hoopla

I think the AFL will have to look at the rules relating to player availability for medical testing in drafts. It seems ridiculous that the system enables clubs to have ready access to medical tests for young draftees but someone like Ball is able to avoid having to make himself available.

Surely the AFL has to look at this. Here is a bloke entering the market - and giving one buyer considerably more relevant information than he is giving all the others. There might be an argument to say that he shouldn't have to talk to the market - but how can he claim that he is not manipulating the market when he only makes potentially vital medical information available to the purchaser of his choice?

I think the footy public should push the AFL to explain why young draftees have to undertake AFL- approved medicals when mature-aged players do not.

Having said that - it would be nice if Mr Ball's season was ruined by injury!

Everyone in this year's rookie draft?

Good answer!!

( ................except I'd be surprised!!)

Take a look at Warnock, some players mature a bit later and Hughes has had injuries.

You're clearly off the pace - the FD rate Hughes or they wouldn't have re-contracted him.

His style of player has made an impact in recent times.

Warnock is 192cm and plays tall - Hughes is 186cm and tries to play tall .

The law of averages says the FD are going to get it wrong from time to time. Who would you rank below him?

A more likely explanation for our draft selections is simply that at 1, 2, 11 and 18 there were no KPPs worthy of the pick. Occam's razor.

I reckon that's it in a nutshell.

Not sure why all the frustration is being directed at the slots occupied by Newton and Meeson.

To me Hughes - the oldest of the lot of them - is the main list clogger.

Not especially quick?

You've never seen him, have you? If you have then you didn't notice him. I think that explains a fair bit of your argument.

Either way, he would have played last year such was his form. We were having a hard enough time delisting enough players to get the draft picks we did (hence delisting Newton and Meesen and rookieing them, as well as keeping Jordie McKenzie on the rookie list).

He's a medium forward who is lightning quick, has great hands and is strong overhead. Injuries have held him back, but the talent is undeniably there.

Well I've watched several matches - both TV and live - when Hughes has been named - and I've never noticed this lightning quickness of his. He must have been running where the ball wasn't ! He has a big spring but he rarely jumps at the right time to demonstrate his ability overhead. He was certainly a better player at Casey than he was at Sandy.

Perhaps injuries have held him back - but they had better letter him go quick smart!!

Well, if you look at the theories for why that would happen then it is the most logical explanation. His form was 10x better than Rohan Bail's at the time and both were eligible to play seniors at that stage. Bail got the nod and Hughes (despite Hughes' good form) missed out at the time.

And then we see that Hughes has been retained on the rookie list and, at the time, he wouldn't have been allowed to if he'd played a game.

It just makes sense.

Well it makes sense if you expect Hughes - who at 23 is not good enough to be on the primary list of the bottom side - to improve sufficiently to debut as a 24 or 25 year old in an improving side down the track.

He's not a big man, he's not especially quick, and he doesn't exhibit any special football nous. He's never been a standout in the VFL. When you factor in his history of injury - you've got to conclude that the odds are stacked against him.

Under the previous rookie rules, prior to the AFL changing them after this season, mature age rookies could not be on the list unless they had not played an AFL game. Hughes becomes a mature age rookie this year and so, under the rules at the time, if he played a game last year then we would have to delist or promote him at the end of the year. His form for Casey at the the end of the year was more than good enough to warrant a game or two in the AFL. It seems that the football department were keen to retain him on the list and the only way they could do that, aside from promoting him to the senior list (where spots are very tight - as shown by the delisting and re-rookieing of Meesen and Newton), was to not play him at the end of the year. He definitely would have played last year if not for that reason.

If the football department didn't rate him then they wouldn't have given him an extra year on the rookie list as a mature age player. Instead they would have delisted him, like they did to Valenti, and opened up the spot to pick up a new player on the rookie list. But they didn't, which I think says a fair bit about how the club rates him.

He certainly needs a good season to show that his body can hold up to an AFL workload and can translate his VFL form into AFL form, but the argument that he was playing VFL because didn't deserve an AFL game is an incorrect one. It was due to the AFL's rookie list rules at the time.

Well that's an extraordinarily clever piece of list management ......" That bloke deserves a game - but we're not going to see if he can play at AFL level - so that we can keep him on the rookie list............. And he doesn't want the opportunity to prove that he should be promoted to the primary list because he's got his heart set on being a mature age rookie.. !?

You must have very close contact with the club - and/or the man himself. Last year the club was heard to say that it felt it had an obligation to rookie him again because of the circumstances surrounding the termination of his previous contract. Was that right or not?

Hughes has had no chances. He's never played a senior game. However most of the coaching staff have said at different stages that he is a part of their future plans. Given that there is now talk of using next years draft to elevate rookies, I would think he's going to find himself on the senior list in 2011.

I hope this is an attempt to be funny.

Hughes is coming up for his 4th year on the rookie list - although he has never shown enough consistent form at VFL level to be a serious contender for an AFL game. The coaching staff have had to refer to future plans when asked about him - because he has never been part of their present actions!! On past form, his best chance of staying at the club is to be injured for yet another season.!

How much longer are the mods on here going to put up with innane posts from opposition supporters intended only to cause problems here? This guy makes Y_M look like Mother Teresa.

Xavier's got a bad enough reputation as it is - without this bloke dragging it even deeper into the mire.

I must admit that I was one who argued that we should take talls at #11 and/or #18 - so I was horrified when Gysbert's name popped out. But with Gawn and Fitzpatrick folded into the mix.......I was much happier by the end.

My view leading into the draft was based on the conventional wisdom that "you could throw a blanket over picks 10 to 30" and that some talls were under that blanket. BP was convinced that Butcher was the only stand-out tall in the draft. If that''s right - and I accept that it was - I reckon we played it the right way - and have ended up with an exciting group.

There will be pressure on the "Gismo" because he was really our first live pick - but right now I accept him as someone they really rate - and I look forward to watching him play.

I just wish we hadn't wasted a rookie pick on Hughes - so that we had room to speculate a little more.....

Show a bit of self restraint.

When a rabid dog comes across your path and barks at you, do you go up to the thing and hand feed it?

Stop replying.

He went to Xavier .....further proof that Collingwood supporters suffer from the lack of a decent education !!

No point in replying - he wouldn't understand anyway

For everyone here who did not like it, there will be plenty who thought it was done well. And i am one of them.

..... found anyone who agrees with you yet?.

How could Fox seriously call that a live telecast of the 2009 AFL Draft? All they did was keep viewers away from the draft until it was all over.

Does anybody have a spare copy of Lindsay Gilbee's autobiography? Unfortunately I think I missed the best bit when I called a mate to try to find out who we'd drafted.

And i cant believe you have nothing better to do in your life than constantly talk [censored] on a demons based forum.

Wait yes i can your a collinw#$d supporter.

No...let's be fair here. For someone who went from Broadmeadows Primary to Xavier College , he's done pretty well to find his way to a coherent website.

You have the best crystal balls out there Hoopla!

Sorry Darren... I'm not sharing them with you!

What if? The answer to that is pretty obvious: he'll play for the AFL club. It makes sense to cover all bases though; by signing for a VFL club he guarantees that he will be playing football on a reasonably high level next year.

I'm pretty sure this guy is a 200cm- plus ruckman .... which begs the question - who plays where when all our rucks are fit?

Lots of people are claiming we have a surplus mids. They do it heaps of threads, with no real justification of why we have enough mids.

I am a fan of picks going to the best available rather than recruiting for needs but I reckon our midfield needs the picks thrown into it.

Well ..if you right we are in heaps of trouble. You are effectively saying that despite all of our efforts over the last three years , we still haven't got the right mix of small and mid -size running players on our list. You want us to concentrate on mid-fielders again - which means waiting until the Gold Coast and West Sydney have all the early picks before putting a few young talls into our development program.

I'm actually a lot more optimistic than you are - particularly knowing that we're picking up the two best 18 year old midfielders around anyway

I'm not an expert on the draft, but if BP saw Melksham, Jetta, Bartlett, or JMP as a better talent than Black, Talia, or whoever, then I would say pick the best kid.

You may come back at me and adjudge those players to be equal in talent to those 4 mids and you have won the argument. However, I have said if they are equal then by all means pick the tall player. If they are not equal then pick the best talent.

Surely this is nothing more than a theoretical debate.What exactly is "equal talent"?.... and how do you determine that midfielder "x" has more talent than KPF "Y"?

In reality once you get past the first couple of picks - the assessment of relative "talent" is so subjective that you have to factor the "type of player" into your equation. It seems to me that is exactly the approach that BP is taking - and he has strongly hinted that we're looking at talls for picks 11 and 18.

An issue for mine in al of this is time and availability.

Going forward ( npi ) there , as result of compromised drafts, will be fewer picks with which to pick up any talls ( or anyone for that matter). Talls, and inparticular KPP take longer to getup and going to the best efforts so you need to get them whilst you can, when you can. We have quite a few players who are either mids of mods in waiting. We need to seriously look at teh best avail talls with 11 and 18 ( th eBall thing aside )

I'd like to think we would all agree with that - unless of course we assume that there will be no talls of AFL quality available after pick 10.

The whole debate really depends on your assumptions. "If there is a gun midfielder".... "if we assume that Jurrah does x or y"....

I'll make two assumptions

1. There is not going to be a lot to choose between the shorts, mids and talls available after pick 10

2. Our current crop of young mids - plus Scully and Trengove - will all develop as we hope they will.

On this basis - we need to look seriously at two talls with picks 11 and 18.

Change these assumptions if you wish

I still don't understand why we couldn't just start the season early and then have a break - the country will be soccer mad, we get to enjoy the world cup and then we get to have footy again.

As I've previously said, of course with no response, is that as recently as '06 we went without the G for at least 4 weeks and gee, AFL never quite recovered did it.

Other leagues have a month off EVERY season for winter, 1 disrupted footy season in 10 years is hardly something to sulk about. Anyone remember our last Grand Final? Good old first Saturday in September, you say

...and I suppose all the sponsors who operate under a budget would ignore the soccer hype and maintain their support of the local code through this disrupted season?

Jurrah is a roaming third tall/flanker and 11 should be used on a tall not best available. A tall up forward and another quality ruck are two gaping holes in our list.

Watts needs someone to grow with and all the succesful teams have two big mountains up forward.

Think Brown and Bradshaw, Mooney and Hawkins, Franklin and Roughy, Kosi and Riewoldt

Absolutely correct ... a side with power forward options is far more likely to succeed than one without - and Watts and Jurrah are far more likely to have long successful careers if there is someone alongside them who can apply a bit of physical pressure.

If Barry Hall is on his game ( big if!), the Bulldogs will be a stronger contender in 2010 than they were in 2009

1) Fair enough, although I think some insight did come out of it.

2) That is most probable but would also (I imagine) be part of the plan so far as he would be there not only as a good defender but also to help the younger runners improve. IMO our defence is quite good with the sheer talent of players. 1 on 1 situations, we are improving. Getting the ball to a neutral or possesion situation we are improving. Third tall up we are improving and we are becoming quite strong. But when I look at a (IMO) benchmark team such as Adelaide and their run from defence which is their main form of attack, we don't even come close. I thought given the circumstances, Bennell played very well this year and Grimes stood up very well too. The problem is that we don't have the system that other clubs have and we don't have enough runners full stop who can work together from half back - well not this year anyway. I consider MacDonald's influence on this aspect of our game as significant as Ball's influence could have been on our extraction work in the middle. Obviously MacDonald is not the same calibre of player as Ball (or many other defenders for that matter) but he helps us in an area where we are lacking. Until we establish our defensive run then we won't be finals material. If we can do this without having to "rob Peter to pay Paul" so to speak ie not drag back our mids to help out then we become more effective - Adelaide have done this whilst leaving most of their promising young mids in the guts. I'll probably get laughed at for this, but for someone that we get in the PSD who isn't a top tier name and more a safe option than anything else, he still could be one of our most important acquisitions going forward. This was not aimed at you either hoopla, just me thinking out aloud so to speak.

No 1858 - that's fine ....and your thinking is sound ( and perhaps more realistic than we sometimes tend to be at this time of the year)

A lot of it comes down to our options - and to our willingness to take a risk with our last pick. If we get as many injuries as we had last year - and he stays fit - we'll all look back in 12 months time and complement BP and IH for some very astute recruiting/ list management. If Strauss, Cheney,Bennell, McNamara and etc etc all develop he might have to spend some time at Casey. How's your crystal ball?

I agree, not about Spencer, but Meesen shouldn't of been delisted, he has got a very very big upside. Maybe a injury free year this year could have made all the difference. When he did play he played well. Must be something very wrong for us to de-list him

Even in those good games his work in the ruck was very ordinary... and now he is battling with stress fractures. I think we made a mistake giving him 3 years in the first place. If he comes back to our rookie list he can count himself fortunate that his career is still live. If Hawthorn take Meeson they are taking a huge risk ... good luck to them.

At 19 - with obvious physicality and competitive instincts - Spencer has a big upside and I am pleased we have been able to keep him for a 3rd year on just a rookie's salary. Clearly he has to keeping improving his basic ball skills

By God, have people actually watched Essendon of late?

I think Essendon are over-rated .... but I've got to agree the way they played last year ,they've got to be closer to the 8 than the spoon.

The punters can say what they like. As last year finished the two contenders would have to be us and Richmond....... and may be Port.

We've just got genuine reason for optimism

From the reports I've read he requested a trade, which didn't happen, so he asked to be delisted to move back to Victoria.

If that is true why is has he been talking to Fremantle?

I still reckon that if Brisbane really valued him as a player and mentor, they would have fought harder to keep him.... or to ensure they got something back in a trade