Nasher

Watching Freo vs Richmond Rog? Saw Dawson iron out Morris with a late spoil - you must have felt so conflicted.

What, don't you do that?

Ah, fair enough then.

You guys need to experience the awkward meeting someone off the internet for the first time. "Oh hey! I'm... err.. Nasher... um, don't call me that though please..."

Do you regular Casey goers ever make an effort to meet up and say g'day? bjDee, KC, Angry, DemonDave, hells bells etc. Or do you ever see other fellas eyeball deep in smart phones, wondering if they're the other Demonlanders?

The purpose of this trade was to bring in a midfielder further in to his development. Just like the deal that saw us giving away this year's first round pick for Oliver (or was it Weideman?), the purpose was to fast track our midfield development. I don't think Tyson has to be as good as the player taken at two (Kelly) or any of the other players we took between there and Salem at 9 for it to have been a success. Tyson immediately made our midfield better, which was the goal; we didn't have to wait years for the trade to bear fruit. Certainly it would have been possible to draft a player who immediately made us better (Bont), but history shows you have to be very lucky to get that kind of result. It's trading an unknown for a solid known: forget Kelly or Bont; we could just have easily have drafted Scharenberg. Imagine the sliding doors topic then. I wholly disagree with rjay's assertion that Salem is not a pick 20 worthy player. History shows that as many players in the 10-20 range completely flop as they do forge a career, and you get very few gun players in that range. Salem has the tools to become a decent player, and I'm pretty confident he will. That would be a better than average result for a pick 20, which was essentially the price.

Am I right that vanders will be making his Casey debut?

*tears hair out*

Indeed. Foot soldier yo-yo is for when you're losing by 60+ every week and they're getting massacred. Someone to play for Jetta, and perhaps OMac for Garland, and that's it for mine.

He's without doubt now the most consistent Jetta. Not being blessed with the pace of his cousins has probably proven to be a blessing rather than the curse we thought it might be, as it has forced him to bust a gut developing the other areas of his game. He's definitely the toughest Jetta, too.

These threads are always interesting. Some try to post what they would do with solid reasoning, some try to predict what will actually happen even if it isn't what they would do, and others just post outright fantasy. Five changes - as if.

It may have worked (you could never say without having been present), but you'd think that tactic has a pretty short shelf-life as Hogan gets more experienced and therefore better at handling the psychological side.

Agreed. FWIW I tried to frame this as a positive thing (as that's how I saw it) rather than a WOE IS ME, HE MIGHT LEAVE type thread.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-05-16/rivals-circle-free-agent-demon-defender-neville-jetta Apparently sparking a bit of interest outside the club. Doesn't strike me as very likely to leave - I expect the club values him greatly and he will get an offer accordingly, and he seems to me to be a particularly loyal person. I reckon he will want to be a part of what is to come. It's definitely been an amazing career turnaround, and just goes to show what can be done with some struggling players with a decent system around them. He's become one of our most consistent players and definitely a personal favourite of mine.

I spent the whole game watching their midfield tear through the middle, in numbers, time after time, thinking if only Dunn were playing!

With a dynamic, mobile, hard working forward line, I find that very difficult to visualize. It's almost like you think if a forward has a solid defender pull up next to him, he's going to stand still, shrug his shoulders and say to his mids' "oh well, guess you'd better kick it to someone else then".

Roos also turfed half the team he inherited. I think that says plenty about the confidence he had in the list. You can't compare the two really. The legwork had been done for Beveridge; Roos started from scratch. A better comparison for Beveridge will be Goodwin 2017.

I don't think it's as simple as someone being "on" Stringer (or Riewoldt). If the supply is reduced, or at least under more pressure, it becomes inherently more difficult for a forward to function. We saw this with our own forward line - their defenders are a bunch of no-names, but we didn't have one winner on the day other than maybe Hogan. I reckon the days of one defender being responsible for one and only one forward are long gone. Stringer's output was purely a function of their midfield dominance.

There seems to be a lot of players in helmets this year - Daniel, Murphy, Griffiths spring to mind, and someone from Sydney was wearing one too. Are these concussion related? I know the general consensus has been that they don't help, but I can't see any other reason for them starting to make an appearance.

Thought the scoreboard was reflective of the difference. It's disappointing, but I thought the effort was there, just too many poor kicks, dropped marks etc against a class side. Bit of a reminder of where we are at I guess. Onwards and upwards.

Cue Redleg: "and some people on here wanted him delisted last year". I'm one who thought he would be delisted (deliberate omission of the word "want") last year, and probably picked up on the rookie list, purely because that's what usually happens to players who don't look close after two years on the list. Glad to have been wrong and that he's managed to stay fit and tie it all together so far this year. His dash off half back is impressive and he's got strength in the air that I didn't expect. I look forward to seeing what he can do over the next few years.

Why would they do that? Seems a very risky strategy even if nobody was in doubt. Never know when someone will do a hammy warming up, or wake up the morning of the game with gastro. Bizarre.

We *always* lose to teams in hopeless situations? I know we like to have really short memories around here, but have you already forgotten last week? We're fresh off demolishing a team in a hopeless situation.

Confident, because I find a win when I was confident far more satisfying than a surprise win. Of course, losing feels heaps worse, but we're a good enough side that I'm happy to take that risk with my own emotions.

It'll be interesting to see which plays first. I have nothing to go off other than Casey reports, but it sounds as if Hulett is already phyiscally developed. It also sounds like he's improving with each game - the earlier reports were of him being reminded to get in to position and so forth. Weideman by the sounds has all the skills, but requires more size. Early days, but how exciting would it be if it turned out we picked up two genuine key forwards in one draft?