The Chazz

Rubbish. Take the emotional side out of it. There's no clear match up for Fritsch, he doesn't really have a clear role, and is at the end of his first preparation. Smith has a clear match up, which will likely be Darling, he has the ability to push forward if Hurn and McGovern get on top. While I don't see what the FD see in Smith, he's our best option for playing this role. I hope he goes well. If he doesn't and we lose, only nuffies will say that this decision cost us the game.

We are in a preliminary final. We're not going to lose this game at the selection table because we dropped a 23-odd game, first year player playing in a bit-part role.

Uncle @Bitter but optimistic should be able to hook you up with one of the fine drinking establishments in the Macedon region? Heck, you might even get an invite to the Manor if you ask nicely...

Sums it up for me too.

So, looks like they will go with Gawn in the ruck this week, and not Filipovic... Good call I think.

I've always wanted to see the Black Eyed Peas live...

Irrelevant. We need to be better than the Hawks, Eagles and Tigers teams on 2018.

You guys are boring. The Black Eyed Peas are going to smash it. They have some great songs that get most people pumped up, and even of they are a bit long in the tooth now, they will still get the crowd up and about. Can't was to watch them while the Demons are warming up in the rooms ?.

Means Harmes either shuts down Mitchell, but if Mitchell gets a hold of him, which is totally possible, we can swing him straight to Smith.

When under contract, both club AND player must agree to a trade. How can you not understand this?

Firstly, let's just wait until after the Grand Final to see if Richmond have gone back to back. Of course I can recognise that their game plan has worked. Results are there for all to see. I think what Hardwick has done has implemented a game style that suited the personnel that he had at his disposal, and somehow they managed to jag a flag. That said, adding Lynch to their line up next year will only improve their current game plan. It will mean the "kick long to a contest" style will be made easier, as there will be two key targets going up, allowing their smaller players to crumb. The amount of times they had Rioli and Higgins going up in a contest last Friday night is far from ideal, and something that Hardwick would know isn't sustainable. Other than the addition of Lynch, I can't see Hardwick tweaking their game plan much at all. Thirdly, it is costing them something - a crap load of salary cap space. They could spend that on Gaff, Shiel, etc, but no, they are spending it on the best KPF they can get.

Naive? Please. Why would a team that is having a "golden era", chase the best KPF on the market at the risk of "disrupting their game-style"? I'll give you the non-naive answer - it's because Hardwick would be salivating at the prospect of having 2 key forwards for his small brigade to crumb off.

Richmond play with 1 tall key forward because they don't have anyone else. Why do you think they have gone out to get Tom Lynch?

Thought it was interesting listening to Roos talk about the possibility of playing Hogan at CHB, then that talking guppy, Matthew Lloyd, talked about playing Weid at CHB when Hogan returns. This must be what it's like to have options, and quality key position players on our list. I love it. (I will admit, I mostly dismissed Lloyd's views, mainly because I can't stand him.)

Pretty happy with a couple of my tactical suggestions here...

Drive there, train home (if we win) or drive home (if we lose).

Drove to work this morning with 2 Dees scarves out the back windows. By the way, I live and work in Geelong.

Long may their post-bye slump continue (well, at least for another week!).

I remember that final very well - we never looked like losing. Not sure why, but a mate and I headed over the footbridge to the Crows buses and held up some "Go Demons" signs as we walked around each one. Not feeling content, we decided to drive through Camp Crow at Kryal Castle, windows down, singing "It's a Grand Old Flag". Clearly we were very gracious in victory. We decided against visiting the buses or Camp Crow three weeks after the above...

I'm interested to know why we had our main training session on Tuesday, yet Geelong had their main session on Wednesday. Will this make any difference? Would Geelong normally have their session on the Tuesday too but have changed it up given their poor performance after a week off? If it was a normal Friday night game (ie without a bye the week before), I would've expected that we'd have our main training session on the Wednesday.

Watch Scott Selwood tag him...

Rjay, did you happen to watch the interview? One thing Neeld said toward the end that if he had his time again (and thank Christ he won't!), he would've questioned the tactics/directive from Schwab, Lyon, et al, about getting rid of a certain group of senior players. Because he didn't question it in the first place, he went hammer and tongs to get rid of them. In hindsight, he would've done the job (of turning over the list as directed) a lot more along the lines of how Roos did it. Biggest difference - Roos had the experience to know how to do it, and Neeld didn't. While the end goal of getting rid of the likes of Moloney, Green, etc was achieved, it could've been done a lot better. There are many things that made me cringe in the Neeld era, however, there were a few things that made a lot of sense, even though I may not have liked it at the time.

This is pretty messed up, so much so that you shouldn't be surprised if you get a PM from Uncle @Bitter but optimistic after he reads this. If this is how you act, you tick a lot of the boxes that he looks for when inviting folk back to the Romsey Manor.

So, one is right (re. Hannan and Smith), the other isn't. Given Ben Guthrie also confirmed that Smith or Hannan didn't do the full session, I'm going to lean toward Earl's observations.

I was about to say that this bloke would know, given his efforts in September last year. But he is obviously aware of his own performance! Well played Tom.