Redleg

Luker is tracking very well and people need to understand that given his serious illness, we should be allowing him to develop without the pressure of being thrown in the deep end. After a FULL pre season, which would be his first, we can then start to assess him and hopefully give him his chance. I can just see it, we play him in the seniors now, he doesn’t play well and the bagging starts. That is not the way to develop players.

You might want to revisit this. If he has what we need, why would we pick him because of his name?

I wonder if that is because we put a line through his name at Casey or something else. I really thought he had some tricks.

Not exactly, as Dom at least played for us and chose to go home. Roan was a Casey player for a few years who we didn’t even rookie and is now an AFL player with the top club,

WILL that be TOMorrow?

When you are likely to be delisted for the second time at close to 30 and you do an ACL, that would seem a strong possibility. He has been very unlucky with injuries.

The Pies are easily the best side in the AFL. We lost to them by a point. We can't be that far away from being a decent side again.

We have probably robbed him of his chance of playing 250 games. He was dropped when in good form and if he had kept playing, he would be on nearly 250 now and then could have retired to give a younger player a chance for the last 7-8 games. I think he is entitled to feel p-ssed off.

Annd I am not happy. I will try and take it gracefully.

I hope we leave the kid alone and let him develop, without the weight of expectations put on him by DL. He is not a saviour, but rather just another promising kid, nothing more. There are no guarantees on becoming an AFL player just because you make an AFL list. Jed Adams and Seston are examples of that, though they still can make it if they keep improving.

If we make a Coaching change, it won’t be until the end of the season.

Well this season is certainly petering out.

Playing on a winger, not a defender and has done nothing this year otherwise.

Good start.

Ricky Mentha?

Don’t forget that Luke’s hasn’t had a pre season yet and is coming off double pneumonia where he was a very sick boy earlier this year and lost a lot of weight. It would be ridiculous to play him in the seniors this year with all of the pressure that goes with it. Let him have a full pre season next year and hopefully then he is ready for senior games.

That is good news.

Berry played AFL as a teenager and that is a big difference. He is also not a skinny young ruckman hopeful, who is physically underdeveloped and knows little about the game.

Hopefully Derksen doesn't get a game with the Giants and comes to us.

It would be hard to get ahead of Curtis and Zurhaar and now Sheezel is playing forward.

Yes we are sure, it was paid a free not a mark and no 50m penalty. As Ainsworth ran past the umpire, he put his hands up and called play on and watched him run 40 metres into goal without bouncing the ball.

But trades are done basically with coaches’ input, whereas with drafting, the recruiters tell the coaches all about the possible draftees and there can be some coach input. Tim Lamb doesn’t just go and get someone without the coaches telling him to. It’s on them, not him. His main role is to manage the list and salary cap and work with the recruiters.

I think you are correct, that the time on had been called and play was stopped. I was unaware of the new rules that you can run with the ball as far as you like, without bouncing it, if you are running from a melee and that you don’t have to go behind your mark if a free is called and play is stopped, when time on has been called, while your team mates have knocked down a player not in the play and are wrestling the opposition to stop them defending. We will say nothing most likely.

After picking up the ball ahead of the mark, while defenders were being held and wrestling in a melee, not able to stop him and then not bouncing the ball once in that 40 metre run. Wonderful officiating!

I was making my point in answer to a post we lack fitness and that we were playing under some reasonable difficulties, in being men down from quarter time, with several other injuries as well. We were beaten but not thrashed, by a home team, playing for finals, with more fit players for most of the game. That might not be solace, but it is recognition of an effort from a team playing under a disadvantage and not giving in. We could have lost that game by a hundred points, from where we were at quarter time..