DeeSpencer

The Cats played really slow from the backline all year, which requires fitness but controls tempo. If anything I think they got too comfortable going too slow and to beat the best defensive sides you have to put pace in to the game at times. Their backline didn't have the skills and run. For some reason they moved Clark from half back (he was great forward too), then moved Tuohy and then moved or lost Duncan. Richmond have 3 slashes from half back - Houli, Short and Baker. The Pies have 2 - Crisp, Noble and can get run from Howe, Maynard and Moore. The cats rely on Tom Stewart doing it all and whoever else they use on the day. Unusual. Apart from that I just think their forward line fell apart. Hawkins obviously had a moment of madness. Gary Rohan kicked 20+ goals in the first half of the year as the 3rd tall and then about 4 in the whole second half of the season, unfortunately you can't rely on him. Young Jordan Clark got injured and the rest of their small brigade that bought pressure and skill were found wanting once teams worked out that they only had a few tall targets and to just jump 1 defender and stay down on the smalls. Atkins, Gryan, Gaz and Dalhaus weren't going to kick a winning score alongside Esava and Henderson, they needed that 3rd marking option as well as Hawkins in. Chris Scott probably outsmarted himself with coaching moves but he had to try different things to get the edge on the Tigers because once the Tigers got rolling they were done. Dropping Stanley probably wasn't smart but the Cats have a surplus of tall defenders and a lack of ruckmen. Blicavs on a wing was a reflection of that same surplus of defenders and a lack of outside run that comes from playing half your games at a stadium without wings! Overall I like the way the Cats are reliable from the back half and manic in the forward half, plus the inside mid pressure Parfitt creates. There's lessons there for us in the way they moved players to create a steadier backline (Selwood defensive winger), more defensive accountable inside midfield and reworked almost their entire forward line in one summer - which worked for half a season.

The comparison with the Tigers I think is more that they started rebuilding (for the 2nd or 3rd consecutive time) in 2010 with Hardwick, made finals from 13-15 with a bunch of quality players but were poor around the fringes then dipped. We started rebuilding (for the 400th time) with Roos in 2014 and all but made finals in 17 as well as 18, we've got a lot of quality and we've got stuff all around the fringes. Bouncing back to win the flag almost certainly won't happen but there's a lot of positives to take from 16/17 that compare favourably to Richmond's 13-15. Yes it's 3 finals series to 1 but we also managed 3 finals in 1 year compared with 3 elimination final losses! Maybe a better comparison would be some of the North seasons that saw them bounce back but I want to be a little more optimistic than that!

Defensively I think we need some speed in the front half - and coordinated, well coached, well drilled pressure - and then a fit midfield group which includes clearly an upgrade on the wings in terms of fitness and smart positioning and then a proper two way midfield effort. I look at the way the Giants are defending this finals campaign and think that's the blueprint for what we can do which. And the way we've defended last year even without the ideal defensive personnel has shown we were on the right path there. Lever in the Haynes role, May in the Phil Davis (or Lachie Keeffe) role and off we go. In terms of the plan with the ball I think we need to train a style that allows us to do 3 things. Plan B: Slow down the line plays that use Gawn and hopefully a pair of competent tall forwards. Plan C: A fitter midfield group particularly on the wings that works hard for switches and uncontested steady build up play Plan A: Maximise what I see as the strength of our team for ball movement which is that we've got Oliver, Harmes, Gus as mids, Petracca mid/fwd, Melksham and Fritsch forward. We've got a lot of 188cm guys who can either take a grab or win the ball if it spills. We don't need to out sprint teams if we can get the ball moving our way and spread through the corridor and to the fat side at half forward we've got a lot of guys who can get the ball on the lead. The Eagles are excellent at taking riskier kicks to Yeo in the middle or Ryan, Waterman, a 3rd tall etc at half forward. Then it's one on ones deep which is why the Eagles talls are so potent. Pretty much I just want to see us add width and variety to the style we played in 2018. The play on and quick kicking game can be extremely damaging it just needs to be balanced with some safer play and a little more creative and less running in to a brick wall. Then we also need a big improvement in the way we link with handballs from contested situations. The Tigers are the forward handball masters and that's where I'm not sure we could ever match them - no one can when the game opens up - but we have to at least become competent at stoppages and from long kicks down the line in getting runners free in to space. Again, fitter runners and more speed but apart from that just train the right set ups.

The Tigers weren't particularly good for most of 2017, they won their first 4 with a blessed draw, beat us when we lost 2 players early, then they lost 4 in a row followed by gradually building some momentum as a decent side before exploding in finals - in a year without a lot of good sides. They've built on that in 18 and 19 where they are much better now than they were in 2017. So even in a year when they had a huge bounce back and won the flag they didn't become the dominant team they are now overnight. The things to take away from them are: 1. Culture and leadership: The calm from Balme as well as Gale has filtered through their club. All with less talk, more smart decisions, get in and fix what's needed. For the Tigers it was a change in assistant coaches, a few smart trades and then backing in their recruiting and development staff. 2. Coaching: Hardwick fed off that calm environment and got back to basics. Run, tackle, uses attacking handball. Simple stuff. The game plan was based on what Hardwick believes in and what the Tigers had been doing for years which is investing in speed. We've got a bunch of solid body mids and we beat up the Hawks and Cats last year in the finals. There's no reason why we can't still believe in that as the basis of our game plan obviously with some improvements. 3. Belief: They used mindfulness to get their brains in gear but after that it's the way everything feeds back - the coaching, the admin, the care for each other then comes together. Step 1: No more robotic Simon Goodwin. He's one of the younger, fitter and more enthusiastic coaches. Come day 1 of preseason he needs to set the tone. If he trains this playing group with the right mix of high intensity, smarts and energy they'll win plenty of games.

A couple of his kicks were ok but he was let down by team mates not attacking the ball. He would've hit Cameron on the [censored] but he eased up and tried to chest mark it. I'm more worried that he's just going to struggle to crash in for the ball and jump up and tackle, chase etc at his size on the wing than I am about his disposal. Put up a very honest effort in the ruck. As long as he's a utility getting paid towards the bottom of the 22 I'm happy to have him. If we're expecting more we're going to be disappointed.

Game wasn't it? The one against Carlton. That's only one he played as the number 1. It was good but I wouldn't trust him to back it up week after week. No team chased him hard to be the number 1 because they knew he didn't have the professionalism and consistency to take that leap. He might get it in the next 12-24 months. He's not that young but is still developing. He'll stay as insurance or just maybe he might turn it on as a forward, we can only dream.

Had to work very hard to nullify Grundy but looked smarter than Reid in the ruck. Works hard to get to position but stops and watches at times. One thing he does well is quickly gets to position and talks at stoppages. Coaches are mad for that stuff

Nice spoil, turns out 194cm wingmen dropping back are handy.

With Cameron, Himmelberg and Finlayson plus Keeffe in the side to tackle Grundy I'd be very surprised if he played any time forward. And with us we've got T Mc, Melksham and Fristch who are all pretty suited to getting up the ground. If we wanted another key forward I'd go after Jenkins and plonk him in the goal square. If we move Frost on then Tomlinson could end up forward or back purely through lack of tall depth but for the price we're probably paying him I'll be pretty annoyed if he doesn't lock down a role.

Happy to have him train with the players over summer, wouldn't be keen on giving him a list spot. Even if he had a flawless of field record the injuries are astronomical. Cutting out a muscle to create room for a nerve doesn't sound like the right preparation to run 15km a game.

We swapped out Toumpas for Kennedy, at worst a nil all draw. I thought Kennedy had more than enough talent to take a chance on. Howe was replaced by Melksham to play down back, which failed but getting Melk helped to have Hibberd lined up from a long way out the next year to go in to that role. Howe just refused to believe he was a defender. It's one of Roos' greatest fails in not convincing him but unfortunately a coach can't warp minds. A few awful games as a forward for the Pies and Howe finally got the message. A great shame that he didn't get the message whilst at Melbourne. Anyway, not all that relevant to Frost, who mostly knows what he is as a player. How adventurous a new team is with his ball use probably depends on the coach and circumstances. I'm tipping it's lack of confidence in his defensive smarts and positioning that will see him undervalued by the Melbourne list managers if that's our plan more than his ball use.

He's not ready to take over as a number 1 ruck, teams know that. Hence he's not worth a second round pick. Preuss is the young developing ruck, he's just 24 and monsters the VFL rather than being 21.

Watching Blicavs lumber around hopelessly on a wing against the Tigers has me worried about Tomlinson. All the fitness in the world doesn't help you if you can't match the speed and agility.

Yeah he had 1 game as the number 1 ruck and did the job, but otherwise was ordinary. I look at Darcy Cameron being available and apparently off the Pies this year and think he would've been a smarter get. But at least we have a back up. The most important quotes were about Preuss working on his professionalism and training standards and not as a forward. If he gets fit and gets his skills up he'll be a better than handy back up who can come in for a stretch of games if Max is out.

Henderson and Jones were the only players from that list who weren't handy players before 26. There's guys who go up a level with a new side, new positions, injury luck, greater roles etc and Higgins is the best case for that but talent was never his issue. I'm not sure a guy like Frost who struggles with game sense and skills will drastically improve, he's had a consistent run of games and I assume there's not much left in his body to get better and I can't see him excelling in any other position. He could get slightly better in a few areas as he did this year and go from handy to better than handy but even if he went to the Hawks I'd be shocked if he was suddenly cured of the flaws in his game.

Racked up a lot of touches and had some excellent games but the Dogs might've played as well or better without him late in the year. Plus he's off the charts with footy IQ. Liam Baker's been doing a good job for the Tigers down back, it's not impossible but you need to be really strong in the air for that size as well as bringing a lot with the ball. Given most of these Irish guys fail I'd rather take a chance on a guy with more upside.

I don't mind signing up a number of small forwards but the Irish have been most successful at half back and it's hard to play there at 173cm.

As it currently stands according to the website our NT zone is in South West NT around Alice, whilst Darwin isn't allocated for Indigenous talent (maybe becomes Gold Coast now?). Geel, Coll, Haw, Ess also have parts of the NT. https://www.afl.com.au/news/game-development/nab-afl-rising-star-program/nga-clubacademies The NGA zones in Victoria don't match up with NAB league (formerly TAC) teams do they? St Kilda has a big bayside area all the way to Frankston kids from that area could play for Sandringham, Dandenong or Oakleigh, Collingwood have a zone that stretches along the freeways which could be Box Hill, Oakleigh, Sandringham or even Northern Knights kids. We have Dandenong to Cranbourne and then the Mornington Peninsula. We got Toby Bedford because he's from Rosebud not because of the TAC team he played for. I don't even know if there's a prominent Indigenous community in any part of our Victorian zone, possibly Rosebud and surrounding area - excuse my ignorance if I'm missing a big community. The multicultural aspect around Dandenong is probably a more likely recruiting stream.

Apparently the Dogs got 9,560 in Ballarat whilst the record attendance at Casey Fields is 10,099 for a Hawks v Bombers preseason game in 2007. A quick google shows that about 65-100 toilets would do the job for a crowd that size, I'm sure whoever does the races every year would have it sorted. Food and drink is easy. Traffic would be a nightmare but hey you only have to do it once. I think I'd whinge non stop about it when it happened but at least it would be a proper home game and something new.

Still so annoyed that he got injured. He played in the practice match against the Pies on their rock hard ground and put Dayne Beams in to next week. Then had something like 15 tackles at Casey against the Lions shifting on ball after injuries. If his foot is at least in a stable place then I think there's some chance he makes it back but the management has to be extremely conservative and smart.

Time to get serious about hosting a home and away game at Casey. Sell 12k tickets and profit all the cash rather than write a cheque for playing at Marvel.

Whitfield is a pre-agent this year. Do the Giants have the belief that they'll keep him to such an extent that they'll give up a really valuable pick (or picks) now? Are they in their window so much that it's worth the risk. Gold Coast took the pick for May. Port took the picks for Wingard. Essendon might be about to take the picks for Daniher. If you're GWS do you take pick 2 (or a combination of pick 10 and a future first) now rather than pick 12-18 next year? If there's a year to go after Whitfield then it might be right now. As for Tomlinson - sign him up if he's good value and it won't hurt our cap long term. If we are paying overs for Tomlinson then it's not a good idea regardless of future trade targets. Paying overs for limited players is bad cap management and deserves to be questioned.

In 2009 when drafted he was a fleet-footed midfielder, and it looks like the Lions have just copied and pasted from his Geelong profile when he went up there in 2015. You can make an argument in 2015 as a midfielder he probably did have a good amount of speed, but for 2019 as a forward then yeah he doesn't have good speed. He can rarely get away from a defender. I'm not saying you're racist, just my opinion about how easy stereotypes and comparisons are made when evaluating players.

Christensen was out of that line up and the team the Cats had named with Varcoe, Hunt, Smedts, Murdoch was super fast. I was saying their best 22 with Rivers, Christensen and Enright would actually be slower.

We should be rewarded for not screwing with the careers of Dangerfield, Rioli or Rance. Morton had a heap of talent and no development.