Little Goffy

Considering that both of these guys have reasonable excuses for being late developers (Morton being tall, and skinny, Grimes managing lower back issues for most of his first year) I think there is a solid basis for judging them favourably at this point. I think it would be fair to say that we have two guys in the smallest top bracket of players from that draft. That's a satisfying enough feeling for me at this point.

The trouble is, what exactly are our needs, and how 'needy' are we? I've been thinking a bit about ruckmen. We're going to need one, one we can count on, in a few years as Jamar gets older and the collection of 'possible/unlikely' ruckmen that we have thins out. In the next two drafts, the best ruckman will be gone, bank on it. Each of Gold Coast and the Westies will look to first secure a ready-to-go ruckman from another club and then pick up a top future prospect and a general back up as well. Even if we come about 12th, we wont have a pick in the top ten for those two years, either. In this draft there is only one really standout ruckman, Nathan Vardy. The AFL website 'Draft Rater' has Vardy at 8-25, Fitzpatrick next is teens to 35. So, Vardy is therabouts in pure 'best available' terms, and fills a critical need that will be all but impossible to fill otherwise. I think we should be making sure that there is a quality ruckman developing alongside the midfield group that he will spend his career working with, rather than throwing one in years into the process. So I guess my question is; Is getting the best ruck that will be available for at least the next three years, worth pick 11? Maybe I'm favouring this because I'm convinced that butcher/lucas.tapscott will be gone at 11 and Griffiths will still be available at 18, and that this combination gives us the best overall value from 11 & 18.

The whole situation is somewhat unsavoury. I guess that means he belongs at Carlton. If he's nominating a 3 year deal on good money, fair enough if nobody else wants to take him. Where I worry about that sort of deal is the possibility of the player then 'renegotiating' the deal once he is at the new club, essentially making the original contract expectation a bluff to get other clubs out of the way. The stipulated contract should be enforced rigorously, or the whole thing is a farce. Also, I agree completely that it would be both a mistake in general and an insult to Wheats, Wheels and Robbo if we picked up a 30+yr old with injury concerns right after delisted those guys. It would have been like picking up Cousins when we had delisted just as many senior players last year.

I've heard the name before, why? Didn't he stand opposed to Jack Watts in a schoolboy game a year ago, when we were all debating Watts/NikNat/Rich? Big age difference but I think I remember someone saying 'this kid Keath kid matched Watts very well'. Suggestion that being held by such a young player was a bad sign and a question mark on Watts?

I hear his nickname around the club is fatty-boom-bah. Ever since he passed 65 kilos he's been writing letters to The Biggest Loser, hoping to get onto the next season. He and Cale Morton are also trying to get onto a 'couples' season as well.

Can't we get one that goes faster?

I think that's the plan for Valenti. We have selection number 1 in the rookie draft after all, so if he doesn't get picked up somewhere else then I'm sure we'd be delighted to have him around another year. If he still doesn't quite break through to permanent AFL level, he'll be a great captain for Casey in a few years.

Nice to see the little things like the night being sold out, passing 10,000 members, and our best player also being our best clubman while the second best is borderline manic about the jumper. This direction is a good direction.

Hmm... I'm not expecting that Bruce will wind the clock back to that brief flare of BOG performances back in 05, but I do think he will be a solid contributor for years yet, particularly as his role changes and as our recently recruited phalanx of midfielders with skills and speed play a bigger role. The fact that he'll be essentially taking up no space on the list until such time as the next generation (the current 26 year olds) is eligible for veteran status makes it a striaght win for us. It's nice to know that we wont have to be letting go of any more enduring servants of the club for at least a couple of years. Even when we've known it's time, it still sucked.

Bruce and Green have both been reasonably durable players, despite a few nasty hits they've copped. They have also both learnt a variety of roles over their careers. Green is a more potent player all round, and I'm sure will still nail a Best & Fairest at some point. Bruce is less damaging and at some times this year and last year looked a little less than 100% committed to chasing and unrewarded play, BUT to his credit he clearly set out to address that and improvement has been there. Both could be around, as credible AFL players, for some years yet. We could be in a lot worse position than we are, as far as veteran's list goes. Davey is on a four year contract, his next contract will be veteran all the way, which will suit us and him I reckon.

While it's true that we don't exactly have the upper hand on many teams in the last few years (except Freo), it is also true that the Demons have struggled against North for quite some time. The key things I remember being a problem were - 1. Their tall marking forwards being able to take contested grabs from very long kicks into 50. 2. That little Harvey bastard. My read of that is that Warnock is our only defender (right now) capable of contesting in body strength with a truly BIG forward. There's no denying the prospects from a few of the other young defenders, but it may take a year or two more to get them developed to the point we don;t have this weakness. As for Brent Harvey... it's not often you hear about 'champion' taggers/back pockets, but we must all be hoping someone like Bennell, Bail or Jetta steps up to become a speedier Whelan capable of controlling players like Harvey.

The thing is, the kid has had plenty of time to think about the move to Melbourne and to talk about it all with his parents. Nobody's parents (well, some people's parents do but that's not the point) are going to put a bad spin on what their kid is going to be doing for the next two years minimum (by contract). So they'll be sitting around the dinner table having a chat about what a great team Melbourne is going to be, googling the club, looking at Jack Grimes' profile, having a little chuckle about how he'll get to meet Ron Barassi at club functions, which will lead them into thinking about Melbourne's history and how they were the ultimate football superpower back in the day, and how they are on a clear mission to bring that back and will be the top 'traditional' team in place to fight off the Gold Coast and West Sydney upstarts. By the time it even gets to the draft, Jack Trengove and his family will be sending thank you cards to Jordan McMahon

I think he's one of the few people who actually live up to a saying they like to use, I can't remember the exact words but it was along the lines of 'What we're doing isn't unique, but it is special'. Sums up his whole attitude to managing the club - not looking for magic bullets and messiahs, just picking out all the things that need to be set right or done well, and doing them. Would anyone else understand what I meant if I said that for the first time I can recall, it feels like we really have a CEO as a CEO, a president for a president, and a footy manager as footy manager? As a club, we've never been better run. Ever.

There's an important factor to this - attendence figures at games overall boomed in the 90s. This was largely due to the reshuffle of AFL/VFL, the introduction of interstate clubs, the closing of small venues and the killing of small clubs. The comparison - in the mid to late 80s overall average attendance was in the low twenty thousands, even slipping to 21,000 in 1987. Ten years later the overall average was up to over 34,000. Unfortunately, despite a preiod of success of sorts, or at least a return to competitiveness on the field, the Club failed to press itself in the new 'marketplace' and simply didn't ride that wave. I'd suggest that not having any recent history and glory to point to was part of the problem - it's all well and good winning games in a given season or even having a run of good seasons, but clubs like Essendon, Cartlon, Collingwood and Richmond, the 'Big 4', all had recent glory to carry their image. Throw that together with a pretty amateur club management style, and there you go. Over time, some of the other clubs which didn't quite ride that wave for whatever reason have put it together to varying degrees of success, like Hawthorn and St Kilda. It is very clearly our turn to push up now. But the key thing to remember is that there is no question on loyalty - the trouble has been lack of growth.

Holy Crap, he did too. I even remember watching and musing on him at the time, really early in the season. Came in when basically every other ruckman, was injured. He did ok, or at least, he did well enough to not write him off just yet. Hell, at one stage he was the 'winningest' player on our list, with one win out of two games! That's really odd that I forgot. I've watched guys like MacNamara, McKenzie, Spencer and even Newton pretty closely all year, keeping an eye out for anywhere that significant improvement might come from. I hope it's not an omen. However, embarrassing at it is to have forgotted that cameo, I think the points I made are still sound.

I have to respond to the 'we have four designated ruckmen' comment. Being designated a ruckman type doesn't make someone an AFL Ruckman. Paul Johnson is entering what may well be the last year of his career if he doesn't take another step, particularly in consistency and disposal. I say this as someone who has long respected him. Jake Spencer... I listened to the hype, I watched closely, I don't think it's there I'm afraid. John Meesen is essentially 'unknown with an edge of unlikely'. He hasn't played a senior game for us, we can't bank anything on him yet. Stefan Martin is being groomed as a 'key utility' and even if he fulfils the clear promise he has shown, he won't be a major ruckman. Leaving Mark Jamar as our only established ruckman right now, let alone in three years or more as any ruckmen recruited now come into their own. We've got to pick up a likely ruckman this draft. There's a reasonable chance that one of Vardy or Fitzpatrick will be there at 18. They are the best two going this year and in our circumstances pick 18 is a bargain for even a moderately good ruckman, if that is all they eventually develop into. EDIT: As pointed out by others, Meesen has actually played four senior games for us early this year. I'm appropriately embarassed to have forgotten them. He did ok. We still 'can't bank on him yet' though.

The number of places which open up on lists is larger than the number of players who have been delisted and re-nominate. Take the total delistings and subtract all the genuine retirements (about a third) and all the guys who simply aren't gonna make it (let's call it another third). The credible re-nominations are actually a pretty small group. For guys like Tenace or Buckley who have a shot at being picked up, a few extra chances make a big difference. If it goes from just four picks used on recycled players to eight picks , that's double the chances for them. But for the general mass of nominees in a draft of perhaps sixty picks, those four are only about 6.5% of the opportunities.

We'd better be careful we don't give those insoles to Cale Morton (unless it's to eat), because that would bump him up to 192 and then we'd have wasted a top draft pick. Hopefully all those foot/ankle issues Garland has had will keep him from growing the fatal 1cm, too. Come to think of it, I'll bet the reason the club passed on Tom Swift was not so much a worry about his shoulder as a concern that he would grow that cm and end up a spud. And knowing our luck, even if we hadn't lost pick 4 in 1999, and had grabbed Pavlich that draft, he probably would have had a different diet and we wouldn't be talking about a 191cm superstar at all. Nick Riewolt's sometimes fluffly, sometimes spiky but never 'down' hair? The extra 1cm he needs for glory. David Neitz went bald specifically to keep the lid down. Make no mistake, that centimeter is one of the most critical factors in a player's potential. The only time those guys look good is when they are matched up on eachother directly, like Lloyd and Scarlett.

'Dawn of the Demons' Poster with a deep red dawn rising with dark blue storm clouds either side, and a vaguely threatening partial Demon face watermarked into the sun. It's our decade, kids, lap it up.

If there was ever a draft to have the top two picks in, this is it. Last year it was an small incremental decline as you went down the pecking order, right from number 1. This year there really seems to be these two absolute standouts. Everyone else has either slid down the order (e.g. Butcher) or is considered very good but not at that 'super' level. 2009 also looks like a very good draft to have first round picks rather than second round, again there is a 'dip' it seems. And might just be a very good draft to have PSD Pick 1. Best since the last time Collingwood were told to F off at the trade table.

Hmm... After last year's significant loss, beaten out by the Debt Demolition campaign, we've taken a number of steps to improve the balance sheet. 2009 player payments were at least $0.5mil less than 08. 2009 interest servicing of debt will have dropped somewhere between $100-$200k. 2009 there has been no sacking/replacing process of the CEO, board and president. 2009 we received $1mil from the MCC and $1mil from the AFL in a support boost, a major increase on Competitive balance payments of 2008. 2009 we have received (the deal was backdated for season 09) an extra $100k per game at the MCG. Call it $1mil. That looks like about a $3.5 million improvement on the balance sheet. Much of this is one-off windfalls. But all it would take is a modest improvement in general operations and we are looking at a significant cash injection from 2009. Then Debt Demolition of $800k. It's possible that if the club chooses, we could be debt free this year. But I agree with the club's direction in putting as much as it can into player development resources. We have to be 'trying to win', not 'trying not to lose'.

I like what I've heard; he's probably worth 34 without any sentiment. But the club will have had good information on him, he's probably met several players thorugh his brother, likely some officials too. And actually, yes, there is room for sentiment in football. There is also room for psychological advantage, unity, motivation, culture. It's not a computer game, y'know.

Buckley would surely be picked up somewhere, he has a lot going for him and many clubs would be happy to use a late ND pick on him ahead of a raw and 'unlikely' kid. Valenti certainly has the guts and attitude right, and is good at getting it. We all know his limitations but I'd reckon he'd at least find a spot on another rookie list. So yeah, all the best to them, but not quite what the Demons needed. And if they don't get picked up by any other club, well, that hardly is evidence we should have kept them!

I think it's a fair move all round. For Miller it's good, if he finally has his break out season in 2010, as opposed to his break out three games here, two games there and so on, then he can be re-signed and will get a generous deal. If he has another so-so year, then 2010 would be just about the best possible year to be going into the pre-season draft, given the presence of a new club with an interest in a few mature bodies. He won't be brought in as a star, but would be a useful presence. Even the Gold Coast will have a need for the 'good ordinary' players and they wont be keen to spend their first two or three years getting pummelled because they have talented kids and only a few 'star recruit' mature players. From our perspective, it would be nice to get some kind of draft pick in return, but the first priority has to be to get through this Gold Coast introduction with minimum disruption to the mighty team we have assembled. I'm more worried about Jamar also being place on a one-year deal. Overall the story is roughly the same, and many here don't rate him very highly, but he is structurally quite important now. Finally, I'm feeling grubbier and grubbier talking about players as commodoties like this, I think I'll have to start signing off with a disclaimer like - 'I have real respect for the players discussed, my points are related only to the specific needs of the Club'

It doesn't matter a whole lot, but being 'number one draft pick' is like winning an award, certainly in media eyes at least. Wouldn't want him to have a 'Brownlow hangover' before he's even won his first Charlie. (That goes for Scully or Trengove, they'll obviously both get one ) Meanwhile, anyone else starting to get the feeling we wont even pick as far as 34? Particularly if Ball is happy to go PSD. That means just one more delisting plus any shunting for rookies.