Nasher

I adjusted my expectations from "star" to "decent who will reach star very occasionally" a couple of years ago, and since then all my disappointment in him has vanished.

It is yay, more for the symbolism of it more than anything. I'd have thought Sylvia was one of the most at risk players and most likely to leave if the wider playing group thought they were wasting their time here. I'm happy to hear this.

You can't trade Dawes, or Clark, after going to such lengths to convince them to come here. What a shocking message to send to any players who might be considering coming here in the future.

Jack Watts? Does a player have to be small to be a small forward?

Surely a 30 year old slow mid not getting a game for the 16th side doesn't just waltz in to a top 4 midfield? There's a big difference between being a stop-gap for us and a premiership mid for a contender. I expect he'll sign with anyone just to prolong his career.

We need to add some age to our youthful midfield. Sounds like a perfect fit to me.

A number of players have come to life since Craig has taken over. I'd give Jamar the opportunity to do the same before listing him in the classifieds.

I know I'm going to on my own on this, but I don't see how being a "glorified blokes club" equals "blokes can say whatever they want no matter how vulgar". If you can't say it at work or around the family - shouldn't that give you some sort of a clue as to how appropriate a comment it is, full stop? Why do we vary our standards when we're just "amongst the boys" compared to when we're in the view of our wife and kids? I get that it's intended as a joke, but the fact that we still find this sort of crap funny is just a sad indication of how far we have to go in stamping out our ridiculous culture of harrassment and abuse. Whether real lesbians would be offended or not is immaterial, it's the derogatory tone that makes this poor form. Good on Harry for making a stand, I think it takes guts to do this from inside the "blokes club".

Notwithstanding the fact that Buckley's (alleged) comment was completely inappropriate and he deserved to be called on it.

They're guessing, just like the rest of the footy world is.

I'd love to see a breakdown of all of Sydney's behinds, i.e. kicks on the run from 50 vs snap shots inside 50 vs set shots. They kicked a lot of behinds, but I though at the time they were peppering the goals with low percentage shots rather than hitting them with purpose and missing sitters. I'm not sure whether to conclude that we were just lucky that they missed a lot, or if they missed a lot because of our defensive 50 pressure. Probably a bit of both.

Second worst. Don't think anything will ever beat that R22 match against Port at Adelaide Oval (2011?) where the umpires literally officiated to the crowd.

Indeed. I'd suggest we switch off our coach news radars and turn them back on in September, otherwise they might run out of batteries.

I'm so confused about how you got from what I said to this conclusion that I'm just going to walk away.

Why is that funny? He was "good in some ways", but he was a net disaster. If you award him 5 points for the things that were good, but subtract 1000 points for the things that went wrong, what's the total score?

That doesn't make him a mobile player.

The press we implemented was critical, especially in the first half. They were completely unable to clear the ball from our forward 50 and regularly just hoofed a guy on our team standing on his own in the middle of the ground. It was like we were playing against us, honestly.

heh. It is nice to have a second week in a row where we've had a genuine upgrade (last week it was Frawley for Pedersen). Seeing Byrnes, Rodan, Pedersen, Sellar and Blease permanently stuck in a revolving door tour between Melbourne and Casey was getting a tad tedious.

In other words in Grimes, out Blease. With that bench, I can't see any permutations that strengthen the side that include Strauss, Sellar or Pedersen.

I hate the idea of trading Howe. Trades that involve players that are firmly entrenched in the 22 and the club as a whole just make me feel very uncomfortable. I fully understand the logic, but gut feel says no for me.

Never heard of him. What is so special about him and what position does he play?

So is your position that instead of recruiting Nicholson, we should have recruited some other guy from the ammos who also probably wouldn't have made it? I'm all for moaning about our drafting, but honestly, WGAF if we drafted an ordinary player with pick 14 in the rookie draft. The probability of getting good players that deep in to the draft is slim, so the consequence of blowing it is immaterial. If you stood it next to the consequence of those botched first rounders, you wouldn't even be able to see it.

Agreed. The general vibe around the Brisbane fans (online at least) was that they'd been resigned to losing him for a while, and were grateful to us for paying a fair price as Freo were trying to screw them. They were as pleased as we were.

I'll caveat this by saying I didn't change the topic of either of your posts, but I have in the past changed the title of topics when it doesn't give any indication of the content. "Swoop the board" sounds pretty cryptic to me, perhaps that is why it was changed.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that question was tongue in cheek.