RalphiusMaximus

Am I the only person who's happy with this result? It's a win for us because the pies are rated so much more highly than us, so that's a good thing. It was a great game with two teams throwing everything at each other, and if you take off the eye patch you can see that neither side deserved a loss, so that's a good thing. We saw Jamar not just win but DOMINATE the opposition ruck brigade to the extent that he had 50% more hitouts than their entire team plus a massive PB on disposals and a goal. Moloney likewise had a huge day. Our stoppers were all great and only one of their guns did anything noteworthy. HOnestly, I can't see any negatives here. A great day for our team.

The real question though, is has Saint Nick ever kicked 10?

Do you honestly believe that Cheney won't turn it over in our back half. In the games I've seen him play he's shown a spectacular lack of good judgment. He is a very strong one-on-one competitor, but when he wins the ball he is prone to doing some truly bizarre things with it. Kicking across goal and missing the target seems to be a specialty. Quite often he has charged across and won the ball again to rectify the mistake, but in the AFL he won't get that chance. I just wish we could combine Cheney's defensive and contested work with Straus's disposal. We'd have a matchwinner on our hands then.

Awesome news that Liam is getting back into it. However, I think everyone should hold back their expectations a bit. He's still a very inexperienced player and he hasn't had a game in three months. As good as he looks in training we can't expect him to shoulder the whole load and immediately turn things around. If he has a few low impact games and struggles to get back into it, don't be too disappointed.

I love that they're so confident on Fitzpatrick. If he can get himself up to the right level of fitness and strength then he will be a huge asset to the club.

So who gets to captain the side with Junior out?

Love the bad pun in that FB post. "...last leg..." Brilliant. Also cool to have a good summary of the injury issues from the horse's mouth. Best of luck to him on stringing a few games together and amazing us all with what he can do.

What's wrong with being a one-position player? How many positions do you want him to fill? He'd be brought into the side solely to add some size and strength to the forward line, so what else do you want from him? The obsession with versatility is already killing the development (and possibly careers) of several of our players. I'd rather have guys who are phenomenal in one position than fair to middling in all of them.

For a first round pick? Dangerfield or Boak I would think. None of those listed. I might give a second round pick for McKernan.

Honestly, I had little opinion on Maric until I saw him in a couple of pre-season matches this year. Having seen him play in those, I came on here and announced that I didn't think he'd make it as an AFL footballer. My reasoning was that he was slow, not great at winning contested ball and his kicking for goal was terrible (despite his amazing figures as a junior). I have only seen him play once for Casey since then, and have to say that he still didn't do much for me. There were a couple of passages of play in which he looked good, but for the most part a whole lot of nothing special. He also seemed prone to something that many here accuse Nathan Jones of doing, that being trying more than he's capable of and winding up making a huge mess of everything. Right now, I see evidence of improvement in the form of the comments from Gotch listed above, but nothing to suggest that he's ready for AFL. I am standing by my previous assessment. He's too small, too slow, can't win his own ball and his kicking isn't good enough. He could learn to win his own ball in which case we'd have another Valenti, and his kicking will likely improve, but I don'[t see a lot of future for him.

Give insight and advice from a perspective that neither Mahony nor O'Donnell possess. It's that simple. And it doesn't need to be another specialist coach. As I said earlier, even getting someone to sit down with him once a week and go through the game would be of huge benefit (while not costing the earth).

Which is why everyone needs to stop questioning his attitude. The kid has a very good head on his shoulders and understands exactly where his game is right now. That being said, I still think the OP has a good point and he could benefit from some one-on-one time with a really good forward to learn a few of the tricks of the trade.

Just how many young kids do we want playing in the side at once this year anyway? I have no problem with Sam being handled with Kid Gloves right now. There isn't really a spot for him in the senior side, so why rush him when the injury is still causing him pain? Give him another couple of months, see if he can string together half a dozen games with Casey an we'll get a much more realistic idea of where his career is going.

OMG!! Knocking another post just because you can. How constructive. Back to the point. This is an entirely valid question to be asking. Mahony may be an excellent coach, but he was never a star forward, and I'm sure there are aspects of this art that he will struggle to get across to players like Jack and Liam. It may not even be a matter of getting in a specialist coach for these guys so much as asking former players to come in and chat with them. Perhaps have Lyon or Schwartz sit down one on one with the player and the match tape and do a review of how they worked as a forward? This would not eat into their media commitments and could be of enormous value to the players having that insight from some very good players on how they could have done things just a little bit better.

These two in particular were daylight robbery. Thinking back to the people who went to the draft function, didn't they say that these two were slated for picks 18 and 35 before Tapscott became available at 18? Unbelieveably that they both fell so far down the order that we still got them.

As I recall, there was a bit of a furor about his shopping around for other offers in the 2008 trade period before signing a 3 year deal with us. That would put him in the second year of that deal. Once it's over he's probably going to be looking at a succession of 1 year contracts as clubs rarely give any longer than that to 30+ year old players.

Straus. If he's the regular kick-taker it means another of our young guys has taken the next step.

You could always ask him on twitter.

I'm not worried about Jack at all. I've seen him play good games where he showed his ability to attack contests. I've seen him use his speed and agility against AFL listed players. He has all of the attributes to go a long way. The only question is why he hasn't done it at the top level. Either he's intimidated by the tougher and better opponents, or simply not good enough and strong enough to go with them (probably both really). I am quite willing to give him a couple more years to start playing well. Think of some of the past greats like Carey or Schwartz (ok, nearly great). They really started showing what they could do when they were 21 or 22. We've all seen the footage of David Schwartz playing at that age. As far as I'm concerned, this is the target we should be setting for Jack.

He's been out of hte game for a year. It's not just a matter of recapturing the form he had before his injuries, there is also the matter of the high-speed rule changes being handed out by the AFL. Once upon a time a player could sit out a year and come back to find the umpires calling things the same way as when he left. Not anymore. He has to come to terms with the new "interpretations" that may not have applied when he last played.

Interesting things to take from that comment: 1. Morton is going to be a forward. 2. If you assume that Petterd would have been there, then is could be a concession that he is not going to be around. 3. Green is not mentioned. If we read something into Petterd's absence, then we must equally read something into this. Is his time at the club shorter than we all think? Alternately, you can take it as a throwaway line on Twitter that was made without consultation of our long-term strategic plans.

Well, the obvious answer to the OP is: Badly. We have some pretty serious structural issues that need to be worked out. Fortunately, we have a couple of years to get them sorted while our future talls in Watts, Gawn and Fitzpatrick develop to the point where they can influence games.

I'd take Dangerfield. Boak is a great player, but Dangerfield at his best is better. He has the ability to explode and tear a game apart. His ability to kick goals is just an added bonus.

So Dunn in for Watts next week?

I have to ask, why was it that every time the ball was kicked to him at half forward the camera moved across to find him flat on his face and his opponent taking an uncontested mark? Was he being fouled or is he just too easy to push off?