DeeSpencer

We need taller flanker depth ideally with speed. Our forward depth is either talls, smalls or Melksham. Someone with some height would be handy. Even in the grand final side we had Sparrow and Harmes mostly play half forward and JJ as sub. They’re our first line of midfield cover and a more pure forward flanker to compete or fill in for them would be ideal. Same for the wing and even down back to a lesser extent where the depth is skinny.

Howes seems a great fit for need as well as talent. So if he’s available and JT was honest on the website today about considering needs it makes a lot of sense he’s right in their plans. The half back flankers might be less of a need although we could do with a bit more depth. If Hunt replaces Hibbo after next year the depth is thin. It’s a lot to invest in the backline yet again but I’m still very open to Rivers, Bowey and Salem all being flexible. No reason they can’t play wing, half forward or on ball.

Good point. I still think 17 and then turning 39 in to a future 2nd could work for them. Getting the young tall they need before the Fahey bid and banking a pick. A future first certainly has more upside though.

GWS recruiting manager was fairly cagey, talked up the 4 players they liked and didn’t confirm or deny any bids. My guess is they bid on Darcy, don’t bid on Daicos due to a deal with the Pies and end up taking Callaghan rather than rolling the dice on Mac or Gibcus. I definitely think they’ll put 13 on the table for a future first if the top line talls are gone. Would they consider 13 for 17 and 39 to slide down and take someone in that second group of talls like JVR - maybe.

Ethically tricky but should we gather our 40+ fully vaccinated players and give them all covid so they are super immune and less likely to test positive in season? Losing multiple players a week to positive tests seem entirely possible. Not sure what the AFL’s policy on surveillance testing and contacts will be but I assume it will be aggressive due to the travel required.

I’m still skeptical on Pert and I enjoy a contrarian view so I’m with you. But I must admit promoting Richo seemed to work well. As did hiring their old Collingwood mate in Choco. No idea if Yze was a Richo/Goody/Pert driven move but that’s been a success too. My main worry with Pert has been he’s talked of massive growth of the club, where PJ seemed keen on Melbourne being a highly successful mid sized but well run and efficient club. Jaguar actually plays more to the latter. Especially when the Pies sign up KFC! Keen to see who we have joining us for the future and if the focus can be more on providing members a quality club than attempting Eddie style franchise inflation.

11-20 v 6-10 is an interesting debate but a good question is whether 11-20 go better because they get drafted to good teams. They’d be a way to sort that based on ladder position over a span of years to see if it holds true. There’s been an adjustment on key forwards recently I think. Teams aren’t as smitten with them and don’t feel as desperate to get them. The standouts like the King brothers still go early, maybe not as early as they should, but others have fallen. There’s less blind faith in getting big guys, but their scarcity will still make them super valuable. Positional value is certainly worth considering. One dimensional inside mids (even big body ones) seem to have dropped a lot recently too. Teams have never been all that keen on lock down defenders. And rucks stopped being early picks apart from Jacko a fair while ago. It pays to zag against the trends though. Jackson is proof of that. I think North have found a couple of nice options in Curtis Taylor and Eddie Ford drafting the mid sized half forwards who often fall because teams doubt their usage at AFL level, where half forwards must be defensive workers more than flashy. Then again, North haven’t won many games with those 2 yet! Small forwards have really risen in value and Jason Taylor admitted as such when we took Kozzie. Not only did he think Koz and Weightman were special prospects but he talked about just how valuable pressure smalls are to the modern game.

Callaghan seems close to a lock to the Giants and rightly so. He’s got attributes to play wing or a flank but the Giants have so much talent it’s possible he struggles for early opportunities. So drafting Howes would be an investment in keeping him around. I also think Howes has genuine claims as a first rounder and would be right in the mix for our pick.

Jason Taylor would’ve drafted Jackson over Anderson, so there’s no way we would’ve got both of them. I would’ve liked Mac but we’ll have pick 19 and pick 30 something instead. We aren’t getting screwed at all, we’re just getting part of a fairer system. Look at the quote above from Mac, we’ve been involved with him for a long time but hardly the main factor in his development.

Brayshaw: got himself rock hard fit for the the first time and became a useful role player with upside, the best of which was the grand final. But he had some stinking games. He’ll have to be just as fit if not fitter to keep with the competition and it’s time he gets his skills to where they should be too. The last time he had a good season he dropped off a lot. Chandler: I think his future is as a midfielder as much as a forward, needs to get stronger and fitter. Doesn’t have the speed to be a danger deeper forward but could be another essential link/tackle player which is the basis of our game plan. Petty: Had a fair bit of last summer wiped out by illness and missed the entire year before. Which makes his 2021 even more impressive. Could really take another leap and needs to in order to fend off competition from Tomlinson and probably cover May who’s track record of playing 22 games isn’t great. BBB: we probably won’t have the luxury of giving him a preseason mid year again. So he has to be durable through summer. Teams will also put a heap of work in to Fritsch next year, the best way for us to cover that is for Brown to play like he did late in the year (or even better).

Certainly not a big criticism but he’s now gone 0/4 on young rucks with King, King, Bradtke and Filipovic. They are a dice roll but you’d expect at least one of them to become a useful back up. Home grown depth talls and speedy wingers are probably his two areas for improvement. If he nails those rolls of the dice his record would be just about spotless

I dislike anyone who peddles anti vaccine misinformation. But I have a degree of sympathy for the victims of that misinformation. Particularly if they’re refusing the vaccine for incorrect families reasons etc. We have to do more to counter the misinformation particularly on social media and to bring people back in to society. All of that said, Liam surely has access to as many doctors and scientists as possible to talk this over. It’s a shame none of them have got through to him.

It took until this year for Oliver to sort out his decision making and both he and Tracc still have great room for improvement with their kicking. But they’re also in the top 1% of ball winners to ever play the game! Sparrow has some similar attributes with power but it’s unfair to expect him to get to the level of those 2 freaks. His finals series was excellent, my point was I’m just not sure, where as others in this thread seem confident he’ll explode.

I know nothing about him but he’s an overager with a fairly mature body given the weight, and probably a touch undersized too. Every year there’s very good goal kickers at junior level who don’t have the athleticism and talent to be AFL players. The odds are that’s where this guy fits.

It's a tough competition but I reckon Docklands probably is the better of two evils with Southbank these days. Some absolutely horrific towers there. And don't get me started on what's happened in Box Hill. Or the size of some of the towers in Footscray. Caulfield and Camberwell have pushed the envelope too. There really should be something like a hard and fast 8 story rule for anywhere but the Hoddle Grid. Any development along the rail lines should really be for public use. Technology will make it increasingly likely to be built on at some stage but it should all be things with public benefits. A vertical school, a tafe that probably never gets funded and covering the buildings in weeds to carbon offset. No thanks Eddie.

Nope I stand by my post. I'm not saying he's no good or his decision making or kicking is dreadful, it's just to continue to improve to the level that some are speculating about in this thread he'll either have to become a Petracca type who dominates the contest and routinely nails high risk/reward opportunities or he'll have to be sharper with his decisions and kicks. I don't have a strong belief in whether he'll stay as a very valuable premiership player or elevate. That's all I'm saying. If Tracc and Oliver are 9.5/10 players and Harmes is a 6/10 I just don't have conviction on whether Sparrow will end up more of a 6-7/10 or a 8+. Neither are bad results! The examples were just from the grand final as they were the most recent game and we've all seen it plenty. Don't get caught up in the results and look at the actual choices and execution. And you can go through several games this year and see plenty of poor kicks and some odd decisions. I could highlight all the times he kicked in to the mark but I'm choosing the grand final because he played superbly and he really grew in the finals. I definitely stand by the goal that needed all of T Mc's strength to get over the line. He had Oliver running for the one-two and he had Brown alone in the corridor. The shot wasn't an awful option and he nailed it, if he keeps nailing those kind of kicks then happy days but there's only a handful of players in the comp who do that and there's plenty of Sam Powell Pepper types who think they're the hero and usually aren't. In the last quarter Keath leaves Brown to try to defend Spargo but I still think you take the simple open lead inside 50 rather than rely on Brown taking a contested mark. Spargo was pretty peeved that he got burnt, that's not me on the couch that's a team mate. The kick was well placed to Brown though, even if a little loopier than might've been required. Again, excellent result, but if we're talking about a player taking the next steps to become elite then it's taking the quick simple option when it's open.

Took over from Craig Cameron as head of footy for a few years until they realised they needed Balmey.

Losing Jye Caldwell for cents on the dollar as well as other young mids definitely influence that change for them. With Hopper, Taranto, Ward, Kelly, Green, Coniglio, De Boer etc they are just stacked for on ball options and can’t fit them in. I think we’d be cautious drafting a pure clearance midfielder for similar reasons, but we don’t have to be as worried about the go home factor. A young ruck probably isn’t priority number 1 either. Otherwise I don’t think we’d be stressing on whether there’s a clear spot for any early picks

Cameron was head of football in the early 10’s but their recruiting back then was a handful of superstars - Dusty, Cotch, Riewoldt, Rance and a bunch of terrible picks. Francis Jackson was their head recruiter and missed on a lot of picks. Blair Hartley has been their list manager for a decade and the main architect of their list according to tigers fans I’ve spoken too. Jackson moved in to a part time role in 2015 and their recruiting under Matt Clarke since has been far better.

I think Rowell still goes somewhere between 1-3. And I’d have Green and Georgiades a little higher too. Still an incredible draft for the Dees no matter how you rank them.

Simon Dalrymple at the Dogs and then Sydney might be the only one I rate above Taylor purely for having the same level of huge success with early picks (Bont, Stringer, Macrae, Naughton) and then some more late round gems. Taylor’s been freakish in the first and second round but surprisingly colder with late round picks. The other clubs who have done really good jobs lately are Port, Brisbane and also GWS since Sos left.

1. Oliver 2. Petracca 3. May 4. Salem 5. Lever 6. Gawn 7. Viney ------------------ 8. Brown 9. Fritsch 10. ANB Unlucky: Jackson, Kozzie, Langdon, Gus, Petty, Rivers. The Oliver and Petracca combo are where everything starts. After that I think our best 3 defenders are vital and it's hard to know which order but May and Salem might be the hardest to cover. May's by far our most reliable stopper and Salem just controls the ball use from the back half. I wanted to have Gawn and Viney higher. Viney especially come finals. Gawn I've only lowered because Jackson's improvement means we can afford to get less out of Gawn. In fact this year we deliberately didn't use up the big fella too early. I wanted to squeeze Jacko in but I snuck ANB up because I think he sets up our defensive effort and work rate. Everyone else kind of goes along from him. It's probably Jacko and Kozzie at 10, 11 but I thought I'd give ANB the nod. In terms of the tall forwards it's hard to split Brown, Fritsch, T mc and the impact of Jackson/Gawn. If we go smaller up forward then Jacko and Gawn are promoted more. I went Brown at 8 because I thought he did the trickiest structural job as well as kicking goals. Tommy took an unselfish role up the ground (which suits his game). The rucks kind of floated around. And Fritsch was the main goal kicker but to keep winning against the best backlines next year I think it will take more Ben Brown.

Talls and tall flankers/wing depth are probably more of a need but running midfielder types make up a huge chunk of the team. Tracc, Oliver, Viney, Harmes, Sparrow, Salem, Bowey, ANB, Spargo. That’s 9 of 22. I wouldn’t be worried about having overlap in that group as long as the players are versatile.

I reckon running technique, including posture and being physically well rounded is a huge one when it comes to footy. The rehab process from any soft tissue injury is often hours of the guys doing straight line running not just to build back up but so the fitness guys make sure they're running correctly. Not everyone will be Eddie Langdon but I reckon so many of our players just looked like far easier runners over the last 2 years since Burgo came on board. Clearly they were fitter, but wonder how much was just doing more kms and how much was refining their running techniques. Similarly the warm up circuits and all the extras like pilates, yoga, hot/cold baths, massages etc that the players invest in make a huge difference too. Hard to know which of those things works individually but the players who invest in them all often come out with far less issues.

I reckon Knevitt will be gone, too much upside for someone not to take a chance earlier. 30+ touches at 193cm with athleticism - hard to see him lasting past 15 I reckon. Owens is appealing, tall wingman who can read the play, but I'm not convinced by him. They're both tall mids with contested ball winning but I'm not sure they have the powerful games that Taylor seems to like. Even the smalls he's drafted in Koz, Spargo and Bowey have a lot of power per square inch of size. Sparrow and Rivers both like to use their power to burst through congestion. Same with Harmes - for better or worse. Salem - thrives playing with contact and in congestion. There's every chance we go left field as we often do if one of the top quality guys doesn't drop. But from what I've seen the most Jason Taylor player around the mark of our pick is Sam Butler.