DeeSpencer

Overpaying for Patton who might not ever be up to regular AFL footy and at the bare minimum will always be a poor defensive player. Selling Weideman for a team that would have no interest in him - they have Reid, McCartin and Blakey and have to keep paying Buddy for a few more years. Under paying for Brad Hill who is contracted and Freo have no incentive to trade unless it's a whopping offer. Trading out Petracca for Jack Martin which in every possible way is a sideways or even backwards move. Chucking a couple of ball butchers at half back in Langdon and Hunt, where does Jones play in this creative team? At least put Langdon on the wing, move Salem up and add in Jetta or Frost to provide some defensive oomph. Not bringing in a specialist pressure small forward, relying on a first round draft pick to play half forward. One who is 178cm as well. The Langdon trade makes sense, as does the idea of bringing in a good first round draft pick who can provide some class in the forward half. The rest is pretty fanciful.

Stupid post. 1. There's no way he's still earning a fortune, and if he is that's on our list management. He wouldn't be offered a big contract for next year anyway so it's irrelevant. In fact if he has made a fortune he'll probably play on for less. 2. He epitomises everything about why we still have a football club. He stayed loyal when it would've been so easy to jump off. This year has been a down year for many but plenty are acting like we're still in the Neeld years. 3. Who's the next hopeful he's keeping out? Have a look at the Casey team and find a good player ready to play. There just isn't any. He's currently keeping out Josh Wagner - who's had a stack of chances - and Lewis. If we recruit well and get guys back to fitness then they'll get games ahead of him.

Looked to me like he played another solid game of footy on the weekend at half back, his second in a row in that role since they made a change post the bye. 23 disposals, 5 rebound 50's, only 2 clangers, 5 score involvements, 362 metres gained. As of right now he's our 2nd best distributor at half back alongside Salem and the next best on our list is???? Maybe Fritsch if we don't use him on a wing? Maybe Hibberd if we keep Hore and Jetta in the team. Or May and Lever provide more rebound so we don't need another ball user from half back. More than happy for Jones to go on next year to be set to compete for a half back spot, knowing that he can still be used in the midfield if desperately needed.

Preuss for Gawn - we got Preuss so we can afford to give Max a break when he’s not 100%. Time to do it. JKH for Hannan Lever for Petty Dunkley for ANB FB: Hibberd May Frost HB: Hore Lever Salem C; Fritsch Oliver Baker HF: Lockhart T Mc Petracca FF: Smith Weid Hunt Foll: Preuss Harmes Viney Int: Jones, JKH, Dunkley, Brayshaw Use JKH, Dunkley and Brayshaw all heavily through the midfield and forward line so we have a heap of rotations. We need fresh legs and to look at multiple guys in different positions. Same thing goes for the rucks without Gawn.

I agree and I argued that at the time. But the Shiel and Wingard deals dragged on and they eventually coughed up. Pick 10 was never going to be enough. Teams miss with top 10 selections all the time. To just hand over 10 for a very good player wasn't right. It was always going to be 10 and something. In the end it was 10 and a trade back from 19 to 35 a year earlier. That wasn't really a list altering move. Our biggest list failings right now are: 1. Failing to recruit good outside mids. I like Baker and Fritsch, but it's too much too soon for them right now. Vanders is injured. KK is injured/no good. Corey Wagner is ordinary. JKH injured and not much chop. 2. Failing to recruit good small/medium forwards: Spargo is having 2nd year blues, he's not great but might not be terrible, certainly wasn't last year. Hannan injured and recently back. JKH as above. Garlett gone. Dion Johnstone a failure. Bedford/Chandler very young. Corey Wagner see above. Hunt just ok. Joel Smith injured. ANB yuck. Lockhart promising but early days. I expect we'll make some moves to get improvement there. I don't expect huge drastic changes in the other positions.

Wingard and future 3rd for Burton (pick 19 - first rounder), pick 15, pick 35 and a future 4th. That's clearly more than the Lever deal which was picks 10 and 19 for Lever and 35. I didn't love the Lever trade and wanted less on the downgrade to pick 35 but winning plenty of games last year and making it pick 19 made it a good deal. Good recruiters - which is what you want the club to have - should be able to find similar hit rates at 19 or 35 and Lever for 10 is a steal. Lever is meant to be an elite intercept marking defender, a player just as valuable as a gun midfielder. If you think Sicily or Darcy Moore aren't as valuable as a gun midfielder then you haven't been watching many games recently. Yet alone the dream of what Lever could become if developed well - a McGovern level force that teams have to tag. Shiel and Treloar both have breakaway pace but absolutely butcher the ball. They are players a good midfield team can counter. Wingard would rather play playstation than AFL football. We are due for a rebuild: Of our fitness department and assistant coaches, not of trading out a bunch of players.

Trelaor, Shiel, Wingard. Thanks for playing.

Petracca has deficiencies but is otherwise playing steady solid footy across half forward. You’d only trade him if you didn’t think you could improve him. Weid is ok but not good. Tom is in awful form and might get worse or might get back to a 50 goal forward. Either way you couldn’t trade 1 yet alone 2 of them without a mature replacement. Gawn, Oliver, May, Viney, Harmes, Salem, Lever, Jetta, Melksham are all in their prime, you can’t just turf the side around the for kids. Petracca, Brayshaw, McDonald are good enough to contribute to a good side. Not to mention Hibberd, Frost, Fritsch, Lockhart and several others who I think could easily play in a genuine top 4 side. I’d rather take a leave out of Colligwood, Richmond and Geelong than doing a Port and trading out for kids and never having enough prime age talent

Cheers. I think one thing we have to do is keep draft picks where possible and brave the free agency waters. Free agency finds - including delisted pick ups - are the best way to improve the list. A trade improves the list but comes at a cost. It's time we find a at least one if not more who can make us better. The good news is we've got plenty of positions - half back, wing, half forward, crumbing forward - where our baseline level of talent is so low that it really can't be hard to find a better option. Operation find a better version of the Wagner's and ANB should be the aim.

Geelong traded out (pretty much delisted) Menzel. Bought in: Rohan - cheap trade Dahlhaus - free agent Fist round draft pick Jordan Clark VFL player upgrade - Tom Atkins Previour pick - Gryan Miers Ablett forward And had a whole new forward line. We can make maybe 1 subtraction, 3 or 4 additions to beef up the forward line, get some training time and quality together in the midfield get the backline healthy and things can change very quickly.

We aren't getting more than a packet of chips for Oscar McDonald or Hunt so forget them. At best late 3rd round picks that they'd fetch probably aren't more valuable than keeping them or delisting them or whatever the plan is. Trading Weids for what? To draft another young key forward who might take 4 years to become better than Weids. How does that help? Trading Tommy Mc I can get around but who are we getting in? If we've got a 50 goal a year key forward we can swap Tom for then fine go for it. Trading Trac, to get in what? Cam Rayner who's just Trac but younger? Trac's played perfectly decent footy the last month or so. Unless you think he'll never buckle down and go to the next level you're pretty much giving up a good player on the hope of a better player. Trade out the one guy who has the ability to be a great half forward flanker only to draft a lesser half forward flanker? Brayshaw is the one I agree with because his value is hopefully high and we can cover him.

Lol massive clean out. Where are these amazing depth players who would be helping us? Hogan went out for May in. Kent went ok at the Saints but is now injured. Tyson - couldn't get a game at North. Bugg - delisted himself from Carlton. Filipovic? Johnstone? King? McKenna? Pedersen? I agree we don't need to make massive list changes this year but the idea that our delistings last year had anything to do with our win loss this year was wrong. Our depth is poor because our depth players - Tim Smith, Keilty, JKH, Stretch, Wagner * 2, Maynard - have either copped a lot of injuries or just aren't very good. We'll keep some, move others on but it won't be a big factor.

Jetta will be that player. Might take him a while to be trained to stay down and trust his team mates but when you have Steven May next to you it's a lot easier to learn that. The whole backline is a mess right now because they are changing roles and uncertain of each other. If we can get at least 4 of Jetta, Lever, May, Frost and Hibberd settled for more than a few weeks things will improve.

May thinking Frost did something dumb, Frost thinking May doesn't know what he's talking about seemed the gist. Nathan Jones casually drinking a gallon of water whilst they went at it. Like last weeks pissweak leadership wasn't bad enough.

Brisbane did a great job of dragging Petty deep by taking Frost, Hore and others to the contest. The Cameron one was definitely a swap over. It's the 2nd week in a row that the match up Petty was bought in to play on disappeared by half time. Last week he was set for Cox but Hogan went down, this week big Oscar went off. Instead of an inexperienced tall he's stuck either tracking a dangerous tall or a quick small. With Max injured having to play forward and lack of flexibility from the tall forwards it meant he had to stay on a mismatch. I'm disappointed he hasn't played better but it's crazy to be critical of Goodwin playing him when we needed the tall and there isn't any other options.

Our list isn't dreadful it's just lacking a little quality around the edges. Just 1 good small forward and a hard runner on the wing would make a huge difference. Goodwin was the same coached who improved us 3 years in a row but nice story about him being another Neeld.

Oliver has wonderful loose ball winning in space and can make things happen. Harmes has a great running game. Brayshaw can really accumulate the ball around the ground and can be creative around the ground, aside from sloppy kicking his biggest problem right now is he's slow defensively at the contest. I'm not against trading. In fact I'd strongly consider it. But I'm also a big believer that these guys can all take a huge leap forward with a preseason. I'd love to get Salem in to the midfield and I'd like to get Petracca rotating through more often but we need more quality forward and back before we move them. Our wings often don't offer a lot at the contest which is part of the problem and are inexperienced around stoppages. Fritsch and Baker spent most of last week running their backsides off chasing Langdon and Hill. Not surprise at all that on the road they struggle to play well against a strong Brisbane midfield. Our mids got a nice touch up today but after a terrible start with spreading and a whole year of lazy inside 50 ball more often than not they are still doing the job at the contest most weeks. Suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater in the midfield isn't a good idea.

As long as we use the ball with more spread he’ll help by opening up a truckload of space. A lot of our inside 50 problems come because we attack so directly the defenders are always in good positions. We’re running head on in to a wall. A simple switch at half back or through half forward then opens up so much more space for our forwards. I really like the combination of Langdon, Fritsch and Baker as a wing/half forward rotation. Endurance, class, pace. We finally got Baker and Fritsch on the wing against Freo and started to move the ball. And that was using Hunt as the 3rd option, mainly to try to sit on Hill. Having Langdon to sit on Hill would let the other two attack. I’ll take some poor ball use from Langdon if it means we finally have a wingman with the right speed, endurance and good stoppage craft.

His last month has added a lot of composure with the ball in to his footy. Smart with the ball Run hard to space Smart and run in the defensive game That's all I want to see from Petracca. I don't care if he goes over or around opponents when it's ball winning time, the guy has no issue with getting down and winning the footy.

We pushed him way too hard on the fateful day at Casey. Moved on to the ball after injuries and had a stack of tackles and collisions. He's exactly the type of player you work in to a season slowly rather than thrust in to a heated preseason game with limited rotations. Average skills but his contested game and pace are excellent on the wing, at half forward or in spurts on the ball. He had a really nasty heel injury that required multiple surgeries and was always going to be vulnerable. When he injured it again the advice was take it really slow with recovery even though the damage doesn't seem all that bad. The last time he was mentioned in a Misson update had him running twice a week which is steady yet clearly very slow progress. There's still months to go until any list decisions have to be made but I expect unless there's some kind of out in his contract that they'll give him next year to see if he comes good.

Context is key: 1. The forward line has been a joke all season. On the weekend against a pretty decent Freo side they kicked 13 goals, scored 85 and won the game. The forward line function was certainly improved. 2. The forward line featured 3 talls who haven't had a heap of footy together to learn how to function as a unit. I won't look up the exact number but McDonald, Smith and Weideman can't have played more than 10 games together, most likely under 5. Between the 3 tall forwards they had: 7 goals 5 behinds 44 disposals 15 marks Goodwin was explaining very clearly that the forwards worked well for each other and McDonald and Smith got on the end of the goals whilst Weideman played a very good game for 6 disposals. I'm sure the aim will be for Weideman to hold a few more marks and play an even better game for 10, 15 or even 20 disposals, but the most important thing for the side right now is to have guys working for each other and doing the team things. Having watched the replay Sam dropped a mark going back with the flight early that he did all the hard work for and he would've loved to hold one or two more where he got hands on inside 50 but Hamling - one of the best closing speed full backs in the game - got a fist on. But I severely doubt the coach was commenting as a way to pump Weids up. He was being honest and correct in saying it was a really good 6 disposal game as part of a discussion on what the players did well to turn around a bad forward set up.

Some players will get crunched in big hits and have a run of concussions due to bad luck but I doubt that's the case here. Did anyone ever see the incident that led to his first lay off this year? Players who have a propensity for getting concussions or concussion like symptoms from innocuous contact - like Paddy McCartin - are still very unlucky but it's because something mentally or physically is going wrong that puts them in danger or turns minimum contact in to something serious. Still bad luck and not their fault but it's a sign of something more at play that makes them far less resilient than their team mates. Our medical staff decided KK's concussion symptoms at the Gold Coast were all due to some neck problem that was meant to be fixed. Now it looks like he'll have managed 2 AFL games and not many more VFL games for the year. I'm highly skeptical.

Wouldn't be a bad idea of new Burgo caught up with some or all of Vanders, J Smith, Walker and Fred to have a chat with them and see if they are still alive. Surely that would be nice content for fans and might even be good for them as well.

So the actual list is: Chandler - test Hibberd - test --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lever 1-2 Jetta 2-3 Stretch 2-3-season Keilty - 3-4 Sparrow 4-6 Melksham 4-6 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KK - season (seriously) Vanders - season (let's be honest) Garlett - career J. Smith - season Walker - season Neitschke - season

Well the new injury update format is very fancy and impractical. Great to add a few more mystery injuries to the book. There's clearly a mental or physically resilience problem with KK. 3 year deal was it? That's a lot for a player who looks fine on the training track but battles to get through VFL games.