RalphiusMaximus

If I recall, the first time the two played against each other Trenners broke TS's nose.

The returns on his last couple of matches are hellishly impressive. Edit: I really want to see some footage of that game. Sounds like the two forwards put on a clinic.

I have to say there seems to be a vast amount of speculation over a tiny part of the story. Does anyone know exactly what happened? There is a single line in the story indicating that he left the scene of the accident, but not why. Did he go to the nearest payphone? Did he run the rest of the way home and pretend to have never been there? Who knows? Certainly not anyone on this message board. What we do know is that all accounts say that he was on his way home after spending the night elsewhere. None of them even hint that he had been out on the town all night and was just getting in. They also all agree that he was the passenger of the vehicle in question. We don't know why this is. It could be that he had been out drinking and didn't think he should drive. If so, we should be praising his common sense and pointing to it as the right example to set. Imagine if he'd been caught drink-driving instead. On the other hand, he could have been giving someone a driving lesson, or just letting a mate have a spin in his fancy sports car for the hell of it. We'll probably never know. As I say, speculation abounds. How about we all just take a deep breath, be grateful that one of our best players hasn't been hurt in what looks to have been a pretty nasty little crash, and give the guy the benefit of the doubt until we have some actual information to go on? Edit: I see the HS is now saying he was drinking the night before.

I notice they don't have our boy Aaron Hall on the radar at all.

Top Four Finish! No question. We're taking Carlton's spot inthe top four next year and they can just choke on it. Does that help?

But at that rate of increase in six years we'll be ahead of them :D

I wouldn't be going in for the mini draft next year. This year it was worth it because the players were better than we could pick up in the draft. Next year I don't know if that will be the case. Personally, I would prefer to see us with two live picks in the first round plus Jack Viney That sounds like a hell of a good deal to me.

Well, mature aged draftees often go later in the draft. He could last until our first pick. Of course, there's no saying what we'll actually do with that pick so I guess we find out in a month or so.

Nah. We will use them both since our first pick will go to FS Jack Viney. Two first rounders and Young Jack is a nice start in what is supposed to be a strong year.

Walsh to the Swans! Radio says he threatened to walk and forced a trade.

Melbourne finally throwing some weight around during trade week. Love it. Not enough to throw two first round picks at Caddy though. They can have our second compo pick and Maric if they want. Bate too.

Unimpressive. I've just been looking through the results. He made one top ten list for the running vertical jump, where he came seventh at 85cm. No other mentions. Is there a place where they publish all of their scores? I haven't been able to find it so far. Incidentally, look out for Elliot Yeo. Looks like he killed in the agility testing, although he isn't too fast.

Agreed on all fronts. So we ask for just a little more luck from the Football Gods and try to get our hands on him prior to the draft if at all possible. Give them Warnock and a third round pick. Hell, give them a second round pick. It'd be worth it.

That's a pretty fair while ago. This makes me happy. We're obviously doing something right.

So can anyone remember the last time Melbourne actually won a bidding war for a sought after player? I can remember a few times when we've been beaten out by more popular clubs. I can even remember a player flatly refusing to come and play for us after being drafted. Someone tell me how long it's been since we pulled something like this off.

We've been wondering that very thing. GWS has one pick left to pre-list a player and possibly trade him on. We could get him that way. They've been trading guys from this set pretty cheaply to other clubs, so who knows what they'd ask of us? In a few cases they've given players for second and third round pick upgrades, and that would be an absolute bargain. If we couldn't get him through GWS and he were still available, the National draft would be the way to go. We might get lucky and grab him with our first pick (round 2), but in a weak draft I can see him going quite early. I doubt he'd slip to the PSD or Rookie drafts, although you can never tell what will happen on the day.

See the Aaron Hall thread.

GWS are not going to be easy to deal with, but it would be worth having a word to them. If we could get this guy on the cheap I think we'd be pretty happy.

So he has expressed an interest in going to Sydney based on the fact that they will give him games. Surely the same could be said of Melbourne? Are they offering him more money? What would motivate him to specify one club over others at this stage? How much of a preference does he really have? Would he be happy playing anywhere that would give him a game or is he doing a Mitch Clarke and throwing all his eggs in one basket? I also question the Saints proclaiming that none of their players are up for grabs despite being desperate to clear some space under the salary cap. Every single player who has been mentioned has been declared off limits in their press releases. Obviously, given that they are in such need of offloading, this can't be the case with them all, therefore they are playing silly buggers in the hopes of getting payed overs for their players. Personally, I would love it if the other clubs left them to burn, but there are a few really good players there who can be shaken loose, so reality suggests they will get out of it. In conclusion, ignore what the idiot is saying to the press and push them for Walsh. They have to give ground somewhere and it might as well be to us. We have better picks to offer than Sydney, so if they want to maximise their benefits from the deal (which they obviously do given the games they're playing) we're the team to deal with.

That was always a bit of a concern with chasing another tall forward. We have a bunch who are being developed, and bringing in another one is going to cos them game time. Chasing as hard as we have been indicates to me tat there is serious doubt about one or both of Cook and Fitzpatrick in the eyes of the club.

He looks far too fast for the guys he's playing against in Tassie. I do wonder what his pace would look like when he's facing some of the better running half backs and mids at AFL level, but it would be good to find out. One other thing I noted was that he seemed a little selfish in some of those passages, running loops around opponents rather than passing. It looks great, but it only takes one of those guys to get a grip and he's suddenly a dud. All that being said, damn he looked impressive. He can kick, he hits the packs with pace and takes the ball cleanly and as has been noted, his short passing game is very good. He obviously plays all over the park, although I'd like to see us take him as a small forward. Certainly worth either dealing with GWS or just drafting him. Could we get lucky in the second round again?

My thoughts exactly. There were a few media types complaining that Geelong had GC twice for the promotional value of Ablett vs his old team rather than having them play a contender. We should get the same advantage this year and have two shots at GWS so they can run out TS and have him show his stuff against his old team.

Isn't the initial rookie contract for 2 years? Maybe i'm confusing that with the draft contract.

Bear in mind that this is a pretty poor draft. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we traded our second and third round picks away in the quest for a bog forward. We'll be upgrading rookies in the draft so we don' really need high picks. If we had to burn our second and third round picks for Walsh I'd go for it. Keep pick 12 to use on a halfway decent prospect and upgrade Evans and Nicholson for the other two picks. With such a poor draft I can't see us doing much more than that.

No news today on this front. However, with Clarke turning us down I would expect more effort to be put into luring Walsh, so that could be seen as good news. We still have a lot of money and a lot of good picks to throw around, so you'd think we could get a deal done. Only thing that could hurt is that Lynch has been traded, so they have one less forward on their list now.