Whispering_Jack

Wonder where the author got his material from?

Positive ID.My informant tells me he's put on weight up in Sydney.

I'm sceptical about the whole Dangerfield thing but if Frawley's departure and Clark's contract termination leave us with heaps of salary cap room and we get pick 3 for Frawley and a top 10 pick as "draft assistance" we would be well placed to make an offer that can't be refused to both player and club and still leave ourselves with one of pick 2 or 3 as well. Easier said than done although it shows how important that application for draft assistance might prove to be.

Cannonball run takes toll Darcy Moore post match

Possible that he and Jack Trengove will end up as roommates?

Paddy Ryder's having a BBQ with Brizzy Paddy Ryder meets with Brisbane Lions head honchos as he weighs up future at Essendon

... and if the boot was on the other foot?

It could quite possibly be one of the hundreds of urban myths that have sprouted around Neeld since well before the end of his tenure. This is the era when facts are often scarce on the ground in cases when people want to sheet blame home on one individual.

I think the suggestion that we get involved in the bidding over Darcy Moore to get an edge over Collingwood is repugnant. The likelihood is that someone with picks 5 to 7 is going to nominate him anyway because he's a genuine top 5 prospect but if we play that game, we deserve to have someone come under us and force us to use pick 21 or whatever on Billy Stretch. Craig Cameron always said that the clubs that played funny b@@@ers just for the sake of it would always end up with egg on their face when they really wanted to do business at the trade table and I don't recommend we get involved in that sort of thing over the son of someone who was, after all a former player who won a Brownlow Medal at this club.

I think the article is at one with what I've been saying about exceptional circumstances and the applicant club having to prove a poor record over a number of years and not just one year. Before we applied last year, I asked Peter Jackson the question at a meeting of club supporters at AAMI Stadium whether we were going to apply and if we did, what he thought of our chances of success. He said we would apply but he wasn't confident. We applied and were knocked back. One of the reasons we were given was that we had Jesse Hogan in the wings who was the equivalent of an early firs round pick and also MItch Clark was due to come back - another first round pick. Neither played a game and we won only four games. That gives us an extra year's sub standard performances, some additional exceptional circumstances to add to the loss of players like Jurrah and Wonaemirri in previous years, none of which can be sheeted home to poor culture at the club or tanking. And while we were abysmal at times late in the season, is anyone alleging we tanked this year? Fact is, PJ has applied again and he impresses me as the sort of person who works hard to get what he wants. He got Roos against all odds last year, didn't he? Bob, if the senior people who are talking to you are involved in making the decision, it's pretty poor of them to tell people about it before the decision is made (although it wouldn't surprise me going by other things that have been revealed about the AFL of late).

For the sake of clarity, my article has nothing to do with the way the current football should be funded, managed or how it should operate. Nor was I suggesting that we should be asking the AFL for charity. What I was doing was supporting the application the club already has in place to support the football department in its efforts to improve our list after a decade of neglect, poor recruiting and player development compounded by exceptional circumstances which have caused us to lose some very good players who can be replaced with help that's available within the laws of the game if the AFL decides to interpret those laws in a responsible manner. The player losses I mentioned were among the causes of our wretched record which is ten wins in the past three seasons. That should be criteria enough for any club to get special assistance in my view. One additional early pick alone is not going to make a great difference but it will help us in the months ahead and yet there are people who claim to support the club whose wish it is that our coach and recruiting staff should be made to operate with one hand tied behind their backs. Jackson and Roos made the application because of exceptional circumstances. The AFL should help them do their jobs and not continue to punish the club for what they perceive to have occurred in the past.

Did I hear someone say Brock McLean left the club because of its poor culture? Is that the bloke who was arrested twice on drink related charges while overseas, who did wheelies on the Trinity car park damaging its asphalt cover, who attended funerals of gangland killers and who jumped ship to a club that tanked three years in a row and told three incredulous interviewers on a football panel show what the blind miner couldn't see? Had nothing to do with the fact that Carlton offered him lots more money and were prepared to give away a first round draft pick to make it happen, did it?

Message from Susi

There's been a lot of talk about what it takes to build a final four playing list and Port Adelaide with it's vast improvement from a virtual basket case two years ago to a preliminary finalist next weekend is worth looking at. The following is the list of the Port players from the team that beat Freo and where they were originally drafted when they first came into the system:- ND 4 ~ Hartlett ND 5 ~ Boak ND 5 ~ Polec ND 6 ~ Wingard ND 7 ~ Wines ND 9 ~ Moore ND 12 ~ Monfries ND 12 ~ Schultz ND 13 ~ Ebert ND 16 ~ Lobbe ND 16 ~ Pittard ND 20 ~ Cornes ND 22 ~ Trengove ND 38 ~ Broadbent ND 44 ~ Carlisle ND 52 ~ O'Shea ND 55 ~ Gray ND 71 ~ Westhoff GWS 17 year old selection ~ Hombsch GWS NT zone selection ~ Neade PSD 5 ~ White RD 16 ~ Jonas Interestingly, no top three draft selections but plenty of first rounders. Many of them were around two years ago when Port was struggling under Primus so their development under coach Ken Hinkley and performance manager Darren Burgess since they came to the club has been outstanding.

The draft assistance rule isn't the only one on the AFL's books that have the effect of giving some assistance or advantages to clubs which are adding to the participants in their very own swimming classes. We're already seeing the effect of the rules that are giving the new franchise clubs a leg up but did you know that both GWS and GC Suns will benefit this year with compensatory draft picks in the top 20 in the November National Draft? Sydney is set to pick up Isaac Heeney, a NSW scholarship squad member, with their pick which will be a late first round selection. Heeney is considered a probable top five pick but for the special rule in place for the Swans (and it's not even clear why the rule's there). Next year, the rule will most likely give them another top five midfield prospect even if they finish near the top again. Is there any chance they might abdicate their entitlement to take advantage of the rule? On Saturday, I saw Darcy Moore plying his trade for the Oakleigh Chargers in the TAC Cup Preliminary Final. Like Heeney, he would almost certainly be picked in the top 5 in the draft. The Magpies will take him with pick number 8. Thanks to the father/son rule they will get an advantage over clubs like St. Kilda and Melbourne which finished bottom two but thanks to an AFL rule they can't take him. I don't hear GWS, GC Suns, Sydney and Collingwood knocking back the benefit of those rules any time soon.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that we have to be like Carlton or that we should be asking for draft assistance only to flush draft picks down the toilet as we have done in the past. Nor is the request for draft assistance meant to be an alternative to the aim of having a well resourced FD as Bob infers. I wouldn't be advocating for draft assistance if that was the case. However, I have a lot more faith in Paul Roos and our current recruiting team than their predecessor, about who the less said the better. The last thing you would want to be doing to the club is punish these guys or make their job more difficult because the last bloke was totally incompetent. I think any club administration that fails to take advantage of the competition's rules is not properly carrying out its mandate and since the AFL has a rule in place for draft assistance and we appear to qualify, I believe it would be sheer madness not to take advantage of the law. Imagine Jesse Hogan playing at full forward in the 2017 grand final. He goes for a mark and Zac Dawson pushes him in the back. The siren goes with the Dockers two points in front. The umpire awards Hogan a free kick but Jesse says, "no thanks. I know the free kick was there and in the rules but I'm sick of getting charity so I'll pass". Fat chance.

What he did was stupid. He'll probably appeal but I think one week is about right for being an idiot.

TAC Cup Future Stars - Top 20 rolling draft 1. St. Kilda - Christian Petracca 2. Melbourne - Angus Brayshaw 3. GWS Giants - Peter Wright 4. Brisbane - Patrick McCartin 5. Western Bulldogs - Jake Lever 6. Carlton - Jayden Laverde 7. Gold Coast - Paul Ahern 8. Collingwood - Darcy Moore 9. Adelaide - Sam Durdin 10. West Coast - Jarrod Pickett 11. Richmond - Liam Duggan 12. Fremantle - Kyle Langford 13. Geelong - Caleb Marchbank 14. Gold Coast - Lachie Weller 15. North Melbourne - Ed Vickers-Willis 16. Port Adelaide - Hugh Goddard 17. Hawthorn - Tom Lamb 18. Sydney - Isaac Heeney 19. Essendon - Clem Smith 20. GWS Giants - Corey Ellis

This subject has been done to death. I'm closing this thread but the good news is that if you want to carry on, you can do it here and the sane ones can ignore it.

I'm guessing you've watched the replay more than once.

I think it would be great if Chip finished up at Freo. It would reunite him with another free agent who left the club to play finals. What's his name? Colin

There are some people who adapt quickly and who thrive in a new environment, others who take their time and yet others who never realise their potential when the time comes to step up. Wines has been one of first category but the jury remainsl out on Jimmy who is still only 20 years of age. In November, 2012 most judges rated Jimmy Toumpas ahead of Ollie Wines in several areas and I would suggest that at least ¾ if not all of the AFL's recruiting officers would have taken Jimmy ahead of Ollie. There were question marks about both of them. Jimmy was the creative and brilliant youngster who already had senior experience and had been instrumental in a SANFL premiership with Woodville-West Torrens. He had leadership and good character written all over him. He had also recently had surgery on both hips but before that had a brilliant national under 18 championships behind him (hip injury notwithstanding). The experts rated him second best prospect in the draft. Ollie was a big bodied man child whose national championships were good but he was no sensation. The big question was whether or not his strengths would be negated when he took the step up to play with the men of the AFL. When it came down to a choice of selection, our recruiting team headed by Todd Viney (who knew Ollie well) made the call in favour of Jimmy. The club already knew that it would select Jack Viney as a father/son and decided on Toumpas as the better credentialed player at that time and who it considered also best filled the mix of midfield player it badly needed. As it turned out, Wines came into a favourable environment for a young player. Port had a new board, new coaching panel, new fitness guru, a united club with good strong leaders and an infectious ring of confidence around the club catapulted the team up the ladder faster than anything seen in this modern age of the game. It was the perfect environment in which a young Wines was able to thrive. The contrast at Melbourne was obvious. Toumpas was hampered by that as well as the fact that his initial hip problems held back his first pre season and his development. Injury and illness have done likewise to his second. Despite the fact that there are rumours that he (like everybody else on our list) is on the trade table, we won't know how his career is going to pan out for a while yet, so let's see how he goes with a full pre season behind him in 2015. Full credit to Wines - he's exceeded all expectations but that's by no means the fault of our recruiting people. He also happens to have achieved a lot more in his two years than Lachie Whitfield, Jonathan O'Rourke and Lachlan Plowman who were picked 1, 2 and 3 ahead of Wines as well and I don't hear people tearing strips off SOS, the GWS recruiter responsible for their selection (or, since the usual suspects find it necessary to use this as another issue to pillory Mark Neeld over, Kevin Sheedy who was the coach at the time). Incidentally, we had picks 3 and 4 at that draft so we could have taken both Toumpas and Wines but instead chose to trade pick 3 for the GWS mini draft selection that secured Jesse Hogan and also helped get us Chris Dawes, Dom Barry and ensured that Jack Viney would cost a second round draft pick rather than a first. Wines has had a relatively injury free career to date and a clear ride into a team now in its second finals campaign. The Melbourne players have endured a rocky road but history tells us that circumstances can change in sport. I know this sounds like an old war story and our coach recently said we should look forward and not back, but in 1953 Melbourne finished a dismal second last. A year later, swept up on the back of some inspired recruiting and a great coach in his second year in the role, we made a grand final and a year after that won a flag. None of us can say that will happen again just as none of us have the power to go back in a time machine to change the result of the 2012 draft so why agonise endlessly over the situation? Roos is right on that score. It's time to look forward.

Great article on one of the most exciting and colourful players ever to wear our guernsey. He was absolutely electrifying in 1994 when he was destined for greatness.

That sort of thing is highly unlikely. There are many draft experts who believe that it would be line ball if another club nominated Stretch with a first round (or in St Kilda's case, their second) whether we would take Stretch with that pick. I think we probably would if forced to do so but it has to be remembered that this draft is considered to be deeper than last year's draft and if a club tried to pull a bluff, it could end up with massive egg on its face.

So I was sitting in the old Gardiner Stand at Visy Park watching the TAC Cup Preliminary Final with Melon22 and over to our right was the GWS entourage including SOS and a really fat bloke who I'm led to believe is getting paid $120k pa for sitting around watching kids playing footy. (apologies for the grainy picture but my Iphone camera isn't up to standard ASIO issue)