Its Time for Another

Good OP. Misson said in his last update that Balic has a Planta Facia problem but that he's pain free now and should be back in a week. I hear he was looking very promising at Casey. I have a sneaking suspicion Gaff is heading our way. Only real reason I think that is because we so willingly gave away this year's first rounder for Lever. I figured it wasn't as important to the Club because they had something else brewing this year. Who knows. Everyone talks about him heading back to Vic but his long term girlfriend or wife. I don't know which is from Perth so not sure how significant the game home factor is. I agree with others suggestion that Hunt could be the internal solution. I'm really surprised he hasn't been used there already. Maybe because his kicks into the forward 50 are so bad.

Good point.

Making a point jnrmac. I'd say you've got your point across. I certainly get your point. This post has put a full stop on the discussion. It's hard to argue against this point. I've seen a few dot points in my time but this one is the most to the point. The clearest most succinct point made on here for a long time.

I saw two key structural improvements. Firstly OMac is now playing in a position where he's the last player between the play and the goals instead of getting sucked up the ground which was allowing teams to open us up over the top. Think N Riewaldt there a couple of seasons ago. This time he was finally picking off opposition kicks several uncontested. It's made the whole backline play better especially Lever. Also Wagner kept being the 3rd defender jumping up into contests and stuffing it up for the other 2 and leaving his opponent to lick up the crumbs. His absence has eradicated both these problems so they look much better collectively. Forward line is structurally much better collectively. They are not getting in each other anyway and are leaving space for forwards to lead into. Improved upfield options spreading into space started last week and continued. All big steps forward. Enjoyed all of that but like others frustrated by a wasted rare percentage opportunity against a team with one player on the bench for the last half of the last quarter. GC are good I'm not underestimating them. They will be a greater challenge. Hope to see an even better performance for 4 quarters. We're heading in the right direction.

See the link in a post about 13 hours ago

Hemingway, live your work but have a rare disagreement on this one. I love Jack Watts, I wish him the best and hope he does well at his new club. I agree with you about people denigrating him. It’s disappointing. However, I am interested in our list now and part of that is the ins and outs and Fritsch is the player we got with the pick for Watts. It is interesting to see what Fritsch has brought into he team and what we lost with Watts. These stats give a good indication of that and they paint a very good picture

From this point last year to the close of memberships we increased by only another 3,000. At the moment we are tracking about 1,000 more members than last year. Although it sounds great to have reached the 40,000 nearly a month earlier than last year it looks like we'll end up around 43,200. No doubt wins in the next two weeks would push that a bit more but even so unfortunately looks like 45,000 won't be reached this year. Wonder what the Club has to do to get to 50,000. Obviously finals will help but I wonder what else.

I was at the Swans V Port game. Jeez this kid can play. Would we take him if he came to us before the end of the season and said he wanted to play with and for the Vineys. I guess with Clarry and a fit Viney we don't really need him. Other great teams have had threesomes. Briso's great trifecta, Eagles when Judd was still there, Cats have gone that way this year. I'd take him if we could. Problem is it can't happen without some major trading of players. We don't have a first rounder this year and will have to use next year's in the draft so we couldn't nab him anyway. But if we could what a midfield it would be.

You’re my Source for everything and anything Sometimes trades come to the Club in its sleep.

OK, don't know how but you caught me. Fantasising that is. Lynch will be a free agent so no need to trade picks. Gaff is a free agent so no need to trade picks. Wines or possibly Sloane might be available and if Hogan left we could use his picks to get them. What an off season that'd be. However, let me say, I truly deeply hope Hoges stays. Mind you for various reasons we'v only seen glimpses of greatness. He hasn't arrived there yet. I think he will unless there's some overwhelming personal reason for going home. He would be kissing what's about to be a great run with as good a chance as any of a Premiership in the next say 3-5 years. He's grown up with the group who will be achieving that since he was 17yrs old. He'd be doing that to go to a team, Freo that is at the very beginning of a long rebuild that may or may not be successful many years in the future.

Houston we have a problem. I was one firmly in the camp that getting Lever was fantastic but IMHO given Crows wanted Gibbs etc etc we should never have given away this years first round pick and it will come back to bite us on the arse. What do we have to give to Port now if he wants to come to us? We can't give them next year's first rounder because we have to use it to meet the one first round pick in 4 years rule. He's certainly worth a first rounder especially in this year's bumper draft. If Jesse went back to Perth we'd have one. But short of that we won't. So all we'll have is players. Tyson and ANB come to mind. I wouldn't think ANB on his own even with a second round pick would be enough. Tyson wouldn't be. Do we want to give up ANB and/or Tyson anyway for what OW brings. Without this year's first rounder I don't see how we get this done for any value that would make sense.

Bl&$dy knew it. You’re my source.

Good point. Although they still have a predominantly very young list so other than Buddy would have some room. They could back end a contract because 2019 is the last big money year for Buddy.

According to Tom Harley in his interview on SEN Tippett's injury wasn't career ending and it was his decision to retire early so his payout will not be included in the salary cap after this year. Tippett had a trigger clause in his contract for big bucks for a year or two extension but apparently he was very reasonable about it and agreed to take much less each year but extend the contract for longer to the end of 2020. As he has decided to retire early and end the contract apparently he agreed to a very fair payout. I think you'll find the salary cap space that opens up isn't as big as you think. It will still really help them though. Especially as next year is the last really big bucks year on Buddy's contract. It tapers off by about 50% from 2020 onwards. I get the feeling from what Sloane has said that if he goes it will be back home to Vic. So assuming the money is the same that's where he'll end up. Don't know where.

Someone I know watched a lot of his school footy last year. I believe he was the Captain of Melbourne Grammar. Said 4 things :- 1. Hard as nails. Runs through brick walls. 2. Highly skilled. Very good kick and exceptional goal sense. 3. Very strong contested overhead mark with an unusually high vertical leap for his height. 4. Great kid.

My sons 19. I wonder if I can get one of these for him.

Interesting that in late October the tally was over 6,000 behind last year and now has caught up and will be ahead by the same date. Maybe automatic renewals hadn't gone through or something. It's a big catch up. Otherwise who is it? We had Lever by then so its not him. Take your pick on our draftees. I'm going Oscar B. It's the hair. It's worth over 6,000 new members. Or it could be that Clarry has created a frenzy around Ranga's.

Just had a look at the draft replay. They mentioned that he just fell over a fence and broke his elbow which will take 6 weeks to recover. Also he's very light so will take a while to fill out. As others have mentioned looks like Lever 2.0. Bit surprised we went for yet another key defender, would have thought there were other positions with less depth but clearly there wasn't a suitable ruckman or we would have taken one and I'm guessing he was seen as best available at this pick and if he turns into a star we'll be very happy irrespective of the depth in that position at the moment.

You can relax JT said in his interview on the website we will be going best available. I think this is more likely this year than most of the past 10 years as we have depth in most positions and are now in a position to try and improve the talent in each position. So best available.

Yeh you must be right. Apparently an interview has just gone up on the club website with Jason Taylor and he says no rookie picks and will use all 4. I don't know how this new mechanism works for upgrading rookies but obviously that's what happens somehow.

From what I've read a very high go home factor and question whether he can hack afl environment. Still interested in this issue of our picks. I was very surprised that our last pick was 47. Do you have any other information that we have a later pick. That's not what afl.com.au are indicating. Pretty disappointing if we don't.

I'm not saying he has to go to the draft but we have to assign a draft pick to upgrade him. According to the afl.com.au website which has listed all draft picks for all clubs in this draft our last pick is 47. We have to use our last pick to upgrade. What am I missing.

I didn't realise we don't have a pick after 47. We have 36 on the primary list now including Joel Smith who we have to use pick 47 on to upgrade as it's our last pick. That means we can only draft 3 players which means we will only have a primary list of 39 so we can draft another Rookie. It indicates to me that a few things went wrong in draft week otherwise why would have we held out pick 47 from Freo for Balic when we could have given it to them and just used 66 to upgrade Smith which wouldn't have made any difference to us. We must have held out for that deal because we wanted to use 47 in another trade that never happened. I suspect it was going to be the deal West Coast did on the last morning with Gold Coast where they gave up their first rounder next week and this year's pick 50 in return for Gold Coast's picks 21, 26 & 37 and a future second round pick. We could probably have made that happen if we'd got a pick in the top 25 for Watts but without that, didn't have enough to offer. Mahoney was in the trade room that morning but ended up not doing anything.