Dr. Gonzo

As AFL mouthpiece? She was just doing her job in 2007 as well when she tried to send the Kangaroos to the Gold Coast.

I was hoping Cam Schwab might want to come on here and reach out again - I've got a feeling there's a few people who wouldn't mind having a bit of a chat with him.

First response is it's an absolutely horrible draw financially. Horrible. Only 3 home games at the G against Vic sides (Coll, Haw & Bulldogs) and Bulldogs will be a worse crowd draw than North next year. A home game against North at Etihad is disappointing but offset against the away games at the G against Saints and Bombers. Not surprised we play the Bombers away again - while we continue to get a home game against the Pies each year we will also get an away game to the Bombers. No Friday games I can handle - until we prove we are not putrid on field I won't complain. 4 Saturday night games is OK including 2 I believe broadcast on channel 7. From a football perspective there's no excuse to not improve dramatically next year. Return games against GWS, GC & Bulldogs should give us 6 wins straight up (though not counting any chickens yet). Surprise, surprise we play at Geelong again. Who woulda thought??? At least we don't play them twice I guess. Disappointed we don't get return games against North & Richmond. 12 of the first 14 at the G is great, 1 in the last 8 is horrid. Consecutive games in Geelong, Darwin, Docklands, Skoda & GC is pretty poor. Surely we could exchange one game from the start of the year at the G. All in all our away games aren't too bad, at least we don't have to play WCE in Perth this year. That is becoming our worst draw next to Geelong at Geelong. Will be interesting to see how the team responds (especially with the tanking [censored] hanging over our head) but I can imagine the admin side won't be too happy with this fixture (for the second year in a row).

Exactly - the crime isn't in undertaking a strategy to ensure we got a compo pick in 2009 - the crime is in rolling over and spilling your guts to the AFL inevstigators. Low dog act by those no longer with the club, absolutely incredulous act by anyone still there (Mahoney). Anyone still at the club who has dogged it needs to be shown the door NOW. I am absolutely furious that these idiots would come out and lay bare what everyone at the time was the best strategy in the long term interests of the club - you want to know why we have been targeted and not Carlton, Collingwood, WCE, Richmond etc etc - it's because loose lips sink ships and these idiots have not an ounce of loyalty or integrity to back up their actions while at the MFC. Liberatore & Fevola no longer work or have anything to do with the Blues but when questioned on their comments they went to ground. Our ex (and current it would seem) employees [censored] their pants and spill their guts. I am dumbfounded and disgusted and the club needs to come out swinging on this, no way should we cop these scumbags taking a dump on the club like this.

Please don't tell me these kinds of things....

I agree which is why I can't understand why we didn't go after Clinton Young. Sure he may have knocked us back but considering we went after everyone else would've been worth at least making a play for him.

Woudn't think one week in those conditions would be enough though. Maybe a couple of months.

That isn't a very sound strategy.

Of course the desire is to have both but many players, especially coming straight into AFL from juniors, can only fulfil one role or the other. Morton was an outside midfielder, Viney will be inside.

Mate I feel your pain but do you really want to throw away a lifetime if support over a petty squabble on an interent forum? You're in a no-win situation - if Richmond becomes successful it will feel hollow and if Melbourne becomes successful you will regret jumping off.

Go to 22 seconds in. [media=]

Haha, yeah, that's not gonna happen.

What. The. [censored]???

Yeah I'm really hoping (praying) we take Wines and that he is still available - I don't see Toumpas still being there he'll go #2 you'd assume. While O'Rourke may end up being a very good player I don't think he is what we need now. We need to work on getting the hard tough midfielders first and then can complement them with the silkier players in subsequent drafts once we have the core there - I see this as a similar strategy to North where they have gone for guys like Ziebell, Cunnington, Bastinac to get the core of a very tough midfield unit and then they can complement that with guys like Atley and whoever else they pick up in subsequent drafts. It is a fine balancing act. We tried this strategy in 2003 going for "inside" midfielders Sylvia & McLean - adding Moloney to that saw us have a tough but pretty slow (with the exception of Sylvia) midfield unit (although had Thompson stayed it could have been different). So we went back the other way trying to recruit in quicker, silkier players like Morton, Blease, Strauss. Getting the balance right is difficult but I think getting the tougher guys in first aids the development of the skinner/skilfull players as without the other guys doing the grunt work and feeding the ball out to them they will get smashed. Of course there is more to it than this (and guys like Sylvia and hopefully Wines can be both hard tough midfielders as well as skilfull goalkickers).

This is my big fear for the draft - GWS go Whitfield, Toumpas, Wines and then we end up taking Grundy. We have enough KPP/rucks we need midfiedlers goddamit! I'm sure the club will take the best available ready to go midfielder and I'm hoping it's Wines - but hopefully they're not tempted with Grundy.

Petterd did OK under Bailey but I would have thought the fact he couldn't get a game this year would have given a fair indication where his future lay. I can't understand how anyone is surprised by his delisting. Bennell surprises me more than Petterd and even he was 60/40 gone in my mind. What is surprising is that neither of Fitzpatrick, Spencer or Gawn were shown the door (moreso Spencer & Fitzpatrick, Gawn only due to his injuries).

When Blight first came to the Crows he immediately delisted sacred cows McDermott, McGuiness, Anderson and a couple of others from memory. Supporters at the time weren't too happy but 12 & 24 months later they were bloody ecstatic!

The fact his knee is completely shot might have something to do with it.

I hope there has been some real research into this and how it might effect the different types of athletes (eg endurance compared to burst athletes) - because from my rudimentary observation I would have thought training in an extremely humid environment would lead to a greater chance of soft tissue injuries.

If that was the case he would be in the draft and we may not have got him anyhow.

If we can get a decent pick for Martin (33) or back for Gysberts (39) then I wouldn't rule it out - but yeah looking unlikely now.

1) He was contracted so we couldn't just delist him. 2) We want extra spots on the list. 3) He obviously wants out and wants to go home to WA. 4) We have to have "something" in the trade paperwork for Ken Wood to sign off otherwise the AFL won't approve the trade. If we could have we probably would have just delisted him.

Pretty sure they're giving us one but what's the point if it's anything over 40?

This si the thing that worries me the most - are we behind the 8-ball again? I want our coach to be innovative not just copy something that worked for someone else 3 seasons ago. In 2012 3 of the top 4 teams played a highly skilled kicking game slicing through the zone/press with short accurate kicks. Kicking long to the boundary was made redundant and is too easy to defend against.