Little Goffy

Presumably they have a bunch of academy kids next year and are confident the AFL will give them some kind of free hit. Provided their begging bowl is empty enough at the time. #goldcoastmendicants

So many questions needs to be answered. Is your steak a mid or flank? Is it a bit of a raw talent? Mature-aged? Maybe even a smokey? Either way, for the best result you alwyas have to ask the chef the only really important question - What's the best available?

Once again the club is slow to act! #sackgoodwin #sacktaylor #sacknorthey But seriously, good luck to Jason Taylor. His night(s) of the year where he gets to go on an giant easter egg hunt. And word is he is actually pretty good at it. If we do grab Jackson there's a case for being optimistic - Oliver was the same kind of deal. We identified a player we absolutely believed in, paid the price to get them rather than follow the implied rules of the hundreds of phantom drafts, and came out laughing. Doing that with a tall inside midfielder is great. To do that with a ruckman/forward, at a time when young rucks in particular are in desperate short supply, would be truly stellar. There must be only half a dozen truly outstanding rucks of any age in the AFL at the moment - the All-Aus selection is an annual two-horse race and there just aren't that many future contenders lurking in the under-25 age group. If it works, the rewards are enormous and if Taylor & co believe in him, then it's a thrill. Sorry. Got a little off topic to the Jackson debate. I guess my main point is - that's got to be a thrill, having that much responsibility when you believe in your own ability to shine through.

Did it better than Franklin.

I think we are all quietly aware that if we skip Pickett he'll be a Byron Pickett / Cyril Rioli mashup and if we take him he will be basically Chris Yarran only smaller. Similarly, if we somehow get Brodie Kemp it will be because all other clubs let him slide after looking at medical information that confirms he'll never play a full season. On the other hand if we have the chance but don't take him, he's basically Bontempelli and never plays less than 20 games in a season. Luke Jackson is currently in a state of probabalistic flux between being a modern update on Jim Styles or basically a dual-position Lucas Cook. Hayden Young? Pass and he's a more accountable, better-kicking Dyson Heppel. Take? James Strauss II. Is Tom Green the next Patrick Cripps or the next Matthew Bate? Only GWS decision to bid-match will tell. Right. I feel a little better with that out of my system. (oops, as would 'Accepting Mediocrity' who posted the same theme just before me)

I can now see the argument for naming my future children "Best Available". Guaranteed AFL career.

The conventional wisdom now seems overwhelming that we'll be taking Jackson at three. After that, unless Brodie Kemp is magically still available at ten, I think there will be a serious live-trade on the night, so I'm going to throw my dice twice: Scenario One - Pick 10 Brodie Kemp, pick 28 Elijah Taylor. Kemp we are all familiar with by this stage. Taylor is just what a pick 28 should be - the possibility of a gun if we can give a little trim and polish. Scenario Two - Live trade 10 and 28 for Port's 12 and 18 because Port want local midfield guns Dylan Stephens and Harry Shoenberg (desperately need to start succession planning for Gray 31 Rockliff 29 Boak 31 Ebert 29 Hartlett 29 and Motlop 28), need to jump Hawthorn to get Stephens while Shoenberg will still be available at 28, and the deal will still leave them with pick 16 to play with in the later end of the first round. Pick 12 Cody Weightman, pick 18 Trent Bianco. Obviously Kysiah Pickett becomes very likely at 18, too, but might be too similar to Weightman to draft both at once. Bianco is all those 'reliable skills, composure, leadership' words that we definitely need more of. A short draft but we actually have a lot of taller mids and flanks running around already so I'm ok with it.

Hence the water.

I get it. Not the world's first pissing contest and wont be the last. And you're only pissing on each other's shoes so why should anyone else care? But if people were having a pissing contest in the alley over the road from my apartment, yeah, once in a while I'd give a yell out the window to cut it out, too. I'm not saying I don't care. I'm saying this thread has taken a topic which I'd like to engage on and turned it into a pathetic and odious dance of the martinets and there's a case for closing it down because sweet geebus there's nothing of value being added.

when will this thread end?

Centre bounce one - Foll: Gawn, Oliver, Brayshaw, Melksham F: Jackson, Viney, Petracca, Harmes Centre bounce two - FOLL: Jackson, Viney, Petracca, Harmes F: Gawn, Oliver, Brayshaw, Melksham ?

Pick 8 for pick 10 and 28. Fascinating. Worth noting that having pick 28 also means me have the realistic possibility of live pick trading on the second night of the draft. After all the fuss of the first round is done and everyone has a day to evaluate. I.e Pick 28 and 2020 third rounder for 23 to grab a slider (many eyes here are on Pickett of course) we have our eye on. All by prior understanding with a club that isn't interested in that particular player. A pre-agreed 'if this situation arises, then' deal. But the value that is being placed on just a couple of slots up the draft this year is astonishing. Heavily influenced by the mis-shapen bureaucracy of academy and FS and so forth, but what a weird ride it has been already. Adding more on the bureaucracy note - 2020 draft is going to be all about 'draft point value' for the grand haul of F/S, Academy etc so that third round will be wanted, as will even the 2020 fourth rounder we just picked up.

But the club has been terrible since forever AND A WHOLE ADDITIONAL DAY since yesterday so I really, really need to express my feelings.

Feel like you could just about drop this into the 'what to do with pick three' thread as exhibit C that the club intends to get Luke Jackson. "So, Luke in the morning we'll have you doing tap-outs with Greg Stafford, then we'll send you for training with the forwards where we'd especially like you to work on your goalkicking, with Greg Stafford." Hope they get along!

Well, that would make him ours to miss out on.

The short-term pessimist long-term optimist part of me that thinks taking Kemp and accepting his year out actually kind of works out in a twisted way. We've got quite a list management puzzle at the moment particularly dealing with a LOT of players who are hovering on the fringe or who need to find a way back from injury. And there's a serious concentration of that status at similar height and potential roles to Kemp; Hannan, Hunt, Vandenberg, J Wagner, Kolodjasnij, Hibberd and Smith. That's seven names Kemp could replace their role and would anticipate surpassing pretty quickly. And any (Maybe even most. Maybe even all!) of them might be gone at end of 2020. But for now, we've got them all to sort through and see what we can make of them. To unclog a list you actually need to get the lumps flowing. We've traded out of the pointy end of the 2020 draft but it is likely we will have major list turnover then as well. Is it conceivable that Kemp is basically our '2020 No.1' selection?

Well, the good news is that is only about a ten percent improvement on his second half of 2019. Dustin Martin is another step up and I wouldn't want to be greedy, but for Petracca to be talked about alongside Greene and De Goey is absolutely a realistic goal. It would be a lot of fun to see how he goes when both he and the team are in form. As the article notes, the poor bugger was our leading goalkicker this year in a completely broken, injured and confused forward and half-forward line.

I spent some time this morning relaxing in front of the tapes. Because what else do you do when you've got all the pastries already in front of you? Even moer than both of these guys being decent marks, far from soft, long icks and having good vision and awareness - they both have initiative. Neither of them need to stop and think or need to run backwards from the mark a bit to change their brain into gear before they look around. I especially liked the times, for both of them, when a mark slipped or something else didn't quite connect and theere was not even time for an 'oh bugger' before they were back into it based on the new situation. Several times there was an instant recovery (i.e. dropped mark followed by getting the contested ball) or they influenced the play to limit the damage. Give us 22 footballers with that mindset thanks, Mr Taylor. Swooper got in before me. Champion data is based on... data. It is kind of impressive that Kemp is anywhere on the data radar.

Hmm... It is getting better to the extent that it is now a fight and not a bashing. Being aggressively racist, and a whole lot of other obnoxious and predatory behaviours, now come with a price. As long as we keep making that price be paid, behaviours will change. It'll be an unpleasant process because the grubbiness will have to keep being made visible. Ironically, the process could actually be described as a kind of social darwinism. Bitter laughter ensues.

Reminds me of the dilemma of pest and feral animal control. Generally, once they are out and mixed into any large ecosystem the idea of removing them again is just a fantasy. So the strategy has to shift to containment and keeping them to as small a population as possible while 'hardening' the ecosystem where possible to limit the damage they do. In social terms, I guess that translates to always keep the pressure on the [censored] and always keep your own piece of life as clear and safe as possible. On the other hand, when you think of the sheer scale of progress in the last thirty, fifty, hundred years, it is not completely impossible to image as future where racism is truly, truly marginal. The closer we get the easier it gets!

Just as well he got the new contract done last week. If he tried to do it now he'd have trouble signing AND counting it.

Geebus I thought it was his thumb. Yerch. Yerck.

I'm still torn dammit. The talk of us being interested in Kysiah Pickett if we had a suitable late first rounded has me intrigued. And yet... I feel like there's now a better defined top group of players after Rowell and Anderson and pick 3 will get us our favourite of them while pick 8 is still guaranteed to get us someone we would be very interested in. To get Young would require pick 3, and that's fine for a long, accurate, smart kick who is no slouch on workrate or hardness either. It is almost certain that either Kemp (the most likely 'superstar' outside the top two) or Jackson (finally a ruck succession plan, with the bonus of being allegedly ready to be a very early AFL-starter as rucks go which also helps with the Gawn-longevity plan). I'm just totally chill, y'know? It's all gonna be all right, all right?

Broderick. Broderegar. Brodiegenhaarn. Brodear. Brodocea. I'm sure we'll find a solution for Mr Kempington's unfortunate condition.

I'm really staggered by the people throwing aroudn bizarrely uninformed comments like "how will this improve out goal kicking" or "how will this stop us being a basket-case' and so on. Let's see now - the data can now tell us, for each player, exactly how well their fiel kicking is going when you look at it for long kicks, short kicks, kicks under pressure, kicks on the run, kicks from different parts of the ground, you can even cut for how and who from they received the ball. That doesn't just tell you about their ball drop or action, it tells you how they react to the different situations. Is such-and-such reliable when they are playmaking with a little time from half-back but tend to go for blind bombs or dinky low-value options once they are in congestion. Or even if the actual part of the ground changes confidence and behaviour - do they hear footsteps and rush their kicks when in the middle even when they aren't under immediate pressure, but have a little more steadiness with the reassurance that their blind side is covered by the boundaries? So, there's a tiny fragment of the kind of thing that can be isolated by just one stat area. You can even answer questions of blame in some ways - is there a particularly player who isn't spreading enough but calls for it and get short pointless little handball receives and then gets tackles or has to dish it off again for just as pointless a next handball? Or is there a particular player who dishes off the pointless short handball without considering better options? The full package can filter it all out to see which end of the 'equation' is the problem, identify specific weaknesses in specific players when to even the most astute normal observer it just looks like another centre clearance chain breaking down. Who actually improves when the game in tight? Who loses accuracy and effectiveness quickly after certain amounts of fatigue and who can keep going a bit longer without suffering too much? The depth of stats now available, combined with GPS, is now like having a hundred extra pairs of eyes all watching the game for any given aspect of every individual player. And that sheer volume of information is just junk of you don't have someone genuinely skilled to filter it, identify anything interesting and give that feedback to the relevant people. Absolutely yes. It will improve out kciking. It will improve out inside 50s. Because we will It will have consisent information about where things are breaking down and what needs to be improved. And it definitely can improve our gameplan and even game-day felxibility because it gives us much clearer knowledge of who is best for what roles and who can effectively shift around to make new combinations. I'll end the rant there but seriously, people, enough with the "I don't need no MRI, just do the brain surgery."