DeeSpencer

Viney has better inside stats - clearances, tackles, contested possessions. He's far better in the air as well. A lot of Treloar's possessions are give and get handballs that rack up stats but aren't all that dangerous. He is a bit quicker and smoother running with the ball than Viney and get 2 more kicks per game, but that only balances him up with Jack's inside dominance. I don't think Treloar works nearly as hard defensively nor do I think he knows how to be a balanced contributor at clearances working as a unit. Collingwood's midfield leaked like a sieve all year giving up huge games to opposition mids. There's a reason why Pendlebury won the Pies B+F this year when so many thought Treloar would. Pendlebury is a proper elite player. There's more of a gap between him and Treloar than there is - if there is - between Treloar and Viney.

The premise of this article is just wrong. If I were a statistician at Champion Data I'd be annoyed by the way the stats have been represented here. I've got no doubt Scott Pendlebury is an elite player. Treloar is close. Wells (when fit) and Sidebottom are classy players. Close had a great year in 2015. But Wells has never played with those guys so there's no way of saying that group is the best midfield. How do they factor in players 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 in the midfield mix? The Richmond example is even worse. Caddy and Prestia are good players but Martin's ability to play hero ball and have 40 touches might change with the new additions and Cotchin might improve or either he or maybe Caddy could end up marginalised and not getting as much ball. Similarly the Dees midfield group is still coming together. They may improve quickly this year, particularly with Lewis' help, or they may not. But as a group of players they are clearly better than last over the last 2 years, yet alone how they rank for the future. I don't mind the champion data player ratings even if they can overrate particular players. They rate good disposal and I think that's a fair point, disposal is vital. Where they probably fall down is they probably can't qualify the difference between a clearance and a line breaking powerful clearance, or a regulation tackle and a tackle that saves a goal. That's where Viney probably doesn't get full value. More consistent ball movement across the team and better disposal will see our midfielders rise up the rankings pretty quickly.

Yes, it's called a TUE (therepeutic use exemption). But probably isn't even needed for most common asthma drugs anyway. Just some of the asthma steroids have been used in high doses to either mask drugs or to produce some form of short term benefit, you'd have to ask the cyclists if they work.They are corticosteroids not anabolic steroids, so long term they break down muscle not build muscle anyway so asthma meds aren't something you'd take to cheat.

I think I heard some of that just as I was getting there. Sounds like our own version of the Oklahoma drill.

It's the last training for the year. They can't have it the next week! It's a shame it isn't the Saturday or even 3pm on the Friday so people could take the arvo off, but I guess they are trying to stick to their routine and get the year done before the players break for 2 weeks. Take the kids out of school in the morning and return them at lunch time?

I got there at closer to 10:30, so no surprise if I missed a few but: Missing: Lewis, Hibberd, Wagner, McDonald, T Smith, Hannan, Keilty, Flippers, Mitch King, DJ, Tyson, Jetta. Laps: Pedersen, JKH. Oliver doing sprints up the side line. Sprints and towing a sled behind them: Viney, Vanders, Trenners. These three guys look strong and fit. You barely notice the sled with the weight dragging behind Viney. The rest started in smaller drills and then were doing some full ground ball movement. Getting the ball under pressure from one end and working it all the way up to the other before swapping over. The usual standouts - Jones, Brayshaw prolific, Harmes involved with a nice fend off, Salem - so classy, Petracca's burst movement, Stretch getting out wide. Not sure what will come of it but Spencer's movement continues to impress me. He's running on top of the ground at least. Frost is such a zone defence weapon with his ability to break and intercept. Unfortunately, he's still a bit out of control when it comes to actually doing something with the ball. Right now though my choice for third tall defender isn't Frost and definitely isn't Garland. I'd be picking 44 and seeing what he can do. Ben Kennedy came back from AAMI with a band on his nose and a compression bandage on his forearm, think someone cleaned him up earlier in the session but he seemed fine.

And a 2nd round pick. It was in effect Toumpas for Kennedy straight swap. Howe for a 2nd rounder, which was then part of the Gold Coast deal to bring in the 2 first rounders and we dropped back to the 3rd round for it. We missed Howe's good games last year but not his bad and it took him getting traded to realise he's not a forward. Now we used a similar 2nd round pick this year that we got from Howe last year to bring in Hibberd who will play the same role as Howe and if Hibberd gets fit and in peak form he'll play it better.

Doesn't really bother me what he was on. If someone crashes in to my car and injures property or worse a person then I don't care if they are drunk or drugged. Both should be treated basically the same in my opinion. Yep, AFL players are young and have cash to splash. That said, plenty of uni students, apprentice tradies or factory workers at the same age have done the same thing.

Maybe he took an uber? Does it matter if he was high on drugs or alcohol. If he was intoxicated he was intoxicated, does it matter what the substance was? Either way, if he was drinking alcohol with energy drinks you can get pretty drunk without passing out or taking anything else. Crazier things have happened than someone crashes a car and taking off running just on alcohol.

I'd like to see us: Rest 5 of our best 10 in the first game ie. Gawn, Hogan, Jones, Tyson, Jetta Rest a different 5 or so of our best 10 in the 2nd game ie. McDonald, Watts, Viney, Vince, Lewis Then despite the travel I'd be keen to fly the full squad over and have a solid hit out against the Eagles. Plenty of time to recover between then and round 1.

It's not good. It's usually windy so if there's a southerly breeze that will help, but if it's a Northerly it will be very warm.

Details on club website. Seems a fair punishment. I like that it puts the onus on Clarry to go out and sort things for himself, although knowing AFL players the manager will do it for him! The most interesting bit is that they left a fair clip towards young Clarry in the penultimate paragraph.

Same kind of deal - Find the photo you want on the instagram app - which I'm sure you have installed . - Click the 3 little dots '...' in the top right of the photo which will bring down a menu list - Select 'Copy Share URL' - Open up demonland and the thread you wish to post in and then hit paste (push and hold on an iphone) and the link will come up.

- Just go to your profile - instagram.com/demonpk - click on the photo you want on here - copy and paste the link - the demonland forum does the rest, automatically embedding the photo, just wait 1 sec and the link turns in to a photo

The Adelaide media seem to be trying that. But I don't think clubs have any responsibility to turn a player in. The can't impede an investigation, that's all. Getting him a lawyer who then suggested to wait until the morning sounds fair enough to me.

Well it was reported when he won the community award. Otherwise I'm not sure what Sylvia has to do with my post. I'm not trying to be critical of the previous players. Some if not most of whom would've done great work in the community. But for years I've watched Jack Watts be nearly the only player to show any interest in the kids who run out through the banner each week or hang around after training. I just think there's more maturity in this young list and a greater engagement as a club. Is that so unreasonable given we've had 3 years of stable admin and Paul 'relationships' Roos as coach compared to the turmoil in the admin and the coach who came before?

This might be a case of bias but I think it's great to see so many players go up and introduce themselves. Gawny hoist him on his shoulders. Others listen intently to what he had to say. A few years ago I wonder if most of the players would've just done the bare minimum as part of their job. Now they seem engaged with the club. I don't think they would've had to be told to get involved, they just did it. Watching this I didn't get the same emotions that a lot of others on here and on twitter etc have seemingly felt for Andrew but I had a great sense of pride in the club and I'm sure that means he would've had an amazing day.

Unlike the Melbourne players who all were sober at Riva on Saturday night at Jack Watts' board shorts company? Come off it. Going round to a team mates house for a BBQ post training is good culture. I'm sure most players had no more than a few drinks on a Saturday afternoon/evening, pretty standard across all AFL clubs and all of Australia. That Impey had a few too many and did a bad thing seems far more reflective of him than Port Adelaide.

The pessimist in my thinks we'll now get the skills right but not have the run! But they train long hours and do some heavy running drills then add in the running sessions when needed. The rehab group certainly do a heap of running with some mixed in. I often wonder if they are fitter than the main group and some of the would be. But I guess it's an indication that high intensity constant movement footy drills are a lot more taxing than they appear. Tommy Mc, Viney, Trengove and Vanders were in a group doing heavy repeat sprints towards the end of a solid session today. All the rehab guys are frequently timed between two cones as they run up and down the far wing. I haven't quite cracked the code to see if they fitness coaches are aiming for max speed or just repeat sets at a steady pace. JKH was in to longer sprints around the bend. Wagner was seemingly pounding out the laps.

I'm excited by this development and it's in nearly every drill. Maybe you've riled him up Saty but Dom Tyson even seems to be going out of his way to use his right in drills. I think every AFL player should work very hard on their non preferred to have it at a standard that allows them to use it reliably to get out of trouble and kick to space or in front of a target. But I'm not sure you can create dual sided players out of previous one sided players within one preseason. So when game simulation or games come around I wonder if Goodwin + co will try to reign it in to prevent turnovers. I hope there's a few Goodwin's coaching under 12's, under 14's and TAC teams because that's when you can really make a difference to kicking. AFL players take years to improve steadily but it's very hard to fix the ones who come in with bad habits. The Hawks were way ahead of the pack when it came to tapping the ball on. Helped that they had Cyril and co who could read the play and tap cleverly, move like lightning + pick up the loose balls. Other teams tried it last year including us with some mixed results. I think it's a great strategy when moving the ball forward in space. I think it's a terrible idea under pressure down back!

Good to see he and business partner Matty Jones are sticking together on field as well as with the tables! Good luck to them.

I was hoping I got a reply! Maybe I just saw the wrong bit of it coming out from his shorts. And yes that sounds much dirtier than it should.

I'm not an expert on the workings of AFL contracts but: He could turn up, go through the motions at training, play at Casey and collect a full wage. Or he could turn up, take a bump in the first training session or VFL game and probably collect injury payments for the rest of the year and an injury settlement as well, we can't exactly say he doesn't have concussion now. And whether he has a case or not he could file some sort of grievance about the performance based aspect of his contract and how missing games affected that. Paying Lumumba a percentage of his yearly salary to go away sounds like the best of the bad options. A sad end but seemingly necessary. AFL players must get good protection within their contracts which is probably fair enough because once the contracts are finished the get very little.

Split in to forwards, mids, backs now. Petracca, Harmes, Ben Ken fwd. Salem, Melk, Lewis in the mids. Vince with the backs. Spencer held his own against Gawn in throw ins. Clarry went over to the physios with what looked like a sore hip flexor. Now jogging laps at various speeds. Must be something preexisting because I'm surprised given his grimacing they didn't just shut him down for the day

Tom McDonald looks like a mix between Jason McCartney in his final game and Bad Grandpa. Fakemumba 8 is a tall athletic lad. Dec Keilty is a surprise contender for worst tattoo. He also has unusual long arms. main drill split in to 4 groups for keepings off. 2 kicking. 2 handballing. Kicking, bag tackling and other skills stuff for the rehab group