Nasher

6. N.Jones 5. Pedersen 4. Viney 3. Watts 2. Tyson 1. Howe Immensely hard voting this week. I didn't have too much trouble picking the top six, but ordering them was nearly impossible. Very much a raffle after Jonesy.

Was alright, I guess.

What about the one that hit Watts on the tit from which we scored a goal? As usual, only seeing what you want to see.

Watts. The going rate is about 27 cents these days.

I'm struggling to find where in that thread that you warned us that he'd suffer a season threatening back injury in his first season on the senior list.

Salem as the sub again then playing for Casey during the MFC bye week seems to make sense to me. Edit: Scrap that, Casey also don't play on the MFC bye week. Damn.

I take that to mean Pedersen will play as a defender and Gawn to play the forward/ruck role Pedersen has been playing. First time we've had two true rucks in the side in any recent history. Hopefully the big lad is up to the challenge. Can't wait to see how Riley goes. Has earned his place by the sounds of it.

Jamar's "he treats us like men" comment was interesting. It's pretty sad when players find it groundbreaking that the coach treats them like men.

You're right. We should remain as irrational at possible when it comes to losing.

How is a player who has played 6 of the 8 games in the season as certain as you can be? Splitting hairs, I guess, but I don't think Byrnes belongs with the names you've listed. Someone needs to take his place in the bloody 22 before anything is certain.

I'll settle for a "my heart doesn't sink every time I load the site" point.

I asked the heavens for a favour for the Carlton game; will ask again for this one. Wasn't so long ago that we were on even pegging - watching them improve while we floundered was very hard to take, and the way the rest of the footy world just gushed only made it worse. To complete their return back to complete mediocredom with a loss to the 17th placed side would be so, so sweet. The last five years have turned me in to a spiteful and vindictive footy supporter. If we win this one, then all we need to do is roll Essendon later in the year and I can die happy.

How come? He wouldn't be the first person delisted after two seasons. Think you need to have shown enough to prove that you're worth persevering with and I'm unconvinced, and you need to keep turning the list over. I'm not wedded to the idea and I'm going purely of second hand information, but on gut feel it sounds right to me.

Yep. Tapscott, Blease, Strauss, Nicholson and Barry all cactus at this stage, if I had to delist people right now. (Three top 20 picks turfed in one go. Ugh.) Spencer, Byrnes, Jetta® in doubt - these are the sort of ones that would be left until the last minute and will depend on salary cap (presumably not an issue) and how many spots we think we need to free up for trades, free agency signings and the draft. The rest should be working towards being signed. Of course, this is a round 8 assessment - plenty of opportunities for the strugglers to change my mind yet.

He's played 52 games now :-) This thread is a few weeks old.

Exactly. We're not so far off the pack now either. To claim that a player clearly in our top 22 players would not be in the top 40 of most of the other clubs is not just illogical, but grossly unfair to the player in question. I think that the poster responsible has lost all perspective.

Honestly old dee, do these comments add value? He's playing AFL standard footy, so presently he deserves to be on an AFL list. Of course I doubt anyone would reckon he'd be lining up on the HFF for Hawthorn, but he's in the side on merit. It would be nice if we could go for 5 minutes without giving one of our second tier players a backhander.

After nearly 9 years, it has just occurred to me why you have SpongeBob as your avatar. Yup. I'm as sharp as a bowling ball.

Clisby I reckon. I agree that Allison seemed to be saying Riley is ready though.

Yep, I saw that one and commented on it in the game day thread. Those things are very pleasing to see; I realise that if we had scored from that stoppage he wouldn't have taken much of the credit, but it was crucial. A lot gets said about players being able to shake a tag, well it surely helps when your other big bodied mids (like Dom) stand in the tagger's way every now and again. It doesn't seem like a hard thing to do, and yet we haven't seen a lot of it from our team in recent years. This is what the best midfielders do: play for each other. Awesome to see.

Yay. I've been absolutely *itching* for another round of this. I believe in Jesse.

Same. I was expecting a developing midfielder, not an instant gun.

And Clisby was on standby for the MFC game. Went as far as warming up with the team.

Interesting that in the article on the MFC website, Roos again reiterated that we would not have taken Kelly had we held on to pick 2. I suspect they wanted Salem and took the view that he'd still be there at 9. If that's the case, we got Tyson basically for nothing. Sounds pretty rosy. Since we'll never know the truth, I choose to believe it

Me too. It's a feeling I hadn't felt in a long time though - that filthy feeling of "should have won, no excuse for not winning". The only feelings I've felt in the last three years have been "I can't believe we still manage to be even worse than the week before" or "I don't mind the loss - at least we were competitive". This must be what it's like to be a North Melbourne supporter.