KozzyCan

Not sure it says a great deal for the quality of their forwardline. Freo smashed us in the midfield both times. No defence can deal with that sort of assault and most forwards are just going to feast on that service. Even our forwardline looked amazing when we bullied West Coast in round 17.

Didn't another coach have an arrangement like this a couple of years ago? David Noble or Ben Rutten or something?

The victim complex on this site is so tiresome.

Yeah right and we have had both training with the club recently. That's why George and Culley were the names being floated and not some random blokes from some country footy club. It's a moot point, we picked Culley so hopefully we've got a good player on board.

It's not so much that, but I think we have more resistance to injuries in certain areas of the ground. We have more midfield depth than we do small forward depth. Maybe when you're choosing players in the first round of the draft you only think about talent but I find it odd that you wouldn't consider list needs when choosing a player to occupy the last spot on the list.

I also like his name.

Hopefully Roy George. We have a number of guys who can run through the midfield and Culley would start very far back. George would be a bit more fun and we don't have a great deal of small forwards. Would expect it's more likely we'd see George play seniors than Culley.

You reckon Saints are media darlings?

He was offered a deal that would not only set him up for life but give him a list spot for the rest of his footy career. He's a promising player but not a star. Will never get offered close to that in his footy career again.

That is a genuinely stupid offer from St.Kilda. I'm astounded Callaghan knocked it back.

Is there a stat sheet somewhere?

Amw's injury really spoiled a good hit out.

I doubt there's any danger of that anyway.

I distinctly remember the AFLPA calling for a reinvestigation late last year. Has it really taken this long to start that up?

His view has changed a bit since round 24. 🤔

I don't think that first bit is correct. By the time we played Sydney on the Sunday afternoon our ladder position couldn't change. I think Fritsch would have been better served playing a VFL game where his load could be more closely managed. It felt like we were trying to do a bit of a dress rehersal and play ourselves into finals form which didn't end up working out unfortunately.

As I said, these are examples I pulled off the top of my head. Particularly egregious ones at that. Trying to find an average out of that is pretty disingenous. Spargo had just recovered from an achillies injury prior to the season then reinjured the achillies, so yes I think that constitutes further damage. Oliver went alright for a couple of weeks but his lack of fitness quickly caught up with him and when he broke his hand he was pretty oridinary for the rest of the year, even shirking contests at times which I'd never seen him do before. He was a liability for many games and only got put on ice once we were well and truly out of the finals race. So no, I won't accept that he was handled well last year either. The notion that the club played him when they shouldn't have because they were concerned about the state of his mind is absurd. That's an insane level of special treatment, not to mention the club is basically hamstringing themselves playing a guy who they know shouldn't be out there. My view is that we have not handled injuries well in the past, embracing a philosophy of pushing players to play through injuries to our own detriment. We have gotten away with it at times but I think the negatives of doing so outweigh the positives.

I find it odd how touchy people get about any criticism of the club on this site but since you asked. Some examples from just last year: Spargo round 0, returning from an achilles injury had done very little conditioning and no match fitness immediately re injured it and has still not recovered. Oliver has basically been mishandled since he did his hammy in mid 2023. Admittedly some of this is Oliver's fault but rushing him back to play in the early part of the season last year when he'd [censored] away his entire pre-season basically set him up to fail. We then played him through a broken hand for most of the year. People can say that Petracca coming back on on KB was ticked off all they like. Within 30 seconds of him being out there it was obvious to anyone with eyeballs he was not right and he stayed out for over 20 minutes. Other notable examples off the top of my head: Joel Smith getting injured in a practice match in 2019, coming back on and not playing a single game for the rest of the year. Goodwin screaming at a Doctor over the phone about pushing a concussed Brayshaw through his comfort-zone because he had been at Chadstone a few days prior. Fritsch coming back from a broken foot to play a meaningless game to close out the season in 2023, which he then reinjured and was affected by in the QF two weeks later.

The thing that bothers me about this is the club has made this mistake so many times before. Will they actually absorb the lesson this time? Who knows?

Some pretty stunning meltdowns over a clearly incorrect report.

Incredible that even when Port's admin finally worked up the courage to give Hinkley the boot they still made a meal of it.

That's a real shame if we passed on him at the time. But perhaps it was best for Hogan to get completely out of the footy bubble and enjoy life as a relative nobody in Sydney.

He specifically said going backwards prevented us from evolving or growing. And has flagged that has been a big focus for us this off-season. I would find his words highly disingenuous if we end up going back to our slow, defensive predictable gameplan. I think our 21-23 gameplan is extremely out of date and the fact the past three flags have been won by teams that emphasise attack and fast ball movement exemplifies that. I also think that the changes we made in the early part of last year felt pretty half-baked and we never truly committed to a new style, which was why it was so easy for the coaches to blink.

Maybe not in those specific words but my reading of this section is that it is an admission that attempting to recreate what worked in the past is and was a mistake.

Yes. Did you? There's a whole section about mistakes made with the game plan last year.