Go the Biff

Might be a good time to pick at the Essendon carcass. They are lurching from shambolic to full catastrophe. Wonder if they have anyone interesting and out of contract

I think Saad has a shirtful of sore ribs. Weitering seems ok

My first reaction to this was hell no ! And then HELL NO !!! Not that I don't rate Grundy - he's a gun ruck who's had one severe injury. It's more the $$$, the age, the Collingwood factor & a heap of salary cap tied up in two ruckmen. But after rolling it around the grey matter for a while.... This is a contingency plan based on LJ going. It addresses two birds with the one stone We need another KPF for 2023. Sadly, there are none to be had. McStay is the best available & we have one of those in T-Mac.So there's nothing we can trade in. Looking further there's no way McKay or Curnow will be prised out of Carlton, the Kings are already signed for a few more years and North are not likely to give us another FF. Can't see much else on the horizon. We'll need a second ruck for 2023. Goody is keen on the two ruck model. The footy department will have thought this through. They'll have a plan for how they want us to play in 2023. They'll have identified Grundy's role and presented that to him. They'll have explained how this impacts on Max's role which would likely be to spend a lot of time as a key forward and how they will work in tandem. Max is obviously on board as he was in the meeting. Personally I'm not a fan of Max up forward. I think we become too "Max-centric" at the expense of other, better options. However our captain is something of a freak. Barring his tap work (as he rarely jumps any more) he has managed to improve an aspect of his game pretty much every year. Be it his field kicking, his decision making, his contested marking. Even this year his leading patterns as a forward have improved significantly. So if the big fella wants to spend the summer working on his forward craft with a view to reinventing his 30 year old self as the second coming of a young Paul Salmon, I ain't the one to tell him he can't do it.

That's it in a nutshell. ANB is horribly out of form - with the ball. Without the ball his running, pressure & work-rate are all still there. However if he was to be dropped, we need to find someone who can perform his function at his level & better. I don't think that's Chandler nor Bedford nor Lawrie. I wonder if that could be Harmes or perhaps Jordan with Brayshaw then returning to the wing.

Yeah, I'll go round again

Josh Jenkins has his say. Was in Group 1 with Eddie Betts Josh Jenkins Full Statement on the Adelaide Crows 2018 pre-season camp

I've not forgotten. He had no other intention but to injure. Would dearly love to see retribution in the form of a knee to the solar plexus at Cox's first centre bounce. Aside from that I don't mind the big Yank. He has a quirky sense of humour & deserves credit for carving out a career in a foreign game

Hah. Played a couple of years in that. Loved those unfenced grounds. If you followed the ball over the boundary into the spectators you'd cop half a dozen jabs to the kidneys on your way back on the field. Fun times !

Don't come across many expressions I haven't heard before. That one is a cracker Mel.

Apologies for the Essendon content but perhaps Lingers has graduated from the Grooming School for AFL Footballers

I've done this before having rewatched the game & can't be stuffed trying to find my post. Everyone goes "4 goals, 4 goals - he's a forward". Yeah he kicked 4 but from memory he booted a monster from near the centre circle - wasn't playing forward at the time. One was an opportunistic snap from the pocket. The last couple were when he was on one leg in the goal square & they pretty much landed in his lap. I think his direct opponent was queued at the pie stall for the first of that pair. Maybe snuck off for a cheeky dart for the second. Or perhaps Smithy farted. Whatever happened, he was left alone. So there was nothing about his game that made me think "you beauty - we have a natural forward here". Believe me I was looking as they are hard to come by & I'd have loved to see Smithy jnr replicate his dad's deeds. Love him to prove me wrong. Poor bugger has had a wretched run with injury & deserves a change in fortune

Courageous is one word. I think we need two talls and while JVR's development is pleasing, I reckon if they were going to play him it would have been last week. Instead he spent Sunday kicking 5 which looks great on the stat sheet but it was against the last placed team full of sparkies, plumbers & pizza delivery dudes.

Fence, you're an eternal optimist. I'd be loath to use him in a bash & crash kamikaze role given he can get injured just by crossing the boundary line. Accident waiting to happen I'd have thought.

Have a look at the game & you'll be less impressed with his forward craft.

You can pass the test Jaded but have symptoms kick in later on. So maybe that. Or maybe someone copped one at training