Little Goffy

Strangely enough, he played his 'best' football for Essendon, but he has played his 'most valuable' football for us. Could easily have retired at the end of any of the last four seasons and nobody would have thought it was too early. He's smart, persistent and role-focused. Those things don't decline with age.

Well, if he can find good parking near Hardware Lane he will at least have proven he's developed a bit of mongrel competitiveness! Personally, I'm setting my Schache expectations at; kicking a goal, getting a bundle of long-lead marks to help us link up as we move the ball, and having a really good view as Van Rooyen feasts on the 1-on-1 contests created by the faster ball movement and extra space created by Schache's unselfish team-oriented play.

Oooh, yay, Greg the Garlic Farmer makes his debut!

See, it is different for the NRL. They have no soul to preserve.

This is great because we already know his little sister loves Angus Brayshaw.

I'm okay with Segway at pick 5 and Fanagle with 17. Would bring us a combination of sustained speed and craftiness. Hopefully one or both of Savvy and Wiley will still be available at our later selections. There are plenty of not-pick-one good examples of gun kids arriving and making a potent difference in a team breaking through for a premiership. Selwood (Pick 7) and Rioli (13) in their first seasons, and I'd even say that Bontempelli (4) fits in that category with his 36 brownlow votes and a premiership in his first 50 games! Then again, I'm the kind of person who gets irritated and avoids a movie is everyone is out there telling me how great it is. I'm profoundly hype-averse. Still, if we were able to end up with 4, 7 and 13... I might go in for a bit of hype myself.

Might be more interesting to see how we could leverage some other clubs desperation for pick 1 to boost our own position. E.g. Club A that holds pick 1 insists on getting premium picks back, and Club B has managed to accumulate a pile of other trade value but not the top pick being insisted on. Anyway, seems to me that it would have to be the Bulldogs in the hunt. Currently with picks 8 and 13 (Bris), likely to trade out players and to accept that they need to boost their young talent - Bailey Smith is their only midfielder of note under 27. The fit is good and the rebuild for the Dogs could be really helped given the development time of the talls they already have, with a gun midfielder or two acquired in 2023-25ish. Anyway, this thread made me go back and look at drafts. Discounting the too-soon and too-uncertain mess of 2021, I don't think there's a single draft where giving up (for example) a top-5 pick and a top-15 pick for the first selection works out favourably, let alone three early picks.

100% a beat-up. Only thing I'll add is that while I think having Petty as a swing option is valuable, he is clearly an outstanding defender and his persistence when the ball spills and things get chaotic is both elite for a tall defender and a priceless part of our defensive system. May is doing fine. Our talls are under pressure across the board because a couple of our forwards are struggling, but nobody is actually failing in their role. Our deeper issue is that opponents are catching on generally to the fact that a mad loose slap-happy bumbling pants-around-ankles scramble is the best way to get into our defensive 50. That can only be dealt with by getting our mids and flankers to properly dominate the corridor. Do that and our opponents will be relying on mad scrambles inside 50 and only close to the boundary, which frankly is just conceding they are beaten!

If a sideline signal is a picture of BT, it means 'Start wasting time'.

Take heart that this will have done more damage to Essendon than good for Collingwood. A net gain for civilization.

Let's all take a moment to appreciate the extensive footage of the crowd from this game. Allows us all to refresh our prejudices without actually having to interact with those people.

May all your dreams come true. If anyone wants to clip this magic moment and let us all lip-read her epic 'thank you', it is just after 3:38:00 on the Kayo broadcast. Seriously, I nominate it for video of the week.

AFL players will also earn tens of millions of dollars each year in their contracts and merchandising deals, I presume?

But Mr Jaded is not. She would've noticed, I'm sure.

Hang on a minute; who says we aren't the team we were in 2021. If anything on paper we are stronger. Our only relative deficiency since then is that our two main key forwards are in unreliable form, and that seems less concerning when you remember we are the highest scoring team in the competition this season. 2021 came together at just the right moment and there's no denying something magic happened, but we're going along just fine to give that magic another chance.

Looks like a reboot of Upper Middle Bogan.

NEW ST KILDA COACH ACHIEVES BREAKTHROUGH RESULT OF SAME WIN LOSS RECORD AS PREVIOUS YEAR

Nothing good is going to happen if we just keep handing them the goal square, either! Yeesh.

Nothing good is going to happen if we just keep handing them the corridor.

I see he finally was able to eat that football.

Turns out the AFL does have a mercy rule. The leading side must only kick behinds in the final quarter. Still could blow out some more.

"Famous Five take Master George to Florida Disneyland". 💥

Reiterating; I have zero hate for Jackson. We've done very well out of the trade, and the gain of Grundy - which was only possible because of the hole Jackson left - is an unmistakable improvement that may yet shape our premiership tilt this year and for a few to come. I'm not sure any club has 'won' any trade more completely since the Trent Croad move. Meanwhile, I checked the scores of Port v West Coast and my brain is automatically working out how each win by a 'mid-range' team puts a ceiling on any Fremantle climb back up the ladder.

I really like Charlie Spargo and love the regular moments of calm genius he brings to the our half-forward zone. I also fully understand that his game is committed to low-possession roles as space-blocker, decoy, and so forth. BUT I really wish we could build up his numbers a bit. My feeling is that if we could get him just a bit more involved in the play it would not only add to his contribution as a smart player who finds the important difficult links, but would also add to his selfless roles by forcing the opposition to be more aware of him. Anyway, I've put it in the Looneymove FC thread because my proposal is; When Spargo comes back from his concussion, give him a spell in the 2s and give him some time playing right in the middle of the action. There is a small, but not zero, chance we could get our very own discount-brand Brent Harvey if only we can tweak the mindset a bit, and the one thing our midfield lacks is that little edge of cleverness.

Pretty impressive of Freo to not only have their opponent pass them on the ladder, but to have GWS move ahead of them on percentage. Does that make it a proverbial 12 point game?