Nasher

Assuming we had pick 1 (by no means a given yet) and the Dogs wanted it, I'd definitely listen to their offer. Not saying I'd accept it, but I'd listen. What would you (everyone) accept?

Pretty sure the rule was that if you were already on a list (but not under contract), you could only nominate for the PSD. Previously you could not nominate for the ND until your club had delisted you.

I disagr.... Damn. Baited again.

How many games to do you have to win to score less than 16.5 points? (Hint: It's not possible to score exactly 16.5 points) The whole point of making it "fewer than 16.5" is because you can't land exactly on 16.5. You can get 4 wins (16 points, less than 16.5, therefore you qualify), or 4 wins and a draw (18 points, greater than 16.5, therefore you do not qualify).

Who would though? I can see it now; Robbie Warnock nominates for the national draft so he can get home to Victoria, and gets picked up by Brisbane. The PSD is a much, much safer bet, particularly in this instance.

We can, but won't until we are ready to select him for the senior side.

That actually happened to me at footy training once or twice. Ah, the joys of playing in a hopeless team.

It's exactly that kind of player empowerment that Bailey is trying to achieve with the player appointed leadership group. The mix is wrong at the moment but the idea is right. I'm going to reserve judgement on Bailey's philosophies on leadership groups for now.

There's still many question marks over Valenti, but if his form at Sandy continues then he will force his name on to the table. He was easily BOG this week, so perhaps we could see him debut against Freo.

I agree with that. I think it's fairly apparent now that we did not get our superstar with our prized pick 3, however given the alternatives currently on offer with Sylvia, I would definitely settle for a "good ordinary player". Especially if you consider what was taken after him (and even before him) in the top 10 of that draft.

He is not unco at all, which is the best thing about him. He's just extremely unpolished. Of all our youngsters playing at Sandy, Martin's the one I'm most excited about. It's yet to be seen whether he will make it, but I believe we've discovered a real diamond in the rough with him. I can't wait to see how he progresses.

At the beginning of the season when he was still injured I thought he was finished. It looked like a second consecutive year of barely being on the park, and I wondered how feasible it was to carry a late 20s back pocket player who could not get his body right during a rebuilding phase. I also thought that with the emergence of the likes of Bartram and Bell, he was somewhat redundant. I've changed my mind though -- for now. As has already been said several times in this thread, so long as his body continues to hold up then he still seems to have plenty to offer. Time will tell.

Carlton didn't even give up pick 1 for Judd last year. The best player in the competition. Nobody wil give up pick 1 or 2 (depending on which one we have). Nobody. Especially not for the dross we have on our list. Forget it.

That defies logic. Our record is under 30,000. A coach will not be the difference of 5000 members, let alone 15,000. That's more than half again our total membership base. I suggest thinking your viewpoint through before posting it. What you're saying doesn't make the least bit of sense.

Sobering article about Nathan Carroll's father's time in the Vietnam war. Long, dark tunnel I hadn't heard of these tunnels in the Vietnam war before. It's a real pity his story was only told because his son is an AFL footballer. There must be thousands of other stories like this out there.

Thorp is out of contract this year and might be looking for opportunities elsewhere, and we may just have PSD pick #1. If it's apparantly not far fetched to nab Warnock with that pick, why's it so far fetched that we could get Thorp?

I'd rather we pursued someone like Mitch Thorp from the Hawks anyway. Wonder how many oppportunities he'll be getting at the Hawks behind Buddy and Roughead.

The carrot of success is what really drives you as a supporter. It would be pretty hard to support us, or any team of any nature without it I would've thought. Just like if the team folded or merged, I'd just be one supporter that was lost to the game, at least at the elite level.

There's not actually any shred of evidence that they would've ballsed it up either. In reality it's all pure speculation and we will never know.

Half the Sandy side is made up of players not good enough to be selected in the (bottom of the ladder) MFC side, the other half is made up of players not good enough for the AFL in general. I wonder who would win?

Daniel Cross was available too. Handy midfielder?

You're right that it's not the reason but it is a reason. Just as it's not right to wholly blame our list problems on that, it's also not right to outright dismiss it as a factor.

Agree vanlo, definitely drawing a long bow on Warnock. If he does even want to return to Melbourne, there's two possibilities here: 1) he's no good and Freo will let him walk in to the PSD, in which case he will just be fools gold 2) He's a good player and they will want compensation, in which case we'll have to fight, and give up something in return I always have to wonder what goes through people's brains when they think we're going to get a gun player from another club for free. In the modern game it's extremely rare for that to happen.

Yes necessarily. You don't have to promote immediately. They can leave it until week 7 of Neitz's mandatory 8 weeks out if they so choose. Promoting him without selecting him doesn't give them another option, it just means they have to pay him more to play for Sandy. It would be dumb. Why would they do it?

I thought exactly the same thing. To me it sounded more sugar coated than an honest assessment.