george_on_the_outer

Great summary JoeBoy! And an absolute delight to read your contributions throughout the year. I find it amazing that you can sum up in 3 words what some people take 3 pages to write......

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Re-signing Toumpas is logical. At the end of the season Bail, Fitzpatrick, M.Jones, Riley, Jamar, McKenzie, Terlich will most probably go. That's 7 spots to fill with VDB to be elevated. Howe and Garland may leave 2 more spots. If Toumpas were not re-signed, his replacement pick would be in the 80-100+ range. In last years draft only 2 players were taken with picks over 80, across every club! What would be the better option? A pick at that range in a weak draft or a kid who has been injured for a substantial part of his 2 years at the club?

No...much prefer the truth! Well done again Joeboy, an positively accurate summation of the output of each player.

Expecting Freo to have some late withdrawals from their side. Time to give tired players a rest before finals ( Fyfe), yet not be so obvious about it like they did last year!

Problem is that Prestia is not the one who does the trades. It is GC.

I'm thinking a lot will depend upon trade week, and what the Academy clubs will need to be able to select their preferred players. We saw last year that the club was aggressive with the use of its picks, and the techniques used to get us the likes of Vince, Frost, and Lamumba involved using picks, particularly from traded out players. I also have utmost faith in Toddy Viney and Jason Taylor to find us the best deal, and to uncover some real talent. The real capability is not picking first rounders, but what you can find further down. Are we happy with our rookies this year? Vandenberg is a regular senior player, Harmes becoming that as well, and the remainder are not duds like we seem to have got when BP was running the show. ( made doubly worse because he couldn't pick first rounders either!)

For me the most outrageously talented player that I have seen in the Red and Blue. And that is saying something when I have seen Barassi, Flower, and Schwartz play. For me the only other player of similar capabilities was Liam Jurrah and his was also, sadly, too short a career. His output, as mentioned by QWERTY, was simply unbelievable. You went to a game never knowing if he was going to kick 8.1 or 1.8, but you knew he would get a ridiculous amount of exciting shots at goal regardless. However, he was a lazy footballer who never wanted to put in the work required to maintain an AFL career. Gary Lyon has some interesting insights into his attitude to pre-season in his book "Demon Within". HIs injury happened at Princes park when he smashed into the goal post backward in a marking contest. While he played on in further games and then at the Dogs, he was never the same again. I understand some very serious attempts have been made to locate and convince him to come out from his self enforced "hiding", even recently. But all to no avail. What could have been.......

People really only notice this because they notice the forward kicking the goal, especially if it is early in the quarter. It's all about getting the rotations going. The mids have usually only spent a small amount of time on the ground, and you want to keep them there for more than 1 or 2 minutes. The backs haven't done anything at all ( because the ball has gone down the other end). So the forward is the logical start to the process. As Moonshadow notes, the next rotation is bringing the forward back on, and probably moving his original replacement up to the middle, and a mid then comes off. If you don't start somewhere early you finish with 3 mids all needing a break at the same time.

Macca, you have hit the nail on the head dead centre. It is the unequal allocation of home games against "big" clubs that is sending smaller clubs broke. Our 4 Home games this year against Victorian clubs, 3 of which are St.Kilda, North, and Bulldogs....the lowest membership base Victorian clubs. Away games against Richmond, Hawthorn, Geelong, Essendon, Collingwood and Carlton. Who wins financially out of that deal? And perhaps the AFL could stop the falsehood about "blockbuster" games drawing in bigger numbers of spectators. While Essendon v Richmond might draw 80K, down the road Melbourne v St Kilda is drawing 40K. Total 120k. IF Richmond play Melbourne and Essendon play St.Kilda then each match will draw 60k. Total 120k. No more fans go through the turnstiles, but Richmond and Essendon get greater gate takings, when they get to play each other twice in a year.

Excellent news beelzebub. If ASADA get Dank on "attempting to administer", then Essendon are cooked as well. We can now see why WADA have asked for further time. It may make their case a "lay down misere"!

And this is the consequence...... http://www.afl.com.au/news/2015-07-06/afl-victoria-orders-asada-drug-tests-on-suburban-clubs?utm_medium=RSS

So why would Hawthorn or North want to play us in Tassie instead of the MCG?

I don't know about Macrae, but the Bulldogs are simply NOT going to be able to hold all their young players. Tom Boyd is taking a huge slice of the pie today and into the future, after Peter Gordon signed him up, when the captain and coach were removed. So how do they keep Bontempelli, Macrae, Wallis, Wood, Liberatore, Stringer, Hrovat, Talia and Picken happy on the list and under the cap? Like we have seen at GWS over the past couple of years, when Scully hogged all the salary cap. There will be some good players who have to be released.

Our performances over the past 7 years has seen us allocated "home" games against interstate sides, and neglibible "home" games against Victorian sides. We "scored" 7 of those this year! And only 4 home games against Victorian sides...St.Kilda, North, Collingwood and Bulldogs....3 of which will draw low crowds! A home game against Fremantle, GWS, Suns, Port, or WCE would be lucky to see $25K attend the game at the MCG. The financial break even is about this number. If it is a twilight game or a day of lousy weather, as happens in winter, the Club loses money. We make a profit of at least $500k playing in Darwin. It is the only viable option for the club, until it gets a draw which will make money at the gate for us at home. And it's not about members. They can't provide the same amount of money that the government of the NT pays us annually. And Hawthorn has a good number of "members" in Tassie, because with the small ground at Launceston, unless you have a membership, you don't get in the gate.

According to CH10 news the game is sold out, as it is Enrights 300th.....even more reason to avoid the place!

Jones was off the ground for the first half of the second quarter. He returned but then spent a good part of the remainder of the game on the HFF. I would guess that he was/is carrying an injury which is why he wasn't in the middle at the end.

The EFC Board did not know what was going on...That is why they commissioned the report from Ziggy Switzkowski. And that had a finding of a "pharmacological experiment" being conducted at the club.

Listening to SEN last night, the matter is with ASADA. I would think the actual testing has been completed. After all it has now been months since the A-sample. And I asume IF the B-Sample was a negative, there would be no need for ASADA.

Agree wholeheartedly. With 2 winnable games out of the next 4 ( after the Hawks), we need to make sure that we rest worthwhile players, so they can be ready to pick later. I would expect Jamar to be back as well, and hopefully Frost for the St.Kilda game. Sadly, once again this weeks selections shows the lack of depth in our list.

If ( as I suspect) we are still in the bottom quartile at year end, we will not be able to attract any big fish. Fortunately we have a smart recruiting team at the club today, who have sifted through the chaff and found some real gems. So expect to see a similar sort of approach again this year. Listening to the OX on SEN today he highlighted one of those that might be prised loose...Mark Bliclavs from Geelong. Geelong have Hamish McIntosh, Dawson Simpson, Rhys Stanley and Mitch Clark all in rucking roles. IF they attract Dangerfield back they will be absolutely up against the salary cap, if they aren't there already, and probably needing to move someone out to create space. And the one thing we DO need is a mobile, young ruck type, who can actually play football. OX said he would throw a bucketload of money at him, and I would have to agree.....

I think there is something else going on with the umpiring. The AFL is giving the free to air games the best umpires. So we see Roseberry and Nichols umpiring this week on Friday and Saturday night. The "left-over" games get the left-over umpires. So we keep getting the likes of Farmer and Schmitt.

There is a VERY easy way for Jack to get everyone off his back.......and he won't or can't do it. 7 possessions in your 100th game. It's a pity we don't have anyone pushing up from Casey to take his place, because we will get served up the same rubbish until we do.

.....and if you look at the list of 2015 sponsors, he has quietly added a few more since last year. http://www.melbournefc.com.au/the-club/sponsorship/2015-sponsors I just love the way he is building our off-field capabilities and results. A brilliant business man.

Totally agree. After just falling into the finals and then being kicked out 1 week later, one would think that they needed "something" to add to the list to take the next step. But they did nothing, and their first pick in the draft was number 12! I fail to see how adding 1 probably average player was going to improve their lot. The other team that did nothing was the Eagles, and they too have been found out at this early stage. The Blues were always going to get thumped this year. They didn't have a recruiting department of any merit until Silvani arrived back this year. ( Broekhurst as first pick at 19 ?) Their only modus operandi for the past 25 years has been with a cheque-book. And they will use it again at the end of this year, as Judd is sure to retire. The truth is they need a complete overhaul of their list and that will take many, many years.