Little Goffy

Not that he's a bad player but I don't think he'd change our midfield dynamic much. Certainly it wouldn't be much of a gain compared to the proverbial 'replacement', which would presumably be one of the young players we're looking to develop. My summary - not worth the salary cap space relative to a kid, and not worth even the relatively modest draft cost in an allegedly deep draft.

Brace yourself. If you've ever been irritated by a celebrity doing a FIFO 'awareness raising' photoshoot, you'll choke on your vomit by the time you know the full Theresa story.

I did some googling and was a bit surprised to see he'd been with us since 2012. Basically makes him the architect of our premiership list - pursing the structural players which made our game plan and our glory possible. No mistaking that there has been a string of misses in the last couple of years, albeit relatively low-cost misses. I suspect trying to find a back-up ruck capable of stepping in full-time if needed while also being content to be 80% forward for potentially years is one of the hardest recruiting tasks there is, especially if you are hoping for that recruit to be a longer term successor to the game's greatest ruckman. The perception last trade period was that Tim Lamb was simply dealing with too much all at once, between the Petty, Oliver and Grundy kerfuffles on top of the usual trade period nonsense. Clearly it would be silly to try to bump Lamb on in the handful of weeks between now and trade period this season, so let's see if we can get some transparency on what people expect. So... What benchmark in this coming trade period needs to be reached in order for Lamb to re-establish himself as our preferred recruiting / list manager?

Wow, Hinkley cops a $20,000 fine. The AFL is really keen to protect the Hawks' new branding. Can't have anyone pointing out it is a pile of arrogant, vacuous [censored].

Too many players with too much of a disturbance to their pre-season meant that there were always gaps in the defensive running to block options, which meant that there were too many ways for opponents to evade the pressure we did apply. The more that happens, the harder it is too maintain the morale necessary to keep running to cover and to apply pressure. I suspect that it was an awareness of this problem which made us attempt to develop a better attacking style in order to balance the extra goals we were inevitably going to leak. Unfortunately, well, we didn't make it work. The proverbial 'big preseason' could restore that defensive running system and make the pressure efforts much more effective - bringing back the 'edge' as described in the OP. Having said that, we really have to work on our attacking system. Interesting challenge for the new forward line coach, for sure. That could be a destiny-shaping recruitment decision.

Everyone was saying that about us after 2018!

retires-ish immediately-ish

Thin skinned attention-seeking twerps at Hawthorn getting a public dose of disrespect and their captain becoming completely fussed over it. Luv t' see it. Port still managing to appear psychologically brittle despite holding on to win a final by less than a goal. Magic. All in all that was a great night of footy.

Nnnnnnooooope. If Carlton thought he was worth anything they would have held him and facilitated a trade for at least a basic burnable pick to use for the Camporeale twins.

My main concern is that he appears to be an utter [censored].

That irritated me so much I wanted to go on a long rant but the collective effort here is superb. Joe Gutnik is not a man we want pulling any strings or holding any proxy influence around the club. He used to be 'just a bit' bonkers and his extreme vanity served the club well in a crucial moment, but these days he is absolutely a noxious menace.

Yeah but they've got six of them and even then they only last a few months. Unlikely to ever get a full season out of Cerra or an ant. On the other hand, get an ant to climb into the stitching and every shot on goal would be a rushed behind.

Bulldogs in such a crisis I'm tempted to pencil them in for the 2026 premiership. But more seriously, it seems like soon enough the Dogs are going to be left with the deepest set of top quality talls in the game but only one midfielder under 30.

Yeah, but mostly by rapists, war criminals, dodgy property developers and Queensland judges, who all have mysteriously deep pockets. I mean, let's be blunt here; we're not in on the Channel 7 gravy train for scumbags, so the costs wouldn't be worth the victory, nevermind the Streisand effect.

I guess it was supposed to be closer to pick 35 than 25. It was still pick 30 with about five weeks to go in the season. Even so, ANB is criminally underrated and our trade compensation will be criminally below his real worth, and it is looking very much like we got barrelled in the McAdam trade. It is quite possible we were so exhausted from calculating the permutations of multiple other possible trades which never eventuated that we just didn't quite sustain the concentration and were too focused on just getting something, anything, done. Best value I can see out of Nibbler trade would be as part of a traditional Demon wild shenanigan package which comes together for an additional pick in the first round - Brisbane's 14 is the obvious target given it would be burned by the Ashcroft price anyway.

We're getting Ollie Wines. It's been cooking for 12 months.

I call 'splash damage' on the AFLW side discussion here.

Fundamental to that is that Cripps is taking half a million a year less than he might be getting, because collective success was more important to him and he wanted to ensure the club could recruit the additional strength they needed. No idea why I'm mentioning that in the Petracca thread. Coincidence.

Whatever the course of this game I will be sticking around just to hear more commentary gems like; "The numbers are painting a story"

A quick recap of Kate Roffey's final three months as president.

Ex Demons currently 2 goals 1 behind vs everyone else 4 behinds (and 1 rushed).

I'll reserve passing an opinion on Trac's little media moment because what it means changes completely depending upon whether it is part of a fresh pattern of engagement or if it is a one-off. Basically, same as when a young forward kicks three and takes a couple of good marks. Good to see, hope to see more, not reaching any conclusions just yet.

Hmmm, if our 11 wins this season is equivalent to their 11 wins in 2019, after they went out in straight sets in two finals series (with a non-finals year in between), then I take it that everyone being impressed by how quickly Hawthorn have rebuilt will be satisfied with seven wins and a bottom four finish every year until 2029ish. I don't mean to take away from the Hawks' achievement - going into this season, and certainly by round 5, it looked like Hawthorn were just going to sit at the bottom for the forseeable future. Personally, if I were looking to steal one feature from the Hawks' operation it would be their conditioning of mature players - all but one (Wingard) of their players 26 and older have played a full or close to full season. It speaks volumes about not only conditioning and luck, but also the commitment to slicing away the less-than-excellent mature players (I'm trying not to say list cloggers) and giving the club permission to have flaws while it gave kids a run. The contrast of course is with Billlings, McAdam, Hunter, Smith and Schache, who were acquired or retained in the hope that they would provide immediate 'adequate' cover, where bringing in another late draft pick could only offer the possibility of being good in a few years. Of course, prior to that the strategy was a key part of winning a premiership because it took us to having a complete team. We also haven't sacrificed a huge amount of draft value to do this, but at this stage I'm sure there would be general agreement that it would be nice to have, say five more kids running around of which even one or two might develop into quality players, than the list space being filled the way it is. Anyway, to return to my starting point - the Hawks 'amazing' list rebuild is literally the worst-case scenario for our own future, so I'm glad to hear so many people enthusiastic about going through that and not grinding axes at the club along the way!

Has Brad Green been in contact yet?

If Hinkley gets the chop and becomes our head of football, what happens to the body?