Little Goffy

Unless they get Frawley, as per Crawford's random speculation today. Anyway, at this point Jaksch has show very little. Jaksch it, even. But that would appear to be mostly injury-related. All that said, the phantom draft write-ups on Jaksch are pretty stellar, and really that is all we have to go on. Much like Tyson, really. Would take him, but not at a high price.

Petterd Despite showing great promise early on (especially 2009), he never took the next step with us. His second season at Richmond is clearly the best of his career. Martin Despite showing great promise early on (especially 2011), he never took the next step with us. His second season at Brisbane is clearly the best of his career. Rivers Despite showing great promise early on (especially 2004), he never took the next step with us. His second season at Geelong is clearly the best of his career. Bennell Well... it is only his first season at West Coast. But his numbers are better than any previous season and he has played all but one game. I guess we'll see this weekend. Of course, then there's the pile of players who went to other clubs and never saw the light of day there either, like Morton, Gysberts, The results for players leaving Melbourne are mixed and do not show a consistent pattern. But there are definitely recent cases where ex-Melbourne players have gone on to much better times at their new club.

If by 'good strides' you mean 'slightly below the average season results over the last seven miserable years', I agree. Maybe the answer is a grand triple-merger with Fitzroy and University? But seriously, we are in 'last legs' territory. Again. It seems like this club only ever finds its heroic instinct when that heroism is required to climb out of the grave. Anything greater than that and we return to our hobbit-holes.

It is against the AFL's magical rules of free agency and trading for a player to enter a contract with another club until after the season with their current club has finished. As was proven by the harsh way they went after Tom Scully and his dad... I think GWS in that instance was in the perfect little sweet spot of moral hazard, both 'too big to fail' and 'too weak to cope with even a minor penalty'. It will be an interesting off-season, findng out whether Gillion McLaugh'n actually has a spine after all. Maybe all these years he was just hidden under the weight of the AFL operating system, and now he is at the top he will be unleashed to bring a new, consistent, transparent, and ethical era to AFL leadership. *snort*

It's my impression that a single faulty state of mind greatly damaged both the recruiting and the development. We treated our draft picks, and the players they obviously became, like they were assets on the books of a managed fund. Not only that, but loaded with hubris we forgot that risk and reward are not inherently related when making 'investments'. So we even failed to properly administer within the terms of the managed fund approach. At several times, we were taking risks on draft picks for the sake of taking risks, on the perverse logic that risk itself implies reward. Once we had these 'assets' on our books, the managed fund approach continued. Each player, and the playing group as a whole, was seen by the club as being like businesses in which the club had a balance-sheet stake. Expected to operate themselves, and generate a return. It doesn't take much thinking to realise how drastically different this is to the way a club needs to operate, and in particular the way a club needs to constantly refresh, develop, stimulate, and mobilise the players. Very much in the sense of being an actual business operation, where all the shops and all the stock and all the production lines in the world wont help you if you can't actually connect your operations with their final goals and markets. Basically, what we did with the draft picks was the football equivalent of first buying a bunch of restaurant space, including some in 'wacky amazing places that will be soooo trendy', and then not doing a proper fitout, or advertising, or cleaning the coffee machine. I know it seems like an absurdly extended analogy, but it is a relevant one, because I really think it is very close to how 'certain people at the club' were operating. I also really think that our club owes some players a serious apology. Cale Morton, for example, for letting him wither on the vine, being left aimless and unguided on his physical goals and his role on match day. A complex player who didn't quite fit any category, he could have been a valuable utility creating advantageous mismatches. Instead he was always being left to cope matched up on the player the opposition coach thought most advantageous for them. More generally, I think far more than 'tanking', the psychological scars on our playing are the product of that kind of scenario at a team level. Bad tactical adaptations on match day, vague and optimistic (to the point of silliness) gameplan, and constantly finding yourself on disadvantageous match-ups. Yep, that's like a textbook on how to crush confidence and initiative. "Lesson 1 - make sure they keep failing due to factors beyond their control."

Entirely indistinguishable from Mark Neeld's list rebuild plan. Gee, I'm saying some mean things lately. Aaaanyway, a 3AW rumour isn't really any better than an online forum rumour, when in comes to the details, so I'm not really going to let this one rattle around too much in my head. Though I am a little concerned that Roos has decided that an oversupply of the name Jack is a key weakness at the club.

Honestly, I've been assuming for a while that both the possible priority pick and the Frawley compensation pick would be end of first round. Could be looking at something like 19 (compo), 20 (pp) and 22 (normal) in a little bundle. Useful, but puts pressure on to use them wisely. Oh no... oh nooooo.... 2008 draft flashback! If anyone needs me I'll be curled up in a ball in the corner repeating the names of that year's second-round draftees immediately after the Blease-Strauss double. Shuey, Ballantyne, Zaharakis, Suban, Redden, Beams, Hannebery, Shiels... Why Barry, why? Somebody call the MFCSS ambulance.

Oooh, a self-flagellation thread. Ok! Let's imagine that each of Morton, Bate, Gysberts, Scully, McKenzie, Bennell, Trengove, Fitzpatrick and Spencer turned their respective glimpses of form into a sustained, consistent level of play. Let's imagine that Matthew Lloyd hadn't successfully suckered the umpire by diving when Nicholson nudged him in the final quarter of the 2004 elimination final. Le's imagine that we hadn't been done for salary cap breaches, losing us Pick 4 (Matthew Pavlich) from the 1999 draft. MFCSS.

Wow... I can see the conversation now. "Doctor, I'm doing my best to manage my mental illness, following all the recommended guidelines, I even do 'mood gym' programs." "Oh, well, you don't need my help. Have a nice day." "But I still feel like killing myself several times a week!" "I see. So you aren't really trying hard enough. Sorry, I can't help people like you."

Yeah I'm with you. Calming rituals, sure. Breathing and concentration exercises, yep. Yoga and even slow-motion 'mental walkthoughs' of skills, all been shown to be useful. But 'para-psychic' bollocks, is, well, bollocks.

It's a strange thing how, in the lowest paid jobs people do have to work 50 weeks a year, then around the middle incomes the 6 weeks / 8 weeks guarantee comes in, and then as you get into the top incomes you start having work pay for long lunches because they are 'networking', and 'learning trips' to New York, London, and the Loire valley, and then you get a holiday because you've 'had to' spend so much time away from family. That said, I don't think the mentality of seeing the players as some kind of property of the club helps anyone get anywhere. I think the AFL has slipped into the trap of being so anxious to do everything 'right' that the system is undermining player's autonomy and agency, and in the process undermining their personal initiative.

I went back and looked at the match stats. Mistake. Worse thing it reminded me of was that Jordie McKenzie was the outstanding player who kept going. What happened to the tackling machine? Lots of them and often effective. Hell, in 2011/2012 he was even getting a good number of disposals going. A serious contributor who never dropped his head. Club-first guy who stayed on the rookie list an extra year so we could use an earlier draft pick. Now, he really looks about to drop off the AFL cliff.

The 'odds' of a player developing into a 100+ or 200+ game player slip a bit with each round. But that is often mistaken to mean that the later round players are an inherently lower standard. We will probably get a couple of good players this draft from picks taken in the fourth round and later. Just by sheer random chance, there'll be so many selections made.

Fremantle game, anyone?

Personally, I'm leaning towards the big guy Peter Wright. Fitzpatrick and Spencer should both be on the delist wagon, leaving just Jamar and Gawn as our rucks. Jamar has been competent again, but cannot go on forever. Gawn is looking more and more promising, but is obviously only one player. Wright offers a long-term highly capable player to pair with Gawn in a ruck/forward and forward/ruck combo. He's also reasonably well-built already, and could be playing a forward role very soon, adding more ruck once Jamar retires. On the other hand, we need multiple competent midfielders, not a single gun. The whole system is breaking down at the moment and not even Ollie Wines could turn it around. My count of potential/likely delistings has climbed to an incredible thirteen. That'll mean at least half a dozen 'end of draft' picks who as far as I see it can all be 'possible midfielders'. Should be interesting times at Casey next year, too.

4 wins, 69% Ongoing slide in form. Total incapacity to score. Breathtaking mental fragility. Paul Roos is simply not earning his money. There. I said it.

I can actually hear a gurgling sound. Schlurrrrrrrrrrrrrp. Gherrrghk gherrrghk. Those later sounds are the drain clogging up from the occasional wads of cash that Paul Roos drops after rubbing himself down in the shower.

The whole article is hopelessly written and it is very clear the guy is just lifting from a press release and fleshing it out with random comments. Clearly knows nothing about heavy armored vehicles, biathlons, recent world events, or professional writing. The last line is just dumb, that's all. But what really grates on me is when people in jobs I would love to have, would consider as being paid for a hobby, are being held down by people who don't have the skills and/or don't make the effort to do a decent job of it. I'm looking at you, sports journalists, Commonwealth and State government ministers, Social Sciences university lecturers, urban developers, documentary makers, television programming executives, investment bankers... etc etc It really hurts me that this idiot got paid for that article.

WTF?

Love your work SS, well summed up. My take on it is that King and Maclure were just in fantasy land. "Quick, manufacture a crisis so we can suggest any random idea we want, because we all know activity = solution". I'm dissatisfied with this season, but not about to hit panic buttons like they are calling for.

I don't expect Watts to be a star, but I am confident that he will be a consistent AFL-quality player who can also offer a useful tactical mismatch. Will he be Adam Goodes? No. Will he be Brendon Goddard? No. Should we be pushing OUT players who can at least make a useful contribution, when our list leaves us about five players short of an AFL team on any given week? No. With 6+ 'clearly inadequate' players being churned over at the end of the year, I don't think there's a lot to be gained by rolling through our actual AFL players.

What I get out of it is that there are a few key psychological factors, and tactical habits, thhat could make a dramatic difference to our results. I guess this article reminds me why I'm a quiet kind of disappointed about this season, but not in the gut-achingly bad 'where do we go from here' way that has been the story of the last few years,

It's an interesting thing that not long ago I was kind of unfussed about the very tall options high in the draft this year. But the more I've thought about it, the more I think we need to secure some real quality there, and soon. I have full confidence in Gawn continuing to develop as a competent ruckman with a very good contribution in general play, particularly as a contested marking target. But I don't think we can put all our eggs in that (large) basket, particularly given his prior injury issues. Conveniently, Gawn looks like he could develop to happily spend more time as either a forward or as a ruck, with the other filling the balance. This will make it easier to find a good balance for whoever new we bring in to fill the ruck stock. That said, we really, really need some class and poise off half-back - A tall defender who can rebound effectively and/or a truly potent counter-attacking weapon the likes of "that Sydney guy" or Heppell, when he's playing back. Midfield and even forward line I think I'm less concerned than most people. Already a lot of young players looking to develop into those roles. Disappointing that Dawes has faded so much this season. But it's not like we made it easy for him.

I think Nathan Jones is still most likely, sheer hard work and response to pressure, still our number 1 all-round midfielder and player. Tyson has had issues with overall disposal efficiency over the course of the year, same as Vince and Viney, actually. But, couldn't help noticing that in the last few weeks that number has been climbing, to the point where his current form puts him right in the elite. Tyson would not be far off the 2014 B&F, and I'm starting to think he wont just be 'very very good', but truly top-tier elite in seasons to come.

Enjoyed him as a Demon. Unfortunate string of early injuries. Played a few good seasons for us. Not very well behaved off-field but no major crime. Parted on thoroughly sour terms. With his retirement, I for one will also retire any bitterness or ill-will towards him.