Nasher

You've taken such an extreme anti-excuse position that you're no longer able to distinguish between a reason and an excuse. Discuss.

Why would Fremantle approach him?

Freo managed to work out that he might move if the right buttons were pressed and guess what? They circumvented his manager. No doubt it's a bit dirty - though Ross could just have easily "talk to my manager", but if the opportunity was there then you'd hope we'd have at least explored it. Even if Ross had told us to take a long walk off a short pier, the fact that Freo got him is indication that we should've at least put the feelers out. Clearly we didn't.

Bugger. Casey don't have a great finals record despite finishing in the upper echelons of the ladder regularly. Let's hope they can get up next week.

Just like Collingwood were forced to keep Josh Fraser, Brisbane fought tooth and nail to keep Jared Brennan, and we couldn't bear to part with Travis Johnstone.

Only because the chain of posts it referenced got the flick. Your line was bloody hilarious.

Coping mechanism. I'm the same, but I'm assuming I'm going to feel something again when we start winning. I was on a huge high after the Essendon game - this is just proof to me that the passion isn't dead, it's just dormant. Would love to know what timD thinks about this.

Why wasn't it an Atley/Cook decision? Or a Howe/Cook decision? Yeah yeah, I know. Wasting my time.

It wasn't the Darling/Cook decision. It was the Cook decision. And nobody is defending it.

He's been shown where the door is a couple of times when he's stepped over the mark. That said, Demonland has always operated under a philosophy that people have a right to speak their mind no matter how idiotic controversial what they may say is, so long as the topic remains civil and the rules are followed.

Be that as it may Rover, I always find it hilarious when people make those what would the club know? *I* say we should do this! posts. Everyone's an expert. I'm all for discussing the merits of various decisions. I'm even all for discussing this topic. But I reserve the right to ridicule anyone who carries on like they know more on the topic than the club does.

Any danger it could be your assessment at fault and not the club's? Just putting it out there...

That's a WYL-esque I've-Forgotten-What-My-Own-Point-Was---Oh-Wait-I-never-had-one style sidestep Rover. Here, I think you dropped this:

Truth be told, Jack, other than the above post (to offer an explanation to a poster), I choose to remain silent on Watts for the most part. I don't want to slam him too heavily - it's just not my style and enough people are doing that already, but at the same time I absolutely do not want to make excuses for him as per your post. Needless to say, I saw plenty last night that I didn't like and I'm not convinced it's all injury related. That's probably all I'll say at all on the topic.

Maybe you're in the wrong gig, B-H :-) Only half joking.

Still think it was to balance out the sheer number of players who were coming out of contract at the same time.

We have made poor selections in the past old dee, no doubt. All I'm saying if you're going to look backwards, do it in a manner where you might learn something. Saying we should've picked Darling instead of Cook is focussing on the result (which you can't do anything about) rather than how we arrived at the result (can do something about this and ensure we don't make the same mistakes next time). The business equivalent of this thread would be a like the share holder of a company that made a $1m loss lauding its CEO for not instead making a $1m profit. But why didn't you just make a profit, Mr CEO! It's obvious that a profit is better than a loss!

Watts had a purple patch (post move to defence) where he was on fire and garnered a lot of votes through that time. It does seem like a distant memory based on the showing from the last few weeks.

Hey Demonland, if you still have the data from previous years handy: what's the biggest winning margin in the history of this competition? If I remember correctly Jones' lead was already unassailable about 6 weeks ago.

All I'm saying If we'd taken Howe at 12 and then stuffed pick 33, we'd have exactly the same result (same players on the list) but we wouldn't be having this conversation. Nobody would give a rats who sat between our two picks. That makes putting Jack Darling in to the discussion completely redundant. Furthermore, it was redundant once, so you might forgive some of us for being frustrated at thread number one million that brings this up. It's not quite the same as CAC's point - which (and I know you know - for the benefit of the uninitiated) is that later picks can compensate for poor early picks. I'm not saying that picking Howe compensates for the poor pick at 12. It's obvious that picking two good players would be better than picking one. All I'm saying is that this self-flagellation that goes on every time Darling plays a good game is neither interesting nor useful. At pick 12 it's a given that if you stink the pick up that you miss out on better players, so why do we constantly need new threads telling us the same old bull we already know?

To be honest Clint I wasn't even bothered by the free against. I just love seeing a player in a MFC jumper with an obvious penchant for hurting people in his quest for the ball. It definitely takes the edge off my frustration.

I don't want anger, I just want it fixed. Diesel were you really expecting this to be a statement match? Lol. We've barely raised a yelp all year and suddenly we're going to pull something from our arse at Subi against a top 8 side? Ok. I expected an insipid effort and haven't been disappointed.

Tappy hip and shoulder will do actually.

19 minutes of this miserable year to go. Watched in the hope of something to hang on to over the long off season, guess it'll have to come from the draft.

A more simplistic version of BRFE's point: if we had taken Howe with the same pick we took Cook with, would we still be upset about this?