JJJ

I chatted to Langford briefly. When he fills out he will be a massive human. Nice kid. I had a good chat to another youngster and he mentioned that his parents get their gossip from Demonland…. All the players were pretty good and happy to take plenty of photos with kids etc. The running session didn’t reveal much of interest. All the players looked comfortable enough.

I think we need our A-Graders to play like A-Graders. But we also need some new blood in that category. JVR, McVee, Windsor, Rivers and maybe Tholstrup have shown that they are capable. It would be nice to see at least 2 of them become A-Grade. It would also be nice to think that the player occupying positions 16-23 every week will improve. Players like Woewodin, Chin, Sparrow, Bowey and Howes need to become more consistent and damaging to the opposition. Whilst I am optimistic about 2025, I am realistic as to the amount of improvement and work that needs to be done.

It’s a bit early to say that about AMW I’d reckon. I think he’s shown enough that he has the next 2 seasons to make it.

I’ll admit to not having watched any of the kids this year so the following is based on YouTube highlights only. When we drafted Rivers, the thing that stuck out to me as one of his strengths was his willingness to hit the contest with speed. I see similarities with Lindsay. It’s not always successful but when it is it breaks the contest wide open. Combined with his skills and evasiveness, he seems like a very very good prospect. The rest is up to him and his application which I also believe to be top notch.

We were told that the amount of trade offers for teams to either get back into the 1st round this year or move up was unprecedented. All the way from the end of trade period to the draft. They were happy to take players up until picks in the mid 50’s as the pool of talent is deep. They were hoping that Hotton was still on the board when they picked. Richmond went way early at 12 compared to where they had him. There were a couple of players that weren’t in their top 30 which was interesting. Reid and Armstrong were the most easily identified. The other thing they talked about was the poor performance of WA in developing players recently. Reflected in the downturn in indigenous players. Somebody asked about the testing of players and they basically said the speed and jumping measurements weren’t much use when compared to agility and endurance. It was pretty good. Ive been to a lot of post draft MFC events and thought that this event was better.

It was a club picking late on the first night of the draft. Hence they were pretty happy to talk about 8-10 players in detail.

I was lucky enough to attend a function last week re the draft and the scouting report on the kid was exceptional. The club that was hosting the function had: O’Sullivan & Ashcroft grouped. Langford & Smith the next 2. Draper, Lalor & Lombard. Travaglia, Tauru, Lindsay & Kako They said Langford is the meanest player in the draft. Super competitive, good skills, great hands, very clean with the ball but by far the best quote was when they said he’d rip the arms off his opponent to get the footy back. Bit like Megatron ripping Jazz to pieces (awful film). They would’ve picked him at 2. Didn’t have a lot to say about Lindsay other than he was very evasive, highly skilled, deceptively tough and took ground when in possession.

What’s his 1-Wood? Speed? Kicking? Versatility? Can he tackle well? Can he defend against other mids? Is he quick enough to burst from a pack? Can he buy time to size up his options? Can he mark overhead? He may need to start as a fwd/def. My knowledge of this years draft is very poor. The above are genuine questions.

In his exit interview he raised that he’d like to one day captain the club.

A lot of enterprise businesses see CFO’s and COO’s as logical candidates for future CEO’s. Running a $50-70m dollar business on an interim basis should pose no problems.

This is a positive step. We need to clear the air and get the club pulling in the same direction. Whether you were hounding for him to go or staunchly defending him, we can all now agree that the club and Pert have decided to part ways in a move that is best for the club.

Coaches rate him. He is very vanilla. Would love to see him add a couple of strings to his bow in the form of better running power, a bit more size and hitting contests at speed. His kicking technique is pretty sound. Natural improvement in his DE% should come naturally.

Gloating? On Demonland? Why? We all support the same side and want the same outcomes. There is a lot of work to do to get to the end of round 10 with 8 wins. If you genuinely think we haven’t got fences to mend internally and credibility to restore within the competition, well I don’t know what to tell you.

He is training hard.

The AIS used to use interval training and some other methods to measure recovery time. I always thought that would be a better measurement for AFL. Sure you can run flat out for 2km but can you sprint full length of the field and back, recover for 20 seconds and do it all again. That’s effectively what Lingers does.