KozzyCan

Medical retirement is the player's choice but ultimately the player is entitled to the money in their contract. They are effectively retiring due to a workplace injury and yes it should be counted within the cap. If a player retirement could mean their money then gets paid outside the cap there is nothing to stop a bigger club from offering a massively backended deal to players who then are awarded that money as their retirement fund outside the cap.

We scored big in 2018 because we had very little to work with in our backline and Goodwin didn't trust Omac and Frost as far as he could throw them so he went with the old Malcolm Blight approach of if you score 100 points I'll just make sure we score 120. It was a fun year, and there was a very clear difference in the way we played. We basically backed ourselves in to win clearance and contested ball and had runners streaming forward so we could kill teams with our extra numbers. We got a lot of joe-the-goose goals that year, something that hasn't been seen in our side for a while now. The reality was it was never the style Goodwin wanted to play but the style he felt a bit forced to play until he had his backline set up the way he liked it. He definitely prefers defence over attack.

I feel for Fritsch, he needs an open forwardline to work with or at least some space to roam around at the bottom of the packs and hit snaps. We just give him so little to work with with how we set up. If you look at where our goals came from on the weekend it was mostly either through the midfield or a messy crumb or soccer when the ball got spoiled in congestion. There was a lot of right place right time in those goals. Didn't appear to be much of a system in place. I'm still deeply concerned about our forwardline. We've gone from prefering high long kicks to the pocket to high long kicks to the top of the goal square. When we did try to hit up a lead our forwards got in each others way. There was one in particular where we turned it over in the middle and Sparrow launched the ball to the goal square only to be intercepted by Taylor, but he had three Melbourne players sitting on their own 30 metres out on a slight angle. I just don't get why we make things so difficult for ourselves.

Nah makes sense. Players like to get deals that take them to FA at this point of their careers.

May is our best field kick and our best defender. He actually has the ability to launch us out of the backline. Why anyone would want him forward beggars belief.

They presented a pretty weak case. I'm not surprised they lost even though I disagree with the outcome.

Um, yuck to Petty moving back forward but I know what you mean. I'm actually surprised there wasn't any interest in him from other clubs looking for a kpd. He's still a solid defender.

Not sure Langford would have been that tired after playing one quarter. Never really felt like fitness was a real issue. AJ missed his shot and we got caught out defensively on the rebound. We had one chance to try and get a score out of the final centre bounce but bizarrely decided to give Langdon his first go there and moved Petracca forward despite Trac being our most dangerous player from centre clearances all day.

They were fine but they're really the last selected sorts of players who will probably spend half the season in the VFL. The only way we get more of those types of crumbing goals is to drop a tall player and replace them with a small. Right now we have 3-4 blokes in our forwardline all going for the same contested mark, so the ball inevitably hits the deck and we don't have the manpower to win the footy. Small defenders move it out with ease. The other thing is when we did actually get the ball to our forwardline on the fast break we mostly didn't have enough options forward to do anything with it, our options were all covered and we couldn't move the ball quickly enough to get the ball to someone in that super dangerous position within 30m of goal. There was one where Petracca had it going inside 50 and he had to handball it to Viney who was immediately under pressure because he had no other options. Viney had to snap the ball from 45 out which just lead to a high up-and-under ball at the top of the square. It's not an effective way to score and I'm hoping this is the teething issues Goodwin talked about. If Gawn is going to float down there half the time there really is no justification that can be made for playing a forwardline this tall. Hawthorn have one genuine tall forward and kicked 14 goals and 17 goals. Key forwards who can only win it in the air are out of vogue.

He's limited but he works very hard. Think he'd provide more than Chandler right now but really we just need more smalls in our forwardline who can put on pressure at ground level, stop the ball from coming out so easily.

What I want: Out - AJ, Langford given a full game, he and Trac split forward and midfield time. Bring in Spargo as sub. What it will probably be: Out AJ, In Turner. Would be very dissappointed if Langford gets another game as sub, either give him a proper game or let him build his match fitness at VFL.

If the outcome was worse the penalty would have been greater.

That would be four tall forwards plus Max down there half the time. The answer to our fowardline issues is not more tall guys.

Freo played like fiddles if they extend him.

They got JHF and Willie Rioli for picks 9 and 20 and some late junk picks. It was a massive steal.

Port got JHF for an absolute bargain. I think similar to North knocking back Adelaide's pre-draft offer for pick 1 West Coast will regret knocking our offer back for Reid.

That's a ridiculous suspension. Archer should challenge.

There had been showers all day so it was very greasy. It was clearly not a day for tall marking forwards which was reflected all game. Playing three talls and max floating forward was never going to work. We once again wasted far too many good forward entries.

Ehh, feeling pretty nothing about this game aside from a few pleasing individual performances. The way we lost, just felt like I've seen this movie a thousand times before. Our forwardline is still really dysfunctional and wasn't helped by playing so many talls in torrential rain, so that's on the coaches. Goodwin has promised a different brand of footy and that we'll have some teething issues as a result, so I'll be patient. But so far I can't see a great deal of difference in how we've played over the past few years.

Cats just doing their thing. Make it look so easy at their training ground. Dogs got absolutely fleeced in the Smith trade. Murphy Reid a positive for Freo. If Jackson doesn't get up I'd look at him as part of the Kozzy trade.

Not seen those yet. Will put them on my list!

S2 of Yellow Jackets annoyed me so much I haven't bothered with season 3. Sounds like I'm not missing much. Like Ross Lyon I'm onto White Lotus.

I'd be very surprised if Hawthorn miss finals, they look top 4 quality.

Really meanders, doesn't it?

Just ignore it mate.