RalphiusMaximus

Moloney is no longer with us because he chose to leave. I think that's pretty simple. If you want to know why, ask him. I would suggest that the rumours on this topic are at best only part of the reality, and that only Beamer and those close to him know the whole reason for him deciding to leave.

Because he was drafted as a rookie and had another year to go before we have to take him or cut him.

For a slight change of tone, I would like to say I was thrilled with one piece of play from Watts today that didn't result in anything much. He actually crashed a pack. Didn't hold the mark, but he also didn't hold back or flinch. He came in full tilt and hurled himself into the pack and damn near had the mark. I've never seen him try it before and it's something I would love to see from him more in the future.

Carlton will most likely bring Waite in next week, so we need to be able to cover two tall forwards. Thus both Frawley and McDonald stay in. We will need to be able to cover their smalls, so it would be a good thing to bring in Strauss and/or Nicho to help out with that. Dunn is also deserving of a start after some really good form in the 2's. If we don't have Clark back they bring in Fitzpatrick, don't play Pedersen again. Given the poor performance of the Carlton backline, it could well be worth playing Watts forward again, in particular because it clears a spot in the backline for Dunn. Thus we have Ins: Dunn, Strauss/Nicho, Clark/Fitz Outs: Pedo Giving us an extended squad. Refinements to be made later on

I want to see Pedo dropped for at least a month on the back of one disgraceful act. With Sylvia sprinting down the wing and looking certain to bring it into the 50 and take a shot, what does Pedo do? He leads right into Col's space, bringing a Brisbane player with him, and blocks a certain score. Disgraceful selfish and stupid play. The guy showed in one moment that he doesn't have two braincells to rub together. Bring Fitzy in if we want a depth forward.

I only saw a half, but it looked like our skills were abysmal. There were a frightening number of passes that went straight to opponents under very little pressure. There were a couple of positives even in this mess though. I loved seeing Tapscott hitting Zorko with that ripping bump. Watts was thrown forward and did a pretty decent job, held his contested marks and kicked well. Evans continues to improve. That's about it.

He was rated our fourth best player according to the DT points. 10 tackles is nothing to sneeze at.

Those times when Brown took marks well in front, you need to look at what happened in the goalsquare. The Brisbane forwards work really hard to give Brown a chop-out and get him into space. Nobody in our forward line even tries to do the same for our FF. Our team is seriously lacking in cohesion.

People have slightly high expectations of Tom McDonald after a really good season last year. He's got potential, but he's still a kid and he's not going to be able to play like that consistently for a while. That being said, he was pretty bad in the half I saw today, but I don't think you can single him and Jordie out as the only people with poor skills. We were missing more targets than we his today. Disgraceful display of skills, in particular from the midfield.

They can have our first round pick for him. We've already got a top 10 standard player coming in next year.

Funny, when it looked like Vlad may move on I was thinking how nice it would be to grab an executive from the NFL to run our comp.

I'm interested to see what they have to say and obviously which of our players they rate. The obvious question for me is about the now traditional loading in favour of mids. Do they have a system that factors this in and can give an reasonable statistics-based analysis of players in vastly different roles? Will they show any defenders in their top bracket?

You don't know what?

There's this kid I hear knows his way around the goals. Something Kent... Not sure anyone would have heard of him though.

Could have been in consideration for MOTW too if they weren't obsessed with jumping on peoples' heads. You can't tell me that mark in the goalsquare isn't every bit as good as Howes, even if it's less spectacular.

I believe he played as a junior in the high HF/mid role. That is what he was recruited for, and to be honest we have plenty of players who can go to the back pocket. He's doing a very good job where he is and providing a nice spark to the forward line with his good marking, aggressive defence and theoretically good kicking (note that he seems better at hitting targets than goals).

I would love to see Kent get a call-up, but having finally seen the team in action I can't see whose spot he is going to take. Byrnes, Evans and Sylvia were all very good on the weekend, and Davey did well as the sub. That pretty much covers us for the HFF/Midfield crossover role. Given that we seem to have a pretty good group in the side right now in those roles, I have no problem with him spending time at Casey working on his defensive pressure, consistency and teamwork with Hogan.

The issue for the dogs is that they were absolutely gutted by the expansion clubs. The two guys who should have been the core of their midfield for the next decade were taken from them with far too little given in compensation, and they now have a gaping hole between the aging stars and the up-and-coming youngsters. They are still reliant on the veteran 30+ year old players to keep them in games and face a bleak future as those guys retire in the next couple of years with nobody coming through to replace them. Add to that their consistent inability to produce a quality spine and you see that they are in real trouble in the near future. They have too many holes in their list to make up for in one or even two drafts. They need to trade for some more experienced midfielders, produce a better quality ruck from somewhere and find a couple of key forwards. Bad times ahead for the doggies fans.

Personally I was thrilled to see one of our guys get reported. I wish a few more would throw their weight around on the field. It sucks that Nev will miss a couple of weeks because he's just starting to find his feet at this level, but it was great to see. I only wish Watts could've nailed that bump he went for as well. A week for shirtfronting someone would do him the world of good.

I found that if I went to full screen then out again it switched to the "viewing from another country" bit and I had to refresh the whole thing to get it back. Of course, since they have decided not to include any practical way of navigating the video (can't even select which quarter to watch!) I then had to replay from the last goal. Bloody annoying I say.

This is basically what I was thinking. I suspect they may go with Sellar instead of Fitzpatrick, even after he had a solid game for Casey. I don't think he has many credits in the bank so he probably needs to produce a few more good games before they will bring him in, but he's the best option we have type-wise to replace Clark. I'd love to be able to bring Magner in to take the clearance role in place of Viney, but obviously that would require a LTI, which we do not appear to have right now. With those changes, I would line them up basically the same. Davey to be sub again since he did quite well in the role yesterday. Minimal changes to a winning formula.

Just looked at the draw and I can't see four wins for us in the first ten. I see one more we should win and one we might win. Other than that, it's pretty bleak.

Absolute tosh. I know it's fashionable to have a go at Robbo these days, but the fact is he was a great player for our club and carried our forward line for years. You might as well claim that Ablett Senior was a crap player because he didn't tackle (no, Robbo was not in his league as a forward). I honestly don't care that he was light on the defensive pressure. It's only relatively recently that this has become a priority for forwards. What he did do is hold down CHF for years when we couldn't find anyone else to do the job and despite being well undersized managed to give a good accounting in the role. He also scored more goals than one of our highly regarded "champions" in Garry Lyon (who was also a little light on the forward pressure if I recall) at about the same average, topped our goalkicking four times and is third on our all-time goal kicking list. Jeremy Howe is a very good player, but he has a long way to go before he has contributed that much to the team.

There were a couple of occasions where he probably didn't even get a stat to his name, but just threw himself in like the Hulk and crashed body after body trying to get to the ball. You can't buy that sort of intensity. I really hope he keeps this up and makes HF his own for the rest of the season.

Having just caught the replay, I think that Watts was better value than he appeared when at the game. He certainly was very loose on his man when they had the ball, but he provided A LOT of value when we had it. Much easier to see his work with the ball on the screen.