DeeSpencer

You can say the name. It brings back shudders of the Neeld era but we can work through it. Dean Terlich

I suspect Port are just as happy to ditch the salary and promote Dante Visentini to back up so he can play some games and sign on long term.

West Coast might be the only club in the comp he’d start at right now and there’s no way they’d be keen. He’s better than Stanley but the Cats will try to play either Conway or SDK next year is my guess. At the end of the day he’s happier being a back up in Melbourne than in Adelaide. Marshall’s good as far as rucks go as a forward so they’ll probably play 2 rucks a bit. You could play 2 rucks all the time if they had mobile tall forwards rather than Max King.

He clogged our list playing the most insipid brand of soft, slow, zero kicking penetration, miles out the back footy you’ll ever see for one year and then doing nothing in the second year. Strangely went ok in the finals considering what he served up week to week. I don’t hate him, and I have no evidence to suggest he wasn’t professional during his time at Melbourne, but I hate the decision to get him. It was a move in the complete wrong direction from what we needed.

Mullin’s promising. Brown’s in the 2’s. O’Connor seems to have peaked. Nash took 6 years to becomes a decent defensive mid but has a battle to hold his spot. Keane has the most promise but walked out on the Pies, wait and see if he hits consistently now he’s signed up for the Crows for a while. They’re all good enough to suggest what was still an experiment from the 00’s and 10’s is now looking a more worthy project. But there’s no stars (yet).

Rowan Marshall isn’t a number 1 ruck? That’s a bold call

We’ll be doing well if Jeffo is a good player and one of the other 2 proves useful in anyway at all. So it doesn’t hurt to be on the front foot to try to get Lord in 2026 and even more so when he’s a free agent post 2028 (if he extends until free agency as most players do). It’s just very hard to get quality key forwards to move to any club, yet alone for the Dees to land one.

Lord trained with us as part of the afl academy, he was pick 49 in the 2020 draft. It was the covid year and list cut down draft. We didn’t have a 3rd rounder, we took Fraser Rosman in the 2nd round. Probably fair enough given we had a strong list in 2021 and half the kids in the draft missed most of the year but in general this is exactly why I’m in favour of always having at least 4, if not 5 national draft picks and rather than picking the eyes out of the draft just take lots of lottery tickets. Much better off drafting our own Ollie Lord than make desperate offers to a guy contracted for 2 years who may or may not actually be any good

Marshall might not play again. Cumming and Perryman are free agents. They could probably get Lukosius with those picks, Soldo and a future 2nd. Certainly with a future first. They have no incentive to trade Lord.

Honesty I don’t mind that we weren’t in on it until recently. Rucks are a valid use of the Cat B list, as is NGA players and the best use is probably guys like Wil Parker and James O’Donnell who were footballers growing up and then went to other sports. Tuohy, Hanley and at a stretch McKenna have been the only Irish difference makers since Tadgh Kennelly. 3 or 4 since 2000, whilst the go home and bust factor have both been high. That said, Irish immigration is through the roof which is mitigating the go home factor, the Irish are dominating the AFLW and the game has shifted from a focus on the ball constantly being in tight to more run and space. That shift demands more athletes who excel in that kind of running and are confident playing out in space. Geelong will have the advantage of an established program but I hope we can nab one of these guys if they impress.

Have you seen where he’s going? He’s leaving because he can’t get a game behind Jordon Sweet, there’s not a club in Melbourne he would start at.

I’d imagine they’d want Port’s future first back and are probably planning to give over a pick from 3-8 for a pick from 9-15 back, it’s not a bad idea at all. I suspect he’ll choose Carlton but good on North having a decent crack.

If we don’t have the list spots because we’ve junked up the list with the following cloggers: Hunter, Billings, Fullarton as well as the young lack of talent time brigade (I won’t name them), Then we simply have to pay one of them to retire. Not saying it has to be Parfitt but we can’t enter the season with no on ball depth.

I agree, although I do think Parfitt has good footy in him if fully fit and motivated. Sometimes it takes getting cut to find that motivation again. I also think we can’t go in to a season not having replaced Gus, JJ, Harmes and with doubts over Oliver and Tracc. We do have to add at least 1 ready made mid. If it’s not a clear best 22 guy like Peatling the options get murkier. But also I say it in every thread, let’s stop trying to fix depth problems with blind purchases in September. Get 3 guys to train with us over summer. Add the best option to the main list in March, get the second best option on the Casey list with the carrot of the midseason draft.

Hamilton was ok but messy in his early career games but he missed almost all of 2023 with a navicular stress fracture and most of this year with an ankle injury. You just can’t pick up a guy with that history who never really showed he was up to afl footy. He’ll stay at the Giants VFL team.

Fullarton looked good in preseason. He was abysmal in the ruck all year, he now has a chance to play as a permanent forward which is a simpler role. There’s nothing from the club about Derksen’s role yet but I suspect his value will be as a swing man rather than purely forward. If Fullarton can demonstrate he has the tank and hard leading style, plus be more than a total zero in aerial contests he can claim the CHF role. I’m not feeling sorry for him that he has to compete with a guy who’s never cracked an afl game.

The choice right now is pay Campbell 200k for 1-2 years and hope Verrall or others can take over. Or give up a pick and pay Soldo 500k for multiple years for similar results. I think I’d rather bank the useful pick and extra 300k and use that to target players in more important roles than back up ruck. Obviously it would be nice if we had some trade momentum to adding a best 22 player to justify the cheap ruck option.

Would join Robbie Campbell as inspiring ruck recruits. The only ways this makes sense is if they believe Verrall will be ready in 2026, they have a better target in 2026 or there’s just no one in the state leagues of any quality. Either way, I’d again ask what the rush is if no one else wants him. Get the biggest and best 25 year old down for preseason training and if they aren’t up for it then sign Campbell.

Worth noting Ed’s a scout for Oakleigh so he’s going to overrate the Oakleigh guys. Jagga over Ashcroft, nah.

Lions, Niners, Chiefs

Scott took over a literal dynasty tho and all he did was stop them over handballing and coach better than Bomber who had significant issues by that stage. Enough issues to sack a guy who had won 2 of the last 4 flags! That’s very different than Goodwin taking over a list with Gawn, Viney and draft picks. I blame Goodwin for not being more proactive with the list the last few years but I don’t blame him not getting more out of most of the players. We had a look at a lot of the list this year and they just aren’t very good. We just don’t turn the list over or take enough mature agers or alternative talent kind of picks. I agree with this. And trying to recreate 2021 when we played the same team all year in 2022 was a major mistake. 2023 I think we managed some decent injuries, still finished top 4 and actually had everything tracking well for finals until Petty and especially Melksham went down on the eve of finals. Suddenly the forward line was cactus. Throw in the Gus injury early in a game and what could’ve been a big time finals win goes down the drain. We shouldn’t have seasons that go down the drain like this year did but it’s list related not coaching. You can’t win with no midfield.

Have you met Paul Roos? He was working for North from Hawaii.

Watching the games - the way Goody interacted with players and Roos would only step in when needed and watching the trainings - of which Goodwin took all of them. Watching the game plan change massively - in fact, the final round of 2015 was Goody’s first game in charge. 8000 of us at Docklands vs GWS and the magnets completely changed. A zone defence. Up tempo ball movement. Forward pressure. None of that happened in 2015 until the very final round and then got going in 16. May and Lever weren’t just regular injuries. Almost the entire midfield having surgeries isn’t just injuries. Read this and see Misson was warning everyone before the season even started and then it only got worse as the year went on. https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2019-melbourne-board-preseason-reportedly-warned-about-injury-toll-and-possible-sluggish-start/news-story/ac5c04b3f5fc1f0bbab2e3fd40b471bf I’d have Scott over Goodwin too but Scott won his first flag with his own players after a decade in charge and they immediately missed finals. But what did they do in the mean time? Add Olli Henry and Tanner Bruhn with meh picks, that makes life easier than trying to draft and develop the likes of JVR and Jefferson. Add guys like Dempsey, Humphries and Mannagh. The difference between the Cats list management and ours is way more than the difference in coaching.

Big O is a big out, but I wonder if the Lions other outs have almost helped them. Lester is always the back up but seems to get the job done. He might be better than Doedee and Gardiner. Coleman is an incredible footballer but his absence has forced Zorko to go back, where he is brilliant but also seems to concentrate on the game more. When he was mid/forward he’d spend the down time at stoppages giving away free kicks with poor discipline. Linc is one of my favourite opposition players but Ah Chee and Lohmann have thrived in his absence and they have fresher younger legs than he does. The crucial thing with the Lions injuries aside from Oscar is they happened with enough time to regroup and get a consistent team together. Plus they clearly have a fantastic list.

Load of junk. For one, Goodwin coached all of 2016 which was Tracc and Clarry’s first season. There is no Tracc and Clarry before Goodwin. They are just draft picks. Like McLean and Sylvia or Morton and Trengove. By 2018 Jones was a role player, Lewis and Vince couldn’t play in the same side as they were both looking for cheapies across half back. We had no key defenders, our young midfield weren’t seasoned and we didn’t have the depth of wings and forward flankers. We dominated a couple of finals then got blown out by the eventual premiers in a game no one was winning. 2019 our injury list was comically bad and no one did a preseason, there was over a dozen off season surgeries. The trade off of young team going deep the year before. Lever was injured. May didn’t turn up. Just a complete throw away year. We should’ve done better in 2020, but we were bedding down the defensive system and played 3 young kids who starred in September the next year.