Ron Burgundy

On the basis of the clips I’ve seen, Pickett seems to play like a footballer. He has goal nous: times his runs well, knows where to run, executes cleanly, doesn’t fumble, has a good leap and attack on the ball. Too often in the past we’ve picked the athlete over the footballer, and the one thing I’ve observed from that is that it’s bloody hard to turn a great athlete into a decent footballer if they’re not already that good at football. I have no idea who the club will pick with 10 - but, if they pick Pickett, I’ll be excited because clearly he’s the one the club has targeted and it means they recognise his upside, which could be fantastic as it is in an important area where we presently have a gaping hole.

Makes sense. Plainly they wouldn’t have traded pick 8 for 10 if they had thought the player/s they’re targeting won’t still be available at pick 10. And we now get a second rounder. Prior to this, it was pick 8 and then the distance of the Nullarbor to pick 97. It feels like a much better balanced mix of selections now. I’m really happy with it - once again, Mahoney seems to have upgraded our picks like a consummate card shark.

Even though our forward line was a rabble last year, I reckon the thing that hurt us most early on was T Mac’s inexplicable loss of confidence and form. Even though our forward 50 entries were generally poor, there were enough in each game for us to be more competitive on the scoreboard than we were. T Mac was clunking everything in 2018 - it was ridiculous. And within one pre-season, he turned into a player who couldn’t get near it. This really hurt us. Stating the obvious here, but we really need him to recapture his 2018 form (irrespective of who the forward line coach is).

We’d have to be super certain in Jackson to not pick Green if he’s available. I’ve seen this script many times before, and it’s rarely turned out particularly well. For us, at least. I really hope we don’t balls this up.

This brings back memories of that fantastic 2012 draft in which we picked Toumpas over, amongst others, Wines. BUT I distinctly recall the debate around Brody Grundy who was widely touted as a top 3 pick in the months leading up to that draft. As everyone knows, he was eventually picked up by Collingwood at 18, and I remember thinking - geez those mongrels got a steal. Took a while for him to become the player he is today, but it perhaps shows that clubs tend to get nervous about using such a high pick to draft a skinny 18 year old ruck prospect. Then again West Coast picked up Nik Nat with 2 a few years earlier. I don’t know who we should draft. I just hope they don’t stuff it up.

For once, it’s absolutely in our hands. To stuff up, that is.

He is a human jack-in-a-box. Has so much spring. Should not be allowed to leave our forward 50. Ever.

Sounds like a VFL version of Tomlinson.

I would’ve had him on the wing in 2020, but then we recruited Langdon and Tomlinson (which I’m very pleased about). Forward or back? Dunno - there are arguments both ways. If our forward line is as dysfunctional as it was in 2019, I’d say forward. Our backline, on paper at least, seems far more settled and less in need of him down there.

While I thought Sam Murray could be a good pick up, recruiting Mitch Brown seems like a no brainer given we currently lack an experienced back up tall forward. In short, I’d be happy with using the equivalent of pick 97 on this guy.

Diamonds in the rough are obviously super rare at this level. Surely, if this guy had the upside we were hoping for, the Pies would’ve wrapped him up long ago i.e. we wouldn’t even have been in the conversation. That said, I reckon Bennell will help us win the flag. And I hope he does.

Why?

Looks season ending to me.

It seems players taken in the PSD are not on the same or similar contractual terms to players taken in the national draft (which I understand involves standardised terms). If we want Ben Sokol, presumably this is one reason why he’d hold off entering the national draft and instead come to us in the PSD (because we can offer him slightly better terms than he may otherwise get in the national draft). Also - it avoids the lottery of potentially getting picked up by clubs like the Dockers or the Crows. Or even worse, Carlton.

I totally agree. It’s a real pity the club didn’t see the importance of keeping your namesake in much the same way.

I agree - I have no issue with them going to the US to obtain knowledge from other professional sports, bond with each other etc. But I really hope the real learning is derived from looking just across the road at clubs like Richmond and Collingwood, where the head coaches learnt not to squeeze it so damn tight and trust and believe in those around them.

I don’t think it was ever in the cage.

Anyone get to the session?

Don’t necessarily disagree - I have NFI. I just try to do everything the dude yells at me to do.

Interestingly, at the gym yesterday, my instructor had a few of us do 3 one minute planks in the bottom section of a push up i.e. when your arms are bent and your chest is nearly on the ground and you have to hold that position for a minute. It’s pretty challenging. Anyway - one of my mates was whinging about doing it again on the third rotation - to which the instructor then replied: - the fitness coach of the German soccer team which won the World Cup in 2014 required the entire squad do this for 20 minute intervals regularly - you need to do just one minute. Harden up. I still can’t wrap my head around this. If this is true, I reckon Burgess’s Arsenal experience augurs very well for us. They are extremely fit dudes.

It seems the senior coaches have flown over to get them.

Even though history probably demonstrates that we should’ve picked Rory Sloane with the pick we used on Jamie Bennell (pick 35, I think), Bennell struck me as a super silky player with exceptional skills. He did some great things on the Members’ wing from time to time. And he always presented himself super well - articulate, respectful and humble. I really liked this bloke - never warmed to seeing him playing for the Weagles. Nice to read this article.

I’m going to leave it to the experts as to who we select with picks 3 & 8 - but, as an observation, Fischer McAsey has to be a made up name. Surely.

Yep, it’s plainly negligent for the club to lock away a young, required player with plenty of upside (who’s coming off contract next year) and who’ll attract a lot of interest throughout the entire season from a stack of other clubs, thereby creating a lot of unnecessary noise and distraction, for a further 4 years. Josh and Co are clearly dumb dumbs. As an aside, surely this reveals that the club think Harmes is set for a big 2020.

I love this.