Akum

Certainly sets him apart at this stage.

So he'll play a great game against us & then disappear off the face of the earth?

Hodge in space. What he's like in close & under pressure is harder to tell.

Doesn't surprise me that it was a difficult choice, and that we were going to pick Parish from a long way out until just before the draft. Oliver & Parish, at this stage at least, are so close together it's a difficult decision to separate them. Neither of them is clearly better than the other, and they have different assets & question marks.

Is the Sam Murray bandwagon empty now?

I didn't think it was the tackle so much as the fact that he had absolutely no support, let alone protection, from at least 2 teammates, who watched from a distance while their direct opponents gang tackled him within minutes of him coming on to the ground. If that had happened in any other team, the two players would have been benched and given a roast when they came off. We simply shrugged our shoulders, and didn't give a yelp for the rest of that game. It showed the full extent of pure crapness of the team he had joined. At least the new guys are coming into a team that gives a damn!!

Outstanding example of when the sidetracks are so much better than the original subject of the thread!

Hmm ... Scully & Blease. Trengove & Tapscott.

I like how we Mitch and Max our Kings.

Oh well, they did get Howe.

Looks very much like a half-smile too.

It's impossible to overestimate how low they'll go. Foxtel at its best.

We should go the full Catholic - Parish & Francis. It's our only hope of shaking off the curse!

far too zen for this thread!

Look, at this stage it's impossible to tell which of Parish or Oliver will be a better player in 3 years time. Not to mention whether either of them will become superstars in time. Although nothing's more certain than the fact that whoever picks the better player in 3 years time will be hailed as a genius and whoever picks the other will be damned as an idiot.

Agree. His evasion is very good at TAC level. Just wonder how well his dance/sidestep will go when he has the likes of Jordan Lewis or Kieran Jack bearing down on him.

The only thing that bothers me about this is the rare opportunity to pick up a tall-forward-second-ruck in this draft. A competent second ruck who's worth their place in the side as a forward is such a huge asset, and they just don't come along too often And even in such a shallow draft as this, there's the rare opportunity to get one of 3 good possibilities at 7/10 with Weideman, Harry McKay & even Hipwood if we want to take the punt. Sure, we've got Max King, but he's much more speculative than those 3, even though he's had 2 years in the system. Though, as seems to be a theme this draft for a lot of posters, I'd be fine with whoever JT et al go with, even if it's Oliver & Parish. I'm with Josh Mahoney that we have to look at the overall picture rather than any single transaction, and that's what they (JT etc) know & we don't.

Left or right??

This quote from this article is the best thing I've seen written about this draft, and why there's such a diversity of opinions and a lot of uncertainty: "this is the sort of draft where a lot of players have one or two stand-out qualities but either obvious flaws or not enough of the other things they'll need, making them hard to separate and place." I guess it's also why there's so many comments along the lines of "I prefer X, but I wouldn't lose any sleep if we picked Y."

Quigs makes me wonder whether the best tall available at 7 might be Hipwood. It may be that he has advantages over both Weideman and McKay as a tall-forward-second-ruck. If we put a bid on Hipwood at 7, it will upset all of Brisbane's points calculations, because they would have expected him to go 10 picks lower. They may well not be prepared to cough up enough points to match a bid at pick 7, and may keep them to ensure they nail their other academy picks. Especially considering they would have already picked up Schache, who's a similar type. So what do others think about making a bid on Hipwood at 7, Quigs or no Quigs? And if we do, is the difference in points between 10 and 18 (or 20) enough to put Brisbane in the position where they can't afford to match it?

I think he's good at finding space in traffic too. If that's not speed or agility, it's just knowing where to run to - again, the best comparison is with Sam Mitchell, not quick or agile, just knows where to go. He also seems to have a good sense of when he's about to be tackled and has to unload, and when he's got a bit of space and can run it out of congestion.

I think this deserves another look. The thing is, if this is our 6, there may well be only two of them left by the time of pick 7 (or 10 if you prefer). For example, if we take Parish at 3, Bummers take, say, Weideman & Curnow, Suns take Oliver, that leaves us Milera & Francis. Maybe they're good, but they're not the type of player we need & I'm not the only one who'd be surprised if we picked up either of them because no mock draft has us even considering them. So giving them two spaces in our top 6 seems odd? On the other hand, we seem not to be looking at another potential tall-forward-second-ruck in Harry McKay. Or any mids other than Parish & Oliver, who will both be gone before pick 7/10. I hope they are looking a bit more broadly outside this 6.

Well, yes. Unless ....

... and the height of his stupidity is a bottomless pit.

I think it's likely that Parish and Weideman were our original reasons for trading up to picks 3 & 7 respectively. And that JT and his team have had a really close look at all the other options, but come back to their original preferences.