Nasher

Yep, two horse race from here I reckon. Dom needs an average of 10 points more than Jones/Viney in the last 4 rounds, currently he has averaged 2 points less each round. I can't see a 12 point turnaround when the average score of the leaders has been about 15 - he'll close the gap as he finished the year strongly, but not by much. Viney or Jones it is.

Fair enough. Shame, but probably not a great shock at this point in his career. Until Terlich I had never seen a player have a line drawn through his name at selection two years before his contract was up, but there you have it.

I didn't see the Casey game, but the general gist reminds me of Hogan's game against Carlton - clearly a dominant force, but in the wash-up was excessively penalised by people due to the missed shots at goal, as if those undid all the rest of his play. I know stats aren't everything, but I find it difficult to believe Terlich wasn't amongst the 6 most influential players on the day with those kind of numbers.

How about Terlich - 24 possessions, 15 marks if you don't mind, 8 i50s, 4 tackles, 2 goals 3 behinds, not in the top 6 players.

Going out on a limb and suggesting he won't be on our list next year...

I see a question mark in there but I don't see a question. Surely that's not an actual question?

It's an Australian passtime to bag out the states we don't live in, I've just learned to accept/ignore it. Tassie is always the butt of everyone's jokes and quite a few misnomers, for example people thinks it rains a lot in Hobart - nup, average annual rainfall is less than any other capital except Adelaide. It rains like a bastard on the West Coast, but the Eastern edge of the state is all beaches and sunshine. The other one that made me LOL was people commenting on how stupid it was to play footy in Hobart in the middle of winter, as if the 2 degrees difference between Hobart and Melbourne made a huge difference, and that nobody had ever frozen their azzes off at the MCG in July.

I wondered the same thing; what that works out to as an hourly rate. $5k by 22 weeks is $227 a week. What's the time commitment?

If both came in, I wonder who'd go out? All the marginal MFC players - namely Smith and King, were already playing in the dev league. Of the Casey players (excluding 23rd man Ferreira), McInernie is the only fringe senior, having played 4/12 (seniors/dev league) games, but he is a ruckman so may need to play for team balance. Munro and Morris have played 17/2 and 15/2 respectively, while Scott, Smith, Keilty and Hutchins have not set foot in the dev league this season and won't now. I admit I know absolutely nothing about the Casey players, but someone is going to be stiff, as all have contributed to the season. It may also be that the MFC are conservative on JKH and put him on ice for the season. Otherwise, the game isn't for another two weeks, so he's got plenty of recovery time. Chances of Terlich being rubbed out?

I've often wondered what would happen if you just stuck another midfielder in the circle and didn't contest the ruck at all.

Thanks WJ. You'd hope the club would be having a look - when was the last time our club took a player from its own VFL side? Shane Valenti and Stefan Martin came from that avenue but I can't think of anyone more recent than that.

Mo, you said this: You've got from "draft or trade in someone...", then went on to list people who are going to be hard to get because they'll have no incentive to come here. So what if there are untried ruckman out there with more upside than Spencer if they're not available to play for the Melbourne Football Club and are unlikely to come here.

Yes, they're out there, but are they available to us? If they're not players we are likely to able to trade in, then there's no point discussing them. Mitch King is a crazy example, he's already on our list and clearly isn't a viable backup to Max yet. You may have noticed, he and Spencer are *already* both on the list. Gawn's season this year will have been a big fat red flag for any ruckman with aspirations to become a senior AFL ruckman, which is surely all of them. Nobody in favour of giving Spencer the flick has given a viable alternative yet for mine.

I have to admit I'd never heard of him until following the Casey feed yesterday. Pretty interesting selection in a final with an already pretty tall Casey side - must have shown something. Listed as 203cm and 100kg so he's probably physically ready. Any idea why he'd been playing in the dev league for the bulk of the season?

"Morrish Medal Preview" WJ?

What would their incentive be to come?

You say that is if it's easy.

A satisfactory ruck list would look something like this: 1 x Senior ruckman 1-2 x 21-22 year old ruckmen half developed, can fill in for the senior ruckman in case of injury 1 x junior ruckman If you exclude Spencer, ours looks like this: 1 x Senior ruckman 1 x Junior ruckman who injured an ACL in round one of the VFL, so is back to square one next season 1 x Project who fell away badly and will probably be delisted The problem is that that we've got no "nearly ready" ruckmen in that middle class, and they're going to be hard to find - who's going to let go a young ruckman they've invested a lot of time in, and what's their incentive to come here? Spencer's replacement needed to come from the draft 3 years ago. Now we're stuck with him until Mitch King can complete a few years of his apprenticeship, because otherwise the risk is too great. We should really be looking at a ruckman in the draft.

Brent Harvey, possible destination retirement, likelihood 50%. Who writes this garbage, seriously?

Thread is 13 posts lighter. It'd be nice if the occasional thread could continue without becoming a stacks on. Protip: if you're not interested in participating in 'list management' discussions, don't open the threads.

Who do you propose then? Criteria: Must have a developed body, capable of competing as a first ruck at AFL level Must be willing to sit in the twos all year if Gawn doesn't get injured It's an extremely limited field I think. Nobody springs to mind for me. I get why people don't love Spencer, but there's more to it than how highly you rate the individual player. It wouldn't take much development from Mitch King next year to render Spencer redundant - King just needs to get to a level where he's fit and we think we could scrape by if he had to fill in in the seniors - but we're not there yet. This is why Spencer is still on the list.

Macca didn't hand out this week's lotto numbers as well by any chance? Was spot on by the sounds of it.

Because our game doesn't feature the club name of any AFL teams. Dur.

If we get rid of all the players you've suggested, we'll have picks 44, 61, 78, 95, 112, 129, 146, as well as 163 if you decide we need another and delist Matt Jones. Top plan mate. The contracted JKH, ANB and Dunn/Garland and possibly Lumumba are next year's delistings if they don't get going. You need to churn your list every year, it's just a fact of life that you can't get rid of all your players at once.

Your post was #1514 on my counter, which includes deleted ones.