Its Time for Another

Love your work Vagg. Or could be It's Late. Story of my life.

Total coincidence. Just landed in Maroochydore from SYDNEY slap bang into a team of Demons. They couldn’t escape. Asked Brayshaw about the elbow. Said it’s actually pretty sore. Spoke to Preussy and wished him all the best for the season. You think you know how big they are when you go to training. Up close and personal he is a monster. Bennell was with him and told me that’s not Preuss that’s Gawn. Must have thought I was a dumb Queenslander like his Gold Coast supporters. Wished him the best and glad to hear he looks like coming on board. He looked genuinely pleased. Or maybe shocked a dumb Queenslander knew who he was. Of course I’m not from there. Hannan said groins are good now and will be joining main group in a week and a half. Told Richo Saints are my litmus test the last couple of years and I’m depending on his intel to [censored] them. He said no one wants to [censored] them more than him. I’ve seen lots of training photos of Trac looking very cut, in fact it looks like if he knows there’s a camera around, the shirts off so he makes sure people know how cut he is. But man forget how cut he is. The man is a beast. Hasn’t loss too much bulk where it counts. Huge around the arms. He’s going to bust the comp open this year. Jetta said he’s already done twice the km’s he did last season at this time. He said there’s about 10 of them who have done the same compared to last year. Said difference in training under Burgo is its a lot more footy orientated. Train the way you play. Said that’s what you want. Joel Smith said groins are all good now and he’s feeling great and has had a really solid pre season. One other general observation. In the past when I’ve got up close to the players I’ve been surprised that they don’t seem as big as you’d expect. This time they all look substantially bigger in their bodies. So looks like we’re going to see running power and stronger bodies.

So Vagg which one did Maxy in?

This kid really has the full package. You can see why he was recruited even if he output isn't there quite yet. He has one of the most perfect kicking styles I've seen. He's got impeccable judgement marking at the peak of the flight of the ball. Has great speed and athleticism for his size. I'm looking forward to him bringing it to games and cementing his place this year. He's probably the player under the most pressure to perform this year. A lot of list management has been based around him working out. Personally I've got faith it'll happen this year. Not much point thinking otherwise.

I'll take your one Bedford and raise you two Marty Hores. Didn't he break Spargo's footy and then finish KK smacking him in the head in and giving him concussion in the first training session.

Sounds like you have had a very intimate involvement with the Club. My info was only about the chance of YP being approved not anything to do with sources of leaks. I didn't say anything about that. Only fact I know is that it was leaked while PJ was there. Not really interested TBH. More interested in the future than the past. Like most people I was a huge fan of PJ's but he hasn't left the legacy I thought he had. I'd rather give the new bloke a proper run at it than start potting him before he's had a chance to do anything but fix the mess left behind. So far I'm pretty happy with Burgess, Richardson, Bruckner and 23 medical and conditioning staff. Plus admin staff changes. There's some good stuff happening on membership engagement like To Hell and Back. Happy to talk to you on this at the end of the year. We'll have a better gauge of Pert's performance by then.

Think that comment was more likely to inflict lowering the reputation of the person who said it than the person it was said about.

It's a two stage process. First you have to prove you've been defamed. Then if you prove that the person who defamed you can then defend themselves by showing that what they said was the truth. The article you've provided sets out the general definition of defamation as "That person has to prove that what was published would tend to lower a person’s reputation in the eyes of an ordinary, reasonable person."

Sorry but I don't see him moving. There's a few people in my household who get that far off the ground standing still with a look like that on their face after a nasty meal.

Actually I believe technically it is defamation but with the justification of truth.

Which ones do I have wrong? You are clearly privy to inside information I'm not. I'm just stating facts that have been disclosed through the Club or the press other than the prospects of Yarra Park which I got from a reliable source outside the Club.

Then why didn't he address them when he was there. The comments you are making sound like you are getting your info from PJ or his camp who apparently made it clear they were against Pert's appointment because it stopped his succession plan. I'm no fan of PJ's, he left a s@#t sandwich for whoever his successor was going to be. Blew $400k on a feasibility study on Yarra Park without bothering to speak to the people that control the Park. Then leaked it to the press before anyone else could talk to them. If he had he would have found out it was never going to happen. Shocker. Then dropping $900,000 in revenue from pokies immediately with no transition or contingency plan. Shocker. Clearly experience with facilities, membership and commercial growth would have been amongst Pert's strengths over Mahoney. Of course they haven't born any fruit yet for reasons mainly to do with what PJ left and the team's performance. I'm curious why you think we would we have been in better shape with Mahoney? You're uninformed anti Pert bias is shining through if you don't know "what the hell he has been doing." You've stated yourself he's moved a lot of staff on, obviously he didn't think they were good enough and he's got better people in. I'd back his judgement over PJ's, your's or mine. He carried out the earliest FD review I've ever seen which resulted in getting in his ex teammate Alan Richardson before a lot of other Clubs who were after him, clearing out some problematic coaches, getting in Burgess, the ultimate we could have hoped for and having 23 medical and conditioning staff moved on and upgraded in the FD. He's main focus has been fixing the facilities mess PJ left behind and starting all over again from scratch to find a suitable site. It's so easy to criticise when we're in the middle of a crisis. Let's get behind the Club. We've got plenty to worry about without what is now becoming clear is biased, negative, uninformed opinion not based on fact. Yep, agree. I take a lot of what I read on here with a grain of salt but sometimes people provide fact based information which is great to read. It'a becoming clear that's not what he's doing.

Thanks for responding. Jeez we all thought the Club was in great shape with all the work PJ did and the Roos succession. Roos succession is looking a bit shaky and PJ left a very nasty situation for his successor. I totally agree with the exit from Pokies but would have thought they would have done it in a transition so they could replace the revenue rather than leave a gaping revenue hole when we run so close to the wind. Sounds like he left a lot of staffing issues as well. I heard the culture under him was very laid back. I thought Perty would be walking in with facilities all but finalised, the footy dept in the best position it's been in ever, great admin staff, memberships and revenue set to take off. Turns out the place was a basket case and we thought it was flying. At least we have Board stability and a very experienced CEO. No disrespect to Josh Mahoney's future potential as a CEO but can you imagine him stepping in to the footy dept and sitting down with Goody to move review the FD and move people on. Not to mention all these other issues. I for one am very grateful Perty came on board when he did. There's evidently a lot to fix.

Out of interest in your comments on this topic. Are they based on your own personal experience. Are you talking about how the Clubs dealing with sponsors or are you talking about other things as well. Are you talking internal staff issues, bad staff, staff being managed badly or what, or the way the Clubs dealing with external people. Providing this info shouldn’t compromise anyone and would help us to understand what you’re taking about. Otherwise this is very unhelpful splashing super negative stuff out there being totally non specific. Or are you just saying sponsorships are down so the admin and staff are therefore crap. Ignoring other causes

According to what he’s said. GWS & Hawks definitely made offers though. Fitzpatrick clearly thought he was going to GWS.

Agree. Swans didn’t steal him from GWS’s nose though.He approached Swans a year before he left Hawks. He wanted to go live with his girlfriend now wife there and get away from the Melbourne fishbowl. He was never going ti GWS.

Yeh. So true. Of course we'd take the Boyd outcome. But Swans had already snared a couple and were very concerned about GWS impact in Sydney.

OD beg to differ on Buddy's value to Swans. Membership after the 2012 flag was 35,000. Membership two years after he came to Swans was 56,000. They had to get a marquee player to protect their position for sponsorships and memberships in the Sydney market against GWS. The Swans stated a year in that he paid his entire 9 year salary within a year of going there with increased memberships and merchandise, not to mention being given much greater TV and media coverage. I used to go to the pre season intra club games to study them close up to pick up any tips for junior coaching. They used to get about 200 of us and virtually no media. The first year Buddy came there were over 2000 people, every TV channel had crews there and there were even helicopters overhead. They don't need to win a Premiership to justify that deal. They loaded his contract in the middle years so he's on $750k for the last 3 years. A lot less than a lot of other marquee players. He will continue to pull crowds till the end. As long as he gets on the park of course.

Thanks DeeSpencer, I meant to include you in that list of training watches. Great informed reply. Much appreciated.

Have a question I want to ask about Jackson and hunted out this thread and had a first look. What a cracker. Question for track watchers particularly those like Saty and BB who have watched a lot of the sessions. A lot of the talk is that when Jackson starts playing it will most likely be in the forward line. Most of the training I saw him doing for the one session I saw was with the rucks so it looked like that's mainly where he's being taught to play. Have you seen him doing much training with the forwards if that's where people think he's going to start playing?

All hail Liam. Very nice work. Great to see.

Love your work. Ground report please.

Always appreciate the detail you provide in your reports BB. It's not till you attend a session that you realise it isn't straight forward to observe as much as you do. I must admit a rye smile coming down from Sydney when you mentioned smoke. Crocodile Dundee comes to mind. Smoke. You call this smoke. I'll show you smoke. I was sitting there breathing in the clean air. Don't know what you're talking about. I must say Trac looks super cut. He could be anything. He's such a special package. Hope this is his break out year into deGoey territory. He's capable of it.

That's what he was doing when I saw him. I couldn't tell you in those sims which of those or whether it was both. I didn't see him deep forward. But O Mac was playing deep forward in some of the drills. But then again so did Lever a few times. But this was also in drills where some players were doing leads as decoys.

I just read through some of my posts to respond and saw all the typos I couldn't see on my phone. For some reason the Edit option isn't available on most of them. Sorry about that. I had a great chat to Nev after training. It's amazing to think of how he and quite a few of the indigenous players are when they first come to the Club or into the AFL system and what a ripping self confident man he has become. Very friendly. He actually came up to me. I asked him if there was much of a change under the new regime. He said the main thing now is that they are on to full match sim and game plan work way earlier than he has experienced before. Said probably because so many have come back after the break in such good shape and there are so many of them fit. I asked him if there was more emphasis on working on i50's. He shrugged his shoulders and said having all the targets down there like Weid and T Mac meant there were targets to kick to this year compared to in the past. I asked about his nephew. He said he's settling in well. We exchanged old ankle injury stories. I didn't realise his was so bad in 2012. I never really recovered from mine done playing footy. He has no problem with his. Said he was surrounded with great medicos physios etc.