DeeSpencer

Hopefully we don’t give him the Spargo treatment. Rush him back for round 1 and basically derail 2 years of his career.

Quick fire handballs for one group of players. 2/3rds of the ground match sim for the others. Even numbers with a pink jumper going both ways. Couple of very quick Latrell run down tackles. He wanted no part in a mark back with the flight with May bearing down but he was quickly back on the contest and pulled the Kossie ghost step where the defender had no read on where he was going before he lasered a kicked inside (which was intercepted but it was a good bad kick) X Taylor got the pink jumper and looked sharp presenting and using the footy, then bit of more that he could chew trying to run through 2 tacklers which sapped him off energy. Having a close look at new Taj in 40. He was out run for a loose ball by Sharp but then nearly chased him down. Then he just about took mark of the year. Missed a regulation handball to XL who cleaned it up, got it back to him on the run and his burst of speed opened it right up.

I did think of going to switch off the truck.

Ground split down the middle from goal. Group A gets the ball in the back pocket and has to switch then take the ball up to score. Group B doing the same the other way. Group C resting. On pretty quick rotation. 8 on 5 so it’s not difficult. But focus on running hard to space and establishing a deep forward.

There’s an elaborate tree mulch top up operation in action. A lot of pipe. Dude on the end isn’t wearing a mask which concerns me.

Hendo and Viney on the exercise baik baik sajas. McAdam and Matthews rehab. Bowser labs. AMW pulled out of some drills. Warm up exercises seemed really footy movement focused. Cutting hard after receiving handballs. Simulating a ground ball and burst from pack. Then in to a couple of groups of figure 8 kicking. This was sharper than I’ve seen us for a couple of years. Trelly balances up and has a bit of a hunched over technique but he gets the footy low and fast to team mates consistently. Jeff Jnr has good skills, well done to the Suns academy coaches.

There’s little value burning the 5th bench spot on a back up ruck, especially with a young side that needs every possible rotation. Heath has to impact forward and it probably requires Gawn finally relenting some ruck minutes and taking spells forward too. If both of those things happen they might play 2 rucks, but then the question becomes which 2 key forwards are the best combination with a big ruck? Mihocek is a lock at CHF, then we’ve got 1 if not 2 more natural full forwards on the list. For JVR it might be back up ruck or Casey.

Pretty simple choice for the Suns: They can deal with us and have Tracc. Or they can deal with West Coast and save a few draft points (ie. future 2nd or 3rd round picks). Takes a fair bit of entitlement for Eagles fans to think the latter was the right choice.

Yep, especially when all the reporting was that they did it because they thought Gold Coast wouldn’t match, not purely to get Josh Lindsay. They’ve been lucky the AFL basically negotiated with them and Brisbane to get pick 2 for Oscar Allen and a priority pick to WCE to send for a free agent in Starcevich. Those handouts as well as some nice moves like drafting Jobe Shanahan and a couple of good midseason draft picks have helped them get the list back in order. The rest of their drafting and trading still looks pretty meh.

Top 3 insights: Taylor: best on ground with the wrong boots! Plus confidence that he’ll mature into a leader and finals type player. Pickett: Love the line from Lamby that if his name was Latrelle Richardson they’d still pick him. The belief in his talent being obvious even in 2023. And the confidence that he can play wing or even on ball. Matthews: exciting to hear about how good they think he is athletically and how he complements our other small forwards.

Nope, our order of the 5 players left in our tier of players (perhaps our second tier behind the Eagles guys and perhaps Cumming) was: Robey (unsure where but likely first), Taylor, Pickett, Nairn, Farrow. And as explained by Twomey had Essendon gone Taylor we would’ve picked Nairn at 11 just to get Pickett in the 12 slot.

We’ve lost ground, including a traditional footy area but will continue to gain population as the outer SE booms. The challenge is turning that population in to footballers. To speak frankly there might be not much point trying to get footballers out of Asian migrants. Our best hope for a strong academy is to tailor as much of it as we can to the Sudanese kids.

I believe the club has had a little bit of a readjustment with the way they value WA players. Maybe not forever but at least in this rebuilding time. I think Nairn has more upside than Farrow anyway so fine by me.

One thing that I think is a positive for Latrelle is he played 3 games for Norwood under 18’s in 2023 and he had: 15 disp, 2.2 goals 18 disp, 1 goal 14 disp, 2.1 goals So if you average that out it’s 16 disposals, 1.6 goals. Thats with a late December birthday and without continuity of footy. Plus who knows what he was up to with his personal life. If he continued that form across a full season (and had all the talent and highlights) he would’ve been drafted high in 2023.

I think King wants players who express themselves with playing. That’s been the Geelong way. And the Hawks way. And there’s certainly been some Swans (more recently than the Roos era) who fit that bill too. I also think the cultural clean out might’ve been to make sure we’re bringing young guys with a bit of spunk in to the right place. Room for them to make their own mistakes but not be led astray.