Adam The God

Disagree with the point on Oliver. His disposal is fine. He needs to work on continuing to accelerate from the contest and hit the scoreboard more. Judd, Dangerfield, Dusty etc all of them are very hit and miss by foot, but all of them the best players in the game. Petracca is also prone to regular turnovers. Look at his turn over stats. I agree with the rest though, although I think we could address the Weideman problem by getting him stronger support (ie a Ben Brown) to take the best defender away from him, so he can continue to develop. I think Fritsch needs to play at half forward with Melksham on the other flank. They should be used as ball users going inside and occasionally floating back inside 50 to mark themselves. But they should be connection players. This will hopefully take some of the pressure of Fritsch having to be the main man to hit the scoreboard up forward. Getting goals from a Brown, Kozzie, Jackson etc will also release this pressure.

I always like your outside of the box thinking @Pollyanna. I'd target Polec (as @rjay says), try Salem on a wing and keep Baker developing in the background and fighting for that open second wing spot. I think Hannan will be delisted, because as you say, we have too many medium sized forwards. This upcoming pre season is a massive one for Salem. I'd attach him to Langdon like we partnered Petracca with Oliver last pre season. Time for Salem to take the next step.

And more diversity in the midfield role he plays. Still maintain he could be better used as a stopper like Harmes. He's done it before anyhow. Both. Our stoppage set ups are ordinary and predictable. Knights at Geelong sets up the mids in a really interesting way. As does Kingsley at Richmond. We need a midfield coach like that, who is prepared to get the mix right and be unpredictable to opposition in the way we set up, but predictable internally to ensure the best connection between Gawn and the mids. I'd play Viney and Harmes as defensive mids alongside first possession mid in Oliver. Have Petracca rotating in and out of there too.

Who says we haven't already conducted an external review this year? This is way too big. The soft cap is being reduced, so you'll see a much leaner FD.

Particularly if you put it on here mate. The gronks in the AFL press will pick it up and claim it as their own source. What an interesting idea...

Would prefer Merrett obviously, but Phillips will likely come much cheaper and add to our outside run. It'll give us more flexibility and hopefully defensive cover if we try to play the Geelong surrender centre clearance and slingshot game.

I like it. But we'd need another speedster in there that we can guarantee goals out of IMV. Still not mobile enough when the ball hits the deck with that combo.

Not so wobbly after all. I'm learning some military history in this thread! Conceivable, but I don't buy it. Goodwin has a track record of playing players out of position. This is more likely IMV, but we shall see. It's not a bad idea to be honest, but I think we'd want to look at someone a bit younger. May is 28 and won't be around forever. I'd be looking at getting another KPD (in the 23-25 age bracket) to learn alongside May and partner Lever when May retires.

This is a great post. ?

Yep, unfortunately they're rating his poor midfield play and that's more worrying to me. He doesn't, as you say, have Oliver's hands or vision, yet they've rated his rugby to be better than Oliver's year. It's astounding to me, but c'est la vie. Needs to play a different role and I don't think it'd be a good idea to sign him more than 3 or 4 years. That would take him through until 30 and then we can reassess on one or two year contracts depending on the state of his body.

He move up to Byron after this?

Well done, Trac. Thought Oliver was far better in the midfield, Petracca was a star, but forward and mid. While Oliver controlled our games and gets passed over again. Had we beaten made the 8 ahead of the Dogs, I wonder if he gets the nod ahead of Macrae.

Would love Daniels. Crafty, pressure forward. Disagree.

Yeah, not sure about that one. You can just as easily get a decent competitor in the ruck off the rookie list.

Exactly where I stand on this. The ruck position is vastly overrated.

Agreed. But mostly in the context of first possession midfielder. If he's playing a defensive role, I think he could absolutely slot into our midfield. I think Harmes could do the exact same thing. And both could/should play forward when not playing the defensive midfield role. Completely agree with this. I think it's clear Harmes to half back didn't work, so he should be moved into the mid/forward role. I'd even have him on a wing. Exactly. If we tried playing Weideman as a rover, he'd be useless too. Harmes needs to be played in the right position. The same as Gus. It'd be great if they had more versatility but when the midfield is your go, it's your go. One of those guys has played almost 150 games of rugby and the other two have demonstrated they're capable of playing disciplined midfield footy without him.

You can probably guess my position on this. Good move. If Max goes down, we'll be able to cover. This could help us land a pick that might prize a Saad from Essendon.

McClure seems to be folliclly challenged (sorry Demonlanders who are), so that's where I'd be directing my wrath instead of kicking him in the balls, but he definitely has some smarm about him.

I'd give the game up if we lost Oliver. So just putting that out there.

Right, so you're implying that Petracca wants to be traded. There are five guys contracted to 2022 (ie two years left on the contract) and only one of them is represented by D'Orazio.

To be fair to @Lord Nev he actually mentioned it to me earlier today, so prior to Footy Classified...

As I said the other day, we should be putting a 4 year contract extension to Clarry this off season and putting a similar deal in front of Trac too.

No proof, OD, just reading the tea leaves.

You've still got two guys that don't tackle at all; Spargo and ANB are inconsistent in that area; and Kozzie and Bedford hadn't played an AFL game before. This impacts upon consistency obviously.

See, this is why I wonder whether we need to revert potentially to a stronger more aggressive press like the 18 man press we used in 2018. We managed to lock teams inside our forward 50 a lot that year. 2017 as well. We thoroughly dominated teams for large portions of the game. I like the idea that we do have a second way of playing if we want now. And that is to sit deeper and press in the middle of the ground and zone across the forward half, rather than everyone pressing. It may well require us to play the more aggressive press where appropriate and then know when to revert to the second system. To me this is the plan B that we've lacked for so long. I don't think we're particularly good at the three zone midfield press, but with time and another pre season, who knows?