Nasher

There's no written confirmation anywhere, other than the fact that Melb2012's mail has been pretty good in recent times. Make of that what you will.

I don't understand why people are so upset about Ball. He had no intention of coming here, at any point. Would those who are calling Ball all these nasty names have preferred he 'listen' to us, make this public façade that he was "weighing up the options", then choose Collingwood anyway? That would be far, far more frustrating in my eyes. I personally appreciate him not wasting our time, or his own. Can anyone name one single reason why a player like Ball would want to come to MFC? And it's not just MFC. I'd expect Richmond and Freo would have been similarly shunned had they been interested. He's after success, he does not want to have to start from scratch again. TOX's post on it being about tanking is, as per usual, complete bollocks. Too much emotive rubbish being posted in this thread IMO.

You were actually the first one to mention anything to do with the window closing in this thread.

Foolish Nick and Eddie!

Anyone actually read the article, or did you all just come in this thread to bag Collingwood? I thought bits of it provided some good insight in to the life and pressure of an AFL footballer.

At 185cm he is not even remotely close to being tall enough for AFL ruck duties. Jeff White, who was considered to be neutered as a ruckman with the introduction of the circle, was 194cm. And his leap was as good as anyone's.

You've correctly answered your own question.

How does he have less upside than Simon Buckley? In my mind they might as well be the same player; though I admit I've seen a lot less of Tenace than Buckley.

Just to add to that, we've actually got 7 picks which we can spread over the ND or PSD however we like. There's no technical reason to stop us from using picks 1, 2 and 11 in the ND, passing on 18 and having four picks in the PSD, though obviously that wouldn't make much sense.

In light of the Meesen and Newton outcomes, this now makes perfect sense. Had that not happened, at least one of them would have gotten the bullet. Well played MFC.

There is no chance in the world of that happening. Firstly there's still no evidence that he's any good after 5 years on an AFL list, and he has a career threatening injury. His value as a player could not possibly get any lower; it's at rock bottom.

I don't understand the rationale behind his decision, but it sends a pretty clear message to us. Best of luck to him. I think he'll need it.

Nice bump. You definitely did your best work in this thread.

We've been through the breakup phase and are now in the healing phase. It's too late to get back together now, too much damage has been done. Oh wait, we're talking about Robbo. Yeah, nah.

It's a balancing act. He might not necessarily be best 22 by EOY, but omitting him from the side may introduce a leadership vacuum that is hard to fix. Without being inside the club it's really hard to know the dynamics of the leadership group on field, but by all reports McDonald is by far the most important cog in terms of leadership. You only need to read the Sylvia article posted on melbournefc.com.au to learn what he means to the players. The fact that he won't be around for our next flag push is completely irrelevant IMO. The players who are there now still need leadership. And people have been saying "McDonald won't be part of our best 22 next year" on Demonland for as long as I can remember, including last year, and it's never happened. He was still best 22 at the end of 2009 and despite his age, it wouldn't surprise me if he's still hanging on in the best 22 at the end of 2010. I've completely given up on writing him off; I've been proven wrong every single time.

I don't think it's that much of a concern at this point in time. I reckon we'll have a few down after the ND has taken place so we can suss out a few we might be interested in as rookie/PSD candidates. Until then there's probably not a great deal of point.

What problem would this solve? And is it a big enough problem to warrant all the additional problems this solution would create?

You spelled "Bartram" "Batram" again. That annoys me, so I fixed it

IMO neither of these likely or reasonable under the "clubs do not delist contracted players lightly" assertion. The cost of delisting a contracted player is almost certainly not worth it for an additional really late draft pick. To be direct, I'm saying the Hawks must think he has injury or personality concerns that can't possibly be rectified. Given that they have Buddy on their list who is a walking, talking personality problem, if that's what it is then it must be very severe.

To follow up a question with another question, if the situation and/or behaviour and injuries were fixable, what's the Hawks' reasoning for cutting him loose with a year to run on his contract? It provides no benefit to them in terms of list management (still have to pay him and it's still counted under the cap etc), and clubs don't take that kind of action lightly. It's very telling IMO.

Someone on here described it this way: they can choose their employer; their employer is the AFL. The clubs are simply divisions within their employer of choice. Changing employers would be leaving the AFL system altogether and playing in the SANFL/VFL/WAFL. Changing AFL clubs is simply changing which department in your employer you work for. With the way the AFL is structured these days, i.e. all the clubs being funded extremely heavily by the AFL and having no control over many of their own revenue streams (such as merchandising etc), I reckon this argument makes a lot of sense.

Heh. I'd never said "Majak Daw" out loud until you posted this.

I think Rojik nailed it with the "blah blah blah" post. You really don't know what you're talking about. Jolly asked to be traded because he was unhappy at the game time he was getting behind Jeff White, who was one of the premier ruckmen at the time. In short, it was his fault.

Rookie listed players are not list cloggers, full stop. They're there because they are all, without exception, players with some kind of inherent flaw or quality that recruiters aren't going to spend the more valuable list spots and draft picks on them. I'd only call players who are genuinely holding up the development of someone else a list clogger. I don't think Danny Hughes will make it, but it's hard to argue he is holding up the development of someone else.

Great, I'm glad we agree that it doesn't matter which way you word it. I look forward to the next argument in semantics.