Little Goffy

And what do we do if we have a choice of taking him or Dustin Martin?

To be clear - I haven't abandoned my oracular declaration that we will not lose another game this season and Melksham will finish his career in the greatest blaze of glory ever known. However... Gee, it's gonna be tough this weekend.

Extraordinary. Changing the draft rules just a few months before the draft. How unprofessional can this outfit get? Don't answer - I know there's always room for more.

Okay, but seriously. Gawn, May and Viney are our three crucial older players. Short of recruiting both De Konings and LDU as free agents in 2025, that's going to be a tricky one to solve in the near future. (with all due respect to the excellent renewal of McDonald and the triumphant return of superstar Melksham who is currently ranked 1st for goal assists, 12th for goals and 4th for marks inside 50 per game in the entire league) We seem to have a deficiency in the middle but that could be nothing more than Oliver's poor form and missing Petracca. 2025 may even be stronger in the middle thanks to the opportunities opened by this situation. The really unpredictable part of our list is the tall forward and defender stock. There are three 'ifs'; whether we retain Petty, and the progress of Jefferson and Adams. I'm not sure we haven't already done 80% of a rebuild already. Although the De Koning and LDU option sounds good to me anyway.

I want to see this reenacted by Taylor and Goodwin. "Even though it was little, you don't want anything stuck to your list. So I tanked a season to try to get the picks, when seven guys start screaming at me because now the tanking is slowing us down more than the lack of talent. What you've got to do; you've got to draft them in and let the culture lift them up, then draft more in, and lift them up, in a windmill motion. In and out until you've got it." "The selectors aren't choosing for a season, they are choosing for a premiership, and if you don't think that draft pick swaps shouldn't matter... and if you think that I am going to miss even one opportunity to pick up half a round of draft position, you are absolutely out of your mind. When it costs us nothing? When we give up nothing?"

Hmm... harsh rating on the draft effort. By the numbers, the only club which has extracted more games played by its 2017 draft class is Freo, which had picks 2 and 5 and another six to follow. You could make a solid case for Fritsch being safely inside the top 10 group; Brayshaw, Rayner, LDU, Naughton, Cerra, Allen, T De Koning, Worpel, Miers, Kelly. A little unfortunate that this season has been very bad for all our 2017 draftees, with Spargo hurt, Petty hurt then struggling to engage a new position, and Fritsch being oddly out of form with limited impact for the 8th-ranked goalkicker in the league. Still, Fritsch has had six goals from two games since Melksham came back in, so touch wood the form is turning as the system begins to work. Honestly, all it would take for this draft to be rated an absolute world-beating blinder would be for Fritsch & Petty to regain their 'normal' form. I do also wonder if Spargo and Melksham have had long and thorough discussions during their shared injury layoff. If Spargo can add just 20% to his game he becomes a solid 22 contributor instead of constantly on the fringe and disliked because of his awkward combination of low-visibility strengths and high-visibility weaknesses.

Kind of incredible that if you include the game just played, we finish the season by playing every team from 5th to 12th. As to our final 8 chances... well, it almost defies analysis because our fate is so completely in our own hands. I tried. I turned out a few paragraphs looking at each team, but it just got silly. Long story short; 4 wins, 2 losses - we play finals, and probably have a home final, too. Nice and simple. 3 wins, 3 losses - if any one of Port, Footscray or Gold Coast get 4 wins, we're cooked. Nice and simple. We'd want our three wins to be the three games against these teams! Collingwood aren't a contender because the devil has finally come to take their soul. Their supporters might seem upbeat but that is only because they don't know what 'eternity' means. It means you have just two good players under 24yrs old, and the devil is most certainly from Tasmania. Hawthorn never had a soul for the devil to take, and will miss out on finals by percentage because they are flat track bullies. Tasmania will still come for them, just enough to ensure their rebuild falls just a liiiiitle bit short and they get stuck in the levitating potato mid-table zone for a decade.

Was bitterly disappointed when we didn't take Oscar Bert'n'Ernie. I had banners already planned which showed those three muppets standing on each others shoulders while secretly operating their ruckman disguise. In the end, I think we would have lost him Darren Jolly style anyway, as he is strictly a ruckman.

Gawn was a better ruck and on-field presence than Grundy and neither of them were able to adapt effectively to being a 50-50 ruck so Gawn was selected ahead. No ego issue to it, and I must say such scuttlebutt isn't going to endear you to anyone . I think you do however get a pass if you bring in a medical note from your MFCSS specialist! Fullarton didn't play against Essendon because of the weather forecast and because Draper is a Butter Tarzan who could be neutralised by an effective effort from a solid tall, which turned out to be mostly Van Rooyen. I suspect Fullarton is more likely to be given a role against Freo because Jackson is harder to nullify and at the least Fullarton can be given the explicit task to stay with him all day (can there be such a thing as a ruck-tagger?). We'll want to have our tall forwards in their position a bit more because Freo's defenders aren't likely to do a Ben McKay and have four metres gained per disposal. Seriously, McKay had 17 intercepts against us, 12 kicks, 9 handballs, and yet just 82 metres gained. Freo defenders don't try to hatch a chicken from the sherrin before deciding what they want to do. For all that, rain is expected out west for much of this week and the coming weekend, so who knows? EDIT: Sean Darcy is expected to be back in. I think against two top-shelf rucks with very different styles we're just going to have to commit to throwing Fullarton in there.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times you give Stringer a bath, he'll still stink. I also want to quietly slip in that not every gun half-back needs to be turned into a midfielder. I'd be perfectly happy for McVee to take up the Corey Enright status as 'the most underrated 6-time All-Australian in the competition', even as Rivers becomes the new midfield Burgoyne. I guess we'll know in about 250 more games.

And Collingwood can't even spell Isaac.

Is there a week off before finals again this season? Because the Bombers have a September 4th deadline to avoid the 20-year mark and the week off would start finals on the 6th. The last time Essendon won a final without Kevin Sheedy coaching; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_in_Australia Wow, you do not think of Kylie Minogue and Penny Wong, or Hugh Jackman and Scott Morrison, as being the same age. I could almost be satisfied missing top-4 just to play Essendon in an elimination final and crush their dirty cheating entitled souls.

What I'm loving about Pickett's overall progress is the perfectly normal maturation of a deeper awareness of the system and the situation. I think that is what sets players like Rioli and Bruest apart is the awareness that allows them to not only do the brilliant thing but also make sure it has brilliant effect. For all the hype about Buddy & Roughhead, having the creativity of both Bruest and Rioli in a team is pure luxury. It was also an underrated aspect of Eddie Betts' game - about 3/4 of his disposals, throughout his career, were score involvements! Pickett's growing game awareness and demonstrated commitment to personal growth are why any debate about the best small forward from his draft is now leaving Weightman in the dust.

Gold Coast hanging on through the third quarter, which is good for our home final/top 4 aspirations for the optimists (and for anyone anticipating a snort-laugh at the 'Pies dropping to 12th), but for the pessimists it is all about the late sunday shift with upsets for West Coast and Richmond offering pure icing on an already good round 18 cake.

Based on last weeks 'commentary' reviews, is no sound that much of a problem?

"Only"? I prefer "first". 😉 The wider genius question comes down to what we learn from this game. Sacrificing numbers forward in order to scrap and congest close to the ball worked brilliantly in the wet against uncontessendon. Now that we know we can do it, it might neutralise our previously significant weaknesses in the wet. It may also prove to be the moment we come to terms with not having an elite inside mid group this season. Our losses this season have all featured a long tail of players making very limited contributions, but as Windsor, Tholstrupp, AMW and others are getting more involved, confident and effective we may yet overcome that as well.

Oh no. Oh no. I was not ready for Kozzie Pickett's tiny baby in a full koala onesie to keep warm in the rain. That is superb and no matter what else happens tonight that is getting the 6 votes from me postgame.

Maybe the idea is to give Turner a run in the ruck with instructions to do to his opponent everything that gets done to Gawn every week, so that by the time Gawn is back Turner will have been suspended and the AFL will have to pretend that was the rules all along and for the remainder of the season Gawn will get the five free kicks he's been missing out each week so far.

How does a full-forward get 2 intercept possessions in a first half? Has had a hand in almost every Carlton score so far and in some cases has been the difference between 'meh' and a goal. Carlton have matured a lot as a team but there's still just that little bit of dependence on superstars.

I kind of want the Dogs to beat Carlton and then Gold Coast to beat Port just to keep things wild. Plus, that would put Collingwood in 12th, equal with the Hawks who they play next week. Hilarious.

Shush, [censored].

Well, I'm embarrased now. Wheel Elan.

It's only midway through the respective second quarters, but Freo isn't dominating Hawthorn, while Sydney is playing a tentative game against North. Everyone is vulnerable once the wildness of finals start. Geelong didn't look especially impressive in the pieces of the game I watched last night, to the point where I think the 'Pies are in major trouble and Geelong might still slip out of the 8. Everyone is vulnerable is we choose to be the hunter.

Housebound and your TV broken? This game is a proper 'throwing rocks at eggshells' game. Go hard and we could absolutely shatter them, and the rest is details.

Speaking of parrots and rum... Wait, did I already tell the story of how pirate rum was very weak and actually reached a perfect balance where it was as weak as possible (water down for profit, of course) but also exactly strong enough for the alcohol to kill off all the bacteria and such that would infect 'just water'? It is a pretty cool case of nothing more than habits and reactions leading to a precision result. Pirate rum is better for you than water. If you're a pirate, at least.