Akum

Yep, agree. This is an issue that AFL HQ spin can't contain. The PR dept will be burning the midnight oil trying to come up with something a.s.a.p. And it will get a lot worse once somebody asks how AA responded when Healy raised concerns with him after the Sports Science conference. And whether they had any other early hints - there seems to be a number of things coming out of the woodwork already, one wonders who knew what when. And why the AFL chose to focus on illicit drugs when this much more fundamental drug issue may have been ignored. Their capacity to manage drug use in their sport will come under major scrutiny, and they'd have to be very nervous. My gut feeling is that this has a long way to go yet, and perhaps a lot more damage to the AFL "image" so precious to Vlad. Whose legacy must now be looking v shaky indeed.

The whole point about this is that there seems to be a helluva lot of information floating around about it in one place or another in an uncontrollable fashion, and there may well be a lot more to come.

Yeah but this is the one match we're guaranteed not to lose.

Need to take care with this sort of info from now on! Good report - well above the call of duty to get there on a day like today!

This is the whole point. We know that the AFL will make the decision according to their own interest, and that their most important interest in matters such as this is their image.And we think it should be obvious that it's in their best interest not to punish us. But we just can't be sure of it, because the character of the AFL is such that they're impossible to second-guess. It's likely that it all hangs on being able to find a face-saving way for them not to punish us, that will satisfy the most voracious of hounds fro the press and from other codes. You'd think this wouldn't be difficult. But there's still that doubt, that it's by no means beyond them to do us in. Just because they can. Which is what bothers me.

Definitely hairier than last season.

I thought that the whole idea of tanking is that sooner or later you become good enough so that you don't have to.

While I like the trading & drafting strategy for the 'type' of player we've gone after & brought in, it's still the case that a lot of them were either "fringe" players from other AFL clubs, or from "second division" (VFL, SAFL, WAFL) clubs. We're banking on improvement from: * these "fringe" players; * new draftees; * players who had an ordinary 2012; * players whose 2012 was wrecked by injury etc. What I really like is that we seem to be building a much better team structure than we've had for a long time. If it all comes together it'll be a pleasant surprise, but it may take a fair amount of the season to gel. Or not. The signs are good, but after so many false dawns, it's JUST hard to get too optimistic. Oh, and the first question said "discernible improvement immediately" - I think improvement will come, but not immediately.

Still much concerned about the quality of our midfield. That's where most of the improvement has to come from, but we've had the worst midfield in the comp for a number of years now so the only way is up. Having better forward targets & set-up will help, but still have to do far better getting it to them. So where's the improvement going to come from? Can we hope for improvement from the "same-old" mids? Or will we need to load up with newbies? So far most of the suggested teams have had the same midfield, minus Moloney & Magner (who seems out of favour), plus Viney & Toumpas. Can't we do any better than this?

Good thread title???

Really impressed that you actually spoke to some of the guys whose programs were modified to find out why. And the reasons were interesting. Without this, assumptions get made ("Grimes is injury-prone"; "Sylvia is lazy" "Watts is soft") which can be far from the mark. Really 'going the extra mile' - well, thousands of miles, probably! Great report & sounds like it was well worth the effort.

It's great that he knows their names - implies that this isn't the first time he's worked with them. This is something they need to do over & over. IIRC, after they worked with the Storm's guy their tackling improved ... for a week or two.

... Homer Simpson & Ned Flanders ...

Need something culinary in it to get a gig these days. Maybe Marngrook should have had a cooking segment ...

That would make anything it feeds you impossible to swallow!!

Jamar is better at stoppages. Spends most of the rest of the game where the ball ain't. And seems to be spending an increasing amount of the season injured. I understand that Martin's probably gone, and I understand why, but I'm not convinced it's the right decision. I guess the only way to work it out will be by the comparative performances of Jamar & Martin over the next 2 years.

Another thing I like about the experience that's come into the club with Clark, Byrnes & now Dawes is that they generally play up to a certain standard week in week out. This is something we haven't had from our experienced players since we lost Junior & to a lesser extent Bruce (who, for all his deficiencies, was at least consistent), leaving us with experienced players who could be great one week and awful the next - Moloney, Davey & Sylvia in particular, and to some extent Rivers & Jamar. You expect young players to be up & down in their level of performance from game to game, and rely on experienced players to make a consistent strong performance in every game to keep you in the contest, no matter who you play against. Looking at the top teams, there's probably a critical mass of maybe 8 or 10 players who can be relied on to do this. In 2011, we relied on Clark (for half the season), Jones, Grimes & Trengove for consistent strong performance, who were just overwhelmed by the numbers on the other side. But adding Dawes & Byrnes to this group, and continued improvement from the likes of Sylvia (whose consistency improved thru the season) & Jamar & hopefully Frawley & perhaps even Watts, it's likely that we'll get much closer to that critical mass, and therefore we'll be in more games for longer, with a better chance of winning. So Dawes & Byrnes bring consistency & reliability, in addition to leadership & professionalism & structure.

Nudge, any further news?

I'm a bit surprised that there seem to be a few around in this situation, whose value took a fall last year because of either being played out of position by a new coach (Dawes, Broughton) or for some reason just not figuring in a coach's plans (Ray, perhaps Pedersen). And by and large, there seems to be less of a gap between their best and their worst for these guys (including Byrnes) compared to most of our list, which is something you want from your experienced players that we've been lacking. Good to see that we're in there after these types.

... assuming that Pick 20 goes on Dawes. If Pies want too much on top of Pick 20 for Dawes, would Broughton be worth Pick 20 by itself?

And there's the small matter of his future at the Pies looking a lot more bleak than it did at this time last year, for whatever reason. Agree with the rest.

I know it's rehashing an old argument, but guys like Morton, Gys & Cook have plenty of talent but need loads of development to get to the level that their talent can be used. Not only have they had zero development so far (including in 2012), they learned wrong habits from the senior players in the Bailey years that now need to be unlearned fast. A better way of putting it is that if we never had any capacity to develop players, we should never have drafted players who need development, we should only have gone for the plug-&-play types. Like we are now. But if we still don't have the capacity to develop players, these guys should go somewhere else who can do it.

Agree, but if we're happy with having both Dawes & Gumby in the forward line, they're not going to chase & harrass & apply forward pressure. And if we're going with 2 or even 3 tall forwards, plus Howe, where is the pressure going to come from to stop it rebounding quickly out of the forward line? I can understand the focus on tall forwards, but I'm getting a tad concerned that we're starting to overdo it, to the exclusion of other needs. Any reports that we're talking to Jesse White and the bells will get a little louder.

By the way, during Neeld & Viney's trip west, was any contact made with Koby Stevens? Not sure if he's what we need, but might have attracted some interest from them as he seems to be the hard-at-it type.

Let me see, who might Brisbane be after with Pick 4, who they consider would be worth more to them than Rich ???