RalphiusMaximus

Painful last quarter. Mumford has destroyed us.

I say the act that he was able to hit those teammates is an improvement. He never used to be able to do that.

SEN were talking up Wright as being the best tall prospect they have seen. They rate him higher than Danniher. It would be awesome to have Gawn rucking with Wright and Hogan forward. Imposing. Especially with Watts and Salem delivering the ball to them.

I hope it turns out to not be a retirement. That would be more shattering news for the club, and the fact that this sort of thing just keeps on happening is just getting beyond a joke for us. Look at what has happened to the key forwards we've brought into the club for the last decade or more.

Yep. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Not the worst notion. He'll struggle to keep his spot once Stratton and Lake come back, so he could be up for it. We got rid of him because we couldn't fix his disposal. Now that someone else has, why not? This is very true. When I think of Cheney I always think back to an incident I saw at Casey. Under no pressure, he went for a 30m pass across goal to an unmarked teammate. He missed so badly that the opposition got to the ball first. He then charged in and won the ball back himself, only to kick it out on the full. For most of his career that summed him up. He has always been a hard-at-it ball-winner, but his kicking let him down so badly that even with the ball-winning you just couldn't play him in your side (even for us who play McKenzie and TMac regularly). I think it is an enormous credit to the development work they do at the Hawks that they have taken a player we gave up on and over the course of a few years managed to rehabilitate him to the point that they can play him as an undersized CHB and have no concerns either about his competitiveness or his disposal. He's not the brilliant penetrating kick that some of them are, but as long as he has a teammate moving into space for him he's hitting his targets when he should. Frankly, that would rate him in the top 5 field kicks at Melbourne right now.

This is why I love to watch the Hawks, even if I don't particularly like the club. They are so damn skillful, the patterns they run are amazing and they always seem to have another player to plug into the system when they have someone out.

Before the injury situation got so absurd I ad thought we'd be seeing a real improvement by mid-year. Now? Who knows?

Exactly what I was going to say. The AFL held out on the free agency issue for a long time and then when they finally conceded they put as many restrictions on it as possible to try to protect the weaker clubs. This is one thing you really can't blame on them.

Not sure I can agree on Carroll. He may have been a prize idiot, but he was tough and worked damn hard. I think a lot of people underrate him on here.

The thing is that we have tried to trade in talls to fill the gaps in our list, and look what's happened to them. We can't get them on the park and have well over $1,000,000 tied up in the while they keep the medical staff busy. We have actually tried to follow a pretty good list management strategy but have been hit with some insanely bad luck which has kept us from reaping the rewards. At this point it's safe to say we won't be able to pull in yet more tall forwards in the near future, so it looks very much like we'll be drafting tall again this year and hoping that they can come on and become the players we need in the near future. Meanwhile we have Hawthorn, West Coast, Carlton, Brisbane and God know who else sniffing around trying to pinch the talls we do have.

And when he told one of his players to go forward and NOT kick a goal he was only joking

I thought exactly the same thing. This could be the beginning of a whole new AFL investigation.

I think it's not quite right to call him a reject. It's not like he wasn't good enough to play in their side. It is more that they have a stack of hard ball-winning mids who are younger than him and there are only so many you can fit in the team. Think of it more as a forced retirement rather than cutting a player they didn't want. They would have preferred to keep him on in a coaching support role, but he wanted to keep playing and we got lucky.

I do like the way he's playing. He seems to be able to find a little bit of space in packs. Needs to learn when to get rid of it quickly, but he looks like he could be a very good player (as he should be for a #3 pick).

Kent has shown us a heap of potential, but he isn't a lock for me yet. I want to see him cement a spot in the side before I make any judgements. I will say he has shown courage and a willingness to work and has a very nice left boot on him, all of which bodes well, but we've had other players who had good attributes and couldn't put it all together. I desperately hope he does so and becomes the player we all wish him to be.

I couldn't believe my eyes watching Kyle play for the Hawks. He wasn't by any means a superb kick, but he was accurate and reliable within his range. That is so much better than he ever did when he was at Melbourne. How the hell did they manage to fix him?

Well, I caught the second half after work, which appears to have been our better half. The thing that is really getting to me at the moment is our complete and utter unwillingness to shepherd. It's a basic skill that every player on every team should have and know how to use, but time after time we see our players give off a little handball and then rather than putting their body in to create space for their teammate they run away to try to get another cheap possession and leave their teammate to be tackled. I haven't seen a single player do this properly this year. On to the little of good from today: Dunn really looked good playing a more attacking role. He had two or three assists from his long and accurate kicking and was one of the few players we had who was willing to back himself to get the kick right and attack. I know he's copping a lot of flack for his poor disposal, but at the end when we were totally stagnant, Bail took it on himself to run out of traffic instead of getting us into the circle of handballing death again. His ball use was sub-par when he did kick, but he ran hard and broke the lines and at least gave us a glimpse of decent play. If we'd had more players willing to back themselves rather than just haning the responsibility off to a teammate the score would have been a lot more impressive.

Kyle Cheney says hi.

In the few minutes I saw before Fitz was subbed he appeared to be beating NicNat in the ruck pretty handily. You have to give him points for that.

Kind of odd that the saints have now won two games on the back of their opposition missing too many gettable shots. I wonder if this trend will continue. Also as a side note: What odds on Reiwald for brownlow?

But not in the final squad.

The AFL website has him 20th ranked of the eagles based on their fantasy points system. Again, not that great a game.

Look on the bright side. We've had more use out of him than North got out of Gysberts.

I hadn't actually thought about it. It does seem to be flogging a dead horse at this point, doesn't it?