demoniac

Maric had surgery over the summer so it maybe that Bailey feels he needs another game at VFL Level to have the match fitness for an AFL game. Certainly when fit he will be a vauable addition in midfield and forward. Newton has promise. He can take a spectacular grab and applies good defensive pressure. His challenge is to take more of the less spectacular marks, do the regulation mark and goal. Hopefully the kgs he put on over summer will assist. Certainly opposing defenders would be more concerned at being one out with Newton than Pettard as hte ball comes in long or on the lead.

I am also old enough to have endured the dark days of the mid to late 1970s. Can clearly remember watching World of Sport as a 7 year old and being not to impressed by our coach Denis Jones. Went to the game in which Fitzroy kicked a then record score against us. Went to the 1988 Grand Final with my Hawthorn supporting brother. Yep it was great growing up in Hawthorn in the 70s and 80s as a Dees fan. At St Dom's there were only 2 other Dees fans in my year - where are you now John and Trevor? At St Kevin's there was Joe and I. The 2000 Granny was also alot of fun. It is almost sad to write that the highlight of my almost 38 years of being a Dees fan is the euphoric feeling I felt at the Dees making the finals for the first time in my lifetme as I walked over the bridge from the Western Oval after the last round of 87. And yes it can make you pessimistic - if you let it. But I am finally convinced that the tide is starting to turn off field and that we are committed to a full rebuild on the field. And yep, players like Dunn and Sylvia need to get a move on but they do have talent. I think our years of failure tend to dispose some to looking for the weaknesses of players whilst disregarding their strengths. Dunn showed promise as a half forward when he first came into the team. He is now older, fitter, stronger and has had a good footy education over the last few years. Thats a fair reason to say there is a good chance he will step up. Looking through rose coloured glasses? No. Just not automatically assigning the sins of the past 45 years to the current coaches, recruiters and list.

Geelong were good enough in 2007. They were not last year. The problem with your argument is that in the heat of finals the ball is less likely to be delivered with precision. You may not need 2 good power forwards but it is alot easier to win a flag if you have them. Geelong with Ottens and Hawkins playing well up forward is a much stronger propositon than Geelong with Ottens or Hawkins and Lonergan up forward.

I think Dunn has been given a good all round football education in recent years with his stint in the midfield in a run with role afte starting as a half forward. Now is the time to try him once again up forward. He is 192cm, has good endurance, has built up to 93 kg and can take a mark and has good instincts around goal. Should be challenged to play as a high half forward role a la Ryan O'Keefe. I'd certanly be more confident kicking to Dunn than Pettard as the later is not really strong enough yet be strong in contested marking situations. Bailey should lay it on the line to Dunn. At his height, strength and with his endurance he should be a hard match up for opposing defenders. What am I thinking. He is a hack, all our players are hacks, lets trade em all for picks for kids who we can trade for more picks for kids who we can then trade for more picks for kids who we can then trade for more picks for kids, repeat ad nauseum. Must trade. Trade someone. Trade anyone. Do it. Do it now. I want to discuss possible trades endlessly. Trade. Must trade.

It is with some trepidation that I admit that I concur with Yze Mgic. We lack senior players and more particularly quality senior players. Our rebuild has begun and we are stocking up and will get another chance to do so in this years draft. It is this young talent that we are relying on - noting that Watts, Blease have not played, and Strauss came back from injury this week.

Ben Allan was on SEN talking about how Freo have once and for all discarded the quick fix trades approach and are adopting the Hawthorn model of drafting the best available young talent. Dermot Brereton was on later and commented that if they were indeed copying the Hawthorn model then they would not have drafted Rhys Palmer because a key plank of the Hawthorn plan was to only draft players who have elite kicking skills. It does appear with Stephen Hill that they have drafted a playerwith elite kicking skills. Bailey's gameplan is not revolutionary. We saw it in the first half of the Collingwood game. With the advent of the rolling Midfield/Defensive zone the way to take the ball forward from defence is with precise short kicks that pierce the zone - there should always be a player in space in the zone who can be hit up by an accurate flat hard short pass. Use of pace and evasive skills to get around a player in the zone thus drawing another player which creates space in the zone to either hit a player wth an accurate short pass or handball is also important. see the use of Davey and Morton across half back. Davey is our best short kick and also has the pace to pierce the zone when possible. Morton is a good short pass - needs to work on the flat hard short pass, does tend to float them - and has good evasive skills. Thats Bailey's game plan. And he has started to recruit based upon the simple premise that kicking skills are fundamentally important when assessing any draftee. Watts, Blease and Strauss all are supposed to have elite kicking skills. Bennell and Jetta also seem to be good kicks. We will most probably have a priority pick before round one in this year's draft and kicking skills will again be prioritised when those selections are used. Buckley or Hird or Norm Smith would not be making any headway with the playng list we have. Our senior players are at best servicable - we have Bruce's ball getting ability and Green's kicking skills in different players. Our defence has enough promising talls but they are still inexperienced. Our midfield is mediocre - Maclean is struggling after his broken ankle and Jones has no one to off load to. But there is plenty of young talent coming through, and we'll add more to it. We don't have the luxury of a North of old to trade with to advance faster like the Hawks did but we are stockpiling an impressive pool of young talent - watch that footage of Blease laying a tackle then working the other way and drilling a goal from fifty at pace.

Wheels is a favourite. One of the hardest players to pull on the red and the blue. But he is 29 and has played only 140 games in 9 seasons which means he has missed 58 games at a average of 6 and half a year. And thats not including finals. And none would have been through form. Played only 5 games in 2007 and 12 games in 2008.

Think long term. The Dees have rebuilt. Well stocked with talent. Winning flags. Jack Watts has become the player we wanted him wearing Norm Smith's Number 4 and has an impeccable record off field. champion player, well spoken. A very likely candidate for a commercially justifiable rather large spokesman/image rights deal with one of our sponsors. And outside of the cap of course.

We are in the early stages of what I hope will be a comprehensive rebuild. We were crap last year and we quite rightly didn't recruit any stop gap hole plugging senior players so we are relying on the natural development of our young talent. That takes time. Add a few high draft picks from this years draft and our stockpile of talent will be the best we've had in years. Yes we've got to develop them and retain them but at least we have them. And we'll have alot more stokced up than most of our rivals. We are not winning games but there are positives. Think defensive talls. Warnock is 25, 192 cms and 95kg. Composed, strong, does his job with a minimum of fuss. Martin is 22, 200cm and 102kg. Tall, gorilla strong, quick, good instincts, thumping spoil and marking improving. Frawley is 20, 192cm and 92kg. finally seems comfortable at AFL level. Can play on talls and mediums. Needs to keep improving kicking. Garland is almost 21, 189cms and 87kg. Athletic, positons well, could play in midfield. And then there is Jared Rivers at 24, 190cm and 90kg. Fingers crossed. Reads the play superbly. A quarter back who gets his own ball because of that. Marks well, spoils well, supports his team mates. The Hawks'd kill for that group of defensive talls.

Lance Franklin is 196cms and and 101 kg. Brown is 195cm and 104kg. All much of a muchness really when compered to Jack Watts at 196cm and 83kg. Watts has admitted that he had never really done a pre season before being drafted because he was playing basketball in summer and footy in winter. In that sense he was coming from further back than most Under 18 players who would've had one or two Under 18 pre seasons behind them. He is also doing Year 12 like Blease so his training would have been limited since February when school started. I think he will play towards the end of the year like Maric did last year when he was doing Year 12. Its a sensible strategy. We need Watts and Blease to be 15 year players for us. The plague of over use injuries to young players coming out of the Under 18s and into the AFL surely tells us that bottom age players in particulat need to be eased into the intense physical demands of AFL.

"Bruce and Green tried hard all day?" Tried my patience I presume you mean. Senior players are EXPECTED to perform and set an EXAMPLE to their younger inexperienced team mates. Bruce and Green were extremely disappointing. Bruce in particular was very very ordinary. His kicking is mediocre and his lack of composure damning for a player of his experience and supposed ability. Green couldnt even kick the ball the boundary side advantage of Jones in the last quarter, made Jones stop and prop, ball spoiled. Miller was good in the first half but our midfield was so bad in the second half that he had no supply. Macdonald tried hard but again his decision making and disposal at times was alarmingly poor. Assuming Bruce and Green are not dropped as I would like them to be... Ins and Outs for now... Ins - Dunn, Jetta Outs - Bate, Maric

Leigh Brown is a very ordinary footballer. Presume he will pinch hit in the ruck to relieve Fraser.

Expansion into the Gold Coast and Western Sydney is the right way to go. The other codes are weak at the moment except soccer which is building. Remember the state the VFL and its clubs were in before the national expansion in the 1980s. Its also important to look at the reaction from the other codes about AFL expansion into Gold Coast and Western Sydney. They are running scared. The NRL has no cash reserves to support any expansion, the ARU is hamstrung by needing to get SA and NZ approval for any further Australian teams and soccer is still at an early stage in terms of the A League. And then there is Basketball... Bring it on and back the game, its much more fun to play and watch than the rest. As for those who say we lack the player depth to go to 18 teams consider the dramatic increase in Aboriginal players and Queensland players since the expansion, an increase which is largely explained by the development dollars that have been allocated, development dollars available due to the increased media rights from the expansion.

Can't see how any of the debutants could be dropped. Bailey has said Spencer will play. Cheney had 22 possies and took a strong contested mark in defence. Bennell showed good positioning and composure. Jetta got into the right positions and with a bit of luck could have kicked a few. No doubt they will go back to Casey at some point through the season as they tire or lose form but no reason for that yet. Its a novel concept but lets pick on form. I'd bring in Dunn and use him as a forward. He'd be a better target man than Pettard and Bate and has the tank also to go into the midfield. Like to bring Martin in too if he is fit. Garland is a tall but can play on smalls effectively so don't think we are overloading on talls. Martin can provide Ruck cover and key forward/defensive cover. As for who'd go out. Maybe Bartram and Morton. I'd make Sylvia earn his recall and Maric may need another game at Casey. I did read in this thread that Bruce is a class player. Not for mine. Kicking is too fiddy-fiddy. Green didn't have much of an impact either. Solid players who may have been better in stronger teams.

We really need to aim for 35,000. If we all make an effort to sign up ASAP then the Club will be able to focus its efforts on a smaller than usual balance that are slow in renewing and on new members. Thinking positively there is much more excitement about the Dees than at this time last year so lets go for 35,000!

No. Still associating with the wrong crowd as attested to by Karl Langdon during the week despite losing his career because of his drug use. He may be clean but if he is still hanging round the people who supply them then it is fairly obvious that the penny has not droppd. His only chance to resume his career is to to bare his soul - not his torso - in the next few weeks and come clean on his drug use, when it started, how it destroyed his life and to plead for another chance. And he'd have to promise to stop hanging around with his questionable associates. All in all the fact that he was passed over in the National Draft and is now only a marginal chance of being picked up in the Pre Season Draft will be a salient lesson to all who experiment with drugs, including AFL players.

from Inside Footy 19, 183cm, 78kg "Played senior footy for our senior side this year againat WA and had a fantastic year. Plays midfield and forward and has some speed. Played in the Under 16 Carnival and just missed out on the Under 18 side last year" - Mark Browning

Williams had a good record at Sandy and seems to have done a good job at his development role based on the improvements in some of our younger players. Don't care about 'profile' - Tim Watson anyone? - just that he can do the job well. And of course for those complaining that he did not play AFL/VFL.. http://www.blueseum.org/tiki-index.php?page=Mark%20Williams Of course I hope that the development vacancy his appointment creates is filled.

In SEN speak More likely...a bogan than a no show. Reading between the lines Nathan Carroll is effectively an ex Melbourne player.

For mine he started to walk the walk before he had coached a game when he traded the highly payed but inconsistent Travis Johnstone for Pick 14. Do ya reckon Vossy would rather have TJ or Jack Grimes on his list?

Happy with trade week. I am not sure that some of my fellow Demon fans understand that a trade involves 3 parties. The player's current club, the club interested in the player and yes the player himself. It s not a simple as a poster at Demonland coming up with a potential trade and hey presto the trade is done. Many supporters act like drunks waiting for a pub to opened during trade week. You do not trade for the sake of trading. And as outlined above its not as simple as just suggesting a trade and it happens. Particularly this year it was virtually impossible to trade a player for a high pick given the compromised draft approaching, the Hawthorn 'high picks' model, the limited list sizes and In the case of Green there was some interest from the Swans but Green did not want to go there and the deal involving Pick 16 coming from Hawthorn via Sydney was dependent on the O'Keefe to Hawthorn deal which it now appears was always unlikely. Then Collingwood had an interest but by all accounts were offering list cloggers. So to trade him we would have being giving him away pretty much. He is a good, but by no means great player. He seems to prepare professionally. So we have retained him for $1.1 million over 3 years which is a fair contract given that the elite are earning $700,000 plus a year. In the cases of Robbie Warnock and Brent Prismall the contracts they were offered by Carlton and Essendon respectively were out of all kilter with what could be responsibly offered. All reports re Warnock point to a 4 year $400,000 deal for a 21 year old player with 21 games experience. In the case of Prismall - a 22 year old with 25 games to his credit and coming back from a knee reconstruction - reports indicate that he was offered a 3 year $900,000 contract by the Bombers. In both cases one would have to question, as Chris Connolly has, whether those contracts are financially prudent. It'd be interesting to see how many Cats and Hawks earn more than Warnock's $400,000 a season. Lets keep our draft picks and lets not repeat our past errors ond overpay our players.

Lonergan might indeed take the best defender if he plays for Casey. One of Jack Dyer's good ordinary footballers. Plays very short for his 197cms.

Has played 27 games over the last 2 years, generally I am against trading in players who will clog up the medical rooms.

The 25 year old Hansen is not up and going very often, made it onto the park for 13 games this year, and 14 games in 2007. If he could get on the park more often he would be worth considering for a 3rd rounder but given he can't why would you bother?

Assumng 09 salary cap (and my limited maths) is 7.3 mil , paying 92.5% only reduces TPP maximum by $650,000 which taking into account half of Neita and Oozes 08 salaries plus all of White and Holland and (fingers crossed) Carroll and the end of our subsidy of Johnstone's Brisbane contract means that we should be struglling to make 92.5% not be struggling to get down to it.