mauriesy

He's sure to be Reiwoldt, Brown and Cloke all rolled into one.

Where did I say 'everything just happens with draft picks'? Can you deny that Carlton's high draft picks over several years and their bonus priority picks have made a considerable difference to their progress?

It wasn't a great night for talls on both sides, and everyone dropped a lot of marks in the wet.

Big assumption. Trengove led the club in pre-season time trials, faster than Scully. Maybe there's another reason.

What happened was that Carlton was at the end of the long tanking period that started in the early 2000s, and we were well on our way to the bottom after having played finals the year before with an ailing team. Before 2008 Carlton recruited Walker with a priority pick #2, Murphy with a priority pick #1, Kennedy (who they later traded for Judd) with a pick #4, Gibbs with a pick #1, Hampson with a priority pick #17, Kreuzer with a priority pick #1, Judd with a traded pick #3 and Yarran with a pick #6. Despite the awful trades with us for Johnson and McLean, they did very well out of getting Henderson (a former pick #6) by dispensing with that sore named Fevola (some of whom on here would have liked to pick up). That's a strong basis for their whole resurgence (one we have not come close to matching) but it's taken them another 4 years to get to premiership contention ... 10 years all up. By that yardstick, anything earlier than 2016 and we'd be doing well, particularly since one of our priority picks did a runner and set us back two years.

Yes, but if you activate a first-round compensation pick in the year you get it (i.e. 2012), the pick comes at the end of the first round. If you activate it in subsequent years (i.e. 2013 onwards for picks received in 2012) they are placed after your first round pick. See The AFL's ruling in full That negates any first-round compensation pick from the GCS etc. for 2012. It's a considerable incentive to delay until subsequent years and is designed not to compromise the draft further for clubs that lost players to GWS in 2011..

Supreme optimist. Adelaide is a top 8 proposition. Richmond, St Kilda and the Bulldogs are playing much better football than Melbourne. Even Port Adelaide and the Lions have enough home game advantage to ensure they'll get more wins than Melbourne. 16th for me, or even 17th if the Gold Coast Suns can cobble together a few home wins.

Clubs have to nominate usage of compo picks before the start of the respective AFL season. I gather that to mean that any further compensation picks awarded to clubs that have players taken by GWS at the end of 2012 would not be able to be used until 2013, if I've understood the statement below correctly. Quote from Giants Draft Rules explained: Compensation picks Further, as part of the entry rules and in line with the rules that are in operation for the Gold Coast Football Club, Demetriou said the AFL Commission had again confirmed that any club that lost a player to the expansion side would be eligible for a compensation pick. Compensation picks will be tradeable and can be used by clubs at any time within five years covering the period 2011 to 2015. First round compensation picks can not be until the 2012 draft onwards. Clubs will be required to nominate the year in which they plan to use the compensation pick before the first round of the Toyota AFL season in that particular year.

Pigs might fly.

No it won't be. If you have, say, pick #8 and a compo pick at #9, and you trade #8 plus a player for, say #3, you still get your compo pick at #9.

Your first-round compo pick can't be 'bumped up'. It's directly after your original pick.

So you'd see the club's reputation for ethical business dealing in tatters (i.e. the commitment to Viney), all for the sake of a minor difference between three players? Remember that Judd went #3 behind Hodge and Ball.

Ah ... conspiracy theories! Every recruiter in the country knows how good Viney is. We've also let them all know by nominating him F/S with all the associated publicity.

Old, I know that. It would be good if no-one bid for him and we got him for #25, or on the outside chance we could do some sort of later pick deal.. But the idea of not taking him at #3 if GWS or GCS force our hand is fanciful.

You really think recruiters at all the other clubs are idiots?

If Stevens had read bigfooty, he would have probably seen the early 2012 draft assessment from 'Knightmare' (who seemingly has a quite good reputation) in which he places Viney easily among the top 10 (from which two, Crouch and O'Meara, went in the mini-draft last year). "Really competitive and hard inside midfield. Could have joined an AFL club as a 17 year old and been a regular. Not a big fella, but purely and simply he is the hardest player I’ve seen coming through the system and his attack on the ball, attack on the man and aggression on the field is without equal and the big reason why he is such a dominant player already. Wins all the hard, contested ball and as a 17 year old was doing better than most of the 18 year olds who got drafted early, so Melbourne will get very lucky to have young Jack who I’m sure will very quickly become a Mark Neeld favourite. Tackling is excellent. Is a real leader out on the field and is someone who really leads by his actions and hardness at the footy. Really high character guy and hard worker who will put time into his game until he becomes elite. Jack has very clean hands and uses it well by hand consistently. Big time accumulator. Left foot kick, can use his right. Kicking is generally very good and will continue to get better. Speed is good, but not elite. The big strength athletically is his endurance which without seeing any of his testing I suspect would be very, very good because he has such a high work rate." Later he says "Viney looks like a very top talent in this years draft and I wouldn't be shocked to see him become the best of the lot". Doesn't sound like a late first-rounder to me. Standard disclaimer: "Yes, I know it's only bigfooty".

I didn't ask what they, or anyone, thinks GWS believe. I asked what he is actually worth, by good talent assessment. That is an important question. If he is worth pick 1-10, all talk about shenanigans and deals are moot. We select him with pick 3. Especially since we've committed to him.

Can someone please provide me good evidence of where Viney is rated? Figures like "5-15" or "late first round" seem to be bandied round at will, when previously there is plenty of evidence that he is a 1-5 pick. I just wonder whether these ratings are being changed and concocted to suit hypothetical drafting arguments, rather than reflecting reality. If Viney is a 1-10 pick, and GWS/GCS force our hand, we take him at 3. Simple as that. I can't see any other option given that the club thinks he's good, we've committed and he trains with us. He's a tough bugger and exactly what the midfield needs.

I believe I read somewhere that we are the tallest team in the AFL. Why would we go for more talls? We definitely have the AFL's worst midfield. If we don't go for the best mids in the draft with our best picks, we're crazy.

I didn't write them off. I just said they hardly get to play (and hence their development and learning is not great).

Maybe the reason is we're just not good enough through the midfield. With all due respect to players like Moloney, Bate and Jones, they really should be the 5th or 6th best midfielders, not the ones we rely on every week (please don't take that as meaning I don't like what they do and how hard they try). The young players we were hoping to build a good midfield group around are just not there: Scully's gone; Blease, Gysberts, Grimes, Strauss, Tapscott and Jetta hardly get on the field, Bennell doesn't go, Morton's too light, Trengove is still learning. Now we're trying to cobble together a midfield by using Howe and Watts, who really should be on the end of leads provided by the others.

Just to clear things up, it's Tom Mc and Joel Mac.

I'm not so sure that one is more or less teachable than the other, but anyway, carry on.

Is there? What's the effective difference between bad skills and bad decision making when the outcome is a turnover?

Indeed, we must watch different teams. Based on the official disposal efficiency (%) stats from yesterday (below), Frawley, Rivers and MacKenzie contradict your list. In fact, they were among the best. Watts 83 Frawley 81 Rivers 80 McKenzie 79 Bate 75 Dunn 75 T McDonald 73 Trengove 69 Tapscott 67 Bartram 64 Garland 60 Bail 58 Howe 58 Jones 55 (his worst this year) Moloney 53 Morton 52 Jamar 50 J Macdonald 50 Magner 50 Davey 44 Clark 43 Sellar 25