DeeSpencer

It’s fine. Players can agree to be a father son or not. Clubs can decide if they want to match a father son or not. https://www.afl.com.au/news/160752/dunkleys-draft-deal-how-josh-ended-up-at-dogs

Do you think Twomey just made it up? He’s followed the draft crop to get his own opinion then probably called every club, every player manager and every junior club for mail. Every year the draft is speculative but this year way more than ever. If you look at it the top 20 or so picks are mostly WA and SA kids who showed their stuff, academy players then the elite Vics who did enough last year. There’s a pretty steep drop off somewhere in the 20’s. Almost any player picked in that range won’t have played national champs, WAFL on Sanfl seniors, Nab league finals and so on. The so called safe choices might’ve played half a dozen state league colts games, let’s not pretend they are significantly safer bets in any way.

The Dunkley’s did a deal with Sydney that they would only accept a father son nomination if the Swans agreed to only match interstate clubs. Josh only wanted to go to Sydney if it was to avoid another interstate club, he had a strong desire to stay in Victoria. The Swans not matching had nothing to do with not rating Josh.

He couldn’t commit entirely but Kinnear Beatson (interviewed today on the afl show) sounded very confident they’d have the points to match for both kids. I think it would take a matched Campbell bid at 5 and a Gulden bid in the top 15 or so to force them not to match.

He can play a crucial role until he quits the club to take up a better job. Mahoney is a competent operator who does a good job filling gaps but he doesn’t have the high level footy smarts to take the list, the coaching and the culture to the top level. I don’t know if Richardson does either. But he is a whole more experienced in footy and it’s easier to get someone up to speed with the admin requirements than it is to truly know footy. I’d rather have Richo in a coaching role and find a true head of footy but it’s hard to have it all under the current financial restraints. People give Mahoney too much credit for trading up picks. It’s hardly all that complicated. And largely it’s either taking a huge risk or at best defying the analytics that says trading down is far better value.

The Braeden Campbell bid probably determines what the Swans have left and any threat of going in to deficit next year. Overall though unless they don’t rate him the discount and ability to get a fringe top 20 player rather than a kid at the back of the draft - they’ve got to match that.

1. Western Bulldogs – JUH – (Matching bid) 2. Adelaide – Logan McDonald 3. North Melbourne – Elijah Hollands 4. Sydney – Denver Grainer-Barras 5. Hawthorn – Will Phillips 6. Gold Coast – Riley Thilthorpe 7. Sydney – Braeden Campbell (matched bid) 8. Essendon – Tanner Bruhn 9. Essendon – Zac Reid 10. Essendon – Conor Stone 11. Adelaide – Finlay Macrae 12. Port Adelaide – Lachie Jones (matched bid) 13. GWS – Heath Chapman 14. North Melbourne – Tom Powell 15. Fremantle – Oliver Henry 16. Coll - Nik Cox (traded for GWS in a deal not to bid for McInnes) 17. Collingwood – Brayden Cook 18. GWS – Archie Perkins 19. GWS - Bailey Laurie 20. Coll - Reef McInnes (matched bid) 21. Richmond - Liam Kolar 22. Sydney – Errol Guldon (matched bid) 23. Brisbane – Blake Coleman (matched bid) 24. Melbourne – Jack Carroll 25. Adel - Luke Pedlar (28 and 40 for 25 and 50) 26. GWS – Nathan O'Driscoll 27. St Kilda – Jake Bowey 28. Melb - Max Holmes I suspect we trade out of our 3rd pick and then use our late pick 50 (which I've upgraded to 40) on a project tall. Callow, Rosman or other.

Petracca probably has to play more forward this year with longer quarters and limited rotations. So it could be possible to play 4 other inside mids in the side as long as they are all taking a share of forward or wing minutes and performing well. The obvious group of course is Oliver, Viney, Harmes and Gus. But if Viney and (to a lesser extent) Harmes aren't going to share the ball there spots come under threat. If Oliver isn't going to give up the 1m handballs and actually put the ball on his boot or wear some contact before giving it off then he needs the ultimate coaching move - being sent out of the side. And if Gus doesn't get his game in order and start providing some defensive pressure around the stoppages then get him the heck out of there too. Sparrow's hungry and coachable. He'll make the big name mids work for their spots.

Holmes' story seems very similar to Jayden Hunt. Small kid with other sporting interests. Always played footy but not having a lot of exposure to the elite junior pathways. I know Hunt hasn't become the player we hoped he would but all things considered he was still a decent pick up. It will take a brave call to say he has the skills and smarts with such little exposure against quality opposition but if they've seen enough I can understand the appeal.

Would like to take the muscle from his arms to his legs. I know he has to be super fit to play his role but he often looks like he doesn’t have a strong base under him in contests

He had a strong season at WAFL colts level as an on baller with a good amount of contested ball winning. Versatility is probably one of his best strengths. I'd like to see a bit more line breaking run or bustling physical play, there might be more of that in his games this year. We need at least one classy kicker on ball, so even if he added to our glut of mids at least he'd be the right kind of addition. Then it would be up to the coaches to work out the subtraction!

There's a little bit of footage of Carroll here. https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/giantroo-draft-videos.1181782/post-68047495 Looks a good mover with a penetrating left foot kick, but certainly from last year would have to do a lot of work on his tackling and strength at the contest. He's as young as any player in this draft as well so might take a bit more time to build up. He looks like a half back flanker to me, at least in the early years.

Mostly reasonable points apart from your opinions about the McDonald brothers. Even if they had more to offer physically they've both been mentally shot for 2 years.

You could play our home games on a remote cattle station and Tomlinson would still be too slow for the wing.

Except endurance. A knock on Rivers before the draft was his tank, it’s probably why he fell a bit in the draft and didn’t play as many games as he could’ve this year. I’d put Rivers in the same boat as Salem, far more valuable at half back or on ball than the wing. Especially if we’re planning to go direct to goal with big talls. Hard runners is the need for the wing, the class players do more damage at half back or on ball.

I am Smith fan but that bombers game was very concerning. He was beat by Stewart multiple times, Laverde and Draper. I don’t think size was as much the issue as an ability to read the play and stand a man. The same problem has hurt all our defenders apart from May, but Smith is particularly worrying given his lack of footy. Earlier in the year Smith shut down McKay and Rohan who are dumb straight line footballers, then got exposed by Riewoldt who he could easily handle for speed and size but who confused him with short leads and fakes. Some of our deep zoning was truly diabolical which makes me worry about Chaplin. I don’t think he’s the right man to develop Smith. If Smith was at a side like Richmond or Sydney that develops defenders properly I think he’d make it. We insist on a lot of zoning even inside d50 and the likes of Lever and Tomlinson just won’t be trusted deep, which means Smith has to be deep if he’s in the side and any mistake is super costly. Smalls who he can play man on man on is likely an easier role than talls who can confuse him. Frost had all the same troubles but started to get the hang of it this year at Hawthorn. So it is possible but it takes a lot of good coaching and time. Smith might not have either of those.

Roos handed over to Goodwin for the last game of 2015, who completely re did the game plan and built a side that made finals but wasn’t a real contender. Now we’re rebuilding again on the fly because we didn’t get enough talent in the first time and the fundamentals were never truly established. Im not saying Roos was all bad. He turned around a sinking ship which was a phenomenal effort. But he didn’t put anything in place to last long term. Almost all the people he bought in are gone. When the AFL stepped in to take over Brisbane they did it with David Noble heading up the footy department and an experienced coach in Chris Fagan. Watts and Hogan were ticking time bombs. Credit to Goodwin for making the tough calls on both of them. ‘The no [censored]’ bloods policy clearly didn’t make it down from Sydney

Goes well with all natural insecticide.

Phil Merriman was promoted to Freo's main man. So we needed a second guy, whether that's as part of a Burgo succession plan or not time will tell.

Pretty much. He won't be the first or the last. Only have to watch the cricket last night for the Indian's to create a concussion when convenient.

The Muir story was mostly great, especially the way it outlined how footy has failed him and all the background of the abuse. The way it outlined the cycle of destructive behaviour was a must read. It was just missing one part. Lots or room for ego, but where are Lumumba’s friends? The people most interested in his story are those who are invested in to buying what he’s selling. If you’re going to lecture an entire country then don’t move across the world to a country with a worse racial history.

Having followed him and a loyal band of fawning followers on twitter for a long time I can say he's a classic champagne socialist. He's a very good writer who was nearly lost to journalism but with both this story and the Muir piece I think he's been overly flattering of the subject. Robbie Muir belted the living daylights out of a lot of people, it's ok to include some reflection of that in a huge piece about him. Lumumba has more than a healthy ego and did revel in the publicity and his justification to not taking part in the inquiry about him seems way too weak to me. You have to really buy in to every part of his story if you're going to let that slide.

I’ll remember him as a failed recruit who we didn’t mentally screen properly who promptly invented concussions to get a retirement pay out. He was the AFLs first multicultural ambassador and lauded by the Prime Minister. No doubt he was the victim of things at Collingwood and the media turned on him but geez he was keen to play the martyr. The mainstream footy media do like doing the league and big clubs bidding for them but not nearly as much as left wing journos love a sob story. He’s a footballer who took too many magic mushrooms, he isn’t actually Patrice Lumumba.

I put it in these terms: Will any club give us a future 2nd round pick for what will become pick 34 ish in this draft? - Right now, surely the Suns have phoned all 17 clubs and found that answer has to be no. Some clubs don't have one, some clubs can't trade it etc. Which future 3rd round pick is the best option? If the Suns have predicted from the future 3rds on the table for that to be Melbourne then it's defensible. I'm just interested to know come draft night that not a single club would've up their offer to a future 2nd. Or that no other club might've offered a future 3rd with some other later swap like a future 4th or a late pick that can be spun back in to a future 4th. Theoretically they could've moved the pick back a few spots for a future 4th and then done the same deal they did with the Cats. It seems from the outside they didn't really think how to get maximum value from that pick.

Melbourne doing something stupid would hardly be a surprise! The Brisbane deal was a fair deal, but certainly a huge risk. Surely we knew when we did it that 18-19 combined to move up would’ve been tough and keeping those picks has to be an option. But whether we get 1 or 2 of our prime targets is an unknown. Gold Coast have set the bar very low, probably far too low, for a pick in the 20’s. We have to at least get a future second and hopefully for a team that misses finals if we’re trading out. Usually on draft night teams will overpay. If we’re trading out we hope that’s the case. Most clubs are just valuing next years draft far higher which makes a lot of sense.