RalphiusMaximus

Agreed. It could have been worded better, but it's pretty clearly a case of his career could have been over, and if he gets to playing again it's a bonus he needs to be grateful for.

What's Wade Lees doing these days?

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

Day three gallery. Interesting to see who's lifting what with those deadlifts. Trengove doing the same as Viney and apparently with less strain to judge by his face. Is the third last pic Hunt? If so, he's really improved his body shape. Looks about right for AFL now.

Damn, Big Max is a beast isn't he? I'm impressed with how cut vandenBerg is looking too, he's really dropped that bit of weight he was carrying last year.

I'm not sure which has done more damage to the game, the Players association or the AFL commission. Can we get rid of both?

I was chatting to an Essendon Supporter at work today ("I just don't understand how they can look at the same evidence and see it so differently"), and he raised an interesting point. He'd love them to get Crowley in as a top-up player, but he's not sure it would be a good look for the club given he's coming off a drug ban himself.

I don't think the delays should or will be taken into account given that it was the EFC and players who initiated them. It would free up a spot for a rookie to be promoted. Mitch White looked OK in his one game last year.

I would like nothing more than for Dawes to have the best season of his life and kick 60 goals, but the reality is that it was a horrible decision to trade for him at that price and he's never going to be a significant factor in our forward line. Quite frankly he should be third in line for the second key forward slot right now and playing out his career at Casey. There is more value to the side in giving game time to King, Weiderman and Hulett than in putting Dawes on the park.

Sad to say, Melbourne has traditionally been the slowest club to adapt to changing rules and environment. Even going back to the first legal player payments, who was the only club who insisted that playing for the jumper was enough?

Funny you mention that, I found that game on a spare hard drive and watched it a few days ago. I think it's a great cure for a crappy day.

To be fair, Hunt's injuries are likely due to his late growth as much as anything.

Casey's gain. His punishment will be playing the first few rounds for them instead of playing round 1 for the seniors.

He's already given himself one.

Ablett Jr last year or the one before. We matched GC all over the ground, but every time we tried to attack he took the ball off us and fed it out to their kids again. I said at the time it was like a bunch of kids playing and someone's older brother was playing in their backline. He mostly just let the kids play, but any time their team looks like being scored on he steps in, takes the ball off us and gives it back to them again. He was just so much better than anyone else on the ground it wasn't funny.

At games, I see Jack lead a hell of a lot and either not get the pass or have it kicked high and long rather than out in front. What I can't tell is whether this is because his teammates aren't looking for/seeing him or if he's not timing his leads properly. In a few games I've re-watched in the off-season I've heard commentators say a few times that he takes off just a few seconds too early so he's running through space a moment before they are ready to pass to him. If this is the case, then a minor adjustment to his play could reap massive rewards. I suspect that the reality is a mix of several factors. As above, he sometimes leads too early. He needs to fix that. Likewise, our mids have historically been terrible at hitting a leading target, most often going too high and either forcing them to stop and wait for the defender to crash into them or going right over them and straight into the defender's hands. I have often suspected that awareness of this lack in kicking skill has lead to a reluctance to take that kick and instead they hold up and look for a safer option or a good contest on the boundary. Hopefully the addition of more skilled young players will lead to more willingness to take the attacking option in the future.

Happy New Year everybody. Let's hope that 2016 is The Year of the Demon.

What we have right now is a highly combative midfield that is lacking in weapons. We have a whole bunch of players who will win contested ball and tackle. Most of them are pretty reliable with the ball as well which is nice. What we lack are really good ball users and significant pace. There's also a bit of a question mark over the hands of a few, as in their ability to grab the ball on the first attempt. I think that a lot of faith has been shown in a few young fringe players to develop into first team regulars to help fill these voids. Guys like Mitch White, Stretch and Hunt need to come on and give us those outside weapons to complement the rock hard core. If we see that, then we're going to be much better than 15th ranked in the league.

I have to say, I am so impressed with the attitude Oliver has shown this year. The amount of weight he lost before being drafted, the way he attacked the draft combine, living away from his family to make it easier to play footy. I'm sure it's these things as much as his form late in the season that lifted him right up the order. So often we've had talented kids who didn't want to work hard. Here we seem to have a kid who started doing the hard work on his own and is loving being given more now that he's at a club. I really hope he continues in this vein.

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.

This is brilliant Six6six. Keep it up.

Lacking the motivation to go to sleep right now, I had a look on a USB I had sitting around and discovered us vs Collingwood on there. Round 18 that is. It's funny looking back and remembering watching it live. I seem to recall commenting on here about it being a stereotypical Melbourne start to the game. There's a dodgy free kick directly in front of Collingwood's goal to open the scoring. Nathan Jones tries to show leadership by playing on blindly and getting into trouble. Grimes takes a little too long with the ball and winds up kicking it out on the full. Fortunately, this is the incarnation of the Demons that was starting to show that they can hold their own in this weight division and rather than dropping their collective bundle they were able to keep their [censored] together and play like footballers after the first few minutes. I'm quite looking forward to the rest of it.

Odd thing. I can't vouch for the accuracy, but they said that Melbourne has never lost a game when one of the opposition was celebrating their 300th. If true, that's a hell of a record to hold.

The training thread says he was kicking and sprinting at very good pace today. Still a long way from full training, but you have to call it good progress.

I'm confused.