Hards

Chris Connolly's hand all over this one. So its: Bailey - Coach Whelman - Assistant Coach Mahoney - Assistant Coach Paul Williams - Assistant Coach (? is he staying??) Connolly - FD K O'Donnell - Development Good to see us put some cash into the FD

Neitz has one last year in 2008. That gives Newton another year to learn FF, and gives any number of players a year to impress to be the next Captain. Works perfectly.

Very talented but application issues. I think we're getting those blokes out rather than bringing them in at the moment.

lol. I'm not sure King is really a Premiership ruckman. Blake did all the work during the year and missed a flag because of sentiment. So Saints have added Schneider (pace/goals), Dempster (pace), King (ruck), Gardiner (?)

Great post H. Like Dappa Dan said, that night was an absolutely heartbreaker, about as bad as you can feel after a game. I still watch the middle two quarters from time to time, it's as good a brand of football as I've seen a Melbourne side play since 1994. Travis was pretty good the week before as well. That year was the only good year of his career. I don't buy 2005 - he was more accountable in 2002 than he was in 2005. Sadly he could never repeat the form of 2002 going forward. I'm actually genuinely happy for him that he's been traded. Brisbane will do him the world of good. He won't be the first one tagged and he'll use the space to deliver to Brown and Brennan and co with ease. It's a trade I would have made at the end of 2003. That will still manage to get a first round pick out of Brisbane for him is a credit to our FD and Recruiting Dept.

Still wish for Jolly over Dunn? Still wish for Woey over Bell? You're a good man Powelly, but seriously, is TJ not more talented than ONE b+f and only a couple of top 10 finishes? This deal is an absolute steal.

His knee is completely stuffed. Will most likely never play again.

There's a trend with the names popping up. Hard nuts who got the most out of themselves.

lol Nasher me too. Congrats to whoever is actually involved :D

He'll get his Diablo. He's going to Carlton after all.

Because no player on our list has as much natural talent on our list as TJ. 22 W's will always beat 22 TJ's. TJ has done those things for 9/10ths of his career. The one year he did them, he was one of the best players in the game. What a pity the penny never dropped.

One good season does not a superstar make. As much he is loved by some of our supporters, this is a Woewodin situation. Value for money and genuine output vs actual output. Travis doesn't chase. Travis doesn't tackle. Travis doesn't set a good example for younger teammates. Travis doesn't hit targets above the league average. Travis doesn't make his opponent accountable. Travis isn't accountable for his own opponent. Travis doesn't buy into the team ethos. At his best (2002) he was top 5 in the league. Sadly his attitude doesn't allow for that to be a consistant output. Like a wise man once said, you've gotta get what you can when you can while you can. A change of scenery might be the best thing for him, under a hardarse coach like Leigh Matthews he might produce the best footy of his career. And if he does, great, good luck to him. I've met Travis, he's one of the nicest blokes you'll meet. But for both parties this is the best thing. And as for the W comparison. There's a big difference. W got absolutely everything out of himself. Infact he probably overachieved for his career. TJ is 10 times the natural footballer than W, but W was 20 times the worker, and that will always be the different between the two.

Good work by CAC. Even if Meesen is a bust, for pick 37 in any draft, let alone an allegedly weaker one, that's a good job. Hopefully he can go a bit. I'm sure we wouldn't have pushed hard for him if we didn't think he could.

I was probably the biggest critic of us doing it, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it as a style of football. It's just that it works best when you have a midfield with breakaway pace playing on an open ground. While we play on an open ground, we don't have breakaway clearance pace, and therefore it was never ever going to work for us. As was said at the time, Sydney would never try it at the SCG, nor would West Coast try Sydney's style of footy at Subiaco. You play to your strengths, and for us that was a pretty potent forward line (before all the injuries). After four years of constantly copying last years Premiers I'm looking forward to seeing what fresh approach Bailey brings this year. -- edit: re the comments from Johnson - that's what the players were saying DURING the 06 season. White said it, Bruce said it, McLean said it. These guys all saw it happening from the beginning.

I saw that first game, he was pretty handy. The Kangas gave him number 18, so they must have rated him highly enough at the time to think he wouldn't be worried by the stigma or the expectations of taking over that number. I dunno... not sure he's much of an upgrade on what we have. Would we get BOTH Meeson and Moran, and keep all three of White, Jamar and Johnson? Five ruckman, none of which can genuinely play another position (PJ being the closest).

Like Mark Coughlan, love him as a player but the knee injuries aren't worth the risk. If he goes anywhere it'll be to Freo I would have thought, he's a WA boy. Saw Carlton were interested but I think they're up to their necks in getting the Mercenary.

Think the media attention may be more about the gambling that him being up for trade.

If Cousins is on a one strike policy and he is being tested approximately every two weeks (as per the deal to get him back in the league) then given the length of time the drugs he is believed to have had issues with stay in a persons system it's a pretty safe bet he hasn't slipped off the wagon. That said falling off the wagon and being rehabillitated are two different things, but he's obviously progressing in that respect. What's the difference between him and two players who have undergone and continue to undergo treatement for substance problems from another club? Just because Cousins' issues are public doesn't make his any different to those who are undergoing treatment away from the public eye.

Paul Johnson gone then?

I doubt Cousins will be delisted, but rather publicly put up for trade. There's enough teams out there that would take a chance on him. I'm bemused by the people that think just because he went to rehab he's the source of all evil. There's probably a number of players in the league that need to go to rehab for their issues but stick their head in the sand and continue to do damage to themselves. There's guys that have [censored] away their career by getting lost in drugs, talented guys out of the league in five years when they could have played 200+ games. We've seen plenty of players having issues with alcohol, do their time and make their way back. Some of them could probably have used "rehab". Some privately did. And if you believe the documents that channel 7 and Dylan Howard released, there are other current AFL players that have undergone forms of rehab for drug addiction. He's on a one-strike policy with the AFL as it is at the moment, so he's kicked out if he relapses. Assuming the cost would be little, both to salary cap and to trade for, which it most likely would be, then it'd be more than worth a punt. Nearly every Premiership team has a story of redemption - Martin Pike, Barry Hall, Andrew Embley, Steve Johnson, if they've got the talent on the field then sometimes the change of scenery works.

You know what guys, let's be realistic here for a second. 1. Cousins is unlikely to provide a negative influence in a drug sense to players at another club. - Due to the constant pressure on him to stay clean and the threat of being kicked out of the league (which means more to him than people realise) his situation is different to that of a normal recovering drug addict. If Ben is likely to relapse it's either going to be right now (after the death of a very close friend) or when his career is over and he is no longer subject to constant drug tests (which he is at the moment, the most recent of which being in the last 48 hours). 2. There is no player in the league who could provide a better example of how to push yourself to the absolute limits on the field than Ben Cousins - Judd has said it. Kerr has said it. When they arrived at West Coast they saw Cousins physically exhausted, barely able to walk to his car after training, let alone after games. It's the same at Brisbane, when a young player saw Simon Black push himself to the point of throwing up in the last quarter of a game against the Saints a few years ago. 3. He'd cost bugger all and he'd give us a bloody good midfielder. 4. As a club due to the extra media attention our guys would probably be drug tested more, which given the way the system is set up, rightly or wrongly, I think is better - I'd rather one player kicked out early than letting multiple slide through and us ended up with the problem that a few other clubs have right now. Obviously there are negatives: 1. Added media attention and scrutiny - You can argue that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but after the year West Coast have had... 2. It wouldn't be good for Ben to come to Victoria to any club - The fishbowl with two clubs vs the AFL fishbowl with 10 clubs, he'd be the most following player in the city. 3. Cost in terms of trade? After losing Judd the Eagles wouldn't want to give up a pretty good midfielder for bugger all. Regardless, our President has already said that we wouldn't have a player like Cousins at Melbourne. It might have been a stupid comment on something that has nothing to do with him, but it kinda of rules us out. If it was my choice I'd certainly consider it - I don't think Cousins is a bad guy - he's made some bad choices and been directed wrongly by some people but if he's serious about keeping his crap together and playing footy and the price isn't too high to get him then he'd be worth a punt.

I very much doubt Roughead is on the table.

From what I'm led to believe Carlton knew that Judd was coming home from a fair way back - not the mid-season break, but as far back as around the last 5 weeks of the H+A season.

I would have stopped awarding anything after the top 4. The rest didn't deserve to be classified as top 10. In fairness: 1. James McDonald - 21 games, 489 possessions @ 23/game (1), 131 tackles (1), 3 goals 2. Nathan Jones - 21 games, 365 possessions @ 17/game, 86 tackles (2), 10 goals 3. Matthew Bate - 19 games, 294 possessions @ 15/game, 94 marks @ 5/game, 59 tackles, 19 goals (4) 4. Brad Green - 18 games, 384 possessions @ 21/game (3), 117 marks @ 6/game (4), 49 tackles, 13 goals 5. Aaron Davey - 18 games, 258 possessions @ 14/game, 74 tackles (3), 24 goals (3) 6. Cameron Bruce - 16 games, 377 possessions @ 23/game (4), 96 marks @ 6/game (5), 66 tackles (5), 9 goals 7. Jeff White - 22 games, 356 possessions @ 16/game, 127 marks @ 6/game (2), 461 hitouts, 41 tackles, 7 goals 8. Brock McLean - 14 games, 254 possessions @18/game, 60 tackles, 4 goals 9. Nathan Brown - 19 games, 416 possessions @ 22/game (2), 137 marks @ 7/game (1), 46 tackles, 3 goals 10. Russell Robertson - 15 games, 169 possessions @ 11/game, 85 marks @ 6/game, 10 tackles, 42 goals (1)

Interesting. If the suspended betting has come on the back of Melbourne plunges then it's a good sign. Becuase of the size of Collingwood's supporter base you can never trut the market on anything Pies related, unless it's ridiculously large (and even then sometimes it can be crap). Hutchy is usually pretty good with these things. He had the early word with Bailey. Quietly confident.