Nasher

You mean Trengove, that guy who's third on our list for possessions for the year?

Bloody hell. This feels like a sick joke and I'm just waiting for someone to jump out and say "ha ha, gotya!" Any moment now... ... I'm completely gutted. Takes all the shine off a good win. What an absolute kick in the guts for the whole club, us supporters, the playing group and Clark himself. FFS, cut us some damn slack!

He was banned under the "no aliases" rule. Considering he is a semi-regular poster here and signed up again especially for that, I thought it was inappropriate. He's welcome to continue to post under his usual account and I have told him as much.

I'm sure GWS are itching to get rid of him. Occasionally I consider retiring from posting and replacing myself with a macro.

Watts delivering pin-point passes to Garland and Rivers is something I never thought I'd ever see.

Yep, I reckon GWS would be just itching to get rid of him.

It will be ours for good, I'd think. Still, let's not temper ourselves with reality too much and enjoy the win and more importantly, the progress.

I feel relieved, more than anything. Outright 16th is ours! Yesssss!

If I read this thread without knowing the score I'd think we were losing. I certainly wouldn't think we were 5 goals up.

Uh, not really Adam. FWIW I don't really care whether he came for the money or not either. It just so happens that I don't think it's why he left Brisbane - I do think that's why he chose us as the destination though and that's fine with me. The other (great) thing is that he saw no route to Freo, because they weren't prepared to pay Brisbane's asking price picks wise and tried to low-ball them, and he wouldn't make it through the draft. We put a fair offer to him on the table and a fair trade offer to Brisbane, they took it in an instant. I was pretty proud of the club that day - we got what we wanted through a swift and fair deal, and managed to leave Freo looking completely and utterly stupid in the process. Gold.

Stupid start time. I remember the good old days (three years ago) when games started around 2:00PM or even 1PM. Now I've got even more time to waste before it starts. Oh well, I'm at work, so I guess I should probably waste it working.

Indeed - obviously he felt like it on that day. That just adds to the frustration, really.

On a player-for-player basis Watson is as good as anyone. Obviously he's not helped by the rest of the Essendon midfield being pox and that's why they're second tier compared to Collingwood et al, but make no mistake: he's a genuine star.

Why do people pick out possibly the least interesting or relevant paragraph in a long article and use that as the point of discussion?

I agree. I doubt Blease has been instructed to take the game on at all costs, it's more likely that he's always done that and they're trying to beat it out of him. There's a time and a place for dashing runs, but it's when Blease seems to make the assumption that the best option is Blease when it clearly isn't is when he is going to run afoul of the coaches. It's no different to Beamer's continual attempts to barge through packs rugby style and continually getting caught.

Everything is black and white in football if you believe forum speak. Dud or star. Brilliant or terrible coach. Fast or slow. Exciting or boring. Craves success, or accepts mediocrity. I've got a permanent lump on my forehead from bashing my head against the desk while reading these forums.

The quotes from Rawlings confirm how I've viewed Clark's departure from Brisbane from day one. He didn't leave for home sickness or for money - the latter just helped him choose his destination. He left because he wanted out of Brisbane, for whatever reason. I also found his reaction to Jimmy's death pretty moving. Anyway, like most have said in here I love the guy. Has leadership, is tough and can actually play; we've had far too few players with all three traits in recent years. He's currently the closest thing we've got to a genuine star.

It'd be poor form to steal someone else's idea, I'd have thought.

I'm sure he lays awake at night thinking about it.

I'm really struggling with relevance of all this. At least, any relevance that can't just be counteracted with "West Coast and Adelaide seem to managing OK".

Precisely what I thought too, Jack.

His main argument was that he wanted a reserves side because the leading clubs do. When challenged with the West Coast example, he said he didn't care what other clubs did. That is a complete and utter contradiction of himself. Even if you did give him the benefit of the doubt that way, consider this. In the last 10 years we've seen premierships from clubs that have stand-alone VFL sides (Collingwood, Geelong), clubs that have an alignment (Hawthorn), clubs that stand-alone reserves sides in outrageously weak competitions (Sydney, Brisbane), and clubs whose players are scattered amongst clubs in the second tier leagues (West Coast, Port Adelaide). Without a scientific study, that's pretty strong evidence that it doesn't make that much difference how the "second tier" competitions are set up.

World first: WYL contradicts himself. I've never known a person who forgets his own argument so much. It's pretty comical.

One year, though. It'd be nice to have a midfielder that was "a gun", rather than "a gun once".

Look up the threads, and have a look at whose side of the fence Nasher (to use rpfc's trick of self-referral in third person), nutbean and others were on. I want my credit for being part of the sucker club! Though I wouldn't say I "believed" him per se, more like giving him the benefit of the considerable doubt, which may or may not amount to the same thing.