Nasher

I'm pretty happy with the view I took in 2010.

This and the Michie trade indicate that Roos prefers speculative 21 year olds over speculative 18 year olds. I know nothing about Riley so I have no idea if he'll be any good, but the rationale seems reasonable.

Haha. You can't tell someone's height relative to your own just by eyeballing them. Make a 3cm gap with your fingers and look at how small it is. Your brain would just ignore a difference that small when looking at something on the scale of another person, especially when you can't even see the top of the point of reference (yourself).I agree with the assessment that you're just guessing.

I like the confidence anyway. I like Jesse Hogan's strut and I like it that Dean Kent told a fan at a family day in last pre-season that he wasn't here to play for Casey. I thought his self belief was a key reason for his relatively successful first year. It showed in the way he played. Players who believe they can match it with the best probably will if they have the work ethic to go with it.

Amazing he managed any good games at all at that height.

Agree to disagree, though my parting comment is to point out that what you have asked for is two Brownlow medalists, once again indicative that what you want is way beyond what could reasonably be expected.

Sure, we should be shooting for the best in every aspect. It goes without saying. Though in 2013, the "best" played in teams that finished 13th and 16th. It's a luxury but ranks low in importance I think.

Two points: 1) I'm not arguing for or against Jamar - I'm just arguing that it can't be that important for ruckmen to get the ball if hardly any of them do. I don't think you'd get much disagreement from anyone if you asserted that Jamar had a dog of a year. 2) I didn't "take off" Cox or Minson, I just stopped producing the numbers before I got to them because it was tedious and boring typing in numbers that were essentially the same. I also raised them in my discussion, so I think I have been sufficiently complete in my very crude study. I also don't think it's fair to use arguably the top 2 ruckmen in the competition as the bar for "par".

Does the ruckman really need to be able to get the ball that much? Which AFL ruckmen currently get stacks of the ball? Picking a selection of first rucks, with their max disposals in 2013 and their disposals average for 2013: Aaron Sandilands: Max disposals in 2013: 14, average: 9.2 Sam Jacobs: 20 (next best 14), 11.27 Matthew Leuenberger: 21, 13.5 Matthew Kreuzer: 18, 11.4. Want to see how Robbie Warnock went? Tom Bellchambers: 17, 10.28 Jonathan Giles: 16, 10.5 Max Bailey: 15, 8.89 Todd Goldstein: 20, 11.95 Mark Jamar:16, 8.11 Max Gawn: 18, 8.92 Jake Spencer: 15,10.00 .... These stats are very boring to produce and probably even more boring to read, so I won't go any further, but the punch line is that pretty much all the chief ruckmen in the side had very similar stats in terms of amount of the ball they get, and that includes good ruckmen like Sandilands. I only did very rough numbers from that point onwards, but the only ruckmen who had numbers for disposals in the midfield/flanker range (~15 average) were Dean Cox and Will Minson. The rest were very much in the 10-12 average range. I don't see a lot of evidence supporting any assertions that getting the ball is an important aspect of a ruckman's game.

Uhh yeah. I don't think that's what BH said. Well done on the staggeringly misguided view on a club champion though. As for Hogan, I too expect him to be a better player than Neitz. He's bigger, has stickier hands and will be harder to stop, I think.

28 posts gone. Stu, we get that you find these discussions tedious. I find discussing the same things over and over again tedious too, but the fact is that the merits or otherwise of Watts is a popular and contentious topic. I also get that you might have thought there was something new in here - now you know there isn't, so there's no need for you to continue to read the thread, right?

That's a pretty closed minded view - people don't see it your way so it must be because they are afraid of upsetting him. I don't think there's anything to be afraid of, anyway. Grimes doesn't strike me as the sort to get pissy over losing the captaincy.

Ron, I'm not going to get too hung up on who plays first ruck. I think we've got three flawed options in Jamar, Spencer and Gawn. My point was more about how the our ruck options are grouped and how they're competing for position. Jamar, Gawn and Spencer are all competing for the same spot. One of those three will play. Fitzpatrick and Clark are playing for the forward/second ruck position (i.e. 80% forward, 20% ruck or something like that). One of those two will play. Who you think is best out of Jamar, Spencer or Gawn is neither here nor there to my point. I've seen a number of arguments in favour of each and at this point, I think they all have merit. It's plainly obvious that Gawn ought to be the best of the three on the long term, but I think he's third in the queue at the moment due to his inability to run out games. We'll see whether that's still the case post pre-season, but I think he's coming from a long way back in that regard and I think it'll take quite some time to get there. I also wouldn't be surprised if we took a ruckman in the rookie draft this year.

Pissing down with rain this morning here. I live half an hour south of Hobart and it tends to rain more here than it does there, but let's hope it's raining up in the "big smoke", so that play is abandoned and we stop running their batsmen in to form with the pie chuckers we've got in the 'A' side.

One. Spencer and Gawn are backups for Jamar, Fitz is a backup for Clark.

In the Tasmania vs Queensland game, Tassie 2/268. Silk 107, Cosgrove 74, Cowan 57*, Bailey 22*. Bailey's 22 have come of 20 balls, including five 4s; all the other batsmen had strike rates in the order of 50. Think someone forgot to tell him he's not playing on roads in India any more. Harris 1/86 and has been the most expensive of the bowlers.

If it turns out that Clisby and Jones don't do the required work, it's no biggie, they just won't play. But I'd be staggered if two guys in their mid 20s who have been given the opportunity of a lifetime would be so stupid as to just throw it away by slacking off. I'm going to give them the benefit of the considerable amount of doubt.

Really liked what Fitzpatrick brought last year but as far as I'm concerned, if Clark plays Fitz doesn't.

Opening the batting now (2 not out) in his first Shield game of the year. Apparently has shed 16 kilos in a couple of months. He's 29 now, it's not too late to knuckle down and make something of his undoubted talent. I'd love to see him extract a digit, get fit and get himself picked. Not holding my breath though - and quite happy to have him help Tassie to another Shield if he can't. His batting partner is Jordan Silk, who already has two centuries to his name in 6 first class matches. Doolan, Hilfy and Ed Cowan also playing, though you'd think the latter is finished at Test level. Plenty of interest in this game.

That being said, how does he get on to the Carlton rookie list? I assume he has to nominate for all three drafts. I know nobody else will bother taking him other than Carlton, but it's a hell of a way to have to go just to keep playing for the club you already play for. Just another example of why the rookie list doesn't work and should go.

Amusing idea from a "ha ha, take that Carlton" point of view. Heart-breaking from a "not being an embarrassment of a footy club" point of view. No thanks.

With the way we've been batting in recent years, the "extra rest" he gets at batting at 5 instead of 3 is about 15 minutes.

Tom Scully evolved in to Jesse Hogan. I'm *really* not going to complain about that.

I agreed with the competitive lines when Bailey, Neeld and Craig said it and I still do. Just because we've heard it so often that it now rings hollow, doesn't mean it's not right, and I'd have thought it was self evident that competitiveness is the obvious first checkpoint from where we're coming from.

I hear a lot of these sorts of comments, and it makes me wonder what they're expecting the kid to say. "Yeah, nah, look, I was named the AA CHF, my game's perfect. There's nothing I need to work on and if there is, I can't really be bothered working on it anyway"? I expect if they asked the kind of questions Demonlanders wanted, they'd get platitudes and the answers they wanted to hear every single time. How much can really be taken away from talking to the players? Genuine question. I suppose I don't really have any concept of what gets discussed in these interviews.