Akum

Some of Adelaide's "stars" have ben putrid. Talia worst on ground, Lynch putrid, Eddie nowhere. Brown, Hartigan. And of course Tex.

Appalling umps, unless you're one-eyed Richmond

I'm watching the game where Houli is BOG. By a long way. 20 more AF points than the next Tiger. Been a team effort by the Tiges, but up tot 3/4 time Houli is best

Houli BOG by a mile. Would be great if he takes home Norm.

Agree with the first part. But Lever is the only defender that's been half decent under pressure. Not perfect, but half-decent. Their other defenders are an absolute rabble. This could start to get real ugly.

They would if that's what I said. Watts and pick 10 go to Pies for their pick 6. Then we use pick 6, which by my calculation is better than pick 10, and a third rounder to get Lever. See?

Lever and ... ? Do you still think Gaff? We still have to satisfy both clubs. I can't see, the way things stand at the moment, how we can satisfy both clubs. If we can get pick 6 for Watts & pick 10, we might be able to add it to a third rounder for Lever and save a second rounder. But a mid-second-rounder won't be enough for Gaff, and apart from Hogan, I can't see who we've got that WCE would want. Kent and a second rounder is unders for Gaff.

We would get a lot for him if it was his initiative. Other clubs know that he's being pushed out so they know that they don't have to ask much. I really think we'd accept Watts for a 4-pick drop from 10 to 6 if it would help us land Lever more easily. Massive unders, but it might gets us what we want. We're in a lousy position to demand much for Watts (who is not damaged goods like Stringer), and this may well be as good as we are likely to get.

Have a bucket nearby just in case.

I'm sure that if he had his preference, he would stay. But he realises that's not an option so he's just had to cop it and he's trying to get himself up for the next challenge ...

Could be some truth in this. On a Monday morning after a bad loss, I can imagine Jack coming bouncing into the club, big smile on his face, trying to gee everybody up, wanting everyone to put the loss behind them and to get stuck into it. For those whose reaction to a bad loss is to burn and brood and make it really sting hard for a few days, nothing in the known universe could be more annoying and aggravating than this. It'd be "obvious" to the "brooders" that "bouncers" like Jack just isn't taking the loss anywhere near seriously enough. And maybe they'd think that he's encouraging the younger players to not take it seriously enough either. Jack said a few years back after a bad loss something to the effect that it was a bad loss but there's no point hurting about it, nothing can change the result now, so we put it behind us and start focussing on the next game. This is the sort of attitude that continues to annoy some DL readers, and that's not unreasonable. And who are the senior guys in the FD - Goody, Macca, Todd Viney. The leadership group of players include Jack Viney, Jones, T-Mac and Lewis - all of them definitely "brooders" and not "bouncers" (Gawn & Vince may be more "bouncers", but perhaps more inclined to keep their exuberance in check after a bad loss). Now, I can understand Jack's response to a bad loss, because that's what I'm like after a setback in life - the sooner I bounce back, the better I'm able to prepare for the next thing that ice throws at me. I can also see from my - ahem - advanced point in life that both are legitimate ways to respond to adversity. You can see in a number of my posts I'm trying to get us accept Jack has gone and to "bounce back" and prepare for life with him as an opposition player. And OK, it's not a lot of help for those who haven't done brooding over it yet.

A really honest post. Most of us would prefer that it had never come to this, and are just trying to come to terms with it. For whatever reason, the senior coaches have come to believe that there is a mismatch between what Jack brings and what they want the team to be going forwards, and that this mismatch can't continue. Some of us blame Jack for that; some of us believe that the coaches may have got it wrong and are concerned that they're using Jack as a scapegoat for the team's failings. In reality, there's probably a fair amount of truth on both sides. Jack polarises opinion because his positives are so damn sublime, while his negatives are so glaring. Like no other footballer I can remember, he looks as though nothing is beyond his capabilities on the field, yet he can make the most basic mistakes, or fail to do what should be basic stuff for any footballer. But there's a mismatch, and to quote a phrase, "it is what it is". Like a number of others, I'm concerned about how we'll do without his positives; many others think we'll be much better off without his negatives. But his positives and negatives are someone else's problems now. There are certainly other ways of dealing with Jack than the ways we've chosen; maybe they'll do better, maybe they won't. Only time will tell.

... and who is invariably called upon to cover gaps wherever we have them, no matter how physically unsuited he is to the position

Including those of our team leaders who haven't bothered to improve their disposal for a few years now. In contrast to the Crouch brothers, who have helped to propel their team into flag favouritism by doing just that in one season. Again, seems some faults are tolerated while others are sanctioned.

And for the same reasons, you'd think Roos knows far more about him than Goodwin. You can choose to believe Goodwin above all these people if you like. But among all the questions are being raised, that's getting harder to do.

Perhaps it's because it's a decision that doesn't have universal support, even among the coaches, as others (such as Ox) have intimated. Perhaps it's just a Goody/Macca/Viney thing. Perhaps the media dept are struggling to get a message together that will satisfy everyone who needs to be satisfied. And I can't imagine that those who run the club would be ecstatic at the prospect of losing their most prominent media presence and public face, their "go-to guy" for media & corporate events (apparently Jack's strange interview and re-enactment of his QB goal was part of an advertising promotion that will involve other players), their best representative of the MFC to the public, the player most loved by their junior supporters, who does a huge amount of outreach in schools & holiday clinics and so on. Perhaps a lot of members have complained to them. Perhaps it's as well that this has come to the fore during GF week. We'll all have to adjust in many ways to a post-Watts MFC. We'd better get our stories straight by next week.

Sorry, can't recall Jack ever crashing his car in the wee small hours.

Watts's playing career with the Demons is now past. I'm more interested now in the future from season 2018 onwards. And I can't help but be concerned. This is the first cause for concern: This is actually a massive slap from Roos. There's a strong implication here that things have gone back to the pre-Roos days of "always harp(ing) on people's weaknesses", which Roos believes was the main problem before he got there. With this I totally agree. He also says that it wasn't difficult to motivate Watts: "Wattsy responded when you talk about his positives". Again, a strong implication that they knew how to get the most out of Watts, but thought it was better to do the opposite. Again, I don't care who's to blame: Watts is past, our coaches are the future. Do our coaches only know one way to motivate the team - by smashing them about their weaknesses and faults - even when they know it's counterproductive for certain players? Is this what went on in the last half of the season that resulted in the whole team losing their ability to take the game on, when our scoring per game went from 102 points before the Swans game to 79 points after. What caused the whole team to collectively go back into its shells? If Watts isn't the only one who responds better to positive mediation, and if the coaches do the same thing next season ... that's my concern. And it would seem that concern is shared by Roos. Another concern is the clubs that are apparently interested in him. Port and Collingwood we know, and apparently Geelong, Sydney & West Coast. There are a good number of clubs who think they might be able to do better with Watts than we did. These are all solid, well-run, well-structured clubs, not the sort of clubs (Brisbane or Freo) that enjoy a desperate speculative gamble. We have cast off many players over the past 10 years or so, no other player has had interest from 5 clubs. OK, maybe our rookie coach and a previously failed coach may know more. Or maybe not. But I can't help but be very concerned about the future.

No, this is the point, and you guys keep missing it. If we're placing all our emphasis on defensive effort and none on attacking effort, I don't know that's a good thing. There needs to be a balance. If there's no attacking effort, nobody runs into space and we keep turning the ball over because we don't care enough about disposal skills. I'm not sure we've got that balance right. Look at the Crouch brothers. What's made them so much more dangerous this year is that they've both worked hard on improving their disposal. I can't see a similar improvement among any of our mids - in fact some (notably Tyson) have gone backwards in their disposal, either because they couldn't be bothered or because our coach doesn't think it's important. Adelaide, to me, have a great balance of attacking & defensive effort. This is not about for or against Watts - it's about what a post-Watts Demons will look like. But that's the path our coaches have chosen, and it's their right and responsibility to make that choice. I just hope that we won't suffer post-Watts because our disposal skills are so shite and we keep turning it over at half forward like we did in the latter half of the season.

That's the question. However we divide up the blame between Watts and the team, there's a big mismatch. And that's the problem.

A good comparison is his old mate Tom Lynch of the Adelaide variety. His attacking skills are pretty damn good but not at the level of Watts, so he's had to develop his defensive skills more. All Watts's skills are offensive, not defensive. He would probably say that that's why he's in the team. I think it's just come to the stage where the Dees don't want that. It must also be said that Adelaide honour Lynch's offensive efforts far more than we honour Watts's offensive efforts. So the teams that want him are likely to honour his offensive efforts more than we do. Which might be good for him or might be bad for him. The more important question is: will that leave us better off, or not?

Watts does not lack effort. The problem is that, in our existing structure, it's mostly attacking effort rather than defensive effort. Watts does a helluva lot of running during a game for someone of his size, but a lot of it is offensive running to provide a target, or to take defenders away from the likes of Hogan, and much of it goes unrewarded. He's probably always seen himself as an attacking player, who is meant to win the ball and use it to advantage. These are his great assets, and that's what we bought when we drafted him. So my question is, do our coaches want him to keep up that level of offensive effort, and to massively increase his defensive effort as well? Or do they want him to curtail some of his offensive effort in order to preserve his energy to massively increase his defensive effort? The third alternative is to make much better use of his attacking skills and efforts, as long as the defensive effort is covered across the team as a whole. I believe our coaches don't see it that way, but if he does go elsewhere, that's probably what they'll try to do. Howe at the Pies is a good example - he seems to be a much more effective player at Collingwood, but that's not because they've drastically improved his defensive game - they seem happy to just encourage him to do what he does best, not to try to rein it in to be more defensive. So our coaches have chosen one way, and that just doesn't work for Watts. If Howe is any indication, it looks like Collingwood's coaches choose to make use of a player's strengths and to cover their faults across the team - in other words, to choose their team so that they've got a balance of attacking & defensive skills covered across the 22.

I don't care much about hard or soft. The players I like best are the ones that do the most damage. So that would be Salem, Oliver, Hogan, Petracca, Gawn, Hunt, Watts and Hibberd. That's a mix of hard, soft and in-between. I admit I put Salem up there in large part for his potential than his output so far, but when he plays well he's probably our most damaging player because of the quality of his ball use. He just needs a decent run of 20 or more games without interruption, he seems to struggle to get to 6-8 games. I like the guys that the opposition tries to tag (Oliver, Hogan, Watts, Petracca) or to use negative tactics on to try to keep them out of the game (Gawn, Hunt). These are the guys that the opposition knows will really hurt them. Hardness is not much use unless it does damage. So I'm a bit 'meh' about Viney & Jones. I love their hardness, but they're rarely damaging. Oppositions know this and prefer to tag Oliver or Petracca, because they know who can hurt them more. For Viney to be more damaging, he needs to work as hard to improve his ball use as he does his body strength. Similarly, Oliver would be much more damaging if he kicked it more. We need him in the Dusty-2017 role, I think he's somewhat wasted in the Prestia in-and-under role.

Weren't they (Watts & Hartlett) in the same draft?

Great post and killer "inside mail". But the bit I've bolded doesn't quite ring true to me. Only because the one thing I do feel certain about is that if Watts simply wouldn't be looking around if he was sure that we wanted him. He would just keep to his contract and wouldn't need to do anything. So I find it hard to believe that "MFC would prefer to keep him on the list". Perhaps some at the club might feel that, but the ones whose opinions count are the coaches. This to me is the big difference from previous times his position on the list has come up. So what do the coaches think is "value for him"? There's a huge spectrum of DL opinions about this - where do the coaches lie on this spectrum? The thing is, other clubs know all this and won't be bluffed into bidding high for him if they think the coaches will be satisfied with a mid to late second-rounder, for example.