Akum

I want this to be true. But my head tells me otherwise. Probably boils down to if we're getting a quality tall in Lever, then a tall had to go. In retrospect it was probably between Jack & Frost. Wonder if anything happened at around the time they re-hyphen-signed Frost?

If we're flying, it won't matter.

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Trouble was that when Watts was in the ruck (and Hogan not playing) it just kept coming back from the forward line. We could cover a defender but not a forward.

Good bait. The assumption of course being that the only thing he did was whatever was on the Instagram.

Just out of interest, did you back Neeld, or dump him early?

But they don't seem keen to move anywhere. Darcy Lang, anyone?

He's 100% gone, has been ever since he started answering calls from other clubs.

No, I think the club wants to recruit him, and they're using Dangerfield & Selwood to try to win him over. Good bait.

Think their lack of picks is really starting to bite. They were hoping to persuade players to head to GCS so they didn't have to use their highest pick on GAJ, and that didn't happen. They were hoping to get a big compo pick for Motlop, and that's unlikely to happen. So the cupboard is bare. You could be right about PA.

Comedy gold.

Goody's speech? Anybody sober?

Surprised he didn't win it.

A class act. They're the survivors (with JT) since the Bailey years, been through a lot together.

I'd like to hear the raga version.

Totally predictable.

Viney.

I was responding to a poster who accused Watts of not putting in the effort to increase his performance. My main point was in the last sentence - I'm concerned if the club doesn't consider his elite performance in inside 50s and forward pressure acts (i.e. what he DOES do well) significant, and I'm also concerned about how we're going to replace that elite performance in these areas when Watts is gone. I'm about the future, not the past. Watts is gone and the Dees will carry on without him. But if our coaches are blind to the holes that his going leaves, then we'll have problems.

To be fair, it was some journo on SEN (I think) spouting that he didn't think Paul Connors would ever allow Jack to get back to Melbourne. Not a "report", just a journo's opinion.

Suddenly we seem to have a lot of neo-Saty's everywhere, who follow / swallow the club's line no matter what. Saty is at least to be admired for being consistent and for not making stuff up.

... except that, as far as I know, the club hasn't yet used "not going in hard enough" as a reason for pushing him out. But it's "what everybody knows"? Well, clearly it hasn't stopped a number of good hard clubs from chasing him ... hard. And you could equally say: "kicking is a basic skill in footy; just because you're a hard inside player doesn't mean you shouldn't execute a basic skill to an adequate standard". But we don't say that, do we? Are we better for not insisting on high standards of ball use?

The club has been dishonest in my view in trying to give the impression that Watts is welcome to stay. If the option to stay truly was open to him - even if Goody said to him that he's not going to pick him in the firsts for the next two years, no matter how well he does for Casey - he would not be talking to other clubs. It's clear that hardly anybody buys the club's fable that he's on the market by his own choice. All that Watts has said in the media is that it's not his choice to leave, he's being pushed out. As I've explained above, and so many other times: he's gone, he was probably gone since just before he started talking to other clubs, and those who think he's staying need to get with the rest of the footy industry and accept it. But he hasn't bad-mouthed the club, he hasn't criticised his coaches, and he hasn't whinged about being hard done by. He's just accepted his coaches' decision and got on with what he needed to do. On the other hand, when any senior MFC person gives an interview, they seem unable to resist the urge to take another whack at Jack, which just makes our club look terrible. It wouldn't have hurt the club to act with the same level of character and integrity that he's shown. That's my biggest disappointment in all this. My club has been shown up badly in this regard, but that's their fault, not his.

Sorry mate, I'm really not trying to stalk you. But you just keep making these assertions that cast Watts in the most negative light, and in so doing, miss some important aspects of the team. Jack Viney, like all players, has strengths and weaknesses. His great weakness is his ball use. Oppositions prefer to tag Oliver and Petracca, because those two can hurt them a lot more with their disposals, and they tend to bring others around them into the game. Viney has been at the club for a few years now, and there is no discernible improvement in his ball use. He still tends to follow his instinct to just bang it forward, but when he does take more care and lower his eyes and look for someone, he's actually pretty good, and much more damaging. Yet there seems to be no pressure from the club on Viney (and Jones and T-Mac and Tyson, among others) to take more care with his disposal. Yes, Viney smashes it in the gym, but does he work on the things that would make him a more dangerous player? His mate Ollie Wines, by contrast, seems to have put a lot of work into his ball use since he was drafted. And if Watts does extra work in practising his goal shooting, or hitting a target, or controlling the ball at full speed, does he get as much credit for it as Viney coming in on his days off to smash the weights in the gym? You're right that Jacks Viney and Watts are probably opposite ends of the footballer spectrum, and the attributes they bring to the team are vastly different. But my point is: they're both equally important to team performance, and need to be both regarded as such. You need several who can do what Viney does in a successful team, but also a few who can do what Watts does. And which are harder to find? My concern is that we overvalue what Viney is good at (crashing in and winning contested ball, and tackling) and undervalue what Watts is good at (putting it to damaging use once he's got the ball, and pressure acts). This is largely why Watts is so criticised for not being good at the things Viney is good at. But as a team, we're mostly good for contested ball, good (although erratic) for tackling and pressure, but not good at all for things like turnovers, uncontested ball and entries into forward 50. In other words, the things we have to improve on as a team are the things that Watts is good at, not necessarily the things that Viney is good at (though of course we need to maintain those). And we're not good at those areas of the game that we undervalue, and we won't get better unless we sanction our players, especially our team leaders, who fail to improve in these areas.

Sorry, but again, just plain wrong. When Roos gave his opinion that he wouldn't trade Watts, he also said that you don't motivate people by focussing on their mistakes; that was the big problem before I came here. You motivate Jack Watts by using positive reinforcement, not focussing on his mistakes. (now that's not news; in most other walks of live, it's well known that positive reinforcement is a far more effective way of motivating anybody. Jack had enough "focus on his mistakes" by Neeld, as did all his teammates at the time, and in Roos opinion, "that was the big problem before I came here". The implication was, "Goody, you know how to motivate Jack Watts. I showed you that last year. Why are you choosing to handle him completely the wrong way?" Quite an admonishment, for me. If he goes to a club that motivates their players by positive reinforcement (pick a club, any club), if you believe Roos (and of course you're free not to), he's likely to do better. Watts has, by all accounts, had big pitches made to him by Swans, Cats, Port & Pies, who all think they can do better with him than we did. This includes 2 of the 3 consistently best 3 clubs over the past 10-15 years, who match high standards with positive reinforcement. Again, Watts is gone, but cutting him out isn't going to fix any of our problems. I'm not on a campaign for him to stay, I'm much more concerned about my club going into the future. And just as it's wrong to totally blame Goody and say Watts did nothing wrong (which nobody is saying), it's wrong to totally blame Watts and say Goody did nothing wrong (which a lot of people are saying). It's self-defeating to think that the club couldn't have handled this better, because, just as you say about Watts in other posts, it's important for US to learn from OUR mistakes and move on. Whether or not Watts does is now another club's problem.