Its Time for Another

Chazz I think you're likely to find there are a lot of them. I suggest you be a bit careful about which ones you choose to rely on. For instance I'd probably steer away from any with the name S Dank. D Robinson is probably another that comes to mind to avoid. I like to rely on facts where I can. It's very clear from the Financial Report and it's notes that the Club is on to this. We increased spending in the FD by about $450,000 last financial period and PJ says in the notes there will be a focus on spending more on the FD in the next year so the financial result won't be as positive as this year. Mahoney & Co have already shown they have a knack for assembling very strong people in the FD. McCartney & Jennings come to mind. I don't know the breakdown of the positions in the FD and who the Sports Medicine people are but I trust they are working to be cutting edge without being Hird cutting edge. I just read that the Bulldogs increased their FD spending this year by $2.8mill for AFL VFL AFLW. I might have our increase in FD spending wrong but that's how I read it and if so then it gives a bit of a comparison to one of the other small clubs.

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.

DeeS, Saty or anyone else who was there. I spoke to someone who was there yesterday and they said that Balic was way out the back on all the running and didn't look like he had any chance of keeping up and on that basis was going to struggle to get a game. DeeS you mentioned Balic in the 2km time trial. How did he go? Does he look ok or do you agree he's a long way off the fitness of the other players? Anyone else have a comment about how his fitness is compared to the others. For all this guy knows he could be training with the flu or something. Drunken mentioned this about Keilts a few weeks ago.

One of the other great benefits of having Lever around is the rate of improvement for both he and Hogan of getting to train on each other in a lot of these one on one drills. Should raise the standard for both of them. That photo last week of the two of them grappling with each other was pure rolled gold.

Haven't seen a swimmer swim without using their feet and cyclist cycle without using their feet. Tough to maintain any semblance of fitness when you have to be off your feet. On an unrelated topic seeing as you mentioned cyclists. I'm sure this will be a short derailment. Go Richie Porte. Just heard an SBS Podcast interview with him. Back on the bike. Had his first hit out in a criterium. Said it wasn't racing as he was at the back and was suffering. Looking forward to Tour Down Under. One of his favourite races. Was asked who'd win an arm wrestle with Chris Froome. He said him. I suggest they stay away from one Jack Viney. Froomy has been down to Tassie in the past to stay with him and train. Roll on 2018.

Maybe we should have separate training OP's just from Saty and the Haters don't have to go on them at all and the rest of us don't have to put up with their crap and can enjoy Saty's reports. The general training OP could continue for anyone else who wants to post reports.

Have read that Weideman is in the rehab group and is missing today. Anyone know whether he's got a problem and if so what. Also anyone noticed how Balic is going. He was apparently right at the back of the running drills at the beginning. Sounds like he's still not up to speed with the main midfielders. I guess we don't know if he was getting over an injury in the off season but sounds like he's got some catching up to do.

Hope that drill is meant to be non competitive.

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.

Majority of debt was the poker machine licences and also the separate debt the Bentleigh Club had. I can't remember how much that was but I seem to remember it was around $3mill. The final pokey licence fees were paid out this year so I could be wrong but think they are now debt free and pure revenue makers. The Bentleigh Club valuation of$8.7mill has never been adjusted since the 2011 purchase. So the balance sheet is a lot stronger than it looks as it must be worth considerably more by now. The Club can't sell it until 15/8/2022 unless certain conditions are met (don't know what they are but I think it might be finding an alternative Bowling club they agree to) or the BC members approve the sale. Couple of interesting figures. The increase in Gate Receipts was $774,927. The increase in membership, reserved seating & general fundraising was worth $479,843. Given that includes fundraising the increased revenue from increased memberships would be less than I was expecting. Social and Gaming revenue was $11,641,049 . Don't know how much the social revenue was but I assume the vast majority of that is from the Pokeys and now it appears we will get all of that revenue with no associated debt to pay off. I don't know if there are annual fees for them.

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.

Fun to theorise what that might be. We clearly learnt this year while we didnt' have a proper ruckman that you can win clearances while being thrashed in the tap outs but a mobile ruckman can be very effective losing the tap outs but winning around the ground. Perhaps they are transforming Maxy more as a result of that experience. Patrick Cripps is a 194cm midfielder. Maybe with T Mac, Pedders (rather than Pedo ) eventually Weids in the forward line they are contemplating more of a midfield role. Hawks have done it a bit with Roughy. He certainly has the athleticism to do that.

You make a good point. When you think about it of course the coaches are going to talk positively when you first come because you haven't done anything that has to be fixed at that point. I wonder how positive the feedback will be when Hinkley has to address the deficiencies particularly in JW's case that have been there all the way.

Hinkley has a reputation for concentrating on players strengths rather than their weaknesses. Interesting that both Watts and now Trengove have mentioned this after their initial meetings with Hinkley even though he was told he's not in the best 22. Trengove said in the HeraldSun :- “He (Hinkley) really does focus on what you can bring to the team as opposed to the inefficiencies and things you need to improve on,” Trengove said. “As a player that has been around for a few years now, it is great to hear what you can do again as opposed to the negative parts to your game. It just gives you that instant confidence. The way both Trengove and Watts have commented on this suggests they both think this is an issue at MFC. Maybe its time for a bit of reflection in the FD about coaching styles. McCartney while being regarded as probably the best development coach in the comp was also regarded as being so negative at the Bulldogs that he lost the players and was turfed. From what I've read the players love Goodwin but I wonder if a bit of an adjustment is needed. There was an article this week about how Buckley has moderated his behaviour. I assume off the back of the FD review that took place there. .

Agree with you. For some reason he seemed to go backwards this year compared to his very confident debut last year when he read the play particularly well and took some great contested marks. I suspect this year was more about learning the whole forward system with all 6 forwards and his role within that system and that may have set him backwards a bit this year. I agree he didn't seem to be reading the play as well and getting involved. I really hope I'm right and we see a transformed player in 2018. He's very important to the future structure of the team. He's still very young in key forward terms so still has time on his side.

Quote is from SEN not one of us. In any event the point of this OP IS Potential v Reality.

As always thanks for the training insights. Especially for us interstaters.

Saty am very interested to hear if you think Truck has post weight and how much and if there are any standouts from the off season like Clarry’s change of body shape this time last year.

For what it's worth SEN posted this today on our A Graders and who is borderline. You could say they fit into our Potential Categories. https://www.sen.com.au/news/2017/11/09/how-many-a-graders-does-your-club-have/ A-Graders: Jack Viney, Max Gawn, Clayton Oliver, Michael Hibberd Borderline: Jake Lever, Jesse Hogan, Christian Petracca After having just one star for so many years in Nathan Jones, who narrowly misses this list, the Demons are now overflowing with talent. Viney and Oliver are midfield bulls, Gawn is one of the league’s premier ruckman, while Hibberd is the quintessential modern day defender. The trio of Lever, Hogan and Petracca are on their way, if they can maintain their best for prolonged periods.

Must be following Clarry as his mentor. He started the same way last pre season and ended up going all right. They need a congo line of Billy followed by Clarry and now followed by Harley (Wonder what his nickname will be. Any suggestions.)