drdrake

Depends what happens at Gold Coast, Al Clarkson will be coaching next year and it will be either gws or gold Coast. Afl need high profile coaches at these clubs to try and get some interest on the side. These clubs and AFLW will be costing the afl a lot.

It's been an interesting watch over the past month in particular. Teams are more focused on stopping us scoring then trying to score. That just leaves our backline set up behind the ball. The fear of the opposition is great, it is we don't want to get blown away early so defend hard, then they realise they need to score and we bang on 5 goals quickly to kill the game.

Walk past any primary school playground at lunch, basketball courts will be full, soccer balls will be out, you will be lucky to see a football. AFL clubs once visited schools to run clinics, that turned into a marketing call to increase club membership rather than get players into the game. Getting the kids to play is hard to find a half decent coach is even harder. My son goes to a high school that prides itself on sport and AFL Catholic school, 180 boys in his grade, 11 tried out for AFL, 50 for Basketball, 35 for Soccer, I think he said that only about 8-10 kids in his entire grade play AFL

Gil has done some amazing things for the AFL, keeping the game running over the past 2 years big tick, the growth of female participation another tick. Now the whack, the expansion of AFLW and AFL GWS/GCS will be the biggest financial challenge they new CEO has. The AFLW will need to be heavily subsidized by the AFL along with the two AFL expansion clubs. The utter neglect for junior boys particularly in Victoria will be a massive issue for the new CEO, the game outside the increase participation of females is in a rapid decline at grass roots level, this was pre-covid and post covid we are seeing further drop off. AFL is to hard, you need so many volunteers to get a junior side on the park, Coaches, Team Managers, Umpires(massive shortage), Trainers, Time keepers, Umpire Escorts, each week a side needs 6-8 volunteers for your team to play. Basketball you need a coach and scorer. They will say the game has never been in a better place, might look that way in the top tier comp but underneath that there is massive issues.

Essendon and Port had game plans to keep the ball and shift us as much as the can. Worked for Essendon in patches due to the width of the MCG, never going to work at Adelaide Oval. We just sat back and waited for them to eventually go forward. I don't think Weideman or TMac did anything wrong the way Port defended and we moved the footy didn't help the tall forwards. One will make way for B Brown but I don't think Benny would have been to upset missing last night.

Playing for school mid week then local club on the weekend, best of both worlds. You got to play with School mates then have another circle of friends from outside school

A few State schools are jumping on the sports academy bandwagon but these still can't compete with the PSA schools

The coaching you get at PSA schools compared to your local football club is calk and cheese. Most top end private schools have ex AFL players/coaches coaching their program, local footy you get the dad who puts his hand up, you might be lucky and get a good one but a lot don't. I'm from the West, we don't have that prestigious private school, you either go into the City or head to Geelong, that explains why players drafted from the Western Jets is extremely poor in comparison to the NAB clubs in the East. There was a series of articles a little time back that went through the states, basically saying if you aren't in the private school system in Metro Vic you have a very slim chance of being drafted

That's the key keep winning gives you options to rest players, ensure little niggles don't become big ones, give the players time to recover from injury with no pressure. Beat Port this week, 0 and 4 is a long way back for them.

I bet we are wearing the royal blue jumper

You could safely say Melksham will be gone, Hibberd is more likely to retire then play on. Then there are a number of fringe players that might look elsewhere or be cut off the list.

All about smoke and mirrors. Make something look like it has a bigger audience than it actually has to attracted sponsorship, TV $$$$$. I'm based in the West, my kids school if assigned to North Melbourne but the Bulldogs also get in there. A couple of years ago both clubs visited the school offering free tickets to the students, to access these free tickets you had to go online to register. We did this away game for the Dees V both clubs, as soon as I registered for the tickets receive Welcome to Bulldogs and Roos membership for all 4 of us. Free tickets that turned into a one game free membership. The MCG you basically have about 50,000 capacity outside MCC and AFL members, Marvel is less, seems like a lot of clubs with the arm chair members

Formally known as tanking. Still can't believe we are the only club to ever be sanctioned for tanking. WCE would need to off load players to fit him in. Their salary cap has been busting at the seems and they would need to off load a player like Gaff or Yeo to fit him in. Freo might have the space in their cap, but even with the poor performance yesterday you still expect them to be 7-12th on the ladder.

April is going to be a very interesting month of Football. A few side with Top 4 aspirations and a couple more to make the 8 could find their season over if they can't find some wins. Bulldogs, Port, Essendon, GWS would not have expected to be winless after 2 rounds.

Posted last week that the post match outburst was putting up smoke to hide the issues at the Bulldogs. Really 1 forward, weak backline and strong mids with no ruck. They need Bruce back to have any chance

Dogs backline is just terrible

No Salem goes out, they maintain the structure with 3 talls, a hybrid mid tall in Smith with Hunt, Bowey and Brayshaw. It is a structure we like playing with hibberd played the Smith Role on GF with Petty, May and Lever, plus Salem, Rivers, Bowey. Bringing in Weiderman helps keep the forward structure with like.

I think Smith goes to lukosius, tmac to Casbolt, May gets Chol

I can see one change Out Salem In Weiderman TMac as much as I hate seeing him down back to play there

English will be an Eagle next season, Jackson will sign 3 year deal with Melbourne. Freo have built a pretty good list, West Coast is stuff and will be going hard for new players

Bevo loves doing this type of stuff, creating the us V's the world type attitude for his players to feed off. The teams performance for 3 qtrs of football was terrible, Bont had no influence which adds to the stop Bont and you stop the dogs. A Journo's job is to unearth stories, report on the information they have and hopefully be the first to break it. It seems that the info Morris had was spot on and the dogs are upset it got out. That isn't the Journo's issue that is the clubs issue.

Maybe realise his defensive players are ordinary and forward line is 1 player.

Recovery today is making the side watch that game last night, one side playing pretty hard both defensively and attacking, the other going through the motions to get to round 1.

As someone already mentioned you need to have something else in with it to make it work. I've always said Reach foundation should be included in the space, you have the multi purpose usage for reach that can also be used for functions.

Do you know what the club has done under Pert, turning a culture of losing into a winning one. I have been critical on the club that we just roll over and accepted losing for to long, 2018 we all thought we are tracking great then 19 and 20 smacked us in the face. No question the Pert review and the personal changes made produced the flag in 2021, now the even harder part sustaining this success, but at least we have strong foundations to continue to build.