Adam The God

If we go by Jude Bolton's recent article, he discussed Roos' philosophy being anchored around the players working through situations going against them, rather than falling back on the coach. That would be about giving the players 'empowerment' to change momentum in games and take control themselves. I'd say this is what it was all about and has been throughout Roos' tenure.

And Richmond might just do it again with Prestia.

Dangerfield, like Judd and Ablett before him, is wallpapering serious midfield deficiencies at his club. I'd prefer to go after a star in the making who will conceivably cost us less, ie Brad Crouch.

That says everything about our poor our club has been and not how good Roos has been. However, he has been terrific since coming in. That record is an inditement on our footy club.

If he's stupid he will. Geelong have an average midfield with two stars in it. Hawthorn will get nowhere unless they start to replace their bookends.

I think we'll probably see five go from the main list and perhaps a rookie or two. That'll be it. Pedersen will get another deal and Matt Jones probably will too.

I agree, but isn't the Brisbane situation more a coaching problem and less personnel?

What a cop out. Get off the fence if you're not going to have an opinion yourself.

Losing yesterday will not be a deal breaker.

Disagree. I reckon FA will be our friend in the coming 3-5 years. It's how we'll smooth the edges of our list.

See, I reckon he'd really struggle at Brisbane (I mean who wouldn't? ).

I think you're underselling him a little bit, mate, but I think he'd struggle in a team with a lesser midfield. If he was 24 it'd be a yes, but with Weed and Hulett coming through, I'd prefer to develop from within there.

I agree with this, mate and with Jaded's post too, but it is frustrating to see him play for free kicks and at times fail to even provide a chase if the ball is spoiled or spilled. This happened a couple of times right in front of us on Sunday and it's not a good look. But it's funny. I feel like he still hasn't had that break out game yet and reckon he might this year. He has the potential to kick 10+, it's really only a matter of time. But first he has to work on his attitude, his defensive work rate and keep things simple with his kicking action.

Good post. The inexperienced players aren't the problem at our club, it's the senior players. Naturally, much of our inconsistency will be down to the inexperience on our list, but also the up and down form of players with experience who should be doing a whole lot better.

Agreed, although there has been a bit of gifting.

Get them all coming through at the same time. It's the Geelong model.

I think what Hawthorn did though was bring in the Gibson's and the Lake's once they'd built a bit of momentum in the competition. Let's see who we can attract at the end of 2016 and at the end of 2017. I think you'll find (if we continue our upward trajectory as a club) that we'll be able to entice some A graders for the first time in years. And these won't be A graders on the back of merely money. These will be A graders that want to jump on board, because they see what we're building. Make finals or go close this year and follow it up again next year with a finals campaign and this will be a reality. I keep saying it, but we are building a scary midfield. Midfields win premierships.

Hogan at CHF and Weideman at FF with Watts as a smart third tall who can kick goals too... that's a scary proposition for opposition defences. Especially, when we'll have the likes of Viney, Oliver, Petracca, Tyson etc winning the ball out of the middle more times than not. Our list balance is almost becoming a little Hawthornesque. We're building a really strong midfield with depth, a powerful forwardline, but a weaker backline. Hawthorn's structures, team work at the back and good ball users is what enabled them to be so dominant. We don't have that yet, but that's the direction we're going in. Of course, down the track we'll look to add KPDs to our list just as Hawthorn did with Gibson (despite playing undersized), Lake and now Frawley. Let's keep adding to the midfield, sign a KPD in FA or Hurley and continue developing our young KPFs in Weideman and Hulett to support Jesse. I love that we're still flying under the radar and rightfully so, we're still horribly inconsistent, but if we can sign Hogan long term this year, heads might start to turn our way.

Makes sense. Thanks mate.

I don't remember that, but thanks mate. Why was Vince's goal against Richmond never reviewed then? That was a metre and a half over the line, but was called touched and then never reviewed. The commentators didn't mention anything, so it wasn't even replayed. I was in a perfect position for that. It was well over.

I'd have Oliver ahead of him, but Oliver is the sort of player, like Sam Mitchell, that will go unnoticed for years. Can I just say that for a billion dollar organisation, they are absolute amateurs at times. How can you not send a memo out to the clubs if the umpires are going to start focusing on new procedures or interpretations? The new interpretation of the deliberate rushed behind and the goal review after every goal - since when? Clearly they've both started this week. No communication out of AFL House though. Hopeless.

How special are Petracca and Oliver going to be? 20s for Petracca and 18.9 for Clarry. At this stage, Truck makes too many little errors and Clarry rarely makes any errors. They'll both end up being different types of players, but we have two absolute gems there.

I know he's only a young kid, but if he kicks those goals early yesterday, who knows. I feel he would have last year. Given the limited opportunities we had, we simply needed to dob the easy ones and he had a couple of them yesterday and missed. It's such a psychological blow. You feel like you're working so hard to create scoring chances and when you finally do, your gun CHF misses very gettable shots multiple times. Scoreboard pressure is a wonderful thing. It's also a big momentum driver. This is where I see the improvement coming in the next few years. In 12-18 months, Hogan would be grabbing that game by the scruff of the neck (ala Stringer) and influencing the game in a big, big way. That's what stars do. I'd hope your Oliver's, Viney's and Petracca's are also capable. Not sure a Nathan Jones is. At least, against really top opposition. You could tell pretty early on yesterday that we weren't on and so often when this is the case, we'll fall over, fumble, run into each other, take the wrong option and generally the luck doesn't go our way. It was just one of those days, but it clearly defined for me where we're at. There's simply too much inexperience and as Roos said, we need about 15 or 16 players playing well for us to win. We're not there yet and we won't be this year. But that's not to say we won't win 10-12 games though and finish on the cusp of the 8.

Yeah, spot on, mate. This is the other side to the playing the PR game with building the foundations. It allowed us to stockpile some draft picks and build this midfield.

Yep, fair enough. Well, Jack only makes our midfield deeper. So that's 10 that can play in the midfield if we land Prestia (I think we will). Guys like Kennedy, Kent and Harmes will also move through there. That's a lot of blokes who can play there, currently in our best 22. It reminds me very much of Roos' 2005 Sydney team. They had a lot of guys that could move through there and they've built the list to Roos' philosophy - players must be multi-positional in modern footy. Roos' term hasn't been flawless. I do wonder, like BB, whether we he could have flicked the offensive switch a bit earlier, but the list building appears to be first class.