RalphiusMaximus

I was going to say something similar. Would I see myself as getting a game at Melbourne in a premiership year? If yes, then I would absolutely be up for a trade. The walking thing is difficult. I think it would come down to how I had come to a club. If I had told them outright that I would prefer to play at Melbourne and would take the chance if offered before they drafted me, then they've been given fair warning and I would be happy to do it. I would never do what CJ or Jeff Farmer did, screwing the club with no warning and little chance of compensation.

Nope. We do get another Rookie pick though.

No. Maybe draft someone a little older, although that is also a stretch. We have Davey, Moloney, Jamar, Warnock and Green who are all in their mid-late 20's (or 30's). THat's a decent bit of experience around the group. A young side is not always a curse. Look at the Baby Bombers.

I knew that they had spoken to him. I don't know if there has been any confirmation before, but I thought this was a pretty clear indication that he was going to sign with them.

The Hawks will be strong next year. Hale makes a big difference to them.

Well, looks like he's not coming to training on Monday.

Just found the following on Miller's twitter. Looks like the move to Richmond is pretty much a done deal.

I think it's a hell of an effort. I query a few things, like Smelts going before Atley. I've seen nothing of Atley but I think he's gone ahead of Smelts in every other Phantom Draft I've read and they are seen as quite similar players. Still, I know very little about these players, so I am not really qualified to judge. Tactically, I question not taking a tall with one of those picks. As even as this draft is said to be, there is a hell of a difference between 12 and 30-something, and from there to high 40's is another big leap. I'd rather grab a quality KPP early.

I seem to recall these rumours being around last year as well. I think by now we've all had time to have a good look at the lad. I have no great objection to giving him a shot, but not at the expense of promising teenager. If the draft is a little thin by the time we get to our last pick then why not?

I freely admit that I know next to nothing about the candidates in this years draft. Last year I put a lot of time into looking into the young players and I was absolutely thrilled with our picks (Fitzpatrick in particular), but this year with fewer high picks I've struggled for motivation. That being said, I have to agree with E25 that the phantom draft published by Clark is horse#*@!. My logic in this is quite simple. He has us taking Jacobs with our first pick. I know nothing about his quality, but I can't see us taking a medium defender with our first pick. It will either be a quality mid or a tall. I would expect the likes of Lycett, Darling, Lynch or Gorringe (although we don't expect them all to be available) to be in the mix. I don't know enough about the mids on offer to suggest any of them, but I would expect us to go that direction rather than another mid-sized defender.

Interesting. Morton did actually look a bit more like his brothers in the FB pic. He might actually be building up a bit.

Interesting. I can log out and view the 2011 thread, but log back in and it's gone. Obviously an issue with the Poll graphic as that is not shown to visitors.

Rather amused to see in that thread the call for Brock to be named captain as well.

I'm using firefox and can't see the 2011 thread. Quite annoying.

Interesting. I like the idea of him as a later pick. It would certainly take some of the pressure off Watts and Jurrah to have him around.

Looks like we got the best out of that trade then. It's a sad thing that he didn't really prosper at the Lions, but well done to the club for making the hard call and getting it dead right.

I like it. I wouldn't be horribly surprised if they offered McNamara a rookie spot (assuming nobody takes him), but then I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't either. He's shown himself to be a good VFL player, but hasn't given us anything to rave about at AFL level. Given that Newton is still a rookie, I think a case can be made for Tommy. Knightmare over on BigFooty had an interesting notion for the ruck situation in Callum Sinclair. He could fit the bill very nicely if the club think he has the improvement in him. 201cm ruck/forward is never a bad thing to have on your list.

With the draw the way it is, I have us down for 13+ wins. I've given us a 50-50 with the Hawks given that the only reason they beat us this year was the rain. I figure one each way with them. Same with Carlton. I'm going with the notion that we'll improve as the year progresses, so in both cases it's a loss first up and a win later on. GC17 twice is a nice bonus. If we can't roll them there's something very wrong. Richmond will throw everything at us, but I think we're further along in our development and have more depth across the field, so we should handle them both times too. This is also the year for us to break the interstate hoodoo. Port are crap and we should be able to get over them at both TIO and AAMI. The only concern there is the Laidley factor. He could influence the result. All in all it's a great draw for us and I can see a very good year coming up.

I can't argue with that. Rumours can get started over all sorts of crap, plas Sylvia was a bit wild as a lad. I've often preached faith in the recruiting department, so I'll have to tow the line here I guess. I'd still take Lynch at 12 if he's still there.

Still not sold on Darling. We've put so much work into getting the bad eggs out of the list. It would be a shame to ruin it now.

He did the team thing. Any other time in the game it would have been the right thing to do. If he ever finds himself in that situation again he will no doubt remember and take the shot, but for a player with less than 10 games to his name, it was a good sign that he did the team thing and we can perhaps forgive a lack of situational awareness regarding the clock. I'll add that the big moment when I realised that we had a serious player on our hands was in the first game I got to this year. I can't remember who it was against, just that there was a long ball out of defence to the wing, the ball spilled to the back of the pack and Bail lurking behind scooping it up and taking off to a vacant 50 for the first score of the match. I remember standing up and yelling "look at Bail!" as he took off, and of course the let sown when he missed the shot. However, he made a habit of taking the spill off the back of packs and running us into attack this year and it's something we can never get enough of.

Also interesting to note that Knightmare rates Watts. Rare from a Collingwood supporter.

Funny to see the Collingwood bias in his comments. Every player with good pace/awareness/kicking/marking is rated as like Heath Shaw.

Damn I hope Lynch falls to 12. Pity it won't happen.

Pretty sure rookie promotions count as draft picks, so to promote Spencer and McKenzie will eat into our late picks. Might wind up with only 12, 32 and 49 or something?