Fat Tony

18 teams is too many.

I feel sorry for North but I hope we are going 100% to pick off their best young talent.

Laurie has not shown enough AFL traits yet to be "probably ready for senior footy" IMO. While Laurie has been improving in the last month, he needs to consistently be winning 30 possessions per game in the VFL because he isn't quick and is small. He is competing with Viney, Spargo and ANB.

Langdon is one of our most difficult players to replace, as we have no similar players on our list. I think we will give Baker a chance, as he has looked to be improving in the VFL this year and Melksham isn't really a wingman. Dunstan was disappointing against North, so hopefully Viney is fit and can come back in. Salem has missed a lot of football but looked good at training (from TV vision). I doubt he plays AFL straight away and think he will get a run in the VFL. Bedford could come into the 22 for Melksham. I doubt Melksham will play 200 as a sub but bringing in Bedford means we will have three midgets in the forward line, which is not ideal.

Van Rooyen plays more like Weitering, who dominated at the other end.

We play the Dockers, Pies, Blues and Lions after that and all these games will be prime time night games except maybe the Pies.

The Dogs play Brisbane, Sydney, St Kilda and Melbourne in this block of games. All these games should be good contests and so I have no issue with those games being fixtured in prime time. IMO the biggest issue with our fixture in the Geelong game has a 5-day break, but this is required for the Swans to not be too disadvantaged and the geriatric Cats have the same short rest. The Crows game on pay TV will also annoy some fans.

Good to have you back old55!

Melksham was good against WC in Round 21 and also played against Adelaide in Round 22 las year and had a poor game. (He was so frustrated with his game he gave away a free for booting the ball after it crossed the boundary line.) That said, I have no issue with him playing. I think he plays well on Docklands and I think the club is right to get him to 200. Who knows, maybe he can rewind the clock to his 2018 form and give us another avenue to goal?

That will teach you to be so confident on the podcast!

The jumper clash will be bad on Saturday.

Salem moving pretty well at training on 9 news.

Apparently we are 0-8 against North at Docklands. We really need to give them a good hiding.

If Max, Jackson and Daw get injured at once, we would be probably better off with TMac, Weideman and Brown as ruck fill ins. We have Van Rooyen and Tomlinson as KP depth. We could win a one off final without a proven AFL ruckman but three would be a tough ask.

We are 9-0 and our percentage is the same as Essendon finished with in 2000. We are going ok.

Do we need a season ending injury to get a selection in the mid season draft? Or do we have a vacant list spot?

Kennedy, Riewoldt and Cameron are all great players and I am not saying it isn't possible to be a forward at 193cm, particularly if you are a dead eye kick. That said, Paddy McCartin is 195cm and looks much more at home in defence than attack. Van Rooyen is the same height as Neitz and like Neitz, he can play at either end. If Neitz were to be recruited in today's AFL, I think he would have been a better key defender.

It was great to see Van Rooyen kick a bag on the weekend and get so much of the ball, even if the opposition was hopeless. He certainly looks a player of the future. But I still think the game is trending against 193cm forwards, so I think he is more likely to make it in defence. Why? The current Coleman leaders include 10 giant forwards who have kicked 223 goals (Tom Lynch, Tom Hawkins, Peter Wright, Max King, Lance Franklin, Harry McKay, Levi Casboult, Joe Daniher, Mabior Chol, Mitch Lewis), 6 tall/mid-sized forwards who have kicked 130 goals (Charlie Curnow, Jeremy Cameron, Aaron Naughton, Brody Mihocek, Bayley Fritsch, Nick Larkey) and 4 small forwards who have kicked 81 goals (Zac Bailey, Charlie Cameron, Isaac Heeney, Shai Bolton). I don’t see Van Rooyen as being as elusive as the tall/mid-sized forwards batch except for maybe Larkey and Mihocek, who are both focal points of their attack due to necessity. The other thing I would say is that our game plan for slow plays is to kick to big packs of 4+ and use our big ruckman and Brown. This isn’t a plan which suits smaller key forwards. I think he projects more as a Weitering type defender, which is pretty exciting. As for comparisons with the Ox. Pre-knee Ox was quicker and had a bigger leap and he played more like Charlie Curnow than Van Rooyen. Van Rooyen moves more like TMac but I doubt he has that level of endurance. All that said, playing forward is not a bad thing for his development this year.

I know we don’t like resting players but Viney and possibly Lever could do with a rest at some point. Two games on hard surfaces is not ideal and North are awful.

We need to manage our cap position, so players like Ben King are unrealistic. Jason Horne-Francis should be number one target for 2024. We have the lure of being a top side and, with our cap position, we won't be able to get him with money. (This would be revenge for Scully.) Next year, we should be looking at star veterans like Breust, Gunston, Issac Smith (ironically), Gray and Boak.

Let's demolish them and take JHF off them in two years!

Is a unicorn in the hand worth two in the bush?

It has us losing 3.6 games in the last 13. I don't know if I can cope with that much losing!

The squiggle predictor currently has Richmond finishing in eighth on 12.9 wins and WBD on ninth with 11.1 wins. https://squiggle.com.au/ladder/

The VFL have a bye next week and Chandler probably won’t actually miss any matches he wasn’t going to miss if he gets one week.