Little Goffy

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.

It is so terrible, and it feels like it happens almost every year! On the bright side, only nine clubs have seen a premiership this century, so it isn't as if we are alone.

I've you're loking for something to monitor for - this remains GWS lowest score ever. Curiously, their other lowest isn't in their early days but in fact from this season, and just a few weeks ago! 4.5.29 is the mark. Imagine... lowest ever score... in your first grand final.

Trivia of the day - even before his first disposal just now, Finlay was doing better than Mumford for meters gained. Finlayson had zero disposals for 5 meters gained. Curious. Mumford has not only metaphorically but literally taken his team backwards today.

In the battle between draft concessions and free agency, I'm going to go with my heart and say "Well, at least Richmond are an actual football club that has some kind of meaning, and at least they actually had to persevere through real adversity to get to the top". I cannot get even a little excited about a GWS win. It quite simply would be bad for football. I'm already dry-retching at the headlines about the big turnouts and 'Giants army coming to training'.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the Malthouse coaching academy was all the rage...

Just have to take a moment to laugh at the people implying that Richmond's recovery from being ninthmond doesn't compare to us because of all our draft and recruiting misses. For I believe a six year run Richmond's recruiting was so poor that only the same fifteen or so players appeared in their top ten B&F. Let's me see if I can find my old notes - - - there we go, six years, 2011 to 2015 inclusive. Five players appeared in all six, and another two appeared in five of the six, missing the full set only because of injury. It was a club held together by a core that mature together and were good enough to keep the team at least competitive most of the time. But success came at a rush with just two, maybe three years of good recruiting that came just in time. Dustin Martin is the youngest of that group at 28. So, realistically, the Richmond experience might be comparable to ours if we keep a stable top-10 in place for another four years of averageness and then put on a surge. I don't feel like we are going to follow the same pattern. Personally I'm looking for a kind of Geelong scenario, with our 2019 being their 2003. That would be acceptable!

If it turns out that Frost goes then Tomlinson becomes much more valuable to us, and he also would be absolutely sure of having a role. If the end result is a simple switcheroo with the bonus of getting trade value from the Hawks, I'm quite happy with the prospect.

Can we have a special unique, bizarre thread where people only post actual news or at least rumours of substance. Give this thread three pages and people will be talking about how the McDonald's are disgruntled and want out and Tom only played badly this season because he was put of by Mahoney eyebrows.

Yikes. Run. Run fast.

You'd reckon GWS would love to get a pick ahead of anyone bidding for Green, and just as happy to dispose of those first rounds picks for a collection of 'points picks' later in the draft. Yikes, GWS could realistically have three picks in the early teens range, with their existing two, plus Coniglio compensation. I wonder, in fantasy worlds, could we get all three? Pick 2(3) out, pick 20(21) out, and some later points-picks thrown in. GWS Gets a top draftee and then can safely use their academy points to get Green, effectively finishing with two top-6 picks. Meanwhile, we go from pick 2(3) and 20 to picks 11,12,15. Obviously, since (with no real insight excpet the chatter) I'm reckoning this draft seems pretty even for the first round with lots of suitable options for us, I think this would be a spectacular move. Also puts us in a great place for live pick trading on the night if we want a little boost by throwing in next years third rounder etc. I should probabyl mention I'm not sold on Melbourne attending the Hill, Langdon etc auction.

One of the players who helped nudge my wife into enjoying football. Both the 'fun' things he did in play and the moments of cheekiness he provided. Really glad we had him these last few years, one of those small wins that help a club grow. Plus, we got to be in the 'have ex-Carlton players kicked more goals than Carlton this week?' game.

Well, that settles it, I'm now officially on the 'trade down and trade up' campaign. Ideal result would be something like picks 8 and 12 instead of 3 and 21. I wonder if Carlton might be interested in getting pick 3 just to annoy the Crows?

Speaking of unnacceptable and unbelievable: The Blues had to sack their coach after poor performances in the first-half of the year, with the club reaching the amount of wins many expected by the end season. But with just two wins from xxx rounds, the writing was on the wall for Bolton who had to be shown the door. Someone got paid to write this. The first sentence makes no sense. The second forgot to actually include the only fact in it, which just highlights that the rest of it is just two cliches run together. Yes, people make mistakes when writing. In an email to a friend, or even a post on a hallowed footy forum, but to spit this out when it is supposed to be your job is just an insult to the thousands of us who would very enthusiastically take the job and do it properly. Actually, I've read back over the whole Carlton section and it is just packed full of high-school level errors. Unncessarily repeating terms twice in a sentence, wacky mixed use of past & present tense, some near-random punctuation. It even misses some key football observations about the Blues, like the younger Curnow having very mixed form and then being injured Tom McDonald style just as he had his one superb game for the season. Carlton will be desperate for improvement from their young very-high draft picks like Petrevski-Seton (pick 6) Lochie O'Brien (10) and Dow (3) who are all still just ok, because the Blues have a surprising number of important players close to 30. Carlton only won one game of the 7 they played without Kruezer, and with Casblout and Phillips, there's no ruck alternative under 28. Murphy, Simpson, and Thomas provided priceless class in a team which struggled for efficency, and Ed Curnow remains the Blues No.2 for tackles, clearances and contested posessions. There you go, a spontaneous five minute typing-speed rant just provided more insight into Carlton's prospects than whichever of the 'Staff Writers' banged that together for Foxfooty. Give me the job. Rant Over.

Ahh, but you see, we've twisted the system and have created an opening here. Every club was looking to improve in 2019, but we broke with convention. Now, everyone else has to try to improve all over again, while all we have to do is look to get back to where we already were!

If he was what we needed, he'd be a good acquisition. Here's me with the deep insights, but you all know what I mean so why go into more detail?