what number the picks are? Just let Jason Taylor pick his faves and trust that he can find one or two exceptional players at any point in any draft." Not sure too many recruiters have the track record to justify such an approach - he might, though.

Pretty sure that's the arm the Predator blows off before impacing Dillon.

Yep. Goodwin marked his card. As others have said, he probably had good reasons to, although when we were flailing and bringing in the same old C-graders, surely it was time to give him a couple of full games. Interesting to see what he does in the final year of a contract under a coach who hasn't put the "never again" against his name and will, I presume, move to a game style where half forwards can be more involved. He never looks particularly exciting to me at VFL level, but I do think it's unfair to bring a bloke in as a sub every few weeks and say "based on that 18 minutes, we can't play you in the AFL".

Hore Gillard McNamara Wotherspoon O'Hehir Hanks Very close to giving Bannan votes. The pile on throughout the game, at the end of the game, and in the season, has been bizarre to me.

My 1diot eye sees a midfield version of Jack Higgins.