Nasher

You forgot "off the hook"!

No player who lays more than 10 tackles in a match is ever "lucky" to hold his spot.

I don't see how this was avoidable in the professional era, given that clubs ceased wanting to make players available for the matches. I'd also love to know your reasons why you think creating the AFL in the first place was a poor initiative.

Generally when we're talking about rookie listers, I'd settle for unearthing a young B-Grader. But yes, a star would be nice

Must be Evans to debut then if that's right, as there's no point upgrading a player if you're not going to play him.

Could be any one of Gawn, Evans, Howe or Blease really, based on Casey form. Awesome.

How about you do one and tell me which player is playing the role of small defender?

I don't think so. At the moment on our list, there are zero players competing for his role (small defender/defensive midfielder). So for Bartram to lose his spot, firstly we'd have to draft someone who is competing for that spot and secondly that someone would actually have to be better than him, and to be better than him we'd be looking at someone with the same or better work ethic and drive (to bring him equal to Barts) and a damaging boot (to make him superior to Barts). That is the recipe for an elite defender; likelihood of us finding him? At this point I consider it pretty unlikely that he'll be unseated in the next few years at least.

Absolutely anything could happen in this game. On paper they should smash us but with the way both sides are travelling, who knows?

Indeed. If I remember correctly Cale also did very well at high school level before he was drafted. If nothing else he's got a good brain in his head and that's part of the reason why I'm confident he'll come out the other side of this a better player. And I love Bartram and I'll always be the first to scoff when people suggest dropping him.

I agree. I'd say he's in the VFL to rehabilitate - that word gets used all the time to describe injured players, but I think describes what's happening with him as well. Once he's "better" he'll be back in the seniors and probably better than he's ever been.

You realise we haven't lost him right?

Indeed it is, I don't think this is one of those situations though as I'm still quite comfortable with the dividend this investment will pay. But I suppose if everybody on the stock market agreed there wouldn't be much of a market would there!

Has a bit of a stock market feel to it doesn't it - we bought high and would be selling low if we sold right now. There's a heap of upside though, so my strategy would be to hold on as the potential dividend/payoff later far outweighs the salvage value we'd get now.

They could also just as easily been scouting any of the other VFL listed players really. I'm not sure who played for Casey on the day but Michael Stockdale and James Wall for example look to be very handy VFL level players - frequent VFL watchers would know a lot more than me; but they could be looking for the next Michael Barlow rather than picking on players to poach. It could also just be due dilligence, and recruiters watch a lot of football a lot of the time, who says they were even looking at Casey players? As far as I know two teams played on the day. Seems like the Age are doing their best to make an article out of nothing to me.

Yes, silver lining and all that, and it's a development year still. But we're pretty much stuffed in terms of winning matches in the short term, which is a shame. It's also disappointing that there are several players on the injury list who we want to be pumping heaps of matches in to for experience, not to mention Trengove. I'm bracing myself because I think we're going to be put in the hurt locker for a few weeks.

Discounting the draw, we've won the contested posession differential in every game we've won and lost it in every game we've lost. No surprises there really.

I did say the "modern era" quite deliberately. It does feel as if Jones has been around forever though.

Hard to think of a player in the modern era who has had to shoulder as much responsibility in such a garbage side so young. Our 23 year old veteran. Well done Nathan.

Funny, two MFC suspensions in two weeks and my feelings about each could not be more opposing. I think Dunn got off lightly. Seriously dumb football. This is the sort of thing the AFL should be making an example of, not that I think most footballers need reminding not to dive knees first on to a player's head.

It's what he was picked for.

You've taken a battering here but I'm in your corner. I'm not saying there's nothing wrong at all, I always just feel the "culture" thing is a massive copout from people who don't want to devote the time looking for the real issues. Much easier just to go "we suck, it must be the culture" and take it no further. No different to "sack the coach" after every loss.

Not the appropriate forum for this conversation. PM me (or a different mod if you don't want me to just ignore you) if you have an issue.

Spot on. "TANKTANKTANKTANKTAoh sorry Dean, you've lost too many games. You're gone." You lot have ridiculously short memories.