Little Goffy

Plus the poster boys for premiership-influencing kids, Selwood and Rioli. And just for fun extending it slightly to players who had a meaningful part in a premiership before their 50th game - Jackson, Pickett, Rivers, Bowey, and Sparrow. Picks 5, 7, 9 and 13 in two seasons is a massive surge of potential talent to complete a best 22 which is already competing. Anyone pretending that can't have an impact is just being sour.

With pick 5 the chances of getting a gun midfielder with an attacking style ready to play round 1 is close to 100%. Wild stuff. Pick 9 looks like a choice between talls (Armstrong, Tauru, Shanahan) and even more dynamism in general play (Reid, Allan, Smillie). I feel like if we go full on for the poised, high-initiative midfielder types again this season we could end up with a whole new look in a very short space of time. Compare the movement style of Rivers, McVee, Windsor, Thostrup, Langford and Reid to the current midfield core based primarily on the powerful bodies of Oliver, Viney, Petracca and Sparrow. But for real fun, imagine the surge that can come while we still have those powerful bodies and can back it up with the mobility of that next generation. For a brief moment we could be going into games expected to win clearances and also expected to win the around-the-ground movement.

I swear, he had more running bounces in that footage than our entire team for 2024. I'm not even kidding, and they weren't pointless bounces either. That and the collection of sharp passes on aggressive instincts make it very easy to want him running around on the attacking half of the ground. There was one pass were he centred the ball with an ambitious kick to his own CHB area. It worked out okay but I felt my hair fall out as he did it! So, yeah, attacking side for my sanity's sake.

Commitment to the family company is admirable but that is a weird t-shirt his dad is wearing.

The two who have made an impression in my mind are Smith and Smillie. Might be a bit optimistic to imagine both making it to 5 and 9, respectively, but that's where my head is. Last year I was disappointed we didn't take Curtin, but I am thrilled about the prospects for Windsor. I'm pretty chill about it all. This ain't no Prendergast sausage factory we're running.

Stats are unreliable but; Seventh in the league for goal assists per game, despite being subbed out twice, including once in the first quarter. Also contributed a handy goal a game. As a role player in attack he is excellent value. It seems unusual to describe someone who can change the tactical situation purely with their own vision as being a 'role player', but, well, that's his role!

It'll be interesting to see how Demonland and the other major sites manage the ID requirements. "Click the following to prove you aren't just three kids in a trenchcoat"

Some of this has a bit of an Iran Hostage Crisis feeling.

It's an interesting one because we have a real gap in the player age spread from Oliver (now 27), with only seven players age 23 to 26. We're going to need at least some of them to develop into quality leaders ready for the 2028 premiership.

If I were Tom Campbell I'd be absolutely frothing at the mouth to get into 2025. He doesn't even need to suddenly deliver his best ever football. the poor guy never got a run at it, always either stuck behind a clear 1st ruck or at a club which simply didn't care much about the ruckman. The only two seasons (2017 and 2021) where he got any kind of run at it he did fine - not spectacular, but fine. He's not an answer to our forward issues except that he can be out on the ground as a supporting ruck, is a proper big lump who can take the impacts as well as contest overhead, and clearly has the humility and experience to work with a clear first ruck. Campbell isn't a star but if he is doing his job well it lets Van Rooyen, Fritsch and so on do the job they are actually best at, and that could make a very big difference.

Personally I've got my eye on Theo Soros and Richard Shonary. Or next year's potential Irish recruits, the twins Simeon and Anthony O'Nym. Funnily enough they look nothing alike.

Just clarifying in my own head - at this moment we are in the 8 and we are waiting on the result of Essendon v Carlton. So... uh... C'arn ya bluebaggers! * *Offer expires 9.30pm Nov 2, 2024

North going into 2025 is very much like Melbourne going into 2010. Obviously many specific differences - North have been given far more draft concessions and other support than we were, and have been right at the bottom for longer than we had been at that time. It'll be interesting to see if their injection of maturity this trade/agent period will help stabilise them enough to be competitive and gain some belief. Also interesting to see what comes of their draft wave - we still haven't really seen anything of Goad, Dawson and Hardeman from 2023, and some of their picks from previous years are still in the 'promising' category rather than breaking out. They could very suddenly become very scary, or else... hmm... it is hard to see North surviving as a club if they don't at least become competitive in this wave.

Some people get 2 year contracts, some people get 4 year suspensions. It's a funny world. Glad he's set at Geelong because I was genuinely anxious about him coming to Melbourne, providing close to nothing on field and continuing to be an off-field swamp at a third club.

Ko****knee is the zero on the scale. Story goes that he did a peripheral awareness test where little lights go off at various points around you, and you just have to push a left or right button when you notice the light. During the test a technician came over to check it was working properly.

It was strange to recognise Sam Redford's name and then need to think for a moment why I recognised it. Tried some googling but can't find much info about what he's been up to since being a casualty of the Covid crunch. Can anyone bring me (and all of us) up to date?

Wait, you mean to tell me that all this time there have been systematic reviews going on and some major reorganisation planning happening? I am shocked. I was sure the club was sitting on its hands all this time.

This thread has gone berserk so I'm sure any comment I make will be three pages back within minutes and never seen again, but I'm going to go on record with my feeling about Pert. 1. Extremely capable and driven. Had clear visions for change to bring about success as a club at both Collingwood and Melbourne, and personally committed to making it happen. Surging financial positions and on field success came to both clubs under his leadership. 2. An 'excess of awareness of own abilities' (I am so polite) led him to not respect role boundaries and the decisions made by others, at both Collingwood and Melbourne, leading to a continuously accumulating breakdown of role definitions and an undermining of the crucial need for unity of purpose once decisions and plans had been set. I suspect he may even be addicted to creating change. This appeared to particularly affect the football side of things with both clubs experiencing unexpected and not fully justifiable slides after their premiership peaks. As Sun Tzu said, to understand the weaknesses of anyone you must study their strengths.

Someone needs to get in Yze's ear that we are definitely taking Smillie with 5 and what is 23 really worth when you have half the first round already?

Just going to take a little breath to enjoy how there has not been a single media speculation about this being 'on the cusp' in the week or two leading up to it. The article about this on the AFL website literally bumped out the 'What should be the Demon's priorities this off-season' chat from apparently 'star' reporters Barrett and Edwards posted last night.

If there was a formal scale for measuring peripheral awareness and anticipation, the benchmarks would go from Jacob Koschitzke through to Scott Pendlebury. I think Jagga Smith might give Pendles some competition. Neither of Smith of Windsor will ever be big guys, but having those two driving our ball movement out of contests could be transformative.

On the assumption that Tom Morris never quite gets anything right... I'm going to suspect that Jones is coming in as a specialist stoppage coach and there will be a general midfield coach as well, tasked with overall ball movement between the arcs. We've surely got quite a bit of soft cap space at the moment, and would have to be seen as a desirable place to take a coaching career when you consider that we've had assistants take up senior coaching positions for two years in a row.

Back in 2009 they did! It was a whole draft event, I don't think there were tickets sold as such, but a pre-registration for interested members. I'd guess as many as 100 people showed up for the draft night event hosted by Chris Connolly, who gave us all a rolling update on who we were hoping would be available. Scully and Trengove were wheeled out for a quick interview within an hour of being drafted. Fun fact - we had our eye on Melksham but he was gone by our pick, so Gysberts it was. Each of Tapscott, Gawn and Spencil were exciting sliders - we would allegedly have taken Gawn at 18 except we were so keen and surprised that Tapscott was available, and would have taken Spencil at 30 except Gawn was unexpectedly there, and then Spencil was still available at pick whateverish. Allegedly. That was how they played the spin live on the night. Hmm, wondering who else here was there on that fateful and strange night?

Probability that sydneydee also complains about millenials being soft snowflakes with main character syndrome is looking high.

Brisbane and Fagan did brilliantly (and I've long loved Fagan since his time with us, increased by his underdog credentials from his time applying for senior position after senior position and getting knocked back). But I'm pretty sure every Melbourne player who ever made the all-Australian shortlist squad of 40 was either injured or just plain had a personal stinker in 2024! Koleman, McCarthy, Gardiner and McInerney is a problematic hole. Petracca, Oliver, and Brayshaw is >20% of the salary cap value of the team. That's an abyss. Having said all that, I actually agree we still have a problem with mental brittleness within games and over the season. A problem we've had for... as long as I can recall, actually.