Little Goffy

Pretty sure this is Bailey Humphrey's cooking channel. Very pointed post re: the trade hold-up

Nah, think positive. He'll kick seven in a half and the headline will be 'Absolute Dovastation'

Is it time that Melbourne (Club, and City) set up a regular commuter helicopter service across Port Phillip bay? Remember when we talk about AFL players and coaches we are talking about people whose time is worth anywhere up to $500 an hour.

Well, that settles it, we're trading Trac for picks 6 and 7 and drafting Hank and John Green.

Quickly addressing the Jefferson sidebar; Jack Gunston just had his best season, kicking 77 goals at more than 3 per game, and operating at 7.7 score involvements per game, off just 0.6 contested marks and 4.4 contested possessions per game. We need a contested target but not every tall forward has to be a 'power' target. But... oh boy do we need at least one contested target to get their act together, and fast! Would a Walter - Van Rooyen - Jefferson - Heath mix be viable? Which brings it back to the Petracca thread, how valuable is Walter to us compared to Gold Coast?

Saw Isaac Heeney trending in searches... AFL superstar drops major off-season bombshell Footy fans in mourning after star heartthrob announces he is officially off the market: 'it should have been me' Geebus fork in crisps. The dripping anus that is sports media. If I were even a moderately rich man - you know, had owned a home in the 80s or something - I'd be sponsoring the creation of a website which filtered and abbreviated all the sports news so nobody had to grind through the slush, and partnered with all the interesting independent types to provide a genuine flow of feature content as well. Come to think of it, if I were a footballer on $800k I'd probably be slipping a solid whack of money in to help make that happen, too.

Merrett is a consummate well-rounded hardworking and skilled midfielder who has suffered terribly from being surrounded by turkeys. Hasn't dropped below 10 brownlow votes since his 3rd season. Obviously he'd be of interest - a fascinating direct style exchange between Oliver and Merrett - but I think the price would be a bit much. What do Essendon get? [censored] and [censored], same as every year.

Well, now we need an 'oooooooh' reaction, or at least a popcorn reaction. Plus, Jordan McMahon doing us a solid. He clearly appreciated that we named an entire draft and trading year after him.

So... is the Suns giving up Bailey Humphrey for a 30 year old on double the salary included in that? Any moment now you're going to be demanding Humphrey for Oliver.

An interesting side to the discussion about how much the proposed picks are worth - even though Taylor & Co. haven't always hit every pick (the curse of Nick 426 Smith lives on, or is that the curse of Nick Sauntner?), they've had an exemplary run of estimating where the drop-away points in each draft has been. You can go all the way back to 2020 when we got Bowey at 21 and had been desperate in live trading on the night to move up that tiny fragment to get Max Holmes at 20, instead of holding 21 and 22. But what is interesting is you could have moved ten picks further up and done no better. So I'd trust the club if we decided 7 and 8 got the job done. For all that, Humprey was pick 6 and has probably advanced higher than that in reckonings after his first three seasons. The complex problem he creates for opponents is illustrated by his unusual statistical combo - a contested mark per game combined with a goal assist per game. Which Hulk movie was it, where Jake Melksham says "If you could take what I know now and put it in the body I had ten years ago..."? Absolutely worth more than picks 7 and 8, and we should be thrilled if it comes to a straight swap for Petracca.

For the record, Windsor, Tholstrup, and Lindsay are all types of cheese. Harvey Cheese is also a cheese-maker in WA. Few realise that our drafting is based on themes; all talls are based on US Presidents, mid-sized players are all cheese varieties. EDIT: Realised the opportunity to add another irrelevant gif.

Trade value will fall somewhere between Sam Flanders and Max Heath. You heard it here first.

A 2027 fourth round pick? For real?

Anyway, here's a quick link dump for anyone wanting to form an impression; TLDR; Assistant at Collingwood for 5 years, development and then VFL senior coach, North Melbourne for 1 season before Covid cuts, then a VAFA head coach with great success, returned to AFL level at St Kilda as backline coach for 2025, is now a Demon again. Other fun details - he starting coaching just two months after finishing playing, and pushed out Craig McRae as Collingwood's development coach. Collegians was the best offensive AND defensive side in their premiership year under Rivers. "Considering when Jared was appointed in 2021, Collegians were languishing in the relegation zone, for Rivers to then win the premiership is nothing short of a masterclass." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Rivers - includes a lot about his VAFA time. https://www.sen.com.au/news/2024/12/13/the-young-boys-have-been-fantastic-new-saints-assistant-jared-rivers-excited - likes young boys. https://www.saints.com.au/news/1678585/saints-welcome-bolton-and-rivers - another article from joining Saints https://www.thefootycoach.com.au/podcast/24-jared-rivers-afl-coaching-and-playing-insights-applied-to-community-football - podcast interview about his career, including coaching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkW7kjuOaw Interview when appointed at North, in November 2019 - kind of eerie in that he never really got to fill the role due to covid cuts. https://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/video/409955/vfl-bf-coach-jared-rivers-and-marty-hores-speech?videoId=409955&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1539039600001 - its a small world, Jared Rivers VFL coach hands over to his best and fairest, Marty Hore!

My heart is already warming for Alex Neal-Bullen's return in 2037. I wonder if Rivers and Hawkins will have the occasional one-on-one session? After all, they did play together at Geelong for a few seasons. I still (approximately) remember the glorious Riv quote from back in the day; "Dealing with the attention and now social media can be difficult sometimes, especially if you're an [censored]."

Does Aleer get his own thread? Should St Kilda be getting absolutely pilloried for making an offer to a player and then withdrawing it after the player has told their current club, requested the trade, and it has all gone public? Or is that just a 'Meh, St Kilda being St Kilda' thing?

My favourite stat people use for that is 'clangers'. A stat dominated by the likes of Patrick Dangerfield, Dustin Martin, Errol Gulden, Patrick Cripps and, yep, Petracca. For as long as I've known football it has been the marker of the gun player given responsibility to make things happen in difficult situations.

What, do we only recruit coaches who have proven they can belt our players? That said, Tom Hawkins was a smart footballer with exemplary team-first attitude and a ton of insight into every aspect of key forward craft.

No doubt, but this is just to highlight how fickle the Brownlow can be and how fine the lines are. Petracca has the 'hot girl low self esteem problem' where he was so close to perfect that everyone began commenting on the remaining flaws. As far as missing a Brownlow, three straight kicks (or two straight kicks and one correctly adjudicated straight kick) and it was his in 2023.

I'm starting to think I have a chance of a rookie list spot.

Surely we'll be able to take it to another level before next wednesday, no?

If Geelong had an extra player on the field the penalty would be forcing them to wear an extra headband.

Multiple captains, club champions and a 2-time recent Coleman medallist on the move and everything is up in the air; The media [censored] circus; "We need more content! ChatGpt please create a rumour that connects the highest clickbait name with the most possible readers without actually saying anything." ... "Nick Daicos is of interest to multiple unnamed clubs."

I'll suggest that both justice and poetry demand that Oliver and Bontempelli share the 2021 Brownlow. Wines' win is not quite as egregious as Tom Mitchell's, but geebus, that was a season that favoured either-or between the dour and the loose. Anyway, just to confirm how much that little imperfection in Petracca's game cost him (and us) Petracca 2023 Rnd 10 v Port. 1 goal 2 behinds. If that is 2.1 we win the game and presumably instead of one vote Trac goes ahead of at least one of Butters and Rozee. Rnd 16 v Giants. Kicked 0.4. Still got two votes, but if one of those shots goes through we win the game, he gets three votes. Rnd 22 v Carlton. Kicked 2.2. If one of his gettable misses goes through we win the game, he gets votes and our late season momentum changes. (Side note, does the touched shot count as his behind or as rushed?) Three strait kicks and that's a Brownlow.

Voss, Black and Akermanis would like a quiet word. Judd and Cousins. Now there's a brutal analogy for Petracca and Oliver. Bartel and Ablett Jr. Anyway, in any given season there's at least half a dozen players clearly on par with the Brownlow winner who don't win it. It's nice to have but not a big deal to not have. See also Bontempelli.