Little Goffy

Ah, but there's the ultimate slippery slope. If you drug test lawyers, you'll get so many detections that all the lawyers will need lawyers so more people will have to become lawyers, who will then be drug tested and have detections so they will also need lawyers. This process continues until 100% of the population is drug tested. A simpler solution would just be to drug test everyone constantly until enough false positive results have come through that the proverbial playing field is levelled out again. NSW Police will love it. "Step into the tent, little girl."

Not sure it is realistic to call the Carlton process unde SOS a knock-down rebuild. There have been very few mature players of note they've pushed out the door since 2015. And most of those were pretty keen to find the exit on their own. Tuohy wanted out, Gibbs wanted out for more than a year before he made his escape at what was a terrific return for the club as well. Almost all the senior exits were made in 2015 too - Henderson, Bell, Menzel, Yarran. Looking at that, it's not as if they were trading our their core! Meanwhile, I think you could say in any given one of the last five years they brought in more 'age' than they have traded out. They've ended up with a huge gap in their 23-27 yr age range but that's got more to do with a wave of terrible drafting since... um... yeah. Such quality as they did have, they've held on to. It's not a good sign for a rebuild if your most valiable Simpson (35) Murphy (32) Kruezer (30) Ed Curnow (30) and now once again the esteeemed Eddie Betts (33). Annyway, for all that I don't think they've done especially well with list management, there's no mistaking that is a team has even a handful of really great players then it is possible for a collection of 'just pretty good' players to fill it out successfully. All it takes is that moment of belief and a plan that uses the strengths and mitigates the weaknesses. Just look at Richmond and the Dogs.

Trouble is, Carlton is riddled with know-it-all coterie members and influential backers to a degree even well beyond that of other AFL clubs. Just ask Brett Ratten, who dared to be realistic in his list evaluation all those years ago. The 'influential' rich people got in a huff and decided they could buy success and all it needed was someone willing to be paid enough. Who knows how much Silvagni has been hamstrung by these people? "Oooh, you know who would be just right? Tom Papley. Yeah I'll have a word with him through a mate of a mate at the yacht club. Nah it's a sure thing don't worry about trying to keep options open or keep any cards close to our chest." Of course, it could also be that the big ego and aggression Silvagni has shown did a good job of keeping those people at bay and the whole ordinary last few years really is his fault. We can also light a bonfire with the 'selection versus development' debate we all know so well. 2015 alone, with Weitering, Curnow and McKay, shows three players who all could conceivable be top level but just aren't putting it together. But then they've had a few kind of average top picks (Petrevski-Seton and Dow) before getting Walsh. Also, aside from the all-important Cripps, they could barely show two rocks to bang together for the last half dozen drafts. You have to go back to their string of no.1 picks plus Josh Kennedy at 4. Honestly, the grab-bag that SOS collected was something he had to do in emergency conditions. Anything to get some semblance of a team in place. What will happen from here with Carlton I think is a 50/50 split between the extremes of either coming together as a young unit just in time before the haul of veterans retire - and thereby being set up for a long term competitive era. OR they wont be able to get traction and too many of those young guys will just coast on their talent and Carlton will spend another five years lurking around the bottom of the table. Personally, I think the Demons under Roos, Viney and Taylor managed a much more effective 'emergency plan' while also bring in more likely long term talent. Of particular importance we aren't relying on one lone beast to hold our clearance game together.

Personally I wont be convinced until I see an interprative dance number. "But how does pick three make you feeeeeeeeel, on the insiiiiiide? Now show it, shoooow me what pick three feels like. Share your draft story with the word!"

Maybe he'll wait until he sees the fixture to decide which club?

1. Fritsch - Snuck under the radar and was experimented with for much of 2019 but despite all that his numbers bear out what watching him would also tell you - he is inside the best 5 drafted in his year (2017). When finally settled forward he managed two goals a game in the final seven rounds. That's no small achievement in a team that was breaking down so badly inside 50. Also to his credit is great consistency, especially considering how much he was moved around. A smart player with at least 'good' in every area of skill and attitude. 2. Petracca - The potential beast. Game ripper. His best is as good as any you care to name. Developed some more of that all-important consistency with no real 'dud' games in the second half of the season. to my mind the word lacking from our midfield players for many years has been 'dangerous' - Good Version Petracca makes things happen, kicks goals and creates goals and demands attention at a whole strategic level from opposition coaches. If Petracca is 'on' and you don't have a plan for it, you're in trouble. 3. Tom McDonald - Like Petracca, when Tom McDonald is at his finest he is a top-level player in his position. How much it ws something about his body or something going on between his ears we can't be sure. But in our five wins this season McDonald kicked 14 goals while barely troubling the scorers the rest of the time. Body right and confidence restored he is just priceless, contribution effectively in every way (even tackles inside 50!) with a huge workrate. His best changes the team. 4. Angus Brayshaw - "You're better than that, Angus" could sum up his 2019. How many times have we each thought it? (except for those who have written him off) Seeing Brayshaw blindly dink kicks around or thoughtlessly run into trouble, handball to someone in no better position or call for it when he was in no better position, or simply fail to run to anywhere useful at crucial moments - it all hurts because many of us remember him being a smart and accountable player who built his game on being pretty good at everything and pretty alert all game. On the theme of 'pretty good at everything', a comparison of his 2019 to 2018 quickly shows that in 2019 he was a bit worse in every aspect. No single stat suddenly collapses, it was simply that in every area he fell away a bit, from 'generally excellent' to 'yeah alright'. The exception to this also tells the story - his "meters gained" stat dropped away massively in 2019, confirming for everyone what we saw with our own eyes - his disposal just wasn't getting as much done in 2019 as it had in 2018. Bring back smart, confident Brayshaw and it changes our midfield and is a pleasure to watch as well. 5. Jake Melksham - The king of goal assists, topping the AFL for goal assists per game for two years running. And that depsite our forward line getting lost down a mine in 2019. Even so, he was short of his best - or simply short of opportunities to play his role as someone who rewards the efforts of others. He never stopped taking on the game even as all around became more and more negative. That made him look like an idiot sometimes, but it was after all the fear of looking like an idiot that spooked the minds of so many of our players. If 2020 comes to look like 2018 reloaded with the bonus of some extra contributors on the wings, Melksham will be rolling the dice many many times and it will be fun to watch and potent for the team. I'm not saying he will improve dramatically in 2020 - I'm saying if the team lifts then his efforts will be dramatically better rewarded. Fair mention to the host of 'out to injury' and 'mysterious form slump' types, like Jetta, Lever, May, Hibberd, Vandenberg, Smith, and of course Viney.

Our midfield (counting the players who at least spend a substantial amount of time there) seems to be structured in three layers as far as TOG goes. Viney and Brayshaw both played a slice less than others - at 73 and 78%. Oliver, Harmes and Jones all round to 83% I do find it interesting that Salem is at 85% (obviously with more time spent not chasing the ball around the park) but the big surprise I noticed during the year was that Petracca was out at 88%, less than 2% off being our player 'most on the ground'. As well as putting a question against people claiming he is un-fit (he is getting >15 minutes less rest than Viney, for example) it also gets me thinking about a rotation where we deliberately end up with a kind of double-midfield. There's no doubt that Petracca and Oliver can be effective for spells up forward, I'd speculate that Viney might spend valuable time there as well as a pressure-providing small forward. In the other direction, we were already trialling having Melksham spent more time on the ball. And I'll just be cheeky here and say whatever your opinion of Nibbler, we can all agree that is he similarly effective across the forward line on in midfield! It is just as easy to see Fritsch, Langdon and Tomlinson rotating wings and half-forward in whatever proportions get the best out of them and confuse our opponents most. It would be a great overall position to be able to quickly and seamlessly switch players between forward and midfield/wing at any time during a game.

What really struck me was how little time Young took to both spot an 'interesting' target and get his body organised to make the kick. The brain is working through the problem in front of him even as he is aware of what is going on closer around him. I'm a little excited and also enjoying thinking of past players with his ability. A bit of Trapper, a bit of Ooze?

It has been a long hard road for pick 6 which, after being truly awful through the nineties, has improved over time and even had a couple of good seasons more recently. But clearly we're talking about one of those picks that only ever shows glimpses of their talent and is forever 'one good preseason away' from being a real performer. 1998 Murray Vance 1999 Damian Cupido 2000 Dylan Smith 2001 Ashley Sampi 2002 Steven Salopek 2003 Kepler Bradley 2004 Tom Williams 2005 Beau Dowler 2006 Mitch Thorp 2007 David Myers 2008 Chris Yarran 2009 Gary Roahn 2010 Reece Conca 2011 Chad Wingard 2012 Jackson Macrae 2013 Matthew Sharenberg 2014 Caleb Marchbank 2015 Aaron Francis 2016 Sam Petrevski-Seton 2017 Jaidyn Stephenson 2018 Ben King

The description sounds very suitable and the highlights support it. Would have the advantage also of letting Casey play with a similar set-up to Melbourne. Although it seems like he might actually be the most flexible and all-round effective of our defenders. I'm still keen on splitting three, especially now we have 8 to keep in the early wave of talent, so count me for the affirmatives.

Cat's are all 'in the now' and clinging on to the chance of a premiership while they still got the ssssuperssstarrrrssssss available. Their minds are fully set to being on top in one crucial month each year. Unfortunely for them that month is August. What I'm saying is, like the US Military choosing not to study counter-insurgency after Vietnam, Geelong can't even bring themselves to think about players who might not be champions this comign August. So them delisting someone doesn't mean much. I know nothing about Buzza except he is big and has a fun name and, allegedly, has a real crack. But that, and people's comments about his VFL-level respectability, meh, whynot throw a rookie spot at him?

Two best 22 players in, one of which is realistically top-10 and both of which fill needs. Frost out is something that people have hugely varying opinions on, almost as variable as the possible value of the 2020 first rounder. I'm very happy with being early in this allegedly 'deep at the front' draft instead of 'somewhere' in the allegedly compromised' 2020 draft, even at the cost of the second rounder we threw in to make it happen. I'm a big fan of the 'high-low' approach to draft that we've (under Taylor especially) used these last five or six years while picking up the likes of Hibberd, Melksham and now Langdon with the 'in-betweener' picks. Very happy. Still some action to play out with the pick trading right onto draft night. I'm sure GWS will be constantly reassing how early they need to be to get ahead of any bids for Green. Wild times.

The Melbourne Football Club has taken a bucket-load of risks even in quite recent memory. Of course, in hindsight they are all either 'obvious' or 'blunders'. Ahh, the past. All so boring and predictable.

Ralph's half-comment about Mebourne was just a bit of noise distraction to interfere with his idiotic main idea that Free Agency is great because hey look sometimes some players use it to move clubs for opportunities and that totally cancels out the fact that clubs already contending for a premiership can effectively pick up additional top-3 draft with proven records and do so for effectively nothing. I wonder how many times that overt lie wil need to be repeated before we all just go with the flow?

Strange to have Kolodjashnij in the same brack at Melkshan and even Fritsch. Strange to have Hunt, Nibbler and Wagner in the same bracket as Petracca. Strange to have Harmes in the same bracket as Stretch, HAnnan and other Wagner. Always going to be very subjective but if even my first glance is picking up a bunch of selections that just seem odd, it must be a little iffy. If there's one thing that I absolutely agree on it is the big gap in the B+ and B range. We have a lot of players that just aren't quite complete. On the bright side, we have a lot of players who could very quickly push into that range. Thinking Petracca, Salem, Brayshaw, Fritsch, May, Melksham, Lever, Harmes and Hore. If being rated just a 'C+' annoys a few of those guys the right way, well, all good.

It just seems to be how the Saints do business. They've already got Sam Rowe, Nathan Brown, Shane Savage, Dan Hannebery, Dylan Roberton, Billy Longer, Jake Carlisle, Dean Kent and I'm sure a few others who aren't coming to mind. St Kilda are in the salary-cap handy position of not having any, any at all, seriously top-line players. Respectable, absolutely, but we're talking Seb Ross, Rowan Marshall, Jack Steele, Tim Membrey. And while you do have to pay 95%+ of cap each year, that is easily fudged by front-loading contracts in, say, 2017-18 so that the gap opens up in 2019 and onwards. See also the Neeld era 'scattergun' - we got a lot of players in then, many of them every bit as respected as the crop St Kilda are brining in. I think it is an illusion and St Kilda are burning their future for a bit of respectability now. They are already not a very young side and abandoning this year's draft is a big risk for the sake of players all I'm surprised Ratten is letting it happen but I guess the club really sees itself as need to show it is turning a corner. A couple more years of wafting between bog ordinary or just kind of pointlessly below average and people will start overlooking the Saints 2000s the same way people overlook the Demons 87-06 copmarative relevance.

Suddenly I have absolute belief that he is a player we will get value out of. Nothing will help our defence more than a bit of extra cover making oppositino entries a bit more predictable. I mean, Lever, May and Hore all lean towards the 'reading the play' style rather than a pure one-on-one match. Golly gosh and gee whizz, I'm getting this odd inexplicable feeling that the club knows what it is doing here. Thanks for sharing the observations Deanox.

Y'know, Tomlinson might also be Dutch. Tall. Blonde. Wore orange. Always plugging holes. Open to trade. Nowhere even close to any tigers.

OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THE CLUB HAS HIM OUT DOING THIS KIND OF THING RIGHT AFTER SURGERY TERRIBLE INJURY MANAGEMENT HE IS CLEARLY LEAVING NOW JUST WATCH AS THE CLUB ROLLS OVER IN THE TRADE.

Unfortunately as much as the club has tried, we seem to have some kind of curse when it comes to key forwards. Hogan is the only gun key forward we've recruited in a couple of decades (Wow, yep, I think we have to go back as far as Schwartz and Neitz!) and we all know how things are going for him now. But it is not like we haven't tried. This century we've invested first round picks in - Weideman, Hogan, Cook, Watts, Bate, Dunn, Smith and Molan as prospective key forwards, as well as grabbing Mitch Clarke, Chris Dawes and Ben Holland in trades. And after all that, I still have a strange kind of faith in the Weideman/McDonald combination. Maybe I just think we are simply too cursed to keep investing more in trying to get a gun? Because I think we all know, if we did throw the money out for a Boyd-style deal, the player we got would definitely be laid out by gastro the night before the Grand Final.

Hmm. I genuinely wondered so put some thought in. Only rationale I can see for it is a belief that the whole group of young 'ok-ish' or simply not yet ready players will mature into reasonable quality. Think Marchbank, Weitering as tall defenders, McKay and Curnow as tall forwards, Petrevski-Seton, Dow, Stocker, O'Brien fleshing out the midfield. Most of them are well below what might realistically be expected of them in the near future. Right now that lump of so-so midfielders is very much plodding along with low posessions and not much impact. But that's the only basis I can see for believing in their near-term future. From any other angle they look more like Richmond 2006 than Richmond 2016. As for our rating - clearly Cornes has just done an average of our current and previous seasons, because realistically bleep knows what our real form line is for 2020.

The traditional one was always 'hot property tips'. A process much resembling the sell-off of former Soviet state assets under Yeltsin. "It is a public auction. But nobody else knows where it is."

Although it is 50/50 whether the door will be open as he tries to go through it! I'm just being silly of course. Frost leaving is unfortunate but such is life, this is not going to be some team-breaking disaster. As has been discussed, there are significant upsides and downsides to Frost. Whatever the flaws and even if he is at Hawthorn he'll retain my respect as a player who very often made extra efforts that mattered. With the magic alternate universe that Hawthorn trades in, I wonder if we'll get more for him than GWS get for Patton?

Personally I'm really looking forward to his 2020. Has carried a weight on his shoulders for better part of a decade and has never had an 'easy' time. Not least among his burdens is the role at lightning rod the the kind of embittered snark-addicts that can post foul-spirited comments upon hearing of one of the great stalwarts of the club stepping down as captain. Nobody who shows that kind of basic disrespect to a club leader should be permitted to ever complain about club culture again. I hope a properly honored 300-game milestone is in order for Jones, as he refreshes himself making a solid contribution in a resurgent team.

And a Brendan Fevola. And a Luke Livingstone. And for that matter Chris Yarran. Daniel Connors. Can't help wondering what Willie Rioli's issues at the worst possible moment were? Or the baggage for and around Sam Murray and a few known others at Collingwood in 2018. And many of these guys are much less 'problematic' than Martin. My main point being that in recent decades many more games, finals and premierships have been lost because of the damage, than have been won because of the talent, of [censored]s. Good on Richmond for keeping a super talent in line enough off the field to deliver his best on the field. But they 'lost' some four or five young men along the way, some of which appear to be permanently wrecked human beings. How fine a line... how sublte and complex are the increments, from Dustin Martin to Ben Cousins to Brendan Fevola to Harley Bennell to Colin Syvia. That is five of the most talent players of the last quarter-century and five very different but stories any one of which could have interchanged with another.