Nasher

Neither was I.

Jurrah. Steve Johnson. Petterd. One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong...

I highly doubt Demetriou has anything to do with the volume of the music at the MCG.

Thanks for the useful thread.

186 was the game where he didn't touch the ball once for the first half then was subbed out. If someone bulldozed McKenzie to get a possession (is this really a good thing anyway?), it wasn't Moloney. Incidentally, Jordie McKenzie was the only one out of our 22 who showed any fight whatsoever during that game, so whoever flattened him should've been getting out of his way.

Indeed - I find it pretty easy to forget how young these guys are in terms of their overall career. Jones in particular gets treated like one of our flagging veterans (by me at times I'll admit) at the ripe old age of 23 - he's probably still 3-4 years away from his peak. If he continues to improve and remain fit, he will easily surpass 250 games and has every chance of reaching 300 based on his current rate. Morton and Bartram just get an excessively hard time regardless of their age I think.

Don't know why, but I really like this. By all reports these two have been the biggest strugglers fitness wise - I guess where it'll be interesting is how this pre-season caning affects their seasons on the field given how they both tailed off last season, and how their pre-seasons look next year by comparison. Ahh November: the month when you could tell me pretty much anything the club is doing and I'd think it was great.

I can see where the "double or nothing" crowd are coming from - why settle for two when you could have (say) four? Of course the risk is you get zero, but that's all in the nature of gambling. Still, I'd take the two for sure.

Indeed - having 8 players who are almost good enough to make our middle of the road side isn't exactly a premiership recipe. Of the players who are in our much lauded "depth" (Macdonald, Bate, Dunn et al), approximately zero of them will be there when our side is good enough to challenge a flag.

It's November ffs. Struggling at training in November does not equal missing a spot in the side. There's absolutely no way on Earth that Watts will not be in our best side this year - especially when you've got Petterd in your side. I like Ricky but the suggestion that he's better than Watts is laughable.

It's November ffs. Struggling at training in November does not equal missing a spot in the side. There's absolutely no way on Earth that Watts will not be in our best side this year - especially when you've got Petterd in your side. I like Ricky but the suggestion that he's better than Watts is laughable.

I expect Jack would've just taken it as a tongue in cheek comment as it was intended.

Lin Jong certainly fits in with jcb's traditional policy of simply backing the bloke with the funniest name. Serhat Temel anyone?

Yeah - the Dawes / Leigh Brown is a huge stretch. My expectations are much lower. This is a big second chance; good luck to him.

I'm almost as surprised as I was when we took Robbie Campbell in the rookie draft last year, but not quite.

It's one of the reasons why it's so difficult to assess the performance of recruiters from the outside, and why I generally avoid judgement of them - because 99% of what they do is invisible to me. If you judged a recruiter purely on who he picked and who he didn't, every recruiter ever known to the game would bomb out because every single one has missed some real gems.

Are you sure about that? I've never heard that before. Doesn't sound right - what if the player doesn't want to play any more?

I'd be surprised.

So how does that contribute to the economic well-being of the game then? Everybody in Tasmania already barracks for a team and takes out memberships. All you're doing there is diluting the support for the existing teams in the AFL.

God I hate that turn of phrase - "turning athletes in to footballers".

Also,

Presumably if he was as good as his old man, he'd have been snavelled by Geelong as a father son at some point.

Interesting, I'd always wondered whether your nickname may've been Scoop based on SJ's alias. I reckon having Scoop and Scoop Junior on Demonland would've been a nice touch, personally.

Would that make you "Scoop"?

Precisely. The whole reason you pay for "best in the industry" types (and you can bet that Misson is costing a packet) is to fix all the things that are busted. Misson seems to me to be one of those arrogant professionals who strive to get the job done with scant regard for who they bulldoze over on the way. Absolutely fine by me, so long as the job actually gets done.