Nasher

I came to terms with the fact that I don't know jack about footy years ago. Makes reading old threads much more bearable - and every now and again I surprise myself!

Makes for interesting reading. I had sympathy for the "not a priority" camp at the time, but in hindsight ProDee nailed it with his "he's better than all of them" argument. There's no doubt we are better off with him in the side. He's also a much better player than I realised.

5 minutes? Jeez, where were you for the first 4? Actually 5 minutes is probably fair - took that long for Richmond to get the ball in their half in that game. I thought Hibberd would be good but I didn't expect him to instantly hit his straps, thought he might take a while to get going. You wouldn't know he had an interrupted pre-season on top of 12 months out. How funny is it seeing Essendon sooking about their suspended players looking flat? Hibberd is going okay, maybe your players are just crap?

The first handball to space in that chain was brilliant. How did he even find space in that pack? Then he somehow ran on to it himself, received an illegal high tackle and somehow got it to Garlett. I'm pretty sure he has some kind of telekinetic power over the ball. I haven't seen another human who can do these things so often.

That's an incredibly dangerous tactic inside the top 5. They rolled the dice and lost. Sorrynotsorry.

I'm not sure if it's that or he just processes things really fast - I can't remember if it was in the JLT or round 1 but I remember one play where he was charging inside 50, looked set to have a flying shot at goal, then passed it to 20m out at the absolute last second. It's one aspect of his game I'd love to see more of - getting on the end of outside ball.

Hah, burn! It wouldn't surprise me if Clarry had a brother who was a plonker. That's a bit what Clarry looked like too, even to some professional scouts, before everyone realised what a gift he had. It's the speed in which his brain operates and can deliver signals to his hands that sets him apart. It's a one in a million trait, and without it he's just another player. Being built like a brick outhouse also helps, though that trait is a lot more common.

Lewis will play zero games at Casey. Will retire still a regular player in the MFC side.

Nothing against Keilty, but the fact that he's currently playing as first ruck for Casey makes a mockery of the couple of people who wanted to bring King in to the senior side. Not even ready to be the chief ruck at Casey yet. [Edit: that's from the round 1 report. By the sounds of it, King was first ruck in round 2.] Let's just leave our undeveloped rookies alone. This isn't an issue they need to be concerned with. We will have to make do with part timers until one of the big men recover.

A wrong being on a much smaller scale than another wrong is still a wrong. Not making it to the centre bounce as the ruckman isn't a huge disaster but it's also not a very difficult thing to get right. I don't recall ever seeing it happen before.

I would. When you're the nominated ruckman, turn up for the effing bounce. No excuses.

This is probably the thing that has me most stoked. His skills were on display last year so that hasn't come as a surprise, but I thought it would take a good few years to get up to AFL midfielder fitness - with the possibility that he may not ever. When he came back to pre-season out of condition I was thinking "here we bloody go".

I hope the coach was as livid about that as I was. Where the hell were Watts and Gawn?

It feels a little bit like nitpicking to criticise a 19 year old with his second consecutive 35 possession game, who also marks and tackles, for a bit of ball overuse in a game where our forward line was cramped and dysfunctional. I understand the criticism is intended to be constructive, but boy are we setting the bar high. I expect these sorts of issues will be resolved with experience. He's a baby still and already our best player.

I thought for a minute you were quoting Prendergast. I was wondering what alternate reality I woke up in.

Unfortunately "lucked out" has become one of those expressions to have an antonymous double meaning. I died a little on the inside recently when Merriam-Webster added a definition of 'literally' to mean the same as 'figuratively'.

Yes, the strike rate gets progressively worse as you go down the draft. That has nothing to do with what I'm saying though, my argument was against the assertion that you need a special player with your top 5 pick (implication being that you should expect one) - history shows it doesn't work like that.

A top 5 draft pick improves your chances of getting a star by much less than you'd think. History is absolutely littered with top 5 draft picks that aren't stars. You *hope* you get one, but it's just as much pot luck as any other position in the draft.

Watts 2009, McDonald 2011.

Fair enough - probably a crud comparison in hindsight. I suppose my point is that it appears to be a regular feature in his game - most players would have done that about zero times in their careers.

I asked him and he didn't know either.

The Weideman running goal also featured a pretty handy one handed collect off the ground and handball to Petracca, not too dissimilar to the one in the Isaac Smith clip, though not under as much pressure. I wonder if he's got really big hands - seems like a very difficult thing to do at pace.

What does that even mean?

Vast improvement on the avatar old son.

Thought this would be a thread about picking Oliver. I love that they've been able to find gems late in the draft like Hunt, Hannan etc, but it's nailing those early picks that the previous bunch muffed that will project us towards the top 4. It looks so far that all of Oliver, Brayshaw, Petracca and Salem will at least be very good, with Oliver almost certainly going to be in the top echelon if not already. There's always misses in the top 20 but we seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. It's just such a relief knowing our key picks are in such good hands.