DeeSpencer

True, but if you wanted to get the most out of him as a midfielder you'd play him 70% to not over do him and have him play well before ramping it up. They're trying to get a heap of run in his legs with frequent midfield stints whilst also trying to keep the forward line potent. Difficult balancing act.

The numbers haven't made the big leap yet and he's still running out of puff after 3/4's but he's at least gone from wayward to far more predictable. There's no longer any doubt that he deserves his spot and that he'll make an impact. This summer might well be the making of him. We'll probably know by March if he's going to play another 100 games at a decent level in a difficult position at half forward or if he's going to become a mid/forward wrecking ball.

He's playing 88% game time and rotating through the midfield. I think they are doing that about as smartly as they can.

Your personal insults don’t bother me so I don’t care if you’re banned or not, do your best. That said. You haven’t actually provided an opinion on Hill’s value or anything about how he plays. 800k a season and a future first round pick that reasonable could be picks 7-12, might be higher or lower but that’s my guess, no thanks. He’ll be elite for <4 years, it’s too much for 80 games on the wing. 2 of the other top 5 wingmen right now: Ricky Henderson and Mitch Robinson. Both came free of charge. We’re like a team with no ruck going all out at maximum price. Richmond had no ruck - got Nankervis for stuff all. I support the May trade because gun key defenders are very hard to find. Meanwhile every team and every draft is full of guys who can get the job done on the wing. When the Hawks turned their list around in 2009-2012 they made one big item deal for Burgoyne. A superstar. Then they found value with Gunston, Gibson, Lake and eventually got Frawley for free. They got Tom Mitchell for a great price, that helped them. Paying overs for O’Meara and Wingard hasn’t.

31 goals in 18 games last year and 25 goals in 10 games this year with an injury lay off. Very hard to read much in to NEAFL numbers but it looks like he's finding the ball and hitting the scoreboard. If Cameron, Himmelberg and Finlayson are all sticking around then surely he'd be keen on moving.

Have you seen Karl Amon play this year? He's vastly improved. Kicks the ball better than Hill and is stronger at the contest. I didn't say Cutler was on Hill's level but he's another option to fill a need at a far cheaper price. Hill's a great player, but if you have a strong outside runner to match up with him or a disciplined game plan he's not doing a whole heap of damage. He just so happens to be off the charts at one of our biggest weaknesses but that doesn't mean he's going to be worth the asking price.

I'm not interested at the price. He's 26, is he really going to be the type of player to play consistently well after 30? Elite outside runner, best in the business. Above average but not amazing skills. Below average at the contest. 68% disposal efficiency, 5.2 contested possessions a game, 2.3 tackles. If you draft Xavier Duursma you've got 3/4's of the player already in year 1 and you've got him for 3 or 4 years at a far cheaper contract and for 10+ years if you develop him properly. Karl Amon probably gets you 80% or more of the output for the next 4 years at half the price and half the trade cost. Tom Cutler at the Lions is available for a big body and booming kick. There's got to be other options rather than paying absolute top price for a player that won't give a long term return. Either we bounce back to a good side next year or we don't with or without Hill. And yeah if we do then he might get us closer to a flag next year but if we don't make a strong bounce back then we'll be left thinking wtf did we do that for.

What about Zach Sproule at the Gaints Jay?

More of a mix of Fyfe/Dangerfield/Stringer even Jaidyn Stephenson style body and game than a Bont from what I've seen. Can drift in and out of games and doesn't have that elite accumulation and pure skills but can win it pretty much any way and can use it with real burst and upside. If he was Bont he'd go pick 1. If he convinces a recruiter the rough edges and inconsistencies can be developed he'll be pick 1.

Shoulder to shoulder I doubt there's any real difference in height. Hawkins has an underrated leap, although his real quality attribute is his power off a few steps. The fat lug was a champion high jumper. He can make ground quickly. Weideman does't have a standout attribute but he has strong versatility and if he puts it together he does a lot of things to a nice level. He can kick, he can gather it on the ground and genuinely handball with fast clean hands on both sides of his body, he can tackle, his tank/speed/agility/strength all aren't terrible, he can present up and he can absolutely leap at the ball. But he doesn't get any thing easy by way of speed, agility or fitness. Plus he drops marks he gets his hands on, misses kicks he should make and then gets injured. Start holding just a couple more marks he gets hands on and making a few more easy shots on goal and he's a useful player. Develop any of his attributes to an above average level and he'll then have some weapons to work with. I feel we've missed a great opportunity to give him some games down back though.

And Adelaide apparently had some interest in Frosty a couple of years ago before he recommitted with us. Keath for Frost, where do I sign?

Would be silly to give him a contract but I'd be fine with the club giving him the Sydney Stack treatment. He can train over summer and see how it goes. Maybe the Hardwick's can provide lodging?

We buggered up the back end of the Oliver draft. Although it was a weak draft. But Mitch King, Hulett, Josh Wagner, Viv Michie and the hope of Joel Smith. We've since add Corey Wagner from this year. Does Lockhart belong in this group as well? Close enough because we need it. We didn't get far with the next draft either. Weideman belongs to this year even though he was taken a year earlier. Hannan, Dion Johnstone ok whatever. But Filipovic (why not at least Ladhams if not Marshall FFS), Tim Smith and Keilty. I actually like the last two picks there, but if you're going to only have 2 picks in the main draft you better be adding some young talent in the rookie spots. The Lever deal isn't the problem. You can argue the value to an extent but we got a good player who should start to improve with some luck. You'd take Lever for pick 10 any day even with the bad run he's had and whilst the pick downgrade was a steep price we still ended up with a useful late 2nd rounder. Spargo, Fritsch, Petty, Baker. Ok that's more like it. One very good player and 3 options who all contribute something, develop them up. Sparrow, Jordon, Nietschke, Bedford, Chandler, Austin Bradtke. Ok good, some numbers to work with. The first 2 should play some games next year if they are developed well. Dunkley is part of this group as well, our crap form let us get an extra bite. The last 4 are speculative but we're looking for role players not stars. If we aren't bringing in 4 or 5 kids each year we're no chance of getting that internal replacement of depth with hungry young players as well as finding some diamonds in the rough. We've clogged our own list up, but it should be able to be unclogged relatively easily.

Roos implied that we could be winning more games and having a better year if we played to a defensive brand of football. There's a side that consistently sets up well behind the ball and does a lot of defensive things well - the Sydney Swans. They've won 1 more game than we have. Richmond defend well because their forward pressure and midfield work rate is excellent and that allows them to keep their backline deep and in position. We don't have the speedy hunting forwards. We don't have hard running outside mids. We haven't had Lever and May in place for most of the year. So trying to copy Richmond would end in disaster. We currently barely have a forward line at all so playing without any flair or attack would almost guarantee losses. Everyone at the club has a lot to improve on but going back to Roos style football isn't the answer. The best thing we can do in the last month is keep going with the general game style that Goodwin believes in and has worked quite a bit the last two years. That's the best way to train our players up for next year. And of course within that the focus should be on the absolute fundamentals - tackles, skills, hard two way running, 1% and team acts.

We won 4 games in year 1 of Roos: against Carlton, Adelaide, Ess and Richmond. And the last 3 there kicked awfully at goal. Ess and Richmond made finals but lost. The entire game plan was long down the line, stack the backline and hope the other team misses chances. In 2015 up until the final round we'd won 6 games: Against Bris, Rich, GC, Geel, Bulldogs. Dogs and Richmond both lost elimination finals. In round 23 that year we played a dead rubber against a Giants side at Etihad and it featured a far different game plan. Dunn was moved forward, Mitch White came in to the side and the team played with a zone defence for the first time, and won at Etihad for the first time. 2016 was Roos as head coach and figurehead whilst we implemented Goodwin's game plan. We were aggressive with the zone defensive system that all the top teams were using. We finally started getting some forward pressure. We moved the ball quickly and started scoring. We beat Hawthorn for the first time in forever. We added some nice away performances. But there were still heaps of negatives including losing to Carlton in round 22 after giving a Port team in contention for finals a nice touch up. 2016 was Goodwin's ideas with Roos' guidance. Then 2017 - more wins and 2018 - more wins again was Goodwin in charge. Yes, there's times he's overdone the attacking strategy but he's also never had a reliable backline out on the park and rarely had a fully fit midfield or hard working forwards. The midfield got younger as it got better, moving Vince, Cross and then Jones to peripheral roles for the young guys to take over. My point is there was no Roos sustainable excellent game plan implemented. Roos set about a simple plan of defending hard and having a crack. I don't even think at any stage this year we've lost our strong attack on the ball and outside the first 5 weeks there's actually been a lot of really hard running and defensive work. It certainly looks like we've lost a lot of the hard working culture that Roos preached but the fitness is bad, the motivation is low, the leadership is poor and the talent is awful right now.

There's problems in fitness, there's problems in list management, there's problems in coaching and everywhere else. The idea that we could fix it all by attempting to play with a particular brand of football ignores all the actual problems.

Brand, brand. Doesn't really mean anything. Yeah we had a brand under Roos - it was defending by flooding numbers back and keeping games low scoring on the hope we'd fluke a win. Roos did nothing about the escalating Misson problem, put it in the too hard basket. Didn't do much about developing the next wave of small forwards and outside runners, they weren't his priority. Where was the foresight that Jones, Garlett, Hibberd would all slow down at the same time and why was the focus then on adding Lewis to that mix? What about coaches, did he have the right assistants in place to support Goodwin? Brand, brand, brand. Load of junk.

Gawn, Oliver, May are in the elite groups at their positions. Tom McDonald, Lever, Salem, Petracca, Melksham are all very good but need to round out their games and that's assuming Tom bounces back and plays like he did after the bye not in the first 10 weeks. Harmes, Viney are next. That's the 10. It's a very good top 10, better than we've had in over a decade, but it's not perfect. I still think Jetta can get back to a really good player for at least a year, there were some good signs on the weekend with some good spoils and his evasive skills and ball use. Brayshaw should be in the top 10 but it's all on hope he can bounce back. Fritsch another with excellent talent. That's 13 and after that it's not pretty. Hibberd (who's dropped way off), Hore, Frost, Lockhart, Jones, Hunt - they are guys I at least trust to have a go. Unfortunately they are 14-19 on the list not 19-24. Weideman, Spargo, Hannan, ANB, the perpetually injured Vanders, KK, Joel Smith, Tim Smith. It hasn't been a good year for the fringe players and that's before we even get to the next level of depth players.

If you can’t run - speed and endurance - and can’t reliably hit targets and don’t have big men to create a contest then you can’t create any kind of game plan that works. It’s a big game of chess and our pieces stink right now. Go through the 22 on the weekend and you’ll find very few who are fit, strong and skilled. Our game plan, work rate and skills (apart from goal kicking) all looked very good against the Eagles. When the Saints got their outside running game going at their home ground, with a fresh coach who’s freed their minds we found it hard to go with them and from there everything falls apart. Panic sets in with the skills, indecision at the contest, self preservation at the contest. Watch the first 10 minutes against the Saints where we were full of confidence and trusting the plan and we looked very good. As soon as fatigue and doubt crept in the side dropped away.

Preuss beating up on a barely key position sized opponent has no bearing on AFL footy. Completely irrelevant. We need all the mobility we can get against the Tigers and that means keeping with Smith. Smith needs the game time to see if he stays on the list too. Freeman's a Casey player so he's not playing AFL for us, he has some nice traits, wouldn't mind having a good look at him over summer. Munro is the dumbest footballer I've ever seen. He has AFL pace/endurance but is pretty much a midfield version of Frost when it comes to using the ball and is probably good for 5 free kicks against a game as well. He makes ANB and Corey Wagner look like smart footballers. No thanks.

In: Hore, Melksham, May (Keilty), JKH Out: J Wagner, Lewis, Oscar, C Wagner FB: Hore May Jetta HB: Jones Frost Lever C: Harmes Oliver Baker HF: ANB Petty Petracca FF: Melksham T. Smith Fritsch Foll: Gawn Salem Viney Int: Brayshaw Hibberd JKH Hunt May and Melksham if right, but no risks taken. Otherwise it's a matter of anyone but the Wagner's.

Only saw brief patches but Hore looked good, Melksham a class above, liked a couple of things from Jordon. And I missed what might've been a rough start but Keilty looked good on what I saw down back, he has to be a better option than Oscar? Couldn't fault JKH's work rate from what I saw. Real shame that the Weid went down. Casey have a final round bye, 2 winnable games and then a huge task of beating top of the table Richmond to make finals. Not out of it but unlikely.

Goodwin has a lot of work to do but.... Roos came in, stacked the side with veteran midfielders and won 4 games and 7 games and steadied the ship with an awful game plan of flooding back and hoping to keep games tight. He got some fundamentals right - defensive work rate was good, attack on the contest was good, defensive spoiling skills were solid. Goodwin then took over and introduced an aggressive zone defence, upped the forward pressure from 0 to actually competent and created an angle changing aggressive ball movement system that challenged a lot of teams as he won 10, 12 and then 15 games. A lot of things have gone wrong this year: 1. Injuries, injuries and more injuries 2. List management failures with lack of quality outside running depth 3. Skill breakdowns - the fundamental handball yet alone kicking skills aren't there 4. Structure around the ball falling away Goodwin has a responsibility in a lot of it but the idea he's suddenly a poor coach after 1 year when he really built this team from little more than Roos' scrappy Vince/Jones/Cross resistance to a prelim final side doesn't make sense to me.

Frost is one of the least fit players in the team, he's a burst athlete who's best footy is down back, the idea he could do anything effective on a wing is crazy. Fritsch is a genuine utility. He's crafty as a forward but it takes good ball movement to find him one on ones or space to lead and his defensive work as a forward is really poor. Normally the best way to get him in space where he can win the ball in the air or link up at ground level will be wing/half back, with some rotations forward. One excellent game against the Eagles and a couple of nice goals against the Saints doesn't change that.

I think Misson did a pretty good job at the things he was meant to be good at - getting players fit and preventing avoidable injuries (especially soft tissues). Even right now Weideman has a sore calf and Joel Smith has his groin, they are the only soft tissue injuries on the list. But Misson was also the head of the whole performance program and the management of long term injuries has been awful. My biggest concern is we had the reigns to Burgess who is another sports science guy and as far as I can tell isn't a physiotherapist and clearly isn't a medical doctor. Will he sort through the injury management issues and maybe even change the culture of the coaches and players in how to far smarter with injury prevention and management? We need to get back to a healthy list to start the year, that much is obvious, but when round 1 comes along next year I hope we have selection, game plan etc all on the right page and there's no more panicked selections of underdone players and hopefully we even play smarter, safer and more controlled footy.