RalphiusMaximus

Salem is doing a decent job. Vanders too.

This is painful. Sydney bomb the ball to space and know that their players will lead ours to the ball. Three Demons go to tackle and leave two Swans free for the offload that invariably comes. Our long-suffering backline wins the ball for us again and we bomb blindly to an unwinnable contest. Then we watch Sydney outwork us and get a chain of uncontested marks despite us throwing more players behind that ball... This is just painful.

That quarter hurt. About the only thing I can see that's good is that we're not as far behind as we should be. Oh, and well done to Billy Stretch with his first kick and goal in AFL.

My thoughts exactly. He's doing an amazing job, but like the coaching position we need to know where we stand long-term. It's great that he's agreed to stick around for another year, but the fans and probably hte players would love to know that he's either staying with us long-term or that there is another equally good person waiting in the wings to step in at the end of 2016.

SO White is showing a bit which is nice for someone coming from so far back. ANB will be a player, also very nice to see. Sounds like Jamar was having a wonderful sulk. King had a pretty decent game forward for the Dev League. Everyone else was varying degrees of average/poor with dodgy disposal. That about sum the day up?

This team looks disturbingly tall and maybe a little slow. If we're expecting rain then I would have thought Riley and Michie would have been preferred to do the grunt work of bulling the ball forward. All these talls could make us look spectacularly bad if it gets slippery and their defenders are just running away from them with the dropped ball.

I was wondering if he was injured or something when I saw he was left out of the side. I'm liking that White is in the starting side. I have high hopes for the lad.

He's certainly not in the top half of that list. I think looking at that he should be ashamed of himself.

I love the consistency of the tribunal. May's case: It was a legal bump that resulted in a concussion and is therefore illegal. Hodge's case: That the hit didn't result in serious injury is a function of luck rather than intent. I think they need to pick one or the other. Either they are penalising the action regardless of the result or they are penalising the result regardless of the action. I'm pretty sure that the way they are doing things now can't hold up to a serious legal challenge if a player or players wanted to kick the hornet's nest and take them on.

Salem was flattened by a late hit to the back of the head by a guy twice his size after he marked the ball. No report, just 50m.

Think I'd prefer Lynch. But Dixon is quite decent too.

Watts has had a few bad games running now. I say keep Pedersen in for him and bring Dawes back. If Salem is injured as it appears then Jetta comes in for him (assuming he's ok). Given Roos' reluctance to make changes that may be all. McKenzie might get lucky and be given a run-with role on one of Sydney's mids to free up Vince. If not then he might go out for Toumpas, who again appears to have racked up touches at Casey.

Sadly it's the Dee Stooges today. More slapstick than football.

An odd related question. I am enjoying an ongoing debate with another supporter on whether Hogan or Boyd was a better junior prospect. The Boyd supporter contends that Boyd's massive player ranking scores during the 2013 season put him clearly ahead, which I counter by pointing out that Hogan didn't play that year but went straight to the VFL and won a B&F. I've been trying to find player statistics from the 2012 national championships, which I believe would be the most recent time they were both playing in the same competition, so as to do a bit of a comparison on who was looking the most promising at that stage. Anyone know where I can find those sort of stats?

I actually think Carlton getting thrashed on Friday night is great for ratings. There are fans of 17 teams who will gleefully tune in to watch that over and over again.

Actually, I was basing it on needs. Grimes is a better replacement for Jetta than the Toump given his defensive skills. Most sides I would have said Toump as the replacement for Kent, but given we need height against the Dockers, I think Spencer is a better option. We are going to be shown up through the middle regardless, but if we let them dominate with their talls it's going to go from bad to horrifying.

'Twas quite funny.

I have a nasty feeling this is going to go badly for us. I look at the matchups and I don't see enough height in our backline and depth in our midfield to go with them. Pretty sure they'll hurt us this weekend. I still tipped us though.

If he wants another crack then he needs to get himself down to Casey and try to get a game. I don't know what the terms of his departure were or whether we have first option on him, but either way he needs to show commitment and an ability to impact games in the VFL before anyone is going to go near him.

I think we've done ok with Rookies. Jamar, Junior, Robbo, Bruce, even Nev although he's a special case. I don't know how we stack up in terms of the number of rookies we keep, but we've had some pretty good quality ones over the years.

Looks like Grimes and Spencer from that. It would fit the opponents and they're both playing well.

It drives me up the wall that the media still talk about our wins in terms of our opponents playing badly and missing an opportunity. Richo on the Saturday night pre-game show was a classic example. All of his comments were about Richmond, not one mention of the fact that Melbourne were harder, tougher and played better.

AFL wanted in on the NFL research program. NFL told them to take a hike. Not really a classy move by the NFL, although I can understand it since the AFL would be chipping in such a relatively small amount to get access to their vast body of research and information. I just think it would have been a better look for them to say they welcome input and participation from any sporting organisation to reduce brain injuries across the board and not just in their own area.

Pretty sure West Coast will take it off us tomorrow.