The Great Pretender

He looks a fair bit taller than Bayley.

Matt Balmer of Fox Sports has put out his AFL Draft 2018: Full first-round phantom draft a fortnight out from AFL draft

You’re very welcome.

Chris Judd used to turn up to his junior games for East Sandy wearing the Melbourne jumper with #3 on the back. When he came back to play in Victoria, he chose ...

Forget about the draft before the late 90s. Some clubs had no idea back in the day about how to recruit (sadly, the MFC was one of them).

The article isn’t advocating that you necessarily have to draft for needs but rather, it sets out what each club needs. At any given time when making a decision on who to pick, the recruiters are usually presented with more than one choice of roughly equal quality and, at that point, your needs are a factor in the decision-making. In many cases it’s a subjective view of which one is the best player available anyway. That’s why those phantom drafts are never all exactly the same.

Good read but Ash Browne is a Hawks fan isn’t he? What’s with the pictures of the St Kilda players?

I would like to think that these days, clubs are better at looking after their young players coming into the system and helping them to adjust to being in the limelight and stay focussed. It’s a delicate issue but perhaps worthy of a question to ask to JM for the Demonland podcast interview.

I’m surprised that people are placing him in the same category as Tom Bugg. In 2017, Townsend played a not insignificant role in the Tigers’ finals campaign and is an AFL premiership player. He also won the J. J. Liston Trophy for fairest and best in the VFL (don’t think Buggy would quite rate as well on the score of “fairest” that year especially if you asked Callum Mills). Yes, he did fall out of favour a little in 2018 but it was an injury that kept him out of their finals campaign. He would be handy to have at the club and even if depth, an upgrade on Bugg.

No problem - another year or so under Lyon and he won’t have a positive aspect to the way he plays. He’ll be bored to tears and demanding to go home.

When I saw this I thought “not another Jack Watts thread” but it’s an oldie.

Pardon me.

One of the big victories of the period from my perspective is the retention of AvB who really provided some much needed strength and aggression to the team’s make up late in the season.

And the connection with Jesse is the fact that the Marsh brothers come from WA and their collective scores match the chances there were that Melbourne would accept the Fremantle offer.

Not all of us have the privilege of being able to sit by the radio to listen to what they say. I work. I appreciate getting the point by point information in these daily updates. Thanks.

Not to be scoffed at since I read on FB that he has been seen at Moorabbin in recent times.

Everyone mentions the WCE players missing but we have some handy outs as well. Hogan, Lever and Stretch will all be good “recruits” for next year and in their absence, we have some good replacements coming up. I expect Jayden Hunt to be much better with a good preparation for 2019.

Pat McKenna was injured during the qualifying final v Geelong is out for tomorrow’s game.

I don’t think so.

The key game is tonight’s big clash at Optus Stadium. A win for Collingwood ensures that we won’t have to travel interstate should we progress through next week and means that the Tigers get to meet the remaining interstate challenger in the preliminary final. This might sound a sacrilege but it makes it almost worthwhile for us to ... er, shock, horror ... hope for a Collingwood victory. ?

Very prescient.

Like wow! How did this guy get to replace Mike Sheahan as football editor of a great metropolitan newspaper?

Ancient history

We have a clubhouse leader. in cheese boards we trust.