Adam The God

He's finished IMO.

Gee, May is an ordinary player. Struggles to impact contests and for a bloke of his size, he's pretty soft 1v1. Wouldn't pay much for him.

Lever injured again. Third time this year. Would have to be a consideration.

Lever's strength for mine is his intercept marking and ability to read the play, which allows him to leave his man (ala Rance) and create a spoil/2v1 scenario in favour of his team. I wonder how he'd go in our high defensive press. Our defenders are often separated quite a bit, so it may take a tweak to our defensive press to best utilise Lever's strengths.

So how much do we think Adelaide would offer him? And therefore, how high would we go? Incidentally, given we're generally unleakable as a club, I'd say the rumours of us chasing Lever have almost certainly been leaked from Lever's management to up their client's asking figure.

I think you know where I stand on Tyson.

I must admit a midfield of Oliver, Kelly, Salem, Petracca, Viney, Tyson, Jones, Lewis, Vince and hopefully even Brayshaw makes me salivate. That'd be five left footers and five right footers. Unfortunately though, it'll never happen.

Purely hypothetical, but let's say you could convince Jake Lever and Josh Kelly to come to you, but you only had room in the cap for one of them, who do you choose?

Hibberd would have to be one of our greatest trades in the modern era. I know that sounds a little silly, but I can't recall a player that has come in and performed from game 1 at such a high level, consistently. A player in the Hibberd mould would be great, but if he'd played since Round 1, he'd be in AA contention. No doubt about it. So he's playing A grade football at the moment IMO. The circumstances that Hibberd was drawn to Melbourne were also slightly unusual in that Goodwin and his best mate Melksham were already at the club. I don't think we can expect or hope that players like him (and Lewis - a similar story with Todd Viney) fall into our laps again. But, perhaps the wheel will start to turn and good players will look at Melbourne with a desire to play for a club with a young talented list on the rise. Playing finals is obviously a huge part of creating an environment good players will want to come to. I disagree with this. My uninformed view is that Dusty will want to stay at Richmond and it'll take an absolutely insane offer to drag him away from Punt Rd. And even then, he might simply settle for a pay increase at Tigerland.

And gets beaten one-out by small forwards. But he uses his body well.

Aside from Kelly, who would you be targeting, Steve? There aren't exactly an abundance of silky mids on offer in FA.

Little Jeffy Garlett outbodied Steven May today. May went to ground and Jeffy sauntered off and goaled. A clutch moment too. Rocket went berserk. If I was a Gold Coast supporter (are there any?) I would have been absolutely ropable. It was a pathetic effort, but of course you only see good in the opposition and only bad in a Melbourne jumper.

If all it took was our first rounder this year and next to get May or Lever to the club at the end of this year and Peter Wright the following year, I'd happily give up those picks. Besides, Taylor has shown an ability to pick deep into the draft. As long as we have some 2nd, 3rd and 4th round picks to keep turning over areas of our list, I'd be happy with this as our list strategy for the next two draft periods. That said, can you trade two first rounders in consecutive years? Either way, the obvious holes in the list are a ready-to-go KPD, a forward/ruck and a skilful (preferably) pacey outside mid. I think we need to keep adding ball winning ability in our midfield too. Viney, Tyson, Oliver, Petracca, Salem and maybe Brayshaw are great, but when Lewis, Jones and Vince go (two of those will hang up the boots within three years), we'll need midfield reinforcements. We might back ourselves to be an attractive FA destination by the end of those three years, and hope to land a few mids to compliment the guys we already have and take over from the guys who will retire. Then it's about getting more games into our core elite group of Oliver, Petracca, Salem, Brayshaw, Hogan, Weideman, Hunt and even Frost.

Does Zak provide outside class though? Yeah, he's quick and breaks lines, but we already have Hunt and Frost who are both line breakers, but neither can kick. Is it worth going after another? If the price isn't too high I'd have a flutter, otherwise I'd look for someone who ticks all the boxes.

I'd try trading our 2018 first rounder for him. And @goodwindees, no, we don't need to trade one of our 5 young mids (you need 8-10 decent mids to compete for a flag) to attract May. You convince May to come over and then you have the leverage. Picks will do the trick, but you don't touch our mids or our spine.

It's a boneheaded idea to trade Tyson. We get the May done with draft picks or players like Kent. Don't touch the midfield we're building. We still need another A grade or two in there. No point taking out the very good depth we have. Otherwise, we go a lot harder at Lever, who is much younger.

Yep, I'd be concerned too, but I'd also understand that bigger blokes take time. Agreed that if it's linked to his diabetes it is a problem though. But much of the criticism isn't linked to this it seems.

The people down on McCartin shows what a stupid industry this is. How many times have we seen the same thing? A young KPP struggling in his first 5 or so years. It's driven by a media machine that is looking for a short term story and an ignorant football supporting audience that doesn't understand development in the modern game. And before anyone mentions Jesse, he is a very special talent. That is not to say McCartin won't be, but as others have already done, I'd point to Weideman. He will take time. Love that we have Trac though. Will be a superstar.

Corey Perry again. Oooh baby!

Come on, Ducks. You robbed yourselves on Wednesday. Make sure you get the win tomorrow. It's been a fascinating Stanley Cup playoff series so far. Loving it.

It's not relevant that we were VFL standard during a lot of those attempts? Rubbish. You've had a bad week LT. Just settle down.

None of those years were decent years. In fact, they were all shockers.

So there's a difference between the club having interest and the player...

We usually do, Steve. He is one of the elements we're missing. But I'd suggest someone like Lever would be much higher on the shopping list and cheaper...