Nasher

In all honesty none of us have any idea what Gardner or the board are saying behind closed doors. Part of his job as President is to provide a united front, and as long as Neale's in the position of Senior Coach, on the outside he'll always (appear to) have the support of the board. Do you really think Paul's going to turn around and say "I reckon Neale's doing a shit job and I doubt he'll be the coach in 2008" ?

I wasn't arguing that Ash. It was just a question with no hidden meanings.

Who's Deeboy on there? Jeez I get embarrassed when I see Dees supporters crop up on opposition sites trying to "defend our honour". Bah. So childish. Anyway, I personally take very little notice of what opposition supporters like those guys over there have to say. Didn't read a single post in that thread that didn't show the intellect of a baboon.

Has he laid a front-on tackle yet?

It's a tough ask. Our best two ball winners in Jones and McLean are out. There will be a lot of pressure on Junior and Moloney (if he plays) to win the contested ball. Our backline looks much stronger with Rivers back. Garland in this side opens up the possibility for Miller going back should the other options not work out. That leaves a pretty inexperienced forward line though, as we'll have Garland, Dunn and the resting Jamar holding fort in the forward line. We'll also have PJ as an option at either end, though based on recent weeks I'd much prefer him back as he's shown very little as a forward. Really I think any team's beatable. I think it unlikely that we will beat Sydney this week but I'm really excited about the contest none the less.

I'm absolutely stoked with these selections. Ward and Bizzell out speaks volumes. I also agree with Fan, Jaded et al about Wheatley. He'd definitely be playing if it wasn't for the injury and deservedly so.

Personally I reckon these "huge loss to the game" remarks are a little over the top. I reckon he's one of the most overrated players in the competition. A very good player no doubt, but not the superstar people make out.

Backmen -- especially full backs -- always look good when the midfield is firing and bad when it isn't. Carroll is no different.

Smith was in the next draft I believe. First rounder? We also took Miller at 55 in 2001. Doesn't come close to making up for the stinkers in the early rounds, but represented pretty good value I think.

Isn't it interesting that in your top 10 (which I don't disagree with), only 6 clubs are represented. I thought this competition was "equal".

Exactly. I'm sure an indefinite injury to Nick Gill really hurts their premiership aspirations.

One ray of sunshine on what's been an otherwise very drab start to the season.

Anyone else get sick of seeing "Neale was out-coached" week after week? I don't really have an opinion one way or the other as to whether Neale is being "outcoached" or not, but gee these threads are getting repetitive. QC, injuries or not, I imagine Neale's skating on incredibly thin ice right now. I reckon he's in trouble.

One positive is that Richmond haven't won yet either, so I can still SMS my Tiges supporting brother saying "when do the Dees play your mob? We really need a win..."

A bidding system completely defeats the purpose of the F/S rule. The whole purpose of it is to allow kids to play at the same footy clubs their dads did. If a club gets outbid for a player then the end goal of the F/S rule isn't met, and, potentially, some lucky club pays less than market value for superstar kid. In my mind that's even less fair than the present F/S rule. Edit: I do like that solution proposed by the guy from BF though.

Presumably the idea is that if they get trumped they get another opportunity to up their bid.

No, he sat out last week.

Yeah, sorry about that. There's an "interesting" feature in the forum software that is supposed to make locking threads easier for mods, but all it's done so far is cause us to lock a bunch of threads by accident (and without knowing!!) I haven't figured out how to turn it off yet!

He's playing in the Sandy twos at present, and is probably as far away from selection as ever, especially given that he's still on the rookie list.

Me neither. Who is he?

Travis's "Johnstone" has an 'e' on the end.

Gah, sorry about the topic lock, was (apparently) me that time. Not sure why topics are being randomly locked. Anyway, carry on!

Maybe that's why Bizzell has been named.

Right. I royally stuffed this up the first time because I didn't properly look at who the outs were. Here's take two. I'd like to see these outs in addition to those already named: Bizzell. Two talls (Dunn, Rivers) have come in and two (Holland, Ferguson) have gone out. I think PJ did enough to retain his place. I'd have dropped Jamar so we weren't carrying so many so-so talls, but he's named on the ground so that won't happen. Yze, Brown for the sheer fact that I'd prefer that Petterd and Bate play. Petterd can slot in to the Brown running role nicely, so that works out well on a "horses for courses" scenario. Alternatively, Petterd could play a defensive roll in the back half and release Bell for a running role, but I'd prefer to leave Bell where he is for now, given his consistent performances to date.

Yep, I'm in the "have never lived in Melbourne" boat too QC. I felt pretty isolated before I came across Demonology and subsequently Demonland, because up until then I did not know one single other Melbourne supporter.