Its Time for Another

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.

Five teams in the 2017 Draft disagree with you and picked 5 players in the top 29 179cm or less. That's over 17% of the first 29. I think the worm has turned a bit on this attitude. Pick 17 Jack Higgins 178cm Pick 22 Lachlan Fogarty 179cm Pick 26 Liam Ryan 179cm Pick 27 Brent Daniels 171cm Pick 29 Spargo 172 cm

No. According to Gawn they asked the PA what to do and the PA gave them some advice. They took that advice and then approached the Leadership Group who then went to Goody.

There's plenty of examples of some of the best players to play the game who went late in the draft or weren't picked at all for a few years. Greg Williams had this problem. Had to ask to train with the Cats for free over the pre season and then at the end Haffey gave him a go but had to go to Bendigo for a few years before he got that chance. Sam Mitchell and Dane Swan were quite late picks. Nat Fyfe and Rory Sloane were regarded as too skinny and were both reasonably late picks. Both Caleb Daniels and Taylor Lewis were very highly regarded talents as juniors who didn't get drafted till later picks.

Agree Wise. Caleb Daniel 168cm and Lewis Taylor 175cm & Rising Star Winner say hello. So does Viney 178cm. You can rest assured the FD know that someone of Spargo's height 173cm wouldn't get selected without firstly speed, secondly high level of skill, thirdly great game sense, fourthly or firstly "the most competitive player in this draft" as he was described by the commentators at the draft when he was selected. So far he is displaying all of the above. As someone else mentioned, you never know at his bottom end age, he might still have some growth left. Macrae at the Bulldogs was drafted at 181cm and a year later had had a growth spurt and is now 191cm. Not saying that will happen to Spargo but a bit of it might. Hunt grew 30cm in his last years at school.

I thought he just missed not all but most of his final junior year with a stress fracture in his ankle. What else did he miss that was the majority of junior development. I didn't know about this. He hasn't missed much since he's been at MFC. He's still trained most of this pre season just not with main group yet but is around it for learning purposes. By the way Maynard says hello.

That's the AFL's fault. Out of the $1bill plus tv rights they've had over the past 10 years they won't allocate money to identify and develop young talent in the non AFL States. They leave it entirely to the teams there even though with the expansion there is more need to find more players. The Swans have spent over $1mill per year on their Academy for about 8-10 years now. They seek out every junior athlete initially in the whole of NSW and since GWS in their allocated areas. They have around 500-600 players a year going through it, that's thousands and thousands of players over the period. Out of that massive investment, so far they have Heeney and Mills. That's it. Brandon Jack was the only other player to make it to the list and he didn't make it. Heeney was a rugby league player in Newcastle who would never have been discovered without the Swans Academy work in finding him. I was involved in Junior AFL in Sydney for over ten years and know how incredibly hard the landscape is up here for AFL. The Swans Academy is a big deal to all the kids up here who aspire to getting picked in it. I've watched its impact on Junior Clubs like ours since it started and its significant. The only way to solve this is for the AFL to set up AFL Academies not Club Academies.

Even stranger they went to the AFLPA and not even the leadership group. Then went to the Leadership Group very late who then went to Goody. Said the lessons from last years camp were used all year and doing it was the proudest he’s ever been. Hmmmmm......... He thought Goody was going to wonder what was going on but he was good about it.

There has been plenty of anything but running for the past nearly five months. Trust medicos to decide he's ready to run.

He missed most of his final junior year with an ankle injury. I assume it's the same problem. Not good that it's come back, (assuming it has) and is taking this long to recover. Or alternatively, great they've identified the problem and its about to be fixed in time for him to become a star this season.

From the horses mouth "I had my plantar fascia operated on after I partially tore that against Sydney halfway through the year," Viney said. "Coming back from that, five to six weeks down the track, I ended up getting a stress fracture in my third metatarsal so that's what I'm trying to get back from now. "There's a few things to juggle around after having the surgery on my plantar fascia. "The dynamics of my foot are a little bit different so I'm just adjusting to different loads going through different parts of it and I'm finally at a point now where I do feel like I'm progressing well and I don't see too many hiccups along the way now." url http://www.afl.com.au/news/2018-01-12/cautious-viney-still-weeks-from-full-training

May we never ever ever go through another botched rebuild like this one where we've had to wait 11 years to hopefully get to the strong core of minimal experience you're talking about. Let's hope assuming this list is successful that we retain a solid core of A grade experience as we bring the future crop of young guns through the Club.

Yep and agree. Just trying to keep up the low end pettiness that is supposed to be humour on here.

Interesting theory. Never seen a team win a Premiership when they haven't made the finals.

This is just list assessment. Nowadays there are a lot of other factors to take into consideration when assessing Premiers and some of them, like injuries can't be predicted. 1. Injuries. The Toigs had a dream run with injuries this year. The year before the Doggies ended up with almost a full list for the finals and the benefit of the first bye for returning players. In 2005 the Swans only played 26 players the whole season. We had a shocker with injuries and suspensions and were still very close. These outs also put a huge extra workload on the young uninjured players who couldn't be managed ideally and not surprisingly tired by the end of the season. Injuries during the GF. eg 2016 Franklin was injured in first 4 minutes. Parker taken out at the first centre bounce and Hannebery taken out in the critical last 7 minutes. 2. Coaching. GWS are beginning to show that you can have an elite list but nowadays need an elite coaching panel that runs deep. I have a feeling if we end up facing them in finals or the big one our coaching panel will be significantly stronger and deeper. It's not just Goodwin but also McCartney and Jennings. They proved themselves in 2017 winning more centre clearances (the most strategic part of the gameplan) than they lost during that 8 week period when we didn't have a ruckman. 3. Fixture. The Toigs had a dream fixture last year which left them with a significant record by the half way mark. We all know what ours was like. 4. Umpiring Hopefully we won't see anything like the advantage Doggies received in 2016 including +20 frees in the GF. The equivalent of a significant extra player. Plus several goals from howler decisions.

Jeez H C !!! You're definitely onto something here. This image is a photoshop trick. There are obvious give aways if you look hard enough. Firstly the dude masquerading as Petty only has one arm. He could be Brett Kirk's father. Secondly those guns on the player that has Hogan's face are half the size of the real Hogan's. The plot thickens.

Thanks for clarifying. I couldn't understand why he'd dropped so badly out of contention that he didn't play for Casey. That makes more sense.

Actually he couldn't get a game at Casey. I recall Drunken saying he sat next to him at a Casey final and he said he wasn't injured just badly out of form.

As far as I am aware the timetable was always for him to start running in January. He's doing that. Looks like he will build his running up through January and with that month of running under his belt will join the main group in February. According to Saty he told him he was going to schedule. Not sure why you are all so concerned. The setback in round 21 was a stress fracture to a different part of his foot close to his toes brought on by his foot compensating for the original injury. Doubt that could have been predicted. The original injury was ok at that point. They are being super conservative this time to make sure no other stress fractures occur. Don't forget they did get Trenners foot right in the end and as a result probably know more about foot injuries than a lot of others. I will also be a bit surprised if he plays round 1 if he's only joining the main group in Feb but I'll only start panicking if his foot plays up again from now on. So far so good from what I am reading.

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

One of these hit the mast of Wild Oats XI while it was out of the water the other day and fried all the computers on board. They are furiously rounding up new equipment around the country to try to be ready for the Sydney to Hobart. Be careful what you wish for.

That's surprising I have heard Board members very adamantly deny that. They claim he was put forward by the AFL and they looked at him along with other candidates and the Board made its own decision in the end. The AFL saying you either put PJ in or we cut off your money had absolutely nothing to do with the DEEcision.

Yeh, the thing to remember about Trenners of course is that he actually has fully recovered from the foot injury. It's his loss of pace that has done him in. Who knows if that permanent loss of speed is due to the injury or just his natural pace.

Would you please remind me what MFCSS stands for. I read it once a month or two ago and have forgotten and it has evidently really taken off on here more recently.

Not sure about this article. It says he's got the all clear from his specialist but he has to continue to train "off legs" until Christmas and will join the main group early Jan. Hard to see him training with the main group if he isn't even on legs until then. Personally I don't mind if it takes until July (although 1 Jan would be preferable) as long as when he comes back he's completely over the injury forever.