mauriesy

If we have a lop-sided profile after 2 or 3 premierships, I won't care very much.

I'm sure Weideman wil be happy to spend time at Casey "filling out a bit more" while a has-been like Cloke takes his place in the team. I don't see how, along with Hogan and Watts, you could fit all four. I think Pedersen is under-rated. He adds a certain amount of hardness to the side when he's in, runs well and he's a good contested mark.

I loved the Petracca goal where Hawthorn virtually took it backwards from the centre to our goal square themselves, then coughed it up. Or the one from Frost to Gawn, just after Dunstall is talking up how hard it is to pick a way through Hawthorn's zone defence.

Winning any match by 5 goals is only part of the maths. A 30 point win where the score is 60-30 is a bigger percentage booster than where the score is 120-90. It's hard to make up 9% in the last three rounds, so I expect we'd just miss anyway.

I'm not sure how we would get Hibberd, Prestia and Hurley in the one year, especially without a first-round 2016 draft pick.

The people who disagree have the same right to respond as Joeboy does in the first place. It's called healthy discussion. Joeboy is not really enhancing his reputation by getting all shirty about it.

It should be "I h8", shouldn't it?

I think it's just as easy to dismiss disposal efficiency to suit an argument as it is to promote it. It's really easy, when confronted with a good disposal efficiency of some player you are trying to shoot down, to simply say that "DE% is rubbish". If an "efficient" disposal includes a disposal to a player who is immediately tackled, or who doesn't win the ball etc. that is true of every player on the list, not just the ones you think are 'clanger makers'. The important part of DE% is comparison, not raw disposals. Generally someone who is 75% is a better disposer thah someone who is 65%.

We are trying to move the ball quickly, wth the intent of getting our forwards one out. Unfortunately we overdo it, the movement is almost manic and beyond our current skill level. Either we need to slow down just a little and make better decisions, or get better at the skills to keep moving it faster. The speed is why the error level rises and why kicks and handballs miss their target.. I think this will come over the next year or two. We have so many players under 50 games who have such a lot of development left in them. I just wish supporters would be a little more patient with this team (previous years are irrelevant). I'm totally over the nuffies who just yell out "kick it". Yes, you can overdo handball, but the aim is to keep possession and work your way out of trouble. At one stage yesterday, the crowd around me were yelling "just kick it" when we were handballing out of trouble then switching the play in the backline. The ball ended up going downfield with an overlap on the far side for a mark to Hogan (he missed). If "we'd just kicked it" it would have been to a contest with a 50% chance of losing the ball (or maybe more given they have a lot of tall marking targets who intercepted well at times), or worse still to a lone Suns player. I can see what this side is trying to do, and it doesn't always (or often) come off. It will get better.

6. Watts 5. Tyson 4. Gawn 3. vandenBerg 2. Stretch 1. Frost

Needs to maintain the manic attack for longer though.

Note however that there are two meanings to the verb 'practise'. Practising your football skills is not the same as practising your religion. A practising solicitor or doctor is not a beginner.

You guys are always centred on rock'n'roll and blues. Try Andrs Segovia or John Williams. Or in the women's league, Yang or Isbin.

Indeed. It can be performance anxiety. Like a golfer who has a few really good, relaxed practice swings, but when they're faced with actually hitting a ball to a direction and distance they tense up. Relaxed goal kicking at training might be great, but when the pressure is actually on in a match to score it's different.

I'll take that.

The stilted action players use these days for set shots is half the problem. When I see players going back 30 metres then walking two-thirds of the way back in, before they start running to kick it, I worry. They're-over examining it mentally. Jason Dunstall and Tony Lockett had a more natural kicking action for goal. Jack Watts likewise. Buddy Franklin might run in an arc but when he kicks the ball it's fluent and natural just like his field kicking. Josh Kennedy and Jesse Hogan might have stuttering run-ups but at contact they're both OK.

Gaining Hurley (which I think is remote) without losing Tom would be massive. But simply swapping one for the other is minimal advancement. Hopefully Weideman or Hulett will eventually fill the CHF role.

Putting an old horse in a different paddock still makes it an old horse.

He is a #9 draft pick with huge potential. Would you have put Hogan down the bottom of the list last year when he hadn't played a game?

That's no more leadership than are Tom's good attributes.

Wayne Carey said on Talking Footy this week that it was about time AFL clubs approached the skill of goal kicking more seriously. He has always been surprised that clubs don't employ at least a part-time goal-kicking coach.

Good reading, you've spent a lot of time on it. IMHO, there's no way Harmes and especially Bugg are above Petracca. Or Weideman below players like White or Terlich. Or Brayshaw below Kennedy, Wagner and vandenBerg.

Well, I'm more interested in the 'ledger'. What does he give the team, for example saved goals and goals scored from intercept marking? I suspect they're a lot more than the goals he 'costs' us. There is not a single A Grade defender in the AFL who does not 'cost' a goal or two every week, otherwise teams would have zero points against. In my opinion, Tom McDonald is one of the non-negotiables at our club. Experienced 100-game defenders like him don't grow on trees. I can't see where we would actually gain by literally swapping him for, say, Hurley, or another good midfielder like Prestia. And especially for another B Grade midfielder like Mitchell. This is not swap cards, although many on here think trading and drafting is.

It's not "news". It's a hopeful opinion.

Who says? He's in the leadership group and last year came third in the B&F. Unless everybody wants to keep potting him ad nauseum. And who says Hurley can?