DeeSpencer

Added comments for the first 12 taken. The upside guys like Bont - excellent, Lennon - fail. The highly skilled - Billings -tick, KK - fail, Salem - ok. The low risk, solid as a rock footballer types - Scharenberg - fail, Aish - meh, McDonald - meh, Sheed - good. Cripps was meant to be so one dimensional that a Carlton recruiter quit when his colleagues picked him. But his one dimension is off the charts ball winning and he does everything else well enough or at an improving rate. What is best available? What makes a superstar. I think it starts with ball winning - if you don't have the footballing and physical capabilities - size, strength, speed, fitness etc - to win the ball you won't ever be a star. But for every Cripps there's plenty of Matt Crouch's who can win as much if not more of the ball but aren't as dominant. And there's Patrick Dangerfield types who start their careers slowly and develop ball winning to go with the elite physical traits. Then again there's Nat Fyfe who's a skinny half forward flanker who becomes the comps best midfielder. From that list above Fyfe was probably most like Lennon as a draft prospect. One's a 2 time Brownlow medal winner, the other is punting for Utah.

Today's technical whinge: Steve May skills more marks than he should because he doesn't get his hands close enough together and he also doesn't allow enough cushion by way of bending his elbows. Locking your elbows makes your arms stiff and heavy, keeping them bent allows for more movement and you can pluck the ball from the air. Weid's and Tommy Mc have far better technique.

I don't think Bennell was ever getting a spot from anyone, train on and see how he goes is surely what every team was thinking. If he's right we'll offer him the spot. Similarly with Brown, if a team wanted him as a delisted free agent he would've been picked as one. If we do leave 2 open spots and have these 2 train on then I'd hope we bring in at least another 18 year old rookie type to have the summer as well. Unfortunately the chances of a long term injury are high and we need the youth coming through.

Hawks just made a trade that seems their first round pick from next year back in the game, I'd expect they now chase a pick in the teens as Port did. Not sure if they would consider trading up from 11 to 8, but I'd suspect there's going to be a lot of movement between 8-20 on draft night.

Do we have to leave 2 spots open for Bennell and Brown? We could leave 1 spot open and let the best man win.

Don't agree with that. Jackson has no goal kicking pedigree. His best use up forward would be creating contests at times but otherwise just staying out of the way by occupying a man. That's how West Coast, Brisbane etc other successful teams with 2 rucks play. On the other hand Tom McDonald put up 1.5 seasons of high quality key forward play. He had 2 excellent finals both with goal kicking and up the ground play and paired well with Weideman. He's not a dominant goal kicker like Lynch but he's capable of doing it up the ground and inside 50 and we need to find the 2nd, 3rd and even 4th goal kickers to play alongside him so that we've got options. Fritsch is one option. Weid's and Petty competing for the other. A small forward needed for the 4th. Then you work the match ups and game style and find the guy who's day it is to kick the goals. Tom's versatility is a strength not a reason to doubt him.

The wing was really a gamble with KK. He’s never played it. Given his concussion issues a back flank where he can see the game in front of him and pick and choose contests is far more sensible. Anything we get from him from here is a bonus. Ideally he finds his best footy and takes over from Hibberd. Harmes at half back worked against the Roos in round 23. It worked against the Dogs in the game Lever did his knee. It gives us an elite runner who’s strong in the air and on the ground and can attack the game. Might be a few kicking errors but decision making at half back is pretty easy which minimises errors. The Crisp or Vlastuin all around versatile defender. It also allows Petracca and others to play an attacking skilled midfield role, whilst Viney tags/restricts smaller mids and Brayshaw should get the bigger guys. If that’s not working then an easy swap is Gus to half back and Harmes tagging.

A shoulder/neck injury that pinches or stretches the nerves in the brachial plexus that results in a burst of pain down the arm but most often no long term damage.

Changed to a t shirt and stuck around to walk off with the main group. Not distressed in any way but not swinging his left arm as he walked

Main session done. Corey Wags and Preuss are doing some kick mark. Harmes running goals tracc set shots Beford, Salem and JJ are working on a quick kicking drill. The second time I’ve seen Salem and JJ doing touch skills after a session.

Forwards: Hunt, McDonald, Jones, Beford, ANB, C Wagner Backs: May, Oscar, Harmes, Salem, Hore, Hibberd, Lockhart, KK Mids; Gawn, Preuss, Dunkley, Oliver (inj), Petracca, Sparrow, Brayshaw, Jordon, Langdon

KK also with the backs but in a red non contact hat. Should buy a bunch of hats for his team mates

Harmes and Lockhart with the backs. Jones forward. Jordon mids

Didn’t want a lot of medical attention. Managed to walk off and take his jumper off without an issue but clearly isn’t right. Hopefully a stinger or minor ac sprain

Oliver’s just busted his left shoulder in a live tackling drill. you can’t fix stupid.

Not sure I entirely agree, I think we came up with a ball movement and forward plan that peaked in about 2017 or even maybe 2016 where we chopped teams up through the corridor and then got the ball deep over zone backlines. It even worked late in 2018 against some good teams and in finals. But teams started to copy the way Collingwood, West Coast and to an extent Richmond (with Rance/Grimes) would leave their backlines deep. So we were just bombing it in to out numbered situations. We didn't have outside runners so we couldn't stretch the game with width. We didn't have quick speed on the back flanks with Hibberd declining or playing deeper, Lewis etc so we weren't counter attacking as quickly as the days of Hibberd or Hunt. And our inside mids weren't fit either so we weren't exactly getting that overlap and run through the corridor that powered us at our best. I've got a fair bit of confidence that Fritsch, Melksham and T Mc can structure a decent forward line and the coaches certainly have to improve but it's not all awful. The other big factor is we were great at Docklands because we were great at training bombing it deep to numbers in good positions, then we'd fall apart at the MCG. Training at Casey was a big part to why our forward line mostly looked decent enough in the 2nd half of the season - especially given the personnel was a long way from our best.

I'd answered this above but the best thing for us is to take the best kid that we identify and let the Giants be the Giants. Our job isn't to take a slightly lesser kid just to thwart them.

Very good player Cripps. Clearance machine, best in the league. Averaged 8.4 a game last year. But at the Giants: Hopper 6.2 Taranto 5.3 Coniglio 5.1 Kelly 4.6 Greene 3.7 De Boer 3.5 Mumford 3.5 Whitfield 3.3 Compared with the Blues: Cripps 8.4 Kreuzer 5.5 Ed Curnow 4.7 Sam Walsh 3.4 Marc Murphy 3.4 There's one player on that GWS list who's old and about to retire and every other player is either in their prime or still young and improving. Hopper finally got inside midfield time and was a top 10 clearance mid in the game when given the chance, he could go up a level again if he keeps getting more centre square time. The only other older guy is Cal Ward who's coming back after missing the whole year and of course Coniglio's coming in as well. The Giants aren't thinking they really need the next Cripps. They know they are absolutely loaded with mids. They want a 2 for 1 deal but what they would really like is Jackson or Young.

If in the recruiters opinion he’s not as good as Jackson then by comparison our side is worse. We should focus on doing what’s best for us to beat 16 other teams. If we lose a knockout final to a dominant GWS team then so be it, that’s better than where we are right now.

Making your own side worse to prevent GWS - who have never won a flag - getting better. Sound strategy that one. Besides 'everything' for GWS might not be another big body midfielder, it might be a gun ruck who can compliment their already elite midfield.

Personally I still believe in a smaller, faster and better two way working forward line with guys like Melksham, Fritsch and Petracca as marking options hitting the space and then only a couple of genuine talls. Mitch Brown has never struck me as a hard enough two way worker to really demand selection as a 3rd option. But this tweet (the second one) about the game plan from the members forum has me thinking the coaches very much value more mobile marking power in the forward line. Petty might be in line for first crack, but Brown might be bought in so we have the depth required.

Anything sub 10 minutes is very good, getting down towards 9:30 is elite. If your mids can do around 10:30 and bigger guys at around 11 then that’s handy. Im surprised we haven’t followed the draft combine and most clubs in doing 2kms but really I doubt it matters much. The repeat 200m runs and repeat sprints that they do at the end of sessions are probably a better guide for how a guy might play.

Smart move to have him train on especially whilst Petty and Weideman aren't at full fitness and whilst the odds of Bennell are still heavily against Harley getting through preseason yet alone playing games. I'd invite a bunch of players to train and see who demands a list spot.

They've also given up pick 12 (received from Shiel), pick 18, a future first and will wipe out all of their remaining picks from this year and next year to do it. The academy system is a farce but any other team who traded out a player like Shiel and then combined a bunch of picks to work up the draft board would end up with 2 very high picks too.

There's 4 games of highlights on the Nab League app. He's an imposing unit with an off the charts ability to clear his hands and then fire off excellent handballs on both sides of his body. But I watched 2 full games and I didn't see him even once make a difficult 20-50m attacking kick, it was either long or rushed from a contest or short safe hit ups. Similarly I don't see him once run the ball and attack, it was all handballs. He certainly does some things exceptionally well but it's almost all at or around stoppages/contests and so in many ways the same questions that apply for Jackson apply to Green as well.