drdrake

The Falcons/Cardinals, must be the theme song. Back in the 80's it was great to watch Stringa Ray,Wayne Ryder, Brian Cousins, Rob Wiley at Lathlain Park.

I agree with a number of posters our midfield looks to be the weakest link. We need to remember we already add another hard at high quality young midfielder next year and we have 2 first round picks that we can use either in the draft of at the trade table. I think we need some fast skilled ouside midfielders to complement want we already have.

The Perth Demons, the reason I support the Melbourne Demons. I played with a few of Leons cousins at Perth and it is good to see him back there. Perth Demons are like the Melbourne Demons great successful club through the 50's 60's and into the early 70's but hasn't been close since then and for a number of years we sat at the bottom of the ladder.

He is one big unit, it will be interesting to see his body shape changes over the next few months, at the moment he has rugby player legs, two big tree trucks

Good chance to look at this with our list completed and training under way, to me we are starting to get more options and balance on our list. Tall Backs: Frawley, Rivers, Garland, Sellar, Davis, McDonald Mid/Small Backs; Grimes, MacDonald, Bartram, Bennell, Nicholson, Morton, Tynan, Strauss Tall Forwards: Watts, Clark, Cook, Fitzpatrick, Williams, Sheehan Mid/Small Forwards: Howe, Petterd, Dunn, Davey, Blease, Green, Jurrah, Lawrence Rucks: Jamar, Martin, Gawn, Spencer Mids: Moloney, Jones, McKenzie, Gysberts, Trengove, Sylvia, Bail, Jetta, Taggart, Couch, Magner, Evans, Bate, Tapscott

Hopefully the deal has been signed and we are just waiting for the right time to announce. If the above it true we are just waiting until the new sponser is announced in January, the timing might be to kick of our membership campaign. To me it looks like we will start to drive our memberships early next year to date we haven't really had any real push unlike a few other clubs. We will hit 21,000 members before the christmas shut down and hopefully with the announcement of a new sponser and a successful NAB campaign we can push close to 40K by the start of the season.

Watching training today, if Jai Sheahan is there in the third or fourth round we will take him. I think we will take Leigh Williams, Couch, Sheahan and Cutterbuck

Davey has only this week joined the main group he is a month behind plus has been on restricted training for a number of months. If he can stay with the main group over the next month into January his running will improve. We all look at players that seem to struggle with the running, some are but as long as they can continue to improve each week and their testing results improve to club will be happy. I will guarentee you Blease, Gysberts, Davey and other players mentioned to be struggling will be the fittest that they have ever been and for the younger players it is about building a work ethic so each year they can build on this year.

Flash can't shake a tag because he has never worked hard enough to get a way from one. It is easy to tag someone that doesn't have a high work rate. Good to see our new coaches have studied our players well and know exactly what we need to do. We have the talent around the ball we just need for them to work for each other to create space. Nathan Jones has the potential to be a great clearance player the amount of times he gets his hands on the footy at stoppages just to be held up straight away is huge. If someone can create a little breathing space and Jones takes first option he will be very good.

Because we don't have to, China had nothing to do with him leaving and we have moved on. Let the media focus remain on him, which he couldn't handle last year, and we go about improving what we have. China is an interesting one, no doubt it would be a great place to strike up all sorts of business deals, it is one of the few countries with money in the bank and is the backbone of the Australian ecomony.

No one deserves the named captian. Our leadership group last year that included Moloney was disgraceful. I agree with a previuos post leave it with Green and throw the challenge out there for someone to step up. To me we have Green next year and 3 contenders for 2013 Moloney-he needs to play well in the games we are losing, if you look at least year Moloney beat up on weaker midfields but went missing agasinst better midfields. Trengove-Just keep improving start to dominate in a few games Grimes-Get your body right and play 20-22 games

I have been lucky to attend a few training sessions and you always look for one player that is unexpectively training the house down. To me we have two this year in Bate and Bennell. Bennell in particular has looked good when the footy has come out and hopefully his efforts will see him lock away a small defender role.

What has happened to Adam Maric?

It's amazing the differing opinions and perspectives. I thought today was the hardest session they have had, the running was huge, I don't know what people consider 200m but they ran a lot more than that. It three of sets 2 x 400m, 2 x 300m, 2 x 200m with 1-2 min rest between each one, it was hard work and even our better runners struggled with this. It was solid and the last set the players were spent. I was impressed by the improvement in Blease and Gysbert a long way to go but the worked well in the first 2 sets. The highlight to me was the main group is growing, today was the largest amount of players in this group. Our club to me look to be getting a few things right, I am impressed by the programs certain players have that aren't working with the main group and how the injured players all have someone taking care of them. Jurrah has a rabbit that paces him and for the first time, today Jurrah looked comfortable with his work often beating his rabbit. The drills are the same as past seasons, lots of running zone set ups. Good to see Davey complete the session, he struggled through the running, today saw him and Blease fill that small forward role. Martin will play forward and be the second ruckman, through the drills it looks like we wil have three tall forwards a small the a couple of mid size. Still amazed that AFL players can't him a target over 15m and kick on there opposite foot, the only player that did was Jack Watts, every other player tried to kick accross their body. We have some tall boys on our list and some are starting to get a bit of size about the.

The way I thought the rule worked was if you turned 30 in the year off the next season, so if they turn 30 in 2013 before September they can go onto the VL.

You might also find Davey and I think Jamar will qualify for Veterens List.

Ht I can tell you from experience you will lose a little speed if you focus on increasing your endurance, it won't be noticable because as mentioned he will be able to maintain his top speed for longer periods of time. Our recently departed No1 pick is not quick but what he can do because of his endurance is run at his top speed longer than most which will make him look quick similar to Chris Judd.

Good post, it is the old fast twitch slow twitch agrument, Blease and Jurrah will never have the endurance of a Jones or Bail. By working them to increase endurance wil they lose some speed, yes but what it will enable them to do is maintain their top speed for a longer periods of time. You wouldn't notice of the mark, accelartion but if you put it over 20-30m it would be minimual 0.1-0.2 of a second. With the way the game is played burst players are becoming a liability you need players that have the endurance to run both ways and that is something both Blease and Jurrah need to work on. Great to burst out on the attack but you have to be able to chase and work hard back to create the defensise pressure. The one that is more concerning is Gysberts doesn't have speed and doesn't have a tank, he needs to be running like Jones and Bail and hopefully over the next year we can see this.

You need to think big, our coaching staff would be the biggest in the AFL, most of them look like they can still play and would be 192cms +

It's not about Viney getting past a first rounder it is about a club with a pick below us bidding this pick for Viney, if we finish 12th this year if the clubs below us don't think Viney is worth a top 6 pick it will cost us our second round pick. We have committed to Viney unless we finish in the bottom 4 I doubt any club will let us get away with not using our first round pick.

They guys usualy have 2-3 seasons per day, the stuff we see is only a small percentage of what they do.

Do you follow the media? The world is that close to slipping into another financial crisis that you would want to close a deal as soon as you can. Australian Retail is dead at the moment, get ready for the biggest Post Christmas sales to try and spark some life into retail. Hopefully the club is there abouts or we could be giving the front of our jumper away come Feb next year.

If we turn back the clock 12 months Bailey and the club were pushing Liam Jurrah to the media and members to continue building the Hype around our club. The isuue we faced through the season Liam was pitted against the best defenders in the competition with little support or protection. By mid year he looked done flat, maybe the management of Liam could have been handled better with a few more rests through out the year. On his fitness, we have to manage him. I have no issues with him working on a dedicated training program designed for Liam. We all know his ability and the last thing we want to do is push him to hard if his body isn't ready for it. As long as he is ready to join the main group by January he will be Ok and considering he will go into 2012 as our third or fourth forward and not our primary focal point get ready for an exciting year.

He wasn't on his own in the bad kicking stakes, a little nerves he will get better.

Training went well, just cut and paste Friday's report and it was the same. Good news out of today, we are getting more players in the main group or spending time working with the main group. The only players that didn't join the main group for any part of the session was Sylvia, Moloney, Petterd, Bail, Bartram, Morton, Lawrence, Evans, Jurrah (they are just pumping miles into his legs) - I may have missed a couple but the rest either did the running with the main group or joined in with whne the balls came out. Running 12 x 200m would have been aiming for around 30sec 200m, then 2min to get back to the starting line to do it again slow jog back for most. Again worked on the zoning like Friday, thank god it is November because we sucked at this, it was harder as the ground was made narrower by about 5-10m each side. If you go to training expect to see this drill as ne need to learn how to defend and how to break through the zone. From the set up of both teams look like we are working to have three talls up forward, the whites had Martin Clark and Watts working together with Watts and Martin working through CHF. They are working hard but have a lot of work to do over the next 3 months.