RalphiusMaximus

With those numbers, how could they not give it to him?

Was that the one on the wing where he wrestled and tossed his opponent aside?

11 touches in the second quarter was a great way to make a statement. Having first hands on our first three goals in the final quarter when we were fighting back from a 20 point deficit? That was just priceless. I admit I was wrong on this front. I was a big fan of Parish, and while he will clearly be a player, Oliver has come on beautifully and shown he already has what it takes. Amazing bit of drafting.

Found it. Near the end of the second quarter: 3.36 to go in the second he marks in the centre circle. Attempt to give the quick handpass to Watts which is tapped down by the man on the mark Watts picks up the spill and dishes back to Oliver Oliver short chip to Hogan, play on is called and the ball is knocked out of Hogans hands. Oliver follows up and takes the ground ball at full speed, crashes into a tackler and dishes back to Hogan fro the ground Hogan is tackled and the ball spills Oliver grabs the groundball while still down and dishes to Hogan and N Jones at 3.23 to go. That's one mark and four disposals in 13 seconds resulting in us getting a F50 entry although it doesn't get much further. Oliver also followed up again to pick up the ground ball coming out of our 50 and I don't think was credited with a disposal for letting it be jarred lose in the direction of a teammate. If he can have that sort of impact more often he'll give the Brownlow a shake sooner or later.

Needs to work on his field kicking. Pretty happy with the rest of his work. How was that passage in the second (I think) where he just turned into a wrecking ball and crashed contest after contest and kept winning the ball? I'm pretty sure he wasn't credited with all of the disposals he got from that minute or so.

There was also the broken back Sylvia copped after being tunneled by Butcher. Again, no case to answer.

Interesting point from the game today. When Pedersen was dumped over the boundary at HF, Oliver was a few feet away and turned to jog off and set up for the throw-in. A teammate (I think vandenBerg) yelled at him something along the lines of "He's your teammate, give him a hand up!" by which time Pedersen had already picked himself up. Still, it's another example of team-building and player-driven standards in action.

A previous coach misread his name as Clarence rather than Clayton. It was mentioned in an article a while back.

Just looked this up. Aaron has three boys. Marley (2010) and twins Archie and Isaac (2012) Green has two. Oliver (unsure) and Wilba (2012?). Bruce has one, Ben. Not sure when he was born. Either way, it's going to be a while before we are looking at any of these lads joining the side, but we can hope right? Sometime around 2028-2030, assuming the rule still exists, we may have access to some pretty good talent.

How old are the Davey boys? Come to think of it, didn't Bruce and Green have a couple of lads in the same bracket?

I think there was a photo of Billy as a 14 year old playing representative footy in SA. I'm not sure on Jack, but probably a similar age. It would be amazing if this kid came on to be the athlete his Dad was. He'd be a very handy forward with that height and leap.

So that's an extra 12.

For now. Love that film. Vastly underrated.

Cotchin has better skills than Jones, but he goes to pieces under pressure. Jones has far more fight to him which is why he's so valued in our club. He will always put up a fight.

Can't argue that, but he is a Hero for the club. He's been the one player to stand up and fight through the years of rubbish, he's taking personal responsibility for mentoring the next generation of players who will hopefully surpass him and he's never even considered leaving the club for a cheap premiership. Given that Oliver has moved in with the Brayshaws, I'm really hoping to see Jones (and Gus) doing the same job of mentoring he did with Gus last year. You can clearly see the benefit Brayshaw gained from having a mentor like that just around the corner, taking him out of training runs, making sure he got out the door and in to the club on time and just driving home the professional habits needed right from the start. The training reports, including from Gus himself, say that Oliver loves the physical stuff, loves to tackle and wrestle and is a ferocious competitor. It sound like he's setting himself up to have a Brayshaw-like first season. If we get that sort of output from him this year then we're way ahead of the game and should be thrilled.

Within the first year if he shows he can do it right.

One of the photo sets from Six6six shows Petracca dummying right then stepping left to go around him. Oliver looked like he thought it was the best thing ever. I get the impression that the smile is pretty much a permanent fixture for him when he's playing. Looking at those photos shows that he has a lot of muscle to build to catch up with Petracca.

I don't know if it's been posted before, but there was a nice little article on the lad before he was drafted in The Age. Talks about his OP, struggles with fitness at the start of the season and the amazing work his parents did to help him out.

This bit kind of worries me. Comparing him to a totally ordinary and uninspiring player isn't a great look.

I just think we should be really careful with those injuries. It's not such a big deal if he misses games in his first year making sure he's fit, but if they develop later into a problem it's going to be much worse.

I really don't think the Weed will or should play seniors next year. They need to take their time and make absolutely sure that his ankle problems are behind him before anything else. Then they can build his fitness base over the course of a few years and by the time we're really challenging we'll have a fit and firing forward pair.

You did see those big crunching tackles right?

I have to admit, when I hear the name I keep thinking of the guy from the Crows. Different spelling of course.

Does anyone have a link to his combine scores? I'd love to get an idea of exactly how he scores on speed and endurance. He was third for agility which is amazing for such a big guy, but you can see it in his highlights.

I thought that too, but he looks like he's really slimmed down in the second half of the year judging by the latest shots of him. I think it speaks very well of him that he's done that on his own before being drafted. He's coming into the club ready to train. In the SEN coverage, they said he hurt himself during the agility trial (which he killed) and had to sit out the beep test, but refused to sit out the 3km time trial because he'd put so much work into improving his running and wanted the chance to show what he could do. I'm still worried about our side's overall poor disposal, but this kid does look like he may be a player.