Nasher

Yeah, I was struggling to find a decent recent one.

Not very often that I'm grateful for mega-threads, but wow, we sure have been tracking this kid for a long time.

"No tagging" is actually a rule in the TAC?

Is it that bad really? He's probably "bottom quartile" in the AFL (and someone has to be) and I know he has a funny action, but in the error riddled game just gone, I don't recall any Tom McDonald howlers, and he was involved in the game plenty. It's probably a case of being way overplayed amongst supporters because a small number of very bad errors stick in people's mind and skews their perspective.

They're not. You can "see where a player is at" by seeing how they go at Casey. If that was the case we'd have seen every player on the list play. They must just believe he's adequately playing the role he's being asked to do.

There's the "you have to be open minded to any offers in case the deal of a lifetime falls on your lap" view that bub and co put forward, and then there's the "be a little bit realistic about what he's worth in a trade vs what he's worth to our team" view that rpfc and stmj have cast. Of course I'd trade Tom for Gaz Jr, but in reality I'd be staggered if we were offered a deal that landed us a player more valuable to us than our best 'gorilla' defender. I consider myself in the "I'm open minded for offers but as sceptical as could possibly be that we'd get anything that would make us a significantly better side so I wouldn't waste any time on it" camp.

Watts had always played footy anyway - he played both sports, and gave up basketball to concentrate on footy. He wasn't a 'convert' in the same way Martin was. So I'd say Prendergast recruited zero basketballers.

I doubt Martin would be selected ahead of Jamar as first ruck, and he sucked as second ruck. He got lucky with Leuenberger and West going down; had they not I expect he'd have finished out the year without getting a game and been delisted. If he'd stayed, I don't think it would have panned out the way it has for him at Brisbane. I would not call it a mistake. I was also lead to believe that he was happy to go.

I guess, but surely any player, no matter what role, is expected to touch the ball every now and again. When McKenzie went back to Casey, there seemed to be a clear message to work on his ability to hurt the opposition as well as be defensive. I realise Barry is young and at a radically different phase of development, but I'd have thought the place to develop in that manner would be at Casey.

I'm not attempting to defend his 'efforts' - though as AoB rightly says above, it's not effort that the issue, it's skill. I recognise that he makes too many mistakes. I see that that miss last night hurt the team. What I don't agree with is the way he gets singled out. I raised the Tyson point not to single out Tyson, but to make the point that there are many others who make terrible mistakes, none of whom get raised on here. What about Bernie? He's made several really bad kicks out of defence in recent weeks that have directly resulted in opposition goals. Again - nothing gets said. Only the Grimes errors are discussed. As for being a terrible captain - he's been 'voted' in by his peers for three consecutive years and endorsed by two different coaches, at least one of whom clearly knows a bit or two about leadership. The club must think he does something right.

Fair enough. It's woefully hard to make an informed decision when I don't have any first hand info to go off.

Not sure what to do about Barry either. Hasn't spent much time on the ground obviously, but doesn't look likely to touch the ball at this stage. I'm doubtful he's adding more than JKH might, though it sounds as if JKH has been poor at Casey. Seems like the old cliche of shuffling deckchairs.

I deserved that.

Garland was horrible?! We all have our biases - not sure if it's me or C&B on this occasion.

In: Jetta Out: Terlich Hard when, by the sounds of it, the only two players who did anything at Casey were the worst kick of the footy on our list (when our side clearly has a surplus of those, and a player who has yet not got anywhere near enough of the ball at AFL level. Not sure what big Max is offering at the moment and would not argue against having him swapped out either - either in place of Terlich, or as well as, if anyone can find a second worthwhile in. I'd rather sacrifice the ruck and have Pedersen play in the for 5 mins a quarter than have Maxy give us zip when in the forward line.

And the penny drops.

2 clangers. I know stats can be misleading and/or ambiguous, but that one is well defined. I know Jack isn't the greatest user of the ball and I won't even say he's not symptomatic of our problems, but it makes my blood boil when week after week, in games when more than half the oppositions scores comes from turnovers, Jack Grimes mistakes seem to be the only ones people remember. Dom Tyson (who I am a huge, huge fan of) had 5 and currently ranked equal sixth in the competition for total clangers. I bet I'm the last person to mention him in this thread. But he doesn't have number 31 on his back or a © next to his name, so his don't matter.

Stuff it. 6. McDonald 5. M.Jones ---- 4. Garland ---- 3. Kent 2. N.Jones 1. Frawley

Yes.

You win a prize for being the first one. Congratulations.

It's not the difference between us winning and losing, so it's a non-factor. It's a 1%er when we're ignoring the 100%er: we don't give ourselves much chance of winning when we play like arse. Freo also played in Darwin tonight and I suspect they might make the finals.

You mean we're not going to make the finals?

Can't be bothered trying to rank the players, but thought our best defenders were McDonald (BOG), Frawley and Garland (much better than has been recently), our best mids were the Jones brothers, and our best forward was Kent.

So frustrating. We lapsed in concentration late in the second quarter, and regressed to "Old Melbourne" in the third. It reminded me how much I bloody hate seeing opposition get easy goals, but it's also not something I've seen all that much of this year. As at mid last quarter, they'd scored 8.2.50 from our turnovers. The final margin was 53 points. The number of errors we make is unbelievable. We desperately need an injection of some class. Looking forward to seeing everyone single out Grimes as if he was the only one to make an error.

There's my stat: Freo have scored 8.2.50 from turnovers. Ouch.