Whispering_Jack

Just a note that moderation on training threads will be strict on the issue of poster abuse. Please respect each other's views and no personal attacks on players, posters or moderators ? Thanks.

Pre-season Training starts on Monday and from the AFL site ~ Complete guide to your club's off-season. Training return: The first-to-fourth year players resume on Monday, November 6, with the rest – except draftees – returning on Monday, November 20. The Demons will again hold their pre-season training camp in Maroochydore in January. Injury list: Co-captain Jack Viney (foot), Dean Kent (shoulder), Tim Smith (navicular bone) and Aaron vandenBerg (heel) will be in the rehab group up to Christmas. Swingman Tom McDonald (ankles) is on a running program and will be integrated into the main group in late December, while Pat McKenna (hamstring) will start on a modified program and Lochie Filipovic will rehab interstate before returning in December. Jesse Hogan (hamstring) will be in the main group from November 20. Draft picks: 29, 31, 36, 47 84, 102 Arrived: Harley Balic (traded from Fremantle), Jake Lever (traded from Adelaide) Departed: Colin Garland (retired) Liam Hulett (delisted), Ben Kennedy (delisted), Heritier Lumumba (retired), Jake Spencer (delisted), Jack Trengove (delisted free agent to Port Adelaide), Jack Watts (traded to Port Adelaide), Mitch White (delisted) Major off-field moves: Jade Rawlings is the Casey Demons' new senior coach, taking over from Justin Plapp, who becomes an assistant with Melbourne's AFL side. Recently retired defender Colin Garland is also moving into various coaching roles at the club, including with the AFL team, Next Generation Academy and AFL Women's, as well as being the VFLW Casey Demons' inaugural senior coach. Melbourne also appointed Peter Maynard as Casey's general manager of football, a role where he will oversee the VFL, VFLW and NGA programs. Round one: Geelong, MCG, Sunday, March 25, 3.20pm AEDT Premiership odds: $16 (CrownBet) We say: The time is now for the Demons, who last played finals in 2006 and missed the 2017 post-season by just 0.5 per cent after a disappointing round 23 loss to Collingwood. Jake Lever's addition will strengthen an already solid defence, and their talented young crop – including Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca, Angus Brayshaw, Sam Weideman, Jesse Hogan and Jayden Hunt – should be ready to go to another level. The lack of Thursday and Friday night exposure (only one match) is a disappointment, but six of Melbourne's first seven matches are in Victoria and it doesn't have back-to-back six-day breaks or interstate travel. – Marc McGowan

The 2017 NAB National Draft is now less than a month away. Cal Twomey's updated draft form guide as at the end of October gets a bit of a shake up with a slider and a bolter- Cal Twomey's Phantom form guide: October edition

I was shocked to discover that Redleg will not be attending Moonee Valley Racecourse this afternoon for the running of the WS Cox Plate and has instead chosen to travel to the land of the bananabenders on some undisclosed and mysterious mission. And what on earth has happened to the countdown?

The only thing that I can see that's in any way defamatory is the suggestion that I almost breached Demonland's rules about defamation.

I went all the way back to around this time four years ago when poster Fifty-5 raised this long post by Bigfooty poster Quigley who summed up Ben Lennon as follows:- "Ben Lennon DOB 5/7/95 Ht 189 Wt 80 Lennon has been a Twomey love child this year, putting out several articles telling us how great Lennon is and how he is a virtual certainty for the top 10. Play anywhere on the ground, explosive, elite kick yadda yadda yadda. Well personally I do not see it. He looks like the typical second tier Metro kid who finishes the year well and they are talked up out of all proportion. A lot of people on BF have jumped onboard the Lennon love train and it is possible that I am wrong but if he is taken in the top 10 I am going to be shocked. This is not a case where I rate his tools a bit differently to others I just do not see him having those tools to start with. Lets start with probably the big issue. Of the flanker/midfield groups he would sit firmly at or very close to bottom for athleticism and very real questions have to be asked about whether he has the athletic ability to play at AFL level most especially in his preferred HFF role. Lets start physically. 189cm is pretty good for a midfielder but it is getting to be pretty average for a flanker and combine that with short arms and small hands and we are not off to a fantastic start in supposedly his strength area. Another thing which gets talked up is his explosiveness. Well he was bottom 20% (this includes rucks remember) over the first 5m of the 20m sprint and his back half was nothing out of the ordinary leaving him with a time in the 3.20 range. So pace and explosiveness are a cross. I will say that his repeat sprints were better but that only put him up into the average category. I have seen show a good lateral movement to evade tacklers but I have also seen him get nailed by tacklers that I thought he should have been able to step around and so I was interested to see what he scored in the agility test. Bottom 5%. The only players who scored worse than him on the agility test were a few rucks and many of them scored better than him. I will say that I was surprised with the result. I had a big range in my mind where he could go but bottom 5% was well below where I thought he would end up. Beep in the mid 13s was nothing to write home about and a bottom 25% in the 3km was disappointing. A lot of the highlights for Lennon are him taking nice marks so jumping was expected to be decent at the very least. Well he was bottom 10% in the vertical and below 50% in each of the running jumps. If I am honest I will concede that these results surprised me a lot. I did not expect him to be a stand out athlete but I did think he was probably going to be above average. He obviously plays better than he tests but these sort of athletic deficiencies are often found out at AFL level when playing against guys who are just as smart as you are as a footballer and are much superior athletes. So even before we start to look at his game there are big question marks. Okay onto his game and I hear a lot of talk about how great a kick Lennon is. Pin point passes over 50m to hit guys in stride on the chest. Well I have to say that I have missed those ones. I would say that Lennon is a good kick but I am not seeing it as being elite and it is probably a fair way from that. He does have good penetration and can hoof it 55m. His usual approach is to go with long or 3/4 kicks which are most often to contests. He does not tend to look to use short to intermediate targets as much as he should and will probably be instructed to lower his eyes more at AFL level. I do not rate his decision making or vision as being anything more than average for his position. He tends to take obvious targets which is not bad but I do not see him setting up play like Billings say who played a similar role at the Champs. Around goals he could also be better and will miss goals you would like to see him get. He waves the ball a little in his set shot approach but nothing too bad. As with his field kicking he has good range and might actually be better further from goal where the pressure is on him a bit less. Okay I have been very harsh on him up to this time. What does he do well? Well his marking gets a lot of praise and I would tend to agree with that. I think his hands are good (but not great) and he uses his body excellently in marking contests. He is strong through the core and maintains focus and balance really well in body on body situations. He judges the ball in the air pretty well and marks most that come his way. With the ball on the ground he has really clean hands for a flanker and this gives him a bit more time to work with than others. He can swoop and collect at pace and make opportunities. Lennon does have some class about him and good things do often happen when he is involved in the play. This is a little hard to explain but I think he has good football IQ about some things (reading the play, body work, positioning around goal) but I probably couldn't say that about everything (decision making, leading and passing lanes). In most games there will be a wow moment or two which really make you notice him - a spin move out of a pack, a swooping pick up and go etc. Teams have wanted to see him more as a midfielder this year (you can probably hide athletic deficiencies a little more there) and credit too him that he stood up and put up some good numbers there in the TAC. He did not play a heap of games but averaged 25 disposals a game over the year and 28 disposals over the last 4 or 5 games when playing a lot of midfield time. He played as a half forward at the Champs and only managed 12.6 disposals per game which I did not think was a particularly good return. I particularly followed him in the SA game where he matched up on Scharenberg quite a bit and Scharenberg gave him an absolute bath. The difference in ability was very evident in that game and cemented for me that he was not in that class and definitely not a top 10 pick for me. If I was looking at him I would be trying to develop him into a Sidebottom type midfielder who can go forward. Sidebottom is also not the most athletic player in the world and has a similar good but not great kick. Sidebottom's decision making are probably better than Lennon's but you would hope that would come. Lennon's clean hands also allow some prospect that he will develop a decent inside game as he gets more time on ball. I have been pretty harsh on Lennon but I have to stress that I actually don't mind him as a prospect. I just think talk of him being a top 10er should be way off base." ... and that possibly explains why he didn't make Richmond's grand final team and why he's on the outer today.

Knightmare's October phantom draft: The first two rounds I like pick # 31

Jimmy Bartel rates Mullett Jimmy Bartel's Top 10 Delisted Free Agent Options

Delisted today by the Tigers. I recall there were some differences of opinion between the pundits as to Ben Lennon's ability. Some thought highly of him while others found deficiencies in his makeup. His career at Richmond was marred by a series of injuries and in the end, he wasn't able to break into the premiership team. Opinions?

If Crameri joins the Demons then he won't be the only player with that surname to represent the club. Ben Crameri joined the club in 1954 and worked his way up from the Thirds to the Seconds where he was a member of their 1956 premiership team booting eight goals in the Grand Final. Crameri earned a debut in the Firsts in Round 2, 1957 against Collingwood but played only one more that year before returning to the Seconds where he finished runner up in the Seconds Best and Fairest and equal second in the Gardiner Medal, despite only playing nine Seconds games for the year. Crameri played only one game in 1958 after which he joined Moorabbin in the VFA. He later coached Northcote in that competition. When Stuart Crameri joined the Bombers I enquired as to whether there was a connection between the two but I never found out.

Oscar Allen was mentioned on the Fox Footy Channel combine and draft programme in connection with West Coast - The young gun every AFL club should take with its first pick in the 2017 national draft The player they associated with Melbourne was Oscar Clavarino who trained with us earlier in the year as one of the academy players on work experience. The thing is that they compared him with Jake Lever and I wonder whether that would be a good thing given the fact that we also have the Macs and Sam Frost as other key defenders (even allowing for Tom Mac moving to the forward line). I'm getting to like Charlie Spargo who might be small and recovering from injury but he has football in the blood and is first and foremost a real footballer.

Looks hard at the ball and dedicated to the contest in the limited amount of vision that I saw. I haven't seen enough of him to come to a conclusion as to his disposal but I remember one Nathan Jones at the beginning of his career and his disposal wasn't all that flash when he started but he worked on it as dedicated players do with their weaknesses. We're not talking a top 10 pick here.

Kev, that used to be partly the case when there was a gap between the main draft and the PSD & rookie drafts but these days they're within a couple of days of each other. If potential draftees are still allowed to train with AFL clubs then it would most likely be when they come back from the break early next month. However, I'm not sure whether it's necessary any more and after Fremantle drafted Jack Hannath who was training with us a few years ago, I'm not sure that it's such a good idea.

The popular view is that Melbourne will be looking to draft an outside midfielder as one of its main priorities with its four selections between #29 & 47 in the draft. But there was one player who was mentioned on Fox Footy Channel's Combine and Draft programme last night as being within that range who is an inside midfielder and who really impressed me. Here's the profile from AFL Draft Central ~ Draft Profile: James Worpel

Good question but the clubs aren't in training at the moment. I don't think Melbourne starts till 6 November.

The impending signing of Max Gawn to an extended contract will allow the club to concentrate on other free agents and players who would otherwise be out of contract by the end of 2018. Melbourne ruckman Max Gawn close to signing new deal

The winners of trade week won't be known for a while but here's an interesting insight from Caroline Wilson on to how Port Adelaide positioned itself to get three experienced AFL players in their mid 20s away from their old clubs for the combined cost of only one second round draft pick - Caroline Wilson: How Bombers set up Port Adelaide spending spree Naturally, there are no guarantees - as Wilson says: "Given that Melbourne sent Watts packing, questioning his commitment, Geelong did not fight to keep Motlop despite his September form, and Rockliff, in spite of his impressive season, has had issues of his own at Brisbane, it is worth questioning the wisdom of the Port spree."

With the demise of the Development League, we don't really have much room for another pure ruckman on our list unless that player is the type who can also play another role such as a ruckman/forward. SA youngster Cal Coleman-Jones could fit that bill - on top of that, the hyphenated name would ensure that he feel at home.

I revisited this post today in light of the draft picks now held by the club. The panelists indicated that Coleman-Jones and Spargo were likely second rounders and both would be handy at Melbourne.

Talk around town that our first game next year will be v Adelaide Crows. I'm looking forward to Tex and Jake lining up against each other.

Yes, Spargo has certainly slipped down the ranks over the past twelve months. He now seems to definitely be within our range of available draft selections. Anyone know if there's a reason for his fall from favour - surely lack of height couldn't be the sole reason (he's now listed at 175 cm)?

I was also surprised that North delisted him and not just because he always seems to do well against us. If we take him as a DFA then the effective cost would be a third round selection at 47. He might come in handy as a depth player.

You're in luck. Ben Dixon is presenting the Round 22, 1996 game v Hawthorn (aka "the merger game") at 5pm today.

One thing we should have learned by now is that there are times when the football industry is not always up front about things that happen within its ranks - Truth not always the main goal. Perhaps, the full story of Jack's departure will come out one day. However, I doubt it will in the immediate future and, in the meantime, it feels almost voyeuristic to read all of the speculation.

Q & A - Harley Balic