The Chazz

This is the issue you are struggling with. 99% of supporters don't bloody know at all. All the 99% do know is that they have to, not that they will. See the difference? For the 99% to be convined that we WILL raise the bar this year, we need certain players to step up. I bet if you asked any of the players that RR listed, they would say the same bloody thing. Will they do it? Who knows. 99% of the supporters have no idea, and if the last 6 years is anything to go by, how can we be confident that it will happen.

As I said in one of my earlier posts on this thread Old (at the time he had played just 9 games), we are quite blessed that we got to witness what he did on the oval, all while wearing the red and blue. It's a career that ended far too soon in our eyes, but to Liam, playing 1 senior game was obviously a massive achievement. I'm not a big fan of bumping old threads, but I did have a chuckle in this one, especially the posts from HG45, I tried to tell him we needed a genuine full forwards/CHF, now we head in to season 2013 with Dawes and Clark. Obvioously Neeld agreed.

If there's a way for it to happen, JG will find it jnr.

Bump...(found it HG - no wonder you didn't go looking for it... ) Edit - sorry mate, didn't see you had put the link in the other thread. Cheers Wowee, I posted this back in 2009, and look what happened this preseason!

For someone who dislikes criticism so much, you sure do a lot of it yourself.

Looking for details about Saturday. Anyone heard what the expected crowd will be? What the facilities are like (ie grandstand, standing, etc)? I'm looking at taking my 9 month old to her first Demon game, but will most likely be flying solo. As she isn't crawling yet, I'm hoping to find an area where I can see, and that won't be too crowded, so that I can put a planket on the ground for her to sit on. Also driving a couple of hours to get to the venue.

Where is that thread 45HG? Would love for someone to bump it...

It will be a great challenge to see if he has learnt anything during his "holiday"!

Bloody hell WYL, that's like taking a reformed gambling addict to Crown for dinner.

Sorry Crawf, I'll go back to talking about racists, druggos and who I'm going to make my supercoach captain shall I? It's a footy conversation, on a footy forum.

RP, what were the alternatives to playing the kids? Who were the likes of Scully, Trengove and Watts keeping out? Frequent senior failures like Miller, Warnock, Bate? Deeko, this was always something I considered when watching The Bailey Way ©. He was constantly criticised for not implementing the press, just because Collingwood, St Kilda and Hawthorn did it so well, and most followed. I have no doubt Bailey was trying to create something that was different, just like Thompson did at Geelong, but we never got to see it consistently due to the state of the list. We got a glimpse during "that" Sydney game, but when it came to hard, tough footy, our kids were too light and were easily bullied.

Good post C&B, totally agree. And, once most of the names in that bottom list move to join the top list, then the need for the bottom list replacements to step up isn't as important (for the time being). I think that's when we will be able to say that we have a potential premiership winning team/list. I don't see how Barry can be included in that list at this stage. Other than that, it's pretty close to being on the money. I would like to revisit this team at the end of the season to see who has come on.

Not disagreeing RP, but I wouldn't count Magner, Couch, Jones, Terlich or Clisby, but you're right, Bailey focused all his recruitment on youth, where Neeld has mixed the two. Time will tell if that is the right way to do it, I sure bloody hope so! I would like to know if Bailey ever had the opportunity to spend $800k on established key forwards though. These are the sort of things I mean when I say that I can be talked in to the Bailey criticism.

If I had a free shot at Dave Hughes from 30m, I'd most likely miss too. I'd be spearing it that hard at the [censored] that it would be sure to spray off the side of my boot. Best solution for me would've been to keep running when I got to the 30m mark, and start to wind up about 3 metres from him.

Sorry Jarka, but what has that got to do with my post? RP has rightly pointed out the list of "senior" players, or players in their prime. Compare those names to what Bailey had that met the same criteria. In terms of the amount of players, I'd imagine it was very similar, but in terms of leadership, Bailey had sh!t. He sacrificed his coaching record so that the team could be rebuilt through the draft. He still had the same amount of "juniors" that needed experience, they just never had the luxury of "protectors" such as Clark, Rodan, Dawes, Byrnes (the latter 3 all having premiership experience), and the likes of Jones, Frawley, Garland and Grimes were "kids" themselves back then. Neeld's playing the inexperience card, and we are expected to play along with it. The hand Bailey had to play with was far worse than what Neeld has got, hence why I think it's unfair the criticism that DB cops on here. But, as I said, I'm happy to be persuaded to feel differently (I understand the fitness levels were 2nd rate with Bailey).

Was kinda tounge-in-cheek Nutbean - we were practicing not getting tackled. If we can hold the ball, pass it around and not get tackled, we will win more than we lose.

At the risk of turning this thread in to a sh!t fight (someone has to do it I suppose - happens to every thread these days!), at what stage does Dean Bailey get excused for how we are travelling, and have travelled in the past 5 years? I'm quite sure for 2 of the seasons he was in charge tha twe had the youngest list in the AFL. All of a sudden, we have Neeld in charge yet we should accept that as his excuse/reasons for poor performance? I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, but I will always feel that Bailey cops more than what he deserves on here, and this thread is why I feel that way.

Have a feeling if we can nail this drill we might be in for a few wins this year.

Stuie, not joining in the argument between you and WYL, but watch the footage on the Herald Sun website... http://www.heraldsun.com.au/afl Find the Superfooty Video section (you will have to scroll down a bit), then find the clip of Bomber Thompson Fires Up Over Comparison With Sharks. at the 33 second mark, they talk about Brett Kimmorley, and show a recent interview with him. Nb. For someone who is more tech-savvy, it would be great to get that clip put directly on here so that you don't have to go through my above instructions!

Yay, he remembered my name (kind of).

This thread is incomplete without a poll. But seriously, welcome back Rangey, and I agree with all that is written. I found Neeld's presser interesting after the St Kilda game last weekend. He said something like that he didn't like honourable losses. Personally, this year I want to see more honourable losses, as our losses last year were far from impressive. Richmond had a number of honourable losses in 2012, they would have the expectation of turning a lot of those in to wins this year. The Geelong game in 2012 will give me a good idea as to how we've improved. We were in that match until just before 3/4 time. I'm not annoyed that they ran away from us in the last quarter, what I was annoyed about was the fact that on the scoreboard we were in the game, but on the faces of all the players, we were going to lose. From memory, we had a little run on mid-third quarter, but there was no excitement or celebration from the team. I'll be focusing on the subtle changes this year, with particular emphasis on how they play as a team. Blocking and shepparding is just one element, I'll be looking for encouragement after kicking a goal even if we are 10 goals behind, or more importantly, if we have kicked 3 on end, hoping to see the players get around each other and ensure we keep the momentum.

The development of Jeremy Howe will be a fascinating one over the coming seasons. If our beefed up Football Department are as good as we say/hope they are, JH will become a quality midfielder/half forward, and potentially be a Top 10 in the league player. He is on the cusp of becomming a star, or going down that same path that many red and blue jumper wearers have before him.

Won't be that bad WJ. Will be playing in about 24 degrees at that time of day, especially given there will be some cloud about. Humidity won't be drastic either, I'm tipping around 65%. If the rain can hold off, they will be playing in near perfect conditions.

I would've held off on pulling the trigger with Clark too. Reality is, there is an unknown factor about his injury. Will he come up as good? We hope, but others have no idea. I hope he makes his end of year Top 50. Jones is/was out best chance of getting a player on this list, but I'm not sure I agree with your reasons, and I think Sheehan might feel the same way. He is our best midfielder, I'm not sure if he will get better, but one thing for sure is that he doesn't have better mids to lift his game, unlike some other teams. If we had some genuine stars in our midfield, I'd be very confident NJ could go another step up, but as it stands, we don't know. And our defenders don't have reasonable claims at all, with the exception of Watts and Frawley. The latter was an AA 3 seasons ago now, and has far from been a standout since, so I'm not surprised he was left off. Watts is about the only one in out backline that you can see genuine improvement from over the past couple of years, playing some pretty bloody good footy last year. Putting another preseason under his belt would only benefit him, but would that've been enough to shoot him in to the Top 50 players in the league? That's something that is argued on here. In summary, I'm far from surprised that we don't have anyone in the Top 50 (again), I just hope that we can get 2 or 3 players in his end of season list.

Are you in a position to expand?