Courtney_Fish

Dangerfield.

Spot on. Perhaps this is a game we shouldn't overreact about because even our better players stuffed everything up today. We can overreact next week.

All in good humour.

Hey, you might have something there. Mind if I quote you?

If we did ok this year finishing say mid-ladder, what else would would we need to to be a contender?

He had book group tonight.

I can see the defence being borrowed from. Also there's a tall on the centre line that may have to shift fwd. Will Roos ressist?

The player has to pay $1M for the rights.

I'll bet I could take postings from the pre-season training summaries of the last few years, change a few names and post them as for this pre-season and very few, if any, would know somethings not right. Going to training for a good few years I think there is only one thing I've noticed that I believe really indicated how they are going and that is how many things they fluff. ie the odd miskick or dropped mark. When they are going to have a good season, there's hardly any stuff ups. When they are ordinary they fluff say 1 in 10 and when they are good say 1 in 20. All this talk about attitude or traning style or whether the coach is there or what the players say etc doesn't say "". Oh, theres one other thing, I do think if a player has not had a full pre-season it really does handicap them.

Just wait for my thread about each players favourite colour.

Do you have a test question to determine if an article is positive or negative like "Would this article increase or decrease our odds?" Also, have you made any interesting obseravtions from what you've seen so far? I think what you're doing is very interesting but it must be very time consuming?

You mean it's worse than the current worst thread title I hold. A new personal best.

Did the mo go earlier and I'm the last to find out? Fun in the sun at Berry Street camp

Never mind Miley Cyrus, what's a yardstick?

Did we pick a winner for 2013? With Cale gone, the big Brent was wide open. I think it was a tight race with a lot of hands put up but no stand out. With the new season coming up it leads me to wonder what is the essence of what this award stands for. Obviously it's for the guy that continually disappoints but is it because he doesn't do the right thing once he's got the ball or he's pushed off it too easily or he doesn't go in for the hardball or looks great till he kicks it or maybe something else? I've got one guy in mind but I don't want to put the mozz on him. I so hope I'm wrong.

Can anyone report on what they did in the truck?

That's incredible because I've got Melbourne on top at the end of round 5 - ahead of Hawthorn by percentage.

"burn the house that the players have been training down" - lol "drinks with Campbell Brown." - Did he hit you?

Achilles injuries are very serious aren't they?

I may be hugely optomistic but I wouldn't find it unbelievable to reach the finals this year. A jump of bottom-dweller to finals are not that rare are they?

There's good and bad within any group. But these are the guys that will put their lives on the line to protect us and are called on do some of the worst jobs imaginable. I've seen one guy join the police as a happy-go-lucky character. 6 mths later he was still a really nice guy but you could tell he had to face up to some harrowing situations. I've also seen smart-A's trying to provoke police relentlessly without the police reacting. And how many people would still be alive if they paid heed to a cop's warnings?

No one gets there nose out of joint if it's given to an old guy but there's nobody appropriate on our list. Cross is the most senior and he is a great example from what everyone says but he was cast out from an ordinary team though this could have been because they are going for a re-build.

I seem to recall a player staying at a club because he was offered the captaincy but I can't remember who. I just want to add to my earlier post that obviously being a walk up start in a premiership team does not mean a player would be a good captain - and I'm not aiming that at any particular player.

I get a bad taste in my mouth everytime I read that someone would like to be our captain. I can't see any good coming from it. And I know that we didn't have a player nominated as elite. What I'm asking here is for people to list who they think would walk in to a premiership quality best 22. The 2 issues are related because I would hate to pick one or more captains that would not be a force in our next premiership attempt. In fact I'd be happy if the current captaincy/leadership setup was more or less maintained till after this season bcs I don't think there is enough to go on after the way we have been playing the last couple of seasons; some of the better players my not improve much in a better team and some our lesser players could shine in a better performing team. I'm also aware that a great captain can lift a team when they are playing badly. As an example, people (including myself) think Dawes has captain like qualities but would Dawes be an immediate selection in a premiership team? You may think 'certainly bcs he played in the Pies premiership team', but the Pies didn't think so. I think Frawley, Garland & Clark would walk right in to a premiership team. There's a few in the 'maybe' column but it's too hard to tell at this point.

Well we've spent a lot of effort analysing the past and insulting eachother but does anyone think there's still areas that could stop our improvement this year (besides injuries)?