Radar Detector

Dawes offers nothing to this team

Well stretch did anyway

Dawes is having a shocker, even for him

And certainly overs for Neal Bullen!! Trade doesn't make sense to me. If the objective is to "upgrade" from T-Mac to Hurley then wouldn't Essendon give up something less value than ANB to equalise the trade?

Yeah I got a call from the club asking if I'd be happy to donate the kids membership attached to my membership for this year. This must be where it went!

You are re-writing history. We took Tom with a speculative pick and has become one of the best young KPDs in the comp by 23. His weakness with ball in hand is obvious and is the difference between being a very good defender and an AA defender, not comparable to a rookie. I'm all for improving the side but moving on guys like Tom is very rarely the way to do it.

He is 22, not much younger than T-Mac who is "supposed to be a top dog" because he is a far superior player. Some of Tom's mistakes drive me nuts, the one early against Essendon was probably one of the worst ever. But some of the commentary on here is beyond ludicrous. This guy is a young KPD who less than a year ago was in AA calculations. Sydney are rumoured to want him (and not Hurley incidentally) and I suspect almost every other club would be happy to have him. He has faults but FMD if he isn't a required player I almost don't know who is.

Funny Wagner doesn't cop the same knocks. I reckon he's good for at least one howler a game himself.

Watts just so clean

Oliver is so clean taking possession but needs to kick in these conditions

Haha a bit tongue in cheek. But 17 points down in this weather is tough

All over

Just to be clear, I don't disagree with that comment. Just hope he can continue to build from here. I think he is the type who works hard to correct his weakness. It has been incremental but he has improved year on year. If he can continue to get better in the contest and iron out a few flat patches here and there he could still become a top 10 forward in the comp.

I am coming from the position that we are currently sitting 6-6 and 10th. We have good players playing well and young players showing signs. Jack Watts is an important part of the team, no doubt. But we need players like him to deliver on their higher ceilings if we are to improve and hopefully become a real contender. The same is true of Viney and Hogan, not just Oliver, Petracca et al. whose development is unlikely to be linear as history shows us. If we can content ourselves with the output of guys like Watts, who I re-iterate is having a good year, then we are happy to leave the growth of our team to others. I don't accept that as a base position, he has more in him. He will still be valuable to our team even if he goes slightly backwards but we won't necessarily be a better team if he does.

Sometimes I really don't understand the feuding on this site. FWIW I have been firmly in the "don't delist" camp and would summarise JW this year as follows: 1. He is certainly surpassing the "minimum standard" required to play at AFL level (but I don't think that's what ProDee was arguing) 2. He is making a valuable contribution and averaging 2 goals a game is by far his best effort to date 3. He appears capable of better. He still has quiet periods in games and lapses in intensity 4. His natural talent levels mean he should have a higher ceiling and be held to a higher standard than many other players. This is not harsh, it is an acknowledgement that he has many tools that others don't and should be expected to use them All that considered, this year has been good and we should certainly enjoy what he is producing. However I don't think it is in any way unreasonable to assume that this should be a building block to becoming an even better player, rather than an anomaly year before he regresses or plateaus. He is capable of more. I would suggest that holding this season out as a minimum standard is completely appropriate and don't really understand why anyone would think otherwise.

The win against GWS was probably this year's equivalent of the dogs win. Good side early in the season. Agree we need a Geelong style win (North would've been great) and there will be plenty of chances over the next few weeks to jag one if we're good enough. We also need to start winning against poorer teams multiple times in a season. Pies and GCS our main chances.

Spot on

Any journo who has criticised us over the years (most have been proven right) are burnt at the stake on this site. Now, at the other extreme, a bloke who bleeds red and blue is being whipped for doing his job by writing positive spin articles for the club. His role is to sell hope and drive membership and attendance, not make critical analysis. You have to take this stuff in context... you know what you'll get so don't read it if you're not going to get anything out of it. The club isn't going to sanction articles that overly criticise players or the coach much as some on here would like it.

I'm not sure 700k is quite as far "overs" as everyone else is suggesting. He makes some mistakes, sure, but he's in the best handful of young KPDs in the comp.

I'm much happier to play OMac in a side with two other big backmen. I think he could be OK as third tall alongside his brother and Frost and adds versatility. Has been hopelessly exposed as 2nd KPD though and I'm against playing him in situations like last week.

I agree with this. But I also think that there is merit in the argument that we haven't seen a big enough sample size of performance to really gauge quite where we are at. Of the remaining 12 games, we play 5 of the top 8 sides including the Hawks twice. We also have another Etihad appointment against the Saints, an away game against Port and 50/50 games against the Pies and the Blues. These are the games that will really define our season and we have been poor at taking these chances in the past (Geelong last year and Adelaide the year before notwithstanding). We will need to play consistently good football in the back half of the year to get close to 10 wins which I think would be the par expectation for many pre season.

I agree with much of what you say overall including on Hogan and Oliver. I also believe that our development now is much better. But history just tells me not to extrapolate this too far too early. Hogan could leave or Oliver could get a career threatening injury like Trengove. Gawn and Petracca have both already done ACLs, Brayshaw has now had a spate of concussions and Salem has had muliple injuries/health issues. These are the guys I am highly confident will make it along with Viney, Tyson and T-Mac. Anyway, I'm not as far away from your view as you probably think so also happy to leave it there. I 100% hope you turn out to be correct.

I was saying that Oliver, Hogan and Brayshaw are not too dissimilar from Scully, Trengove and Frawley at the same stage. The others I mentioned which you highlighted above are where I feel we have a bit of an edge today on where we were in 2010. I personally just can't extrapolate that just yet into certain success like you and many others seem able to. But don't let all that get in the way of your pompous condescension.

That is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight for the latter group and unproven foresight for much of the former which is exactly my point. Scully and Trengove early days looked almost as good as Oliver and Brayshaw. Morton was always very outside but got his hands on plenty of ball and we had a young AA full-back as well as a rising star winning CHB under the age of 25 (albeit undersized). Viney, Tyson, Gawn and Petracca are clear points of difference but everyone else on your list could become a boom or a bust. I don't think there are any guarantees about Salem (injured), VDB (already 24 and limited by his skills) and any of Stretch, Harmes, Hunt and Kent who could be world beaters or the equivalent of Blease, Strauss, Maric and Tapscott when we look back in a few years time. As I said, I don't think it's true that we're not improving. But we are not light years ahead of where we were in 2010. The fact is we remain well short of finals standard and are being sold the same dream as we have been since Bailey. I hope your assessment is correct and it very may well be, there appears to be plenty of talent on the list. But I'm not going to get as seduced as other until I see us beating good, or even mediocre opposition more regularly.

For me, it isn't the fact that we're not improving or there is no hope. I think evidence would suggest we are definitely getting better. The frustration is that we clutch to the young list mantra like a security blanket. It's been a bit like chasing a mirage - we have had to keep turning the list over in volume because the young guys don't come on so our list remains young and we get sold on potential time and again. I get that having a young list is a genuine reason for both excitement and inconsistency but I'm not going to just assume these guys will keep up a linear rate of improvement because history tells me there are no guarantees. A lot of the threads on here now are mirror images of threads from 2010.