DeeSpencer

I think they’ve said walking distance from the MCG. It’s the most likely solution.

I see a lot of aims but I can't see a lot of strategic planning? What are the actual strategies that are going to give us an edge? Richmond were recruiting for speed for a long time and finally got it together in 2017. Their playing group were also incredibly inclusive, something that spread through the whole club. That's an on field and off field example on how they've built themselves. Without any details it's more strategic aims than strategic plans

During the season we'll often have up to 5 guys who have played the previous week and will play the next week on modified or very light duties. Some who won't even make the injury report. 4 serious injuries and 11 guys not at their best is too many, but that 11 could quickly resolve down over the next few weeks. Anyway, we seem to be mastering the train harder aspect, probably plenty of room to look at training smarter. Personally I think if we increase the skills at high intensity without contact earlier in summer we might get less injuries when more contact comes in. Without a great skill level our contact match sim drills are going to end up in plenty of bodies crashing in.

2005: Franklin - round 1. Roughead and Lewis - round 3 2006: Birchall - round 1 2008: Rioli - round 1 Back when Hawthorn used to actually draft players with first round picks they did.

A far more insightful and interesting episode this week than last week! They should've led with this one. Just little things but Jason Taylor clearly values footy heads asking about if Harley watches the games. Of course being me and Melbourne there always has to be negatives but are we really regularly training at the Shrine? Just doesn't sit entirely comfortably with me to do sprints up through a war memorial. Also I'll once again play amateur physiotherapist and ask if Harley should learn how to sit in a chair! If he's slouching like that in meetings all day then it can't be good for him!

Go offer Max Gawn a new contract extension at 500k a year for 5 years and then 1.5 million a year when he's 33. His manager will laugh in your face. Players aren't going to defer their payments until they are older and likely to retire any more than any of us would if our bosses suddenly wanted to pay us half as much now and the rest if we still are up to working at 70.

Free agent contracts are locked in to the cap to stop that situation happening. Your example is also missing about 7.5 million dollars worth of money! Players can only get paid what goes in the cap, so whilst managers might agree to longer term deals like Buddy's and some back-loading of pay to join a good club (like Tom Lynch's) they aren't going to sign deals that will pay their clients peanuts and see them retire with huge sums of money unpaid.

Was he due to be paid 1.5m? The issue with free agents - most particularly restricted free agents - is that you could offer them a huge contract with no intention of ever paying it so their existing team doesn't match it. So for cap purposes that amount has to be locked in to stop that loop hole. To pay someone out in different years they have to stay on the list (main or rookie). You can't just kick money to future years without holding a list spot. Someone like Rance retiring on his own accord will have the contract changed for the year in which they retired and that should be it. Rance has a list spot for this year, he's settled on an amount to get paid for his 2 months or so work, maybe with some extra for being a loyal servant and that's done. Beams is likely more complicated because he seems to have physical and mental issues as well as possibly concerns over behaviour, but if they reach a settlement to pay him less to not play then that's fine. Yes. It's called a salary cap, if players are retiring and agreeing to part ways with money owed (in return for retiring) then they are giving up salary. Logical that the cap reflects what players have agreed to settle for rather than hold clubs to a salary that will never be paid.

Sounds like we're mostly on the same page. I think the AFL owe it to their fans to support a professional women's league, I just think it should be the highest quality to thrive long term. Certainly agree that it could be like putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Largely I think sporting administrators go for the short term dollar so much and fail to recognise it's the years of tradition that keep us all coming back. Everyone's loving the short term sugar fix of AFLW and clubs getting women's teams but when that hit fades it won't be a competition that's built dedicated fans from the ground up.

And an 8 game season, 15 minute quarters, ridiculous conference system, playing in February, finals during the men's season isn't treating the women as second class citizens? The current AFLW season seems more like a marketing exercise for the AFL and a select number of moderately famous female players (and their player agents) than a proper footy competition. Playing for existing AFL clubs gave the women's game a huge boost, that's undeniable, but I just struggle to see the sustainable future of it. Despite huge investments in almost every possible pathway there's not enough talent for 18 AFL teams and barely enough interest for 10 Victorian teams as is. The best women athletes will be drawn to cricket and basketball just as men are, plus probably a far greater draw from soccer (big money and a prestigious national side), netball, gymnastics, cheer and dance in a million different forms etc.

It's very relevant to your statement that a sport can only be elite by having full time professional footballers. I disagree. I think the 1970's players were just as elite as the 1990's players in the A/VFL. Same with the GAA. If you start paying full time professional wages to the current group of women a whole bunch of them would still be miles off what I'd consider an elite athlete judging by skill level, experience and overall talent. The same goes for a few men on our list and certainly across the AFL! My personal belief is there won't ever be enough talent nor interest (read; money) to sustain a decent length season with 18 teams of fully professional footballers. So my focus would be to design the best possible competition for long term success. The sports leagues I'd be copying from would be the recent success of the NBL on the back of a number of high quality teams and strong product and taking the good lessons from the relaunch of the A league before it's all gone to waste by lack of investment, some terrible expansion sides, lack of quality players and most of all absolutely no care for the fans.

I don't agree with this. In Ireland the amateur GAA is absolutely an elite game. The Olympics is an elite sporting event that features a number of athletes who aren't full time professionals. The difference between 20 hours of unpaid or lowly paid work a week and 40 hours of highly paid work a week is in the physical performance margins and development of lesser players. I fear the rush to create paid professionalism is putting the cart before the horse. It's not that I don't think there should be a pathway to professional female sports but I just don't think it's been done the right way. Women's cricket had a really strong base to turn professional. So did netball. Established elite competitions that just needed some money pumped in. Meanwhile womens footy has gone from Darebin being the only elite standard and a one off exhibition match to 14 teams, it's bonkers to me. Instead of 14 teams playing 8 rounds it should be 8 teams playing 14 rounds. Each team would double in talented footballers capable of actually moving the ball with skills rather than the current set up of so many athletes who excel at running and tackling but lack the fundamental skills. AFLW right now is really harmed by each team having about 10 Alex Neal-Bullen types on the ground at once who's main job is to just run up and down and tackle. If I was in charge of the AFL I'd be tempted to scrap the entire comp and bring in 8 new teams (1 per state, Tassie, Geel, 2 in Melbourne, with expansion of 4 Melbourne sides planned for year 3 or 4) with their own new brands and play a 14 round schedule from September to the first week of December - a far better time to watch and play footy - and keep the entire thing separate from the AFL as much as possible. Maybe the AFL commission still oversee the league but a new CEO, new TV deal and let the players even form their own union if they wish. The players would take a hit initially in terms of wages but they'd have a proper competition and the big name players are getting paid based on their brands now. If they sacrifice a little for a few years they might end up with a proper competition. It would be sad to see the Demons lose their team but I just can't see how 18 teams is pretty much ever going to work, especially at the start of the year when the overwhelming majority of fans lose interest when the men's stuff starts. Play it in spring and capture the sports fans who aren't interested in racing or non Boxing day/important tests/BBL cricket (which is a lot of people especially women).

The 199cm ruckman being forced to play out of position in the ruck? Not sure that’s something to get too upset over. The absolute best version of Jackson is if he can be great as a forward and mid but it’s also going to be having him in the ruck so we get 4 mids.

Tommy has dodgy ankles, he tweaked one before Christmas. Did it at least once in a game last year. short of more reconstructions I’m not sure what can be done to strengthen and tighten them up. would love to see him turn like an athlete and not the QE2 this year

Surely it’s as simple as the cut on his foot that he had over summer? Otherwise it is a bit of an odd one if it continues.

Coaching director at St Kevs old boys. Which is a fair fall but they aren’t a standard VAFA club. I heard a rumour that one year post AFL the Russian Jamar was in the 2’s, that’s how strong they are. I wonder if he’s also got a job at the school. The way things are going coaching an APS school team is probably more prestigeous than VFL.

It's a shame for the big fella and we might need to look at the state league options just in case either of Preuss or Gawn get delayed in their rehab heading in to the season, but 8-10 weeks is 2-4 for the real stuff. In a more flexible system we'd have a 3rd mature ruck bought in just to give a chop out in the first couple of preseason games, but without that we now should get a good look at Jackson, Bradtke and even rotate the key forwards through. As long as we don't overtax him and allow for a few mistakes I think Jackson will show he's up for it in the preseason and ready for round 1 as the limited minutes back up.

This is (as usual) a combination of the AFL media's favourite things: 1. Fake News: stretching quotes from other sources to suit a narrative. 2. Steve Hocking or some other senior AFL figure unwilling to commit to decisions that people may see as unpopular. In proper context: Hocking is being interviewed by a dedicated AFLW podcast team who are pushing their agenda, with a really inappropriate question by the way. Livingstone dodges it. Hocking attempts to answer it diplomatically, but clearly without an intention to change the name of the AFL. 3 days later with nothing else to write about the Age and HS make it in to a story.

I don't think May had an arthroscope. The bandage on his leg is below the knee and around the back of the leg and the article mentions some fluid in the wound. Hopefully the wound settles down and there's no more nerve discomfort, if that's the case it's probably a better result than fiddling around in the knee joint itself. Joel Smith not kicking on is right foot might be a club directive just to be a bit more cautious with recent wounds to avoid a similar complication.

Fair enough, one little morsel in there about the burden of the decade impacting him as a leader. Although if you couldn't tell that the weight of a decade of failure had on Jones you haven't been paying attention. I'd extrapolate from that and say that if he wasn't enjoying the leadership journey and growth of so many players and the club from 2015-2018 then either he or the club were doing something wrong. The end of 2017 was upsetting but otherwise we were on the right track for a stretch of years there.

Nothing episode. Goody - lets train hard Burgo - be fit Some players ran some laps A snipped of Nath Jones giving a largely uninspiring speech in some kind of foyer which seems to be how we do most things these days - shades of Lewis' retirement with no one paying attention. Bennell, Vanders, new recruits - trade and draft, maybe even some snippets of a coaching meeting. There's a few more interesting stories that hopefully we get to see but it wasn't tonight.

Which parts? I can't remember anything insightful at all from watching that.

He broke my heart by throwing away the win in the final game of the season against North.

Who says they can't afford it? The AFL right now is one big get rich scheme for the executives of the league (and clubs) and for the players. If everyone involved in the AFL industry took a 10% pay cut they'd all be perfectly fine. The greatest threat to the game is over-commercialisation and not lack of funds. That said, there's very little benefit to adding a 19th team that doesn't improve the leagues finances and 20 teams would spread the talent terribly thin, hence the best way to achieve a Tassie team is to build it from the ground up and demand inclusion on the back of people power.

I love that they form a commission who comes back to report that they need: 1. 7-8 million per season in Government funding - which in fairness they currently get rorted for by Hawthorn and North. 2. I'm guessing at least 500 Million for a 30k stadium in the middle of Hobart because the recently renovated 20k stadium a short paddle away is suddenly inadequate. Even though they confirm games will be split so it's probably 7-8 games in Hobart per season. Tassie should have a team but I'm against 19 teams, against merger/relocations and every year that the Suns and Giants exist for makes it very unlikely they get moved. My advice - get Tassie back in the VFL and build a footy club with fans, volunteers, depth players, local heroes. Build something organic from the ground up rather than everything based around big chunks of cash.