Little Goffy

Wasn't that long ago that Richmond looked cooked, with the same eight or so players filling out their top ten year after year and getting older and older. The thing about older players is - they've been testes and found, if not excellent, at least credible AFL standard. When a team with a good block of players of that standard then manages to add an extra later in a rush - that is when a truly dominant team appears. It's not a coincidence that Rioli and Selwood won premierships in their respective debut years. And it also isn't a coincidence that many premiership teams have some form of 'fairytale of the kid going big'. The way I see it, an older profile just means the clock is ticking on getting that extra surge before your existing group starts whittling away. All that a young age profile tells you is that there's a lot of potential improvement, but also potential flatlining!

Those pictures right there are of him, working out, for us. (I'll see myself out)

“It was a pleasure to burn.” /closethread

This is necessarily a wild prediction with the incredible variability of form and injury we've had these last couple of season. But here goes! No draftees in the firsts, for me. Plus faith in Weid's and T.Mc's form, and of course a few players injury recovery. And a wild belief in Viney working out as a rotating forward pocket/inside mid. In fact, my vision for the future includes almost a ridiculous picture where our forward rotation will sometimes look include a complete and viable alternate followers group (i.e. Jackson, Viney, Petracca, Melksham) BEST 22 F: Viney Wiedemann Fritsch HF: Melksham T. Mc Petracca C : Salem Harmes Langdon HB: Hibberd Lever Tomlinson B: Jetta May Hore FOLL: GAWN Oliver Brayshaw INT: Smith Jones VanDenberg Hannan I'd say there are half a dozen players there who are playing for their spot on the team by the end of 2020. Thankfully mostly from the interchange group. NEXT 22 F: Pickett Jackson Chandler HF: Bedford Brown Bennell C : Hunt Neal-Bullen Wagner HB : Wagner Petty Kolodjashnij B: Lockhart O.Mc Rivers FOLL: Preuss Baker Sparrow INT: Spargo, Nietske, Bedford, Jordan I'd say there are half a dozen players there who would realistically be expected / hope to be 'not just depth' AFL level over the course of 2020 and demanding a spot in the best 22. And poor bean-pole Bradke, may he blossom and thrive and cast all doubts aside.

It's been a tricky run for Taylor. A lot of drafts no action in the first round and sometimes not even much in the second. I'm also nursing a quiet dread that under Taylor we've somehow recruited a lot of players who show some promise and then slump badly. (E.g. Hunt, Stretch, Nibbler, O.Mc, Hannan, Spargo) 2018 draft effort is still up in the air and aside from Hore it doesn't look like much to celebrate. What can be said is that very few draftees from 2018 outside the top 18 have had much of a presence yet. The only double-figure games tallies belong to James Rowbottom (pick 25, Sydney, 12 games), Matthew Parker (pick 47, St Kilda, 17 games) Nick Hind (54, St kilda, 11) Noah Answerth (55, Brisbane, 19), our own Marty Hore (56, Melbourne, 14). Parker and Hind are both older than Hore. Indeed, a few more of the other non-first round draftees to get any games were also significant over-agers - Bewley and Shultz at Freo, Hayes at the Dogs. In fact, after the first round, the games played tally is some 3/4 held by mature age recruits of at least 22 years when drafted. Maybe 2018 was just a crap draft with no depth! The way it looks now it seems that except for Hore all we did in 2018 was stock up on mid-sized warm bodies and experimental crumbers, and accept that most wont come through and the list slots will be open again reasonably quickly given the short lifecycle of those types.

The Trent "Esme" Bianco suspense is killing me. ... Sorry, I mean, Trent Rivers, obviously.

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.