Nasher

To be fair, one of the three was Matthew Lloyd, so realistically it was only two.

Damn. I'd forgotten how sick that bump was. I'm not normally a big lover of "flying the flag" but I love seeing the Ox in that instance. How about the body slam on Hird. Even though that was a hundred years ago now, it's hard to not still hate that f-ing club.

I'm with you. I can't see Smith adding anything to the side at all at present.

I don't think any single game is important enough to put the rest of Gawn's season in jeopardy. Even with Preuss potentially out, my position is still not to take any undue risks with Gawn. He only plays if he's 100%.

From memory someone who knew him (@rpfc?) said he actually stylised it that way, i.e. Van Den Berg. I think the AFL media may have been the ones who bastardised it.

If Preuss is injured but Gawn is fit, I guess Gawn can just about cover the loss of Preuss...

Thanks. It might not come across this way but I am actually a fan of Preuss, I just think we need to be realistic about what he is and where he is in the pecking order. As you allude to I was surprised he wanted to come here to play second fiddle to Gawn when he is capable of being a first ruck, but I’m certainly not complaining about it and I’m in favour of keeping him if he wants to stay.

One item Preuss does have in the party bag that Gawn doesn't is an enormous kick. We saw it in action a couple of times on the weekend, one of which was when he effortlessly kicked it to the advantage of TMac in the goal square from 60+ metres away, in the play that resulted in the Melksham soccer goal. It was a ripper.

I agree. Surely it'll be a zero risk approach with Max. He's our best player, but we've also seen that Preuss will do while he recovers.

Could he tell us a bit about the process with recovering from the foot injury? What were the setbacks, how was his headspace during that period? Is the injury still an issue/something that will need managing for the rest of his career now, or is he completely over it?

Good question. An extension of that is if he is still juggling football with managing the family business in Canberra and how that looks on a day to day basis for him, and if that's been made harder with hub life?

Having just watched the replay, I’m convinced that if Gawn plays, they’re not going to drop TMac. He didn’t take enough marks but did the next best thing in bringing the ball to ground - two of which directly resulted in goals (Melksham and Spargo). He’s still a long way from his best, he’s going well enough. In: Gawn Out: Preuss If Gawn is no good, then no change.

Literally had to look up who Hawthorn #21 was. Who cares about some bog ordinary journeyman that plays for Hawthorn?

Prior to the Port game, we were giving Oscar McDonald credit for Lever and May coming good. In hindsight, Lever and May have probably just come good because they're both good players, who have figured out how to work as a team now that they've spent a bit of time working together. Both of them were recruits that we paid handsomely for with good reason.

I couldn’t understand why he wanted in to begin with, surely he knew it would be an uphill battle to get game time.

Agree. When we kick it in his vicinity I’m confident he’ll either win it or kill it. He’s the only one in the forward line I could say that about. I reckon the boys kicking it at him are too. There is nothing worse than seeing key defenders pick our kicks off and that hadn’t been happening since Weid has been up and about. Melksham, Kozzie and the other ground players are benefiting from this as well.

He can most definitely do worse than TMac. He isn’t a forward’s bootlace. Preuss was really good last night and it sucks that he will be dropped when Gawn comes back, but make no mistake about it, he will be dropped. He knew what he was signing up for when he came to the club.

With all due respect, <statement that doesn’t show a shred of respect>. Oh well, suck it, losers.

I do wonder how the likes of Browne find out before the club releases anything though. Surely the club has control of the information that comes out of it.

I don’t think option 2 stinks. TMac and Weideman looked okay as a combination initially until TMac had his eyeball scraped out. With Weideman now having demonstrated capability as first forward, TMac can play the more mobile, pinch hit in the ruck role he played in 2018. It’s not ideal but I don’t think it’s terrible, or all that far off what we probably thought our forward line might look like at the start of the year.

Poor bugger. Must be a scary place to be, not to mention frustrating.

Yep - when I made that comment I wasn't fully convinced of it myself (hence possibly) - I think you're probably right on that aspect. It'll be interesting to see if Preuss gets a run this week.

I liked it. The address after the Port game showed a side of Goodwin you don’t see in his public persona. Pretty rough to criticise the club about this.

I could accept that Goodwin and co took a risk with Gawn, but there’s absolutely no way I can accept they took more risk than they otherwise would have purely so Goodwin could save his own bacon. Firstly that’s a low level of integrity I’m not prepared to accuse the coach of when he’s not here to defend himself, and secondly if he was really in that much trouble (which I also don’t accept), then a cheap Gawn-lead win against Adelaide wouldn’t make much difference in the long run. The more logical answer is they did it because they thought he’d be right - ie a calculated risk rather than a reckless one. It’s first grade nonsense to suggest it’s a Goodwin-lead conspiracy.