Little Goffy

Except for Cameron McCarthy. Who can get as antsy and worked up and annoyed about crappy Sydney summer weather and homesick for the Fremantle doctor as much as he likes. Problem solved.

Yeah, it's a bizarre claim from Schwarz. Hogan is frankly stellar and while i share the notion that 1.5m a year starts to look unbalancing on the list, if there's any player worth it it is Hogan. But Hogan is also taking a risk... what if by halfway through this season Weidemann has cleared his injury legacy, developed the fitness and is out and about providing a credible alternative? Would knock 250k off Hogan's maximum value. Of course, I think really Hogan would just be delighted to have a strong partner up forward and the two of them could settle into becoming the game's best combo. Remember the quotes pre-draft; "When Weideman went under the knife he was rated a top-three prospect on the rise — and little has changed."

Well, now I see what people were worried about with 'gender politics'. Guys, it'd be really great if you tried to keep your radical gender agenda politics away from the game. Its not good for the club.

He was told that he might be the extra ingredient that Richmond needed to win some finals, and has set his peak for the season accordingly. Kind of the reverse of the rest of the Tigers - the goal was to make finals, so then they stop.

In hindsight, a lot went wrong last year that doesn't necessarily have to go wrong this year. We could get a roll on. A bit of excitement and morale. Attacking game-styles rely a lot on emotion and it is our attacking flow that has been particularly deficient. But I always get this way, this time of year. Looking at supercoach values and thinking "oh, surely he'll go up, and him, and him, and him..." Every. Year.

There are some very odd 'sets' on our list, for assistance with diagnosing autism spectrum disorders. We have a young ruckman/forward from the Murray Bushrangers, named M King, competing directly for a spot against a young ruckman/forward from the Murray Bushrangers, named M King. We have three forwards under 180cm whose names begin with K and whose height is inversely proportional to their name length: Kent, Kennedy, and Kennedy-Harris. We also retain our long-held crown for having the most players with names beginning with J. Not since the heady days of Neale Daniher and 'surnames beginning with W' have we had such sustained AFL-wide dominance on our list. I hope this has cleared up some of the confusion.

One the one hand it is plausible to see Adelaide and North slip out the bottom end of the 8. On the other hand, Geelong 'plus Dangerfield' and Port 'plus Toumpas' would be the obvious most likely to take the step up. I can't picture the Dogs going backwards much and... I'm just not sure I am cruel enough to wish upon Richmond the kind of crisis they'd experience if they flopped back down the ladder again. That said, it is highly plausible that they will finally wilt and never rise again. Important, and odd, thing to note about 2015 results. Melbourne had a totally unusual profile of 'teams beaten'. Count up the wins by bottom-6 teams against teams outside that bottom 6, and you find that Melbourne has as many of those 'wins out of weight category' as the rest of the bottom 6 combined. We let ourselves down terribly with some heads-dropped big number losses and the juvenile losses to other bottom clubs, but we are a serious club capable of being a real threat in 2016.

Ha ha ha, John Ralph. Ha ha ha. Ha. Ah ha. Haa.

The tackle on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPt6W_gJXg My favourite part is that Viney doesn't even look around for the umpire after the tackle. Or pause to reflect upon the mangled remains of a footballer at his feet and its metaphor for the universality of mortality and the fragility of existence. As for playing early 2000s football, I wonder... maybe Hogan is actually even more suited to the current game than the game of Neitz and Farmer. His contribution right around the ground is exceptional, perhaps the best of the young forwards in circulation. Where there would be a huge difference is in the relatively 'forgiving' environment for rebounding defenders. Aaron Davey hadn't come along and redefined the small defender yet, and the forward press or the cluster did not exist either. The chances of being able to at least spot up a reasonable 50/50 with a little space on the wing was a lot better than now, and the prospect of having 12 opponents lurking ready to bang the ball back over your head within a moment of a mistake was a bit lower. So maybe it would be Colin Garland, Jack Grimes and Lynden Dunn who would gain the most from a 15-year time warp.

Didn't Petracca spend a chunk of time doing a kind of 'apprenticeship' with the recruiting staff early in his rehab program, when there was not much physical activity he could do anyway? I can picture Petracca spending the next five months telling Weideman that the only reason he got drafted was because of a god word in the ear of the recruiters. Aaaanyway... Interconnection like this is something we haven't seen since the heady days of Trengove/Tapscott (temmates, close family friends), Watts/Blease/Strauss/Scully/Gysberts (all Vic Metro teammates for at least one of their under-18s years), Bennell/Jetta (teammates, rivals for BOG in under 18 Grand Final out west),

Given the trade value we got for Scully, the apparent emergence of Gawn as a premium quality ruck, and the impending [most glorious and illustrious] return of Trengove, in the end it might not be so bad. But I'm not sure there's much merit in raking over these old bones.

Positives; - We now appear to have the 2xCHF set up that I've craved, so I'm happy there. - We have a generally big (and/or hard) bodied and aggressive midfield that will keep us in the contest all game. - We have a young ruckman who appears to be among the next big things in big thing land. Issues; - Not quite settled defensive group, both key talls and lock-down small/medium defenders. Some of the defenders we have are only 'adequate' and also approaching late career. - Question mark (but an optimistic one for me) on whether we have any truly 'dangerous' midfielders capable of cutting a game open. - We have very, very limited backup ruck stocks or forward/ruck relief players. A lot hinges on the McDonald boys and basically unknown quantities like Frost/Newton. (Points for spotting the ultra-obscure joke). But I think we've got things in place to be respectable, and then begin fine tuning on the remaining deficiencies.

We're really having this conversation, again? Mitchell, Gaff, Prestia, Hannebery, Murphy, Steven, Jones, Adams, Hill, Wingard, Shiel, Montagna, Coniglio and Viney. The quickest way to assemble a list of 'undersized' midfielders is to look at the Brownlow Medal count. I'm not saying that being shorter makes someone a better player, but if you're imagining that being around 180cm makes you inadequate for the midfield, you're a mile off the mark. As for Clayton Oliver, I'm warming to him solely on his resemblance to Brienne of Tarth. I say these things to remind myself that I (and most of everyone else) have no idea what the detailed merits of each player are, and will trust pilot to fly the plane. My preference list for the 3/7 combo is still some arrangement of Francis/Parish/Weideman.

I think the Demons should aim for a partnership with multiple women's teams - it is obviously not going to be a high-cash competition and what we can offer fairly easily is advice, 'coaching the coaches', and joint publicity programs. Heh, imagine, 2017, Goodwin takes over at Melbourne, Roos takes a step back, maybe stays involved as a coaching professional development mentor, and gets involved as a coaches-coach with the women's leagues. One day, some day, Melbourne will reap a 'Rookie B' listing out of all this, and football will never be the same.

Good logo. It's even wearable. Simple, strong, clear. Hopefully thaty's our last logo change for a few decades.

The subtle difference between these two posts is the difference between ending up like North Melbourne or Hawthorn.

Bate-fides! The pideal tall, strong, contested marking midfielder who can also chip in as a KPP! Hurrah! I believe he was the origin for the 'Curse of the 191-192cm Demon' debate. Possibly he is also the ghostly figure haunting the minds of those least interested in Charlie Curnow this draft.

I'm a chronic over-believer. I think I've brought it down to a manageable level - I was only slightly and briefly disappointed at Toumpas going. But maybe that's because I have too much faith in our recruitment/list management? Probably my big 'sin' as far as being against general wisdom is that I still think each of Grimes, Garland and Watts have something significant left to contribute. Not 'heroic', I'm not going crazy here, but handy players. A lot of that is an instinctive reaction to the over the top hate-pumping coming from some. What I can say is, I've never sprayed vicious bile at or about any Demon player.

Strange analogy to Tony Abbott. Even setting aside political animosity it is an odd one. A man who was known for being disorganised and impulsive throughout his career, and who operated entirely on emotion. I'd be impressed by anyone who could find a single thing he did that was either well planned or based on careful review of evidence instead of 'feelings'. In contrast, Neeld had a 'linear pseudo-rational empathy-deficient' plan and stuck to it no matter how many screaming tormented waifs and alienated veterans piled up in the delisting basket.

Some people add muscle much more easily than others, some people retain fast-reacting muscle for much longer, some people have better base VO2, some people have shiny hair and soft smooth skin even though they grew up on a sheep-station. One of those "Dr Karl Kruzelnicki factoids" is that historical family names were associated with profession, and people named 'Smith' are heavier than people named 'Taylor' even hundreds of years later. As for why people seem confident that Parish will be a Smith not a Taylor, hard to say. He does seem to have a pretty solid torso, and there's some photos around where there's a lot of sinewy muscle in the arms and legs. Really the only way to find out would be to cook him and find out if he is more like kangaroo or wagyu.

That is one of the best ruckman highlight reels I've seen in a while. Project player to pick up with 46?

Every once in a while Titus O'Reily delivers something brilliant, which is a welcome relief from the drudgery of AFL media in general. Mostly he just drops in a steady flow of routine humour on the basis of a 'lovingly jaded' attitude. Which is also actually kind of refreshing given the AFL media mainstream. Important thing to understand is that his main space is twitter, so his job isn't to make you rofl or even lol, just add a little smirk as you flick through all the other dross. He's only asking for half a second, don't expect too much back!

Prestia in the middle, of course.

Hmm, I worry a little that he looks like the next Brent Moloney. You know - if a coach says 'move the ball quickly, take the first good option' he will be thinking 'ME! I'm the first good option!' There's just something in those highlights that made me think he wasn't as aware of his teammates as an onballer needs to be at AFL-intensity.

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