Little Goffy

I'm a fan. Obviously only speaking based on various profiles and highlights but if you show me a super-mobile tall who can still stick marks and who has a clean long kick I'll always be interested. Also a good time to start developing the rucks and ruck-support players of the future, when they can grow under the supervision of basically the two smartest rucks in the game.

Or scratches his itch.

Our women's team seems to be always on the cusp of being absolutely unstoppable and having a great time while doing it. A breakthrough premiership could really be the first of many. I also think Alyssa Bannan is in the same 'moment' as an individual player; she is right on the edge of being the outright superstar of the women's game and also making everything around her feel more fun. Ugh, the anticipation is killing me. Damn I want that deeply deserved premiership.

Clearly we have more interest in the depth of the 2023 draft (where we already have four 1st/2nd round picks, if I recall correctly) than in the 2022. I'd suggest they are on modest salaries, will require very little attention from coaches, contribute to player development at Casey, and be part of the overall weight of demonstration and support for standards for new players. These things matter in the era of tight budgets and footy dept soft caps. Plus, obviously, either of them in their better form is a legitimate AFL level player. I'm not dancing around giddy but I'm also far from being upset. Also, Melksham just needs 6 more games for his premium genetics to become available to us.

Is it just me or is Alyssa Bannan kind of the 'supreme footballer body' for women in the way that they talked about Anthony Koutoufides as being the prototype of the modern footballer body in the men's game twenty years ago? Touch wood she doesn't start coming apart at the seams the way he did, though!

Excellleeeeeeent.

Fun Fact: Just 113 AFL players took as many bounces in the entire 2022 season as did Alyssa Bannan in that single run down the wing. Don't know how many times in the history of any level of Australian football there has been a player start a run inside the defensive 50 and finish it inside forward 50.

Didn't make it easy but finally one on the board. There's a few players having serious 'moments' out there, but the real power will come only when the system settles into place... Oh, no, wait, there's another goal. Moments of brilliance doing the job.

Considering the reigning premiers went into the grand final with an average age just shy of 29, and almost all of their best dozen on the day were older than that, I'm going to suggest that premiership windows are a little bit over-hyped. Gawn to get his fourth premiership in his 300th game. You heard it here first.

I kind of wish this had been our first game of the season just so we could have had a four-digit percentage. Tell you what, if this is the way things go when we really put everything into attacking, sign me up for more.

Interesting that Twomey has Barnett in the late 20s, and Keeler doesn't even break in. Seems a lot of other phantom drafts have one or the other, or feature both in that late 20s to early 30s range. If we are looking to add a ruckman who can play forward while 'waiting their turn' to go full-time in the ruck, either or both of them fit the bill. So I'm wondering... do we test our luck and do a pick swap 13 and 37 for West Coast's 20 and 26?

Yep, even if it is annoying for the overall effect on the game, Lyon was an early master of the art of getting the most out of unexceptional players through sheer fitness and well-drilled plans. I'd argue, though, that both during his previous run at St Kilda and at Fremantle, Lyon was able to make that work thanks to having some of the most outstanding individual players in the game at the time. With all respect to Jack Steele who is an absolute first-rate player, and to Max King who looks like he'll spend a lot of his career in Coleman Medal contention, there just isn't anyone at the Saints now who can really cut a game open or make the whole structure work through them. Nobody would doubt for a second that Ratten would have taken the Saints routinely into finals if he could add Fyfe and Pavlich or Riewoldt and Goddard (peak Goddard, to be sure) to the Saint's list which he managed to extract a 50% win rate out of. I think Ratten coached the Saints very well, as he did at Carlton. Lyon isn't necessarily a better coach and may yet find himself on a similar trajectory to Malthouse given the brittleness inherent in how he came (back) to the club.

Even at St Kilda's peak with Nick Riewoldt at his best and Justin Koncussedny having his good season, they were never a scoring powerhouse. Even more telling is that it was above all in the later seasons at Fremantle where Lyon really went all-out on the defensive style, hovering around 1575 points for in a season for three years running and not a lot to show for it. I think for both coaches there was an element of what players were available. Arguably, Hogan, McDonald, Garlett, Melksham, Nibbler and Hannan were all in their career best form in 2018, so you run with what you've got! Ross Lyon might be able to make it work up forward with Max King as the superstar and Higgins & Butler sneaking or charging for their share of goals, and maybe his hard-drilled group defence methods will also work in version 2. But here's the rub - Hayes, Dal Santo, Montagna, Goddard. v Sinclair, Crouch, Steele, Ross.

I'm glad you clarified that. I'd hate to think that our players would be coming onto the field by running through a banner-banana.

He's already 206cm, so there's wont be much learning at the feet. Learning from Gawn's eyebrows and Grundy's man-bun? Also, that means we now have FIVE 200cm+ players on our list, so we can finally hold an EntMoot.

In defence, Petty is a realistic prospect for sneaking an All-Australian selection in 2023, that's how good he could be. Up forward he might be excellent but I can't imagine him being quite that outstanding. Yes, we need the role filled for team structure reasons, but I'd argue it is an even balance given how much Petty's presence allows May & Lever to play their best roles. I'm bullish about van Rooyen and McDonald delivering the power of blondeness next season. Plus, I think our draft selections will be tall and mobile types which could give some further flexibility to work on the problem.

Being fair to Cripps, he is basically Christian Petracca's abilities with Nathan Jones career story, plus injury. Let him enjoy his moment and then watch as Oliver continues to be the best midfielder in the AFL for another 200 games.

Reeks of 'non-core business' and 'coterie thought bubble'.

My energy provider made an administrative error months ago (apparently) and then yesterday out of the blue I sudden lost all power to my home, and wasn't going to be able to get it back until I had set up a completely new service. At last I know what it felt like.

I always love it when people firmly agree or disagree with 'A F' in their posts, because of the abbreviation. As in... "That umpire's call was definitely soft AF."

The only area Gold Coast is winning is the commentary box.

Ahh, I see, everyone was just being polite until Daisy got the first.

I'm pretty happy with our overall result. I'm comfortable that we'll get the very best out of Gawn's intercepting and escape-option marking now that Grundy will be doing a lot of the roaming closer to the ball or mixed into general play. Lachie Hunter might prove to be a bigger pickup than the lack of fanfare suggests. I feel like we have actually reached the point where our only weak area on the field is the tall targets in the forward line. We can touch wood and hope for some return to form from Brown, return from injury for McDonald, and arrival on the scene from Van Rooyen. Meanwhile, with two first and two second round picks to work with in an allegedly deep 2023, plus Kynan Brown looking likely, that is going to be a fun draft session. Last I heard, Ben McKay is still a free agent for 2023, so it might also be possible to add a genuinely tall, genuinely contested-marking mature player to our group, which is always handy whether added to defence or swapped forward.

I'm sure Taylor & Co have some particular players they would be most interested in. Pre-draft, all clubs (except maybe St Kilda) will have worked out all kinds of contingencies with each other about swaps and moves they might consider. Let's say we have decided that a Keeler & Barnett combo is our long term future forward/ruck combo. We might grab one with the first pick and then if the second is still available at a selection that another club is happy to trade out, we jump on that. On the other hand, we might be happy to grab either of them and if we are confident of getting at least one, then we could just as easily trade 13 back a bit for a boost to 37 or to our picks next year. Glorious chaos.

That club... Let's not kid around, in 2012 they were right in a hole dug by Ross Lyon, and there was no real reason to expect they would do any better than Scott Watters got out of them. Then they somehow clawed some non-rubbish season under Richardson which had people saying the Saints were climbing back faster than even the Demons under Roos, but the reality of their list hit back hard and they bottomed out again. Enter Brett Ratten, who has taken them to double-figure wins in every full season he has coached, even winning a final in 2020 and only being knocked out of finals by the eventual premier. All despite what is really an absolute snot-blast of a list, complete with a number of their highest-paid players barely taking the field. There's a real prospect that Ratten, Richardson and even Watters actually were all quite capable coaches but the entire St Kilda environment meant there was no chance of delivering a rebuild. Final thought; like many of us, I have a little glimmering memory of maaaany years ago when Ratten was briefly our midfield coach and really started to turn it into an effective unit before being poached. Brief notion crossed my mind that with a couple of our coaches leaving he might be a good addition, but then considered that he might just be a little to shell-shocked to jump straight back into a new club and role within weeks. Which invites the question; have St Kilda actually breached certain terms created by the AFL coach's association with regard to timely and appropriate terminations? In other words, is it possible that Ratten could have a legal case against St Kilda for impairing his ability to seek other work, such that St Kilda ought to be required to pay out more than the mandatory 6 months of salary? I'm only asking because that becoming an ugly court case would be the most St Kilda thing ever.