Nasher

I had one severe concussion as a child of about 9 as a result of an accident at school, and I wasn’t right for months. The feeling of being confused and agitated all the time, being unable to concentrate or remember words is bloody awful. Hearing about stuff like this, or the Daniel Bell case, really gives me chills. Hard hits and collisions are part of the thing I love most about footy. I was super proud of Hibberd when he was injured because he saw it coming but went in anyway, and would have been in a huge amount of pain as a result. But your brain is just so god damn important. Most of the time I have to ignore concussion as the elephant in the room, because if I think about it too much it will ruin footy for me. I really hope he makes a full recovery. I won’t say whether I think he should retire, because that’s a very personal decision and I don’t have all the information, but gee it doesn’t sound good.

In: Salem, Neal-Bullen Out: Spargo, C.Wagner Surely none of Lever (supposedly injured at Casey today), Hibberd or Hannan are ready yet. Fritsch goes as well if we want to play Preuss.

If you’re upset at the final score, have a squizz at what it was at 3/4 time. Have your wife film your reaction for us while you do so please ?

If we had have traded for a different type of player or used a draft pick then we wouldn’t have another ruckman on the list. We rolled the dice massively last year with only Max on the list and got away with it. Imagine if last year, if Max had gone down instead of Lever? We’d have been trying to launch a finals campaign with TMac and Weideman as our ruckmen. Going in to this year where we were hoping for another finals campaign - with no backup for Max, you’re one loss away from season derailment, and that’s a completely unacceptable risk. Obviously at the time we weren’t to know the season would be derailed anyway. If you take it as a given then that we needed another ruck - then why *wouldn’t* we take arguably the best ruckman available? It was just a gift really. The alternative was some 18 year old unknown quantity. As to why Preuss would have wanted to come here when he knew he’d be behind Max, I was stumped at the time and am none the wiser now. I doubt they promised him that he’d play all the time though, because you quite clearly can’t promise that.

Those things you list as his traits are all things I’d expect of a good forward. What I think is more likely is he gets outpositioned and outmarked frequently, does nothing whatsoever at ground level and then gets destroyed by defenders running off. I know I’m probably being over the top in my criticism, but I’m convinced many have allowed romanticism about what Preuss may offer blind them to what he actually does offer. What he offers is a ruckman who can play when Gawn can’t, and to me that’s about it.

I was being a bit sarcastic Rusty. I don’t see why people think Preuss is the magic bullet, I don’t rate him as a forward at all and obviously our main ruckman goes okay. I don’t think just being tall is enough. That said, I do have a fair bit of sympathy for the argument that he couldn’t possibly have added any less than Spargo or Corey Wagner today.

So we have a ruckman if Gawn gets injured. And anyway we traded him for Dom Tyson, so it hardly counts as a trade.

Topic title and OP updated in the interests of everyone’s cardiac health.

If only we’d selected Preuss. ?

Cripes, here we go. Why on Earth do you want to hear from Bartlett?

I’d thoroughly recommend nobody listen to coach press conferences after a bad loss. There is literally no right thing the coach will say. Or at least, you’ll never hear whatever it is you think you want to hear.

I was in despair at 3/4 time, but I have to say I the last quarter did take the edge off it. I know it’s easy to say GWS put the cue in the rack which masked the gravity of the loss etc - and in my head I know that’s true, but if the shoe was on the other foot you know we’d all be thoroughly fuming, so I’m happy to take the reverse position in this instance. Anyway, we have too many foot soldiers in our team - players who can all play a role in a well oiled machine, but not good enough to raise the bar when needed. It fell apart today because on top of that, the good players we do have left all decided they were all going to play like arze all at the same time, other than Gawn, who was our best player by so far that nobody else is even worth mentioning. Although Baker was definitely a real positive, he took a big step forward today. Meh. Another loss in a wasted season.

Said at quarter time I couldn’t imagine us playing any worse. My bad.

Has he had one clean one? He’s been bloody hot every time he’s been near the ball. At least he’s getting it.

It’s hard to imagine us playing any worse, but only 10 down. Lady luck has smiled so far, hopefully we can take advantage of it and start playing actual footy. All our mids have been quiet. Harmes 5, Oliver 4, Viney 4, Jones 2, Brayshaw one. Can’t see that continuing.

Simpsons reference to Ben Brown. Sideshow Bob is this guy:

Despite everything, our core midfield - our biggest strength - has remained completely intact, and the only one not really in form is Brayshaw. Defensively (as a team, rather than back half personnel) we’re functional now, where we were hopeless early in the season. Our forward “connection” (I’d never heard that term before this year) is just going now, which was also rated as hopeless early. Couple this with the fact that GWS have historically sucked at the G gives me confidence we can knock them over. We’re nowhere near as bad now as people are making out. Looking forward to this one.

I’m gonna leave it open now just to spite you!

I thought the opposite. They’re obviously cactus this year and in the early stages of a rebuild. This means the club can start looking for its new coach and planning around that well in advance, Scott can plan his own future, and both parties get to avoid all the wild speculation and pressure that comes with bottom 4 territory. If it causes a bit of turbulence in a season that is already dead in the water anyway, so what?

This post represents everything wrong with the faux selection committee on Demonland. Saying “let’s see how this plays out”, immediately *after* drawing a (negative) conclusion. By the way I’m assuming letting see how it plays out involves crowing about it if we lose and a big apologetic sob story about how you were wrong if we win.

Phew - official confirmation that it’s a good decision.

Pleasantly surprised Goody didn’t automatically fall back to Lewis. Not that C.Wagner is an enormous upgrade, but it puts to bed any thoughts that he won’t change his thinking on his veterans.

Fair enough; I tend to be in the camp of assuming that won't happen. They've already ruled ANB out, so I'd expect them to have already ruled out Smith too if there was doubt. The rationale being I'm in no position to assess whether it's a 'risk' to play him or not.

A player plays an otherwise good game that has an obviously positive effect on the game, but has one blemish in it. Would you prefer the blemish be: a) 1 dropped sitter? b) 1 shanked set shot from 30 out, directly in front? c) 1 failure to 'go'? For some reason, everyone eventually overlooks (a) and (b) but (c) appears to be a completely unforgivable sin. I reckon if the player committed 5 of them in a game, maybe I could get it, but I reckon too much weight is being put on one error for Garlett. For those who see the world in black and white and think I'm suggesting it should be acceptable not to 'go' when required, I'm certainly not. I'm just suggesting it's one of a suite of things that should be non-negotiable in AFL football, but it seems to get a disproportional amount of focus, despite the fact that it probably has the same outcome on the scoreboard, or arguably less outcome on the scoreboard, than the other cardinal and very rectifiable sins.

All the changes will come from the extended bench. Smith will be named in the final side and expected to play.