Akum

He plays slightly taller than his height, and he nullified Wirrapanda a treat on Saturday.

But the thing I like the most is his lateral movement, he harrasses in the forward line well because of his quick feet and mind.

Not sure where he will end up but he can play AFL footy.

What I liked about him against WC is he's got the mongrel in him. He adds toughness and hardness to a forward line full of ball players. St Kilda have demonstated this year the value of forwards who play like defenders, who harrass and niggle, who can keep the ball in the forward line, who make defenders look over their shoulders to see if they're coming. I liked that quality in Petterd, though it looked raw& undeveloped, and may have come about mainly because of the emotion associated with Jimma. If he thinks about it and hones it and makes it a deliberate and permanent part of his game, then he'll add something to the forward line that no other can, and make himself a valuable part of the team. He could also well be the one to shut down an opposition "quarterback" when it's needed (it was certainly needed against the Filth, Heath Shaw killed us because he was hardly ever under pressure).

Playing your foavourites again Jaded?

For the past few years, Robbo's good has been very rare against the bad.

Robbo's 2nd efforts were again poor. He just cannot keep his feet in a contest and rarely has a second effort. We played an opposition that gave Robbo far more latitude than he has been given in years.

And of those four goals, two were easy receives.

...

In all fairness, McLean before this week has been dreadful. He was not on his own in that. But as our supposed No 1 midfielder, he had been very ordinary.

Think this is unfair on both counts. Robbo's always smaller (and often much smaller) than whoever is on him, so has to make all-or-nothing efforts and launch himself at contests. He doesn't have the build for a KPF in 2009 IMO; his build is more like an opportunist HFF or FP. But at this stage we don't have any other reliable KPF so he plays where he's most needed.

And at his age he's mad to make 2nd & 3rd efforts when we're getting smashed, but when the game was there to be won he really did put in. His 2nds & 3rds were different this week. I honestly can't blame him for reserving his efforts for when they're really going to make a difference. And he was still putting in right at the end when the fitness of others who have been injured this year was beginning to tell and others had to stand up. I can understand why some people are exasperated by him, but he was one who really lifted today, and lifted again in the last quarter when we could have blown it like Freo did.

And rpfv is right - Brock has had a few good games, then a shocker last week, but was excellent on Saturday until he simply couldn't give any more. I thought it demonstrated how important he is to the team as the engine room. At his best, he's right up there with the best insiders. He's still not fully fit, but seemed to move much more freely this week. It's so important to us that he absolutely MUST be fully fit & fully prepared for 2010.

Carp. If the umpires were awake it would not have been. He was taken out and retarded when he had his eyes on the ruck contest. He could not have pushed him off. It has nothing to do with a body on body contest. If the player had been a smaller midfielder the frees would have been paid.

On these occasions NikNat was trying to come over the top s the third person at a bounce, and Warnock was just putting his body in the way and keeping him out of it. Before the ump bounces the ball, he has to find one from each side who's going to go for it and they put body on body. Each time it was somebody else, and the Weagles were trying to get NikNat to come over the top & avoid body on body. It was great perception by Warnock to spot this and merely put his body in the way, completely within the rules, so that NikNat couldn't come over the top. At least he didn't do what Selwood was doing to Davey all day and hold him back by the jumper or arm.

Did anyone else notice how poor the umpires were in the StK/Geel game today?

Usually I'm so one-eyed and passionate(in Demons games), that my opinion on their performance(normally critical) is irrelevant.

But today!!! Here were 44 of the best footballers going flat out. They deserved top-class offialdom.

The Umps?? Continually picking the soft option, or,paradoxically, going for the extroverted, super-technical. Over and over again,my initial impression of poor judgment by the umpires was proven correct by TV replays.

A great game , despite second class umpiring by overpaid ,talentless, unfit ,clowns.

Frees were something like 24 to 15 in Geelong's favour. They can't use any of the usual excuses like the side with more frees was first to the ball all day or the side with less frees were undisciplined or unskilled. Much as I like the Cats, the umps were responsible for bringing them back into the game at the end of the first quarter.

Years ago I remember Jeff Crouch saying that the way you can judge a good umpiring performance is that you don't realise that the ump is there. These days the umps seem to want to have an influence on the match. I don't know why anyone would want to do it tho

He was a basketballer who converted to footy very late.

Before playing his first AFL game, he played something like 10 games in the VFL (then Sandy) as a defender.

So while he isn't technically young, he is extremely inexperienced. In fact, he would be as experienced as someone like Jack Watts, given he made a later conversation to footy than Watts, who played both footy and basketball growing up.

Agree Jaded. In fact IMO it's closer to compare him to NikNat, with a similar amount of time playing seniors footy. He's got this far almost totally on his athleticism. And he's going to be no less awesome than NikNat when he develops his skills and game sense. I don't think there's too much wrong with his kicking action.

Doggo is absolutely right, he needs to have a set-shot routine. Is Josh Mahoney the right person? He's been thrown around so much that he's probably never had a consistent Assistant Coach! If DB's planning to settle him in the forward line, that's great

I havent checked yet, but is this an actual stat??

This refers to kickoff clangers. Not aware that it's a stat, but I kept waiting for the routine 3 opposition goals from kickoff clangers, whoever takes them, and they never came. JG took just about all of them. The only defensive 50 clanger goal that I can recall is when Jack hit Wheatley at about the 50 on the boundary, Wheatley for some reason decided to centre it and hit Selwood on the chest.

And Jack playing like that in defence releases Davey to the forward midfield. Across halfback, Davey needs 25 or 30 touches to do scoreboard damage, but further forward he creates major damage with only half a dozen critical touches. We can expect Davey to get a hard tag every single game from now on (Josh Carr next week for example) wherever he plays, but playing him forward makes him a very dangerous proposition even if he only gets it 10 times.

Didn't DB say at a press conference recently that we need to clone Aaron Davey & have one to play forward and one to play back? Well, now it's even better. Jack gets even more contested ball playing back than Flash.

Now we know what he's capable of, we need some consistency from Jack, which is a lot to ask for a 20 year old. Hate to see him get slammed if he doesn't produce it next week.

And can't wait to see Strauss back there doing the same one day.

It was pure dressage that little 'kick-out.'

Aaron Davey failed to score and could be in some trouble for next week due to that report but he still holds a big lead ...

This is probably a dumb question, but I'm new to this. What happens if Flash gets suspended? Is it Brownlow rules?

Yep, Stef showed plenty.

Strangest run in for a set shot on goal I've ever seen, though.

One we might have all overlooked a bit is Petterd. He really gave them something up forward today that's been lacking.

For his report, will they take into account the criminal stupidity of the umpiring decision that preceded it? Can't imagine a more blatant and obvious in-the-back.

I think the main point is that NikNat's game today demonstrates the impressive depth of stupidity of Matthews et al in their cheap shots at Jack. A kid in their second or thrid game is so easy for a cheap shot. Again, that was Matthews' playing style too - great player, but never could resist the cheap shot.

No question that the amount of defensive pressure in midfield really helped all the defenders. Gave them at least a 50-50 chance I reckon. When the opposition midfield is streaming towards you under no pressure whatsoever, it can make any defence look stupid and incompetent (e.g. reigning premiers tonite).

Something I especially liked about Rivers was the number of times he got back to be the third man in one-on-one contests.

They were both very good today as individuals, but it was the team things that really floated my boat (never thought I'd say that about Robbo!) and that goes for the whole team.

It's hard to read much into this game. We had to win given the build up.

This takes "we're not getting carried away with the win" way too far. We wanted us to show something and they did. I'm more interested with how they performed as a team.

They showed they can tackle & apply defensive pressure, even in the forward line.

They showed they can move the ball with skill & purpose, even under pressure.

They showed they can do the team things and the 1%ers and break packs and break lines.

My fear was that it would be a scrappy low standard game and we would scrape a lucky win because of their inaccurate kicking. But it was a good standard game (when did they last get 17 goals?) and they looked very very good a lot of the time today. The senior guys stood up, the younger guys stood up.

Even if they show nothing for the rest of the year, at least we now they are capable of it. At 1.30 this afternoon 2010 looked pretty grim. Now it doesn't.

This was much more significant than merely a balltearing game by Grimes.

Or that he stood up in the last quarter when it mattered most.

Or that he took the kickouts all day with NO CLANGERS.

But we now have two Daveys - one to play back, one to play forward.

Grimes is an ABSOLUTE GUN!

6 - Grimes

5 - Jamar

4 - McLean

3 - Rivers

2 - Bate

1 - Moloney

... with apologies to Green & Bruce & Davey.

The best thing was that I can't think of anyone who didn't contribute.

Maybe we would find out if he was played as regularly as some of our other players. Or if the coaching staff showed as much faith in him as they do with other players.

....

Valenti should be given a decent crack at AFL level. But if he hasn't had a consistent run before the years out and we end up delisting him, I hope another club picks him up and shows us how stupid we were for showing such little faith in Valenti.

Go Dees.

Great post STMJ. Hope you got a good sleep after that. Or r u in another time zone?

The next question is who do you drop for him ?

Bailey played MIDFIELD and knows exactly what skillset is required

Bailey in fact was Similar to Valenti

Well, it's not obvious to me that the midfield is doing so well at the moment that nobody deserves to be dropped to give someone else a go. I can't see how the midfield could be worse with Valenti there.

If you're right about Bailey, then if he was treated better than Valenti & was given more chances than Valenti to prove himself, then Valenti should at least get the chances that he got. If he was himself treated just as badly as Valenti and wasn't given a fair chance to prove himself, then he should know better than to treat Valenti the same way.

My point is that it is neither fair nor intelligent list management to dump Valenti without giving him one last chance. If they intend to upgrade him anyway at the end of the year, well it doesn't matter, though it's a strange way to do it.

There's 10 rounds to go including tomorrow. There are a number of fringe players that we need to know more about before deciding whether they're still with us in 2010, with Valenti at the head of the queue. At it stands it's a gamble either way whether we keep them or delist them. Whether we win a few games or lose them all is of less consequence for the next few years than whether we start 2010 with the best list at our disposal. To do that, players like Valenti have to be given a string of games to show us what they can do.

At this stage I'm happy with Scully and one of either Trengove, Lucas or Morabito. Each of these three have their own strangths and weaknesses, I can't split them.

Would you put Rohan at that level too? Or just below?

Whichever way you look at it, after Scully, all the teams with picks 2, 3 & 4 (at least!) are going to get a potential star midfielder - as you say, with different strengths & weaknesses. We also have to think about who'd fit best into the likely midfield mix for next year - we don't need another Jones or Moloney at this stage.

Hughes and Maric both missing as well. Presumably Maric still has a problem with his shoulder which he injured at Williamstown.

Whisper on Melb BF about Strauss having shoulder reco - hope it's just a rumour.

Was looking forward to seeing Strauss & Maric & Valenti really rip it up against Bendigo.

Argued with RR about Valenti, I really want him to get a run of games but...

McLean up unitl last week was managing his injury well and had a great month of footy leading up to his diabolical game against the Lions.

Macca is the captain, and the most decorated player on our list. He deserves to play when fit.

Jones has been better this season, but still very patchy.

Moloney has ran the gammet from consistent to fantastic this season.

Some on here are convinced that three of these players, who are similar to Valenti, cannot play together and we have four in at the moment.

My personal wish is that McLean prepares for next season with 6 rounds to go and Valenti gets a month and a half to show he is worth a spot on the list in 2010.

Agree totally, for Brock's sake as well as Valenti's. ATM we don't have enough information to be certain whether Valenti deserves to be kept (& upgraded) or not at the end of the year. He needs a run of games in the Dees for us to be sure about him. We can't afford to hang onto more than 1 or 2 who haven't really shown it yet in the hope that they'll come good. On the other hand, if he was really ripping it up for Casey - not just a good contributor - it would make the decision very easy.

I like him a lot, he really adds something to Casey when he's on his game. But it's all in his hands really - if his performances can't snare him a place in the worst midfield in the AFL, he can kiss AFL goodbye. I hope he does it.