Nasher

OP is a young fella who can’t remember what happened last time, I’m guessing. Park players who won’t be here next year (as we have with Lewis) so the work done this year is all relevant to next year, but beyond that, go as hard as possible. I’d love to see us come storming home.

In: Lever, Hibberd Out: Petty, Wagner I’m not in favour of rushing anyone but I am in favour of selecting obvious best 22 players if they are fit. Selecting them doesn’t automatically imply they are being rushed in as some in this thread have indicated.

The label Frost-ball and its subsequent definition are just classic. It’s so true. Honestly, I’m still a coronary risk every time the ball is in his vicinity, but I love it when his complete unpredictability is working in our favour. It’s exciting to watch if nothing else.

Plates don’t heal. The bones heal. The likelihood of the plate being bumped out doesn’t change with rest. Your comment on Lever is drawing an extremely long bow.

Just a bit of savoury humility. It’s important for one to have a balanced cliche diet.

It feels like it! Just getting it all out of the way before next years shot. ? Doesn’t sound like the Hibberd or Lever injuries are too serious, thankfully. I really want that backline to get a good run at playing together. It looked promising against Collingwood.

Hahahahahahaha, I was *waiting* for the Hibberd came back too early call. I don’t even need to read this forum to know what people are going to say. I think I’ve been here far too long. And Lever got injured in the Collingwood game.

Three new injuries to best 22 players. Obviously the footy gods realised they’d dropped the ball when our injury list started to shrink. Unbelievable.

So what you’re saying, is that it might have nothing whatsoever to do with being “rushed back” (from a 12 month rehab) and might just be bad luck? You could knock me down with a feather! (Sorry if it seems like I’m picking on you - I’m not, just frustrated by the general tone in this thread. Thanks for passing on the info.)

The time to develop his right side was when he was 8 years old learning the basic skills.

Isn’t the only way to get match fit to play footy games? I was concerned he might be underdone too but only from a touch/form/confidence perspective. As far as I can see there’s no evidence whatsoever that he wasn’t ready from an injury recovery point of view. People are flying off the handle without having the facts at hand, as usual.

Evidence that Lever was “rushed back”, please? I thought he had been in full training for months before he returned.

Someone at Collingwood would have gotten wind of it and told him to self report before someone else reported it. Standard damage control tactic. The penalty to this is ridiculously lenient. Given that he bet on himself and his own team, he should be rubbed out for two years. His Collingwood teammate Josh Thomas should be totally bewildered.

I just knew someone was going to have posted something like this. I’ve never heard of the guy and don’t follow English soccer, but the argument against fitness guys is always “but injury list”! In elite sport, the fitness group and athletes alike will always be looking to push the boundaries. Injuries will happen. Unless we can specifically point to negligence on behalf of the elite performance manager (or whatever the specific title is), I don’t think it’s a useful metric. In fact I think it’s yet another role that it’s impossible to judge the performance of from the outside.

For what? Pick 100? I’ve never seen the value in discussing which players we would trade until what the actual trade has been proposed, otherwise how are you supposed to assess how the team would benefit? I’d theoretically trade any and all players if the net benefit was team improvement. There are some players where no opposing club is ever going to offer enough to make it worthwhile or justify the risks though. I’d say both Brayshaw and Viney belong in that category.

Classic. Not quite what the moderator notes on your profile say!

Stmj is definitely still around, pretty sure I saw a post of his this morning. Dunno about CBF, his name doesn’t appear in the tag list at all. Alias change?

He popped his head in a few weeks ago -cited wrist slasher fatigue (my words, not his) and claimed he was better off without the Demonland downer every week. I feel the same way sometimes. The endless catastrophising and wallowing in self-pity absolutely does my head in. Just reading it makes me feel drained and tired. Then you get the joys of being abused about it when you have the audacity to try and look on the bright side when things aren’t going well. I usually stay away for a few days after losses, was feeling a bit braver this week though. Edit: I quoted the wrong jumbo returns post, meant to quote the one about @Wiseblood.

Is there more to this story, or just the pic?

That is complete garbage. Nothing irritates me more than people making stuff like this up. You are a total muck raker.

Y’know what makes me sad - the fact that it wasn’t that long ago (relative to my life which still seems to be accelerating with every passing year) that Nathan Jones was in the position Gawn is in now. “He’s obviously the leader!” everyone said. “Why isn’t he already the captain?” I’d really like it if we could stop digging the knife in to leaders whenever things go a bit off track. I get it, honestly I do: Jones is declining, we need to start thinking about life after him. He was once our only shining light though and got elevated to where he did because he earned it. I’ve got no doubt he’s still revered and respected by his teammates. How about we go just one whole week without putting him under the blowtorch?

I reckon if we were winning, we’d all be patting each other on the back about how well J.Wagner was just “playing his role” and going about his business as a foot soldier on our march to glory. He’s not that bad a player, but he’s not that good either. The problem is, when your team is poo and you’re looking for a hero, players like Wagner offer no point of difference. He will pretty much always fit in with the scenery. At the moment the scenery is a giant bucket of pus, which is fairly unflattering for the beige players like Wagner.

Disappointing just because I deluded myself in to think this would be better, but really it was just more of the same: getting heaps of the ball but just not translating it in to goals. Heaps of positives from this game though. Lever at 80% added heaps. I thought May in his first full game was good. Our whole backline looked far more cohesive and kept us alive in the first half. Hannan got better as the game went on. Weideman slowly but surely hitting form and becoming a forward threat again. It might be that thing of deluding myself again but I truly think we’re not as far off as ladder position might suggest. Thought Maxy deserved a paragraph of his own. He is simply immense. He’s playing as a genuine midfielder now without giving up any of his other strengths. If we were winning he’d be being lauded as the best player in the game on current form.

That’s silly. Neale is our bloke for starters.

Skills are absolutely killing us. Intent is good - we wrestled control of the ball in that quarter but gee wizz. Hannan dropping it was just one example but was pretty typical of how we’re going. Both Lever and May are only 1% off and looking better than I was expecting. Our defence as a whole looks reasonably well coordinated, they were just hammered. Reckon they’re why we’re closer than we might be. I haven’t given up yet. I think we could steady and claw the lead back. Fingers crossed.