Nasher

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.

Insurance policy we didn’t up needing. Just because the house didn’t burn down doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have insured it. The time to bring him in was when TMac was first injured. They went with LJ instead. LJ coming on quicker than expected has made Brown and possibly Preuss redundant.

Burgess doesn’t know squat compared to the DBT (Demonland Brains Trust).

Yes.

Good article. The change in Oliver's style has been well documented on here, so it's great to see some outside recognition, backed up by some statistical evidence. It's not often you see a step-change in a player like this within a season, but it looks as if it has dawned on Oliver that there's more in the party bag than clean collect/handball in traffic. It will be interesting to see if it's still going to be as noticeable against stronger teams. It's really hard to get a good sense of where things are at when our last two results have been floggings of terrible teams.

I guess the counter-argument is that overplaying a key position when they’re not ready is also counterproductive and can also compromise their long term playing future. In the case of Weideman, this season is the only one where I think there is a legitimate argument where he wasn’t playing when he should have been. In 2018 he was rightfully behind TMac and Hogan, and came in to play a role in finals when Hogan was out. 2019 was a writeoff with poor form and multiple injuries. So maybe he should be on 40 games instead of 37. Big deal. He’s in now and I can’t see him going out again.