Its Time for Another

In his case it's not onfield we have to worry about, its off field. So fingers crossed they have been able to do both. His domestic situation is very complicated apparently and a lot of behaviour problems caused by his partner. Hopefully its all sorted now. He seems to be naturally shy and having a year under his belt in the Club will probably set him up even more for this season

Are you being serious? He said he didn't expect to be drafted and went at pick 4. Now he's saying he' s not AFL ready and would be happy with a couple of games. I wouldn't read any more into it than he appears to have a lower opinion of his potential than many others. He looks to me to be a kid who will let his footy do the speaking. He'll probably still be speaking like this when he's accepting his first Brownlow.

Interestingly there was an article about Menzel at Adelaide also not coming back in good enough condition and having to go off into the fitness group as his fitness level isn't good enough for their midfield. Mentioned that Jacobs and Betts were able to advise the fitness people what to expect from a player coming from the Blues. Sounds like us a couple of years ago.

25,253 - 17 Feb 2011 24,195 - 16 Feb 2012 23,650 - 18 Feb 2013 26,641 - 17 Feb 2014 26,639 - 18 Feb 2015 28,759 - 17 Feb 2016 So compared to last year in the period 22 Dec to 17 Feb we are down about 20% on membership growth (3187 v 2542) and 25% in the first couple of weeks of February. No wonder no membership numbers have been posted for a while. Hope this trend doesn't keep going or we will be back to close to last year's total. We need Wins! Wins! Wins!

Dodged a bullet here. "Yarran arrived at Richmond for the pre-season overweight and has injured his calf muscle twice in the pre-season." Link http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-richmonds-chris-yarran-wont-play-in-seniors-in-first-third-of-season-20160216-gmw2sp.html#ixzz40NdaPqJ2 If you turn up overweight you obviously haven't done enough training in the break. If you haven't and then try to keep up with pre season training you are likely to get injured. Double whammy. There was a lot of talk last year about us trying to get him. Phew, not our problem. Lesson here about being careful in recruiting players who have attitude problems at their old Club and thinking you are going to turn them around. Sylvia anyone. You are on notice StKilda.

I'm looking for these two improvements and a bit of injury relief from the footy gods . If we get them the sky's the limit. 1. Improved running and spreading. My observation last year of why we fell apart in games was that our boys stopped running. When we were competitive we were running hard defensively to cut off attacks and running hard offensively to set up attacks. When put under pressure by better teams or late in games the first thing that went was the two way running as they lost confidence, dropped their bundles and went back into their shells. This meant that in our worst games we weren't going to climb out of the hole. Since these rebuilds started it appears our list hasn't had the conditioning to be able to maintain competitive running. A few of the coaches have said the fitness levels are there now which has enabled them to concentrate on executing the game plan this pre season. This is a major step forward. 2. Reduced turnovers. These have been absolute momentum killers over this era. They are also partly caused by a lack of 1 above. I believe turnovers are caused as much by players not knowing what to do as they are by lack of skill. If a player gets a ball looks down the field and there are no clear targets then they are going to be forced to hold on to the ball too long and are forced to send it to questionable options which cause turnovers. Hopefully all the game plan work that has been done over the summer is going to lead to a lot more clear options which will lead to a lot less turnovers. This comes down to being taught where to run to and then actually doing the running. It sounds like this pre season has been based around improving these two factors. If the training has worked I expect to see a significant improvement onfield. I don't have any idea what that will translate to in wins. I call 9 wins a pass, however, my main interest in the number of wins is how many will be needed to convince Hoges to stay and attract someone like Prestia or O'Meara. I think that may be at least 10 but probably 11. If the footy gods finally smile on us and we have close to our best 22 on the field most of the season anything will be possible.

Hmmm, Club hasn't posted the Membership tally since 3 Feb, nearly 2 weeks ago. Wonder if membership purchases have stalled.

This is the logic. At some stage the players sue EFC for compo. EFC's insurance company are actually the one's that will pay out. The insurance company says "So you want us to pay you $34mill because you were found guilty by CAS. We think the CAS decision was wrong. The only way to prove that would have been to appeal. Did you appeal? No! Well then it's your fault you are still found guilty it's our view if you had appealed you would have got off and we wouldn't be here fighting you off. So bad luck we aint paying." Whereas by appealing they make sure the insurance company/EFC cannot argue this." What would you do? Given it's not going to cost you anything. If the players appeal and succeed they won't have a compo case against EFC. If they don't appeal they might do themselves out of any compensation. They've got to be sitting there hoping their appeal is going to fail. Forget about saving reputations. That isn't going to happen even if they win on the technicalities they are arguing. This has the potential to go on for years if the win on appeal. If they lose then it goes no further. If they win, then it potentially goes back to CAS to hear the appeal just on limited legal issues. Whatever that outcome either party can appeal to Swiss Fed Crt then the losing party can appeal again to the appeal court. Potentially another 4 hearings at around 6-8 mth intervals after the 6-8mth interval waiting for this appeal.

Easy enough. Smack someone's head into the ground you're gone.

The AFL have banned sling tackles like the one I understand Viney applied to McDonald. That tackle is designed to cause serious injury. Pinning a players arm so they have absolutely no way to protect themselves as the tackler smashes their head into the ground. I don't believe it ever had a place in AFL football and now it officially doesn't. Why on earth you would want to apply that tackle to a team mate at training is beyond me. It doesn't show toughness it just shows absolute stupidity. He's bloody lucky he didn't seriously injure T Mc for the start of the season.

You comparing their QB overcoming a mid season foot injury to return and win it to our JT? I like it. But he will have to plug his favourite beer when he stands on the Premiership Podium. They say that Manning doing that three times was worth $24mill in advertising to Budweiser. And it's such a truly crap beer. You'll see I tried hard to keep this relevant to JT's progress.

OK I'm prepared to admit that when Cameron Schwab took the team to China to do an exhibition match I didn't think it was going to do anything but cost money. But now we have a second significant Chinese sponsorship partner. Was it because the door was opened by that trip? Who knows? Perhaps credit where credit is due. I have read that that trip introduced Liam Jurrah to alcohol with the disastrous consequences to that young man's life we have seen. Also read that Scully packed up and went home because of the unacceptable behaviour in the group on that trip. Is that true? Who knows? It's a funny world grass hopper. We know how the worm turned on Mr Scully's exit and delivered us the prodigal son. For that perhaps we can also thank the China trip. The trip that just keeps giving.....or not.

Would be very interesting to know his 20m sprint time at his combine and what it is once he is fully recovered. That will provide the answer.

Just shows you how big the gulf is between the big Clubs and us. After everything Essendon has inflicted on its members and the rest of the competition it's membership is still more than 50% bigger than ours. As bad as the Blues are they are around 25% bigger than us. And we are up over 10% on this time last year. Ouch!

This is a classic example of why I love this site. Ask and you will be answered. Wouldn't have found this without you. Thanks GTG!

Yeh knew I was pushing the thread a bit but hey, who can resist a Hoges mention. It was in the context of moving on to your "orgasmogenic!" duo. Don't you just love this time of the year.

I was impressed by the wheeler dealing this past trade period. If this ever develops and we get to a point of negotiating a trade I will be fascinated to see what it takes especially as the Suns already have our first pick in next year's draft. I will be incredibly impressed if they pull this one off. I have a feeling it will involve a player or players we won't be happy about losing. But still feels like an unlikely long shot. People keep mentioning the Suns need points for Academy players so will accept later picks for points. I haven't read anything about them having academy players this year. Can anyone verify this. It would make a big difference if true.

Stop it you wicked man. Stop it. Here I go getting over stimulated in another pre season. Surely this year..... surely.

Just came across this article. Interesting.

Hmmm. Nice selfie

This is the article about Tom Lynch resigning http://www.goldcoastfc.com.au/news/2016-02-02/media-reports-suggest-lynch-to-sign It also mentions the following "(Mark) Robinson also writes the Lynch news comes as confidence grows that gun midfielders Dion Prestia and Jaeger O’Meara will also sign new deals." Interesting Tom Lynch stats :- "Lynch booted 43.33 from 20 appearances in 2015, averaging 14.8 possessions, 6.7 marks, 3.6 inside 50s as well as wielding influence over the entire field with his presence. The 23-year-old polled in 13 games, with a purple patch from round 17 to round 20 underpinning a brilliant season for the spearhead. Hauls of 46 and 43 goals in the last two years provide a launching pad to elevate his game further in 2016 and could see him enter the very top echelon of key forwards in the game in seasons to come." We love our Jesse and I for one are very hopeful about Weideman but jeez this blokes pretty impressive and they've got Peter Wright building as well. I don't take much notice of GC so he hasn't been on my radar that much. Same for Prestia for that matter. Have barely seen him play. He's only 175cm. Pretty short for how the games played nowadays. Love the Jaegermeister.

We are continuing to run close to 10% higher than last year. Final total last year was 35,953. So at that rate we'll be around 38,500 membership for 2016. I suspect something special would have to happen for this to change. I guess every year we've all said what a win in the first round would do for membership but given this would be followed by a likely win against Bombers in round 2 which would be our first consecutive wins in years, it can't be overstated this year. That said I'm still not expecting us to beat GWS rd 1. 3/2/16 - 28,013 1/2/15 - 25,647 4/2/14 - 25,416 8/2/13 - 22,962

We were sitting on 29,510 mid March last year and are tracking around 2,000 more this year. So it's possible.

Someone posting on a Demons FaceBook page that HeraldSun and SEN saying both are about to sign long term deals at Suns. Anyone heard anything to verify this?

Impressive. I remember that game well. My son was 12 at the time and got a knee injury that day playing in a footy game. He got so excited when the siren went and we won that he jumped up in the air and came down on it and it collapsed. Off to Emergency we went.