Its Time for Another

I don't think anyone should be judging progress on the NAB Cup or whatever it's called next year. If you look at Roos record, he only ever won one NAB Cup game in his entire tenure at the Swans. He only uses them as practice matches to try out the full list not to win games.

Great pics, thanks so much for the effort. Salem looks pretty lite framed. Going to need some physical development. Funny because all the descriptions of him are as a hard, strong, midfielder. Whereas Harmes is supposed to be 76kgs but looks bigger than Salem in the pic's. Judging by pic's LKH doesnt look as skinny as I expected. He looks like he is big enough to play already and from all accounts he looks like he might.

I first joined 40 yrs ago when junior memberships got you access to all Away as well as Home games. I dropped my membership when my MCC Membership came through after 10 yrs of MFC membership. But once the Club instigated joint memberships I climbed on board again, I think its something like 17yrs now, even though Ive been out of Melbourne for over 20yrs. It's basically a donation but I figure there aren't too many other things I am as passionate about, so it's a small price to pay.

Died before his time as a result.

Sooooo jealous. One of my all time favorites.

I agree. Some players just don't seem to be able to become midfielders. Take Colin Sylvia for instance. He will tear it up next year as a dedicated half forward. No midfield for him. Which raises an interesting point about some of the players selected top 10 in this years draft. Eg Billings a half forward, Scharenberg a half back. Both their clubs say they are going to turn them into midfielders. It doesn't necessarily work that way as we've seen.

Interesting that the two players we know of who have criticised the process i.e. Aker and Hall were both turfed out of their clubs for failing the No D#ckHeads Policy. Maybe this says more about them than the process and they didn't like hearing what was said before they both ended up leaving their Clubs.

We can theorise all we like. But B Hall wouldn't be making things up and his description of what he was subjected to didn't sound too hot. You are assuming LT was there, maybe they weren't and it wasn't implemented too well without them. Who knows.

Barry Hall in his interview with Mike Sheahan on Open Mike talked about Leading Teams. He said you have forums where everyone in the team gets up and has the opportunity to criticise whoever they like. He said even a lot of the junior players were getting up and criticising senior players and sometimes just for the sake of it. Some of the comments weren't justified or appropriate and caused problems in the group. Read into that what you like, given some of Hall's behaviour but it gives you some idea of what some of the processes can be and some negative feedback of the process.

Something tells me the Rookie picks were all down to the recruiters, no Roos magic. Lets hope JT is not a BP or these picks will be like all the other smokeys BP picked while there were other more obvious picks that went on to prosper while our smokeys tanked. I'm choosing to leave the past in the past and give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Out of desperation that the crap years are behind us more than any other logical reason.

Really interesting reading through this after the event. A lot of considered and educated opinions but out of 156 posts only Tall Defence's 125th post mentioned one of the new boys rookied, Harmes. No one else mentioned any of them. I like this a lot. It makes me feel like our recruiters have a lot more inside information and knowledge than a lot of informed people here or in the press. Time will tell of course but interesting. Mind you Whispering J nailed the type of players we should get, so hats off.

Like....a lot. Keep raising the bar on here H, it needs it.

Naa, you're just way ahead of us. Good one, ya got me. But unfortunately I do want to be a member of this Club that wants me to be a member. I don't think the Old Boy would mind. He might, if it was him. Then again he probably would if he knew what state this Club was in. Then again, knowing him, that would be enough for him to want to be a member.

Why?

Yep that's me. But I can't get over how you saw me. I live in Sydney. It must really be hanging out.

Lets hope he is in better shape than Picasso is nowadays. One or two of his speccies might survive the passage of time but something tells me PIcasso's legacy might last a bit longer. I bet Howie would love a few of his speccies to be worth a few of Picasso's speccies. The painted one's not the marking ones. Although with Mr P who knows.

You're probably one of those people who only wants to see this fashion style when the wearer has a six pack. This guy is obviously just as proud as them of his one pack. Probably put in just as much hard work building it as well. I'm not loving the sudden deterioration into personal insults on this thread. It's just good to hear people are out there supporting the Club without them having to be subject to personal abuse from fellow supporters.

Now you know how it feels to be a supporter of one of the other 17 Clubs looking at MFC's recruiting over the past 10 yrs.

Phew, thank God it's open to the public. I thought it was going to be on Goschs and closed to the public.

27 disposals in his last game of the season. Against us. He doesn't need to be reborn. He just has to be Eveready. Keep on Keeping On.

It's ended up being another massive clean out. 14 last year and I think 13 this year. Surely most of the cleaning out has been done and the rump that is left over from the old list has some real quality in it. Roosy certainly thinks so. So the proof will be in the pudding, so to speak. There is also an element of risk in every traded player this year as well.

You're right. For what it's worth. 2001 Luke Molan (9) 2002 Daniel Bell (14) 2003 Colin Sylvia (3) 2004 Matthew Bate (13) 2005 Nathan Jones (12) 2006 James Frawley (12)

I would agree at this stage Vickery is a win over Watts because he has done what they drafted him to do which is to be a key forward target and second ruckman whereas Watts hasn't been a key forward. However, Watts has done much more in of his outstanding games including the one against the Swans last year. He is way more versatile and you can't compare their skills. Hopefully he will find his role next year and prove me right long term, if he doesn't by the end of next season I will officially mark him as a fail for a pick 1.

I have confidence Watts will still end up being better than Vickery. Hogan will be a better player than Martin, although Martin looks like he will be better than Scully. A fit Clark better than Brandon Ellis. And so they should be as they are all higher picks. But shows there should be major improvement coming out of this list very shortly.

2006 James Frawley(12) v Jack Riewoldt(13) 2007 Cale Morton (4) v Trent Cotchin (2) 2008 Jack Watts (1) v Tyrone Vickery(8), 2009 Tom Scully (1)/Jessie Hogan(Compo pick for Scully) v Dustin Martin(3) 2010 Lucas Cook (12) v Reece Conca(6) 2011 Mitch Clark (Traded 12) v Brandon Ellis(15) 2012 Jimmy Toumpas (4) v Nick Vlastuin(9) Since 2006 up until the past two seasons, I've always seen the Tigers as a benchmark for our progress. I kept penciling in those games as wins. It's the perfect comparison of where we should have been. This list of the top draft picks from each club since 2006 makes for a very interesting comparison. Except for 2010 we've had higher picks every year. They haven't picked a dud. We've picked two, Morton and Lucas. Frawley is really the only one of our 7 picks who has gone on to establish himself as arguably an elite player. Tigers have Riewoldt, Cotchin at that level and arguably Martin and Conca hitting that level inconsistently. We are almost certainly going to get a win out of getting Hogan with the compo pick for Scully, who has only proven to be a good player not a great player. Hopefully by the end of 2014 Watts and Clark will have had elite seasons, Hogan at the end of his first season will have shown he will be there shortly and Toumpas will be well on the way. It gives you an idea of why we are so far behind the Tigers when we should have been ahead by now. Of course this list is only first picks. There are a lot of other picks after these that haven't developed in our system yet but their Tiger equivalents are a long way ahead. Two dud picks isn't the end of the world and with a better system of development under Roos over the summer I can't help but feel that with the expected rate of improvement, 2014 should be the year that a bunch of players on our list and in this group finally start delivering on their promise.