DeeSpencer

Not amazing. But who would you rather. I might've kept Grimes in and left Lumumba on a wing but it's much of a muchness .

He might be your cousin or whatever but you're clearly letting your bias see passed his limitations. He's slow, doesn't run, doesn't use the ball well and played a whole game without laying a tackle which is inexcusable for his role. If he wants to stay in the team tell him to get his intensity up. The likes of Brayshaw and vandenBerg show the way. Viv's got a lot of talent but besides from slogging it out in the rain he's just never looked quick or desperate enough.

Spencer needs a few chances. He's 25 and could give us 5 or so years service as a decent back up ruck option if he's up for it. Or he could be delisted and we can start again with more talented rucks. The sooner we find out the better. Our biggest weakness is a complete lack of outside speed and skill. Yes we lost the clearances (particularly the centre stoppages) against Freo but the likes of Michie and McKenzie weren't ever going to be responsible for that. Stacking the team with grunt types doesn't help. Grimes is stiff. But Lumumba provides a better option at half back and all of that means there's room for running players and hence Stretch and Toumpas come in. To sum it up: We are a developing side, that's not an excuse for performance, but we need to get young talented players in to develop now!

There's only about 20 players in the league who have all those tools. I think we should focus on an outside runner like Gaff. Toumpas isn't working out. Watts just isn't going to make it against the best. Grimes could do with a fresh start. Package them all up for whatever returns we can get and see if we can get someone to fill the role that we really need. He's much maligned but Danyle Pearce has been great for Freo because he gives them outside run. we can't keep playing slow grinders in the spots where you need speed!

He often runs out of puff in the second half. Or some strange phenomenon where the game opens up and he stops finding space The alternative is the bombers put someone on him to shut him down. The biggest concern is he can have 15 to half time and not made any significant impact on the game with them.

Best corner in the draft. But it worries me when a player gets kicked off a college team. Especially such a good player who knows he has a lot at stake. And he had an experienced quality coach. Boom or bust I guess

They have Clarke. The issue isn't Spencer in the ruck. I'd love to see 2 rucks. They can then both play a really physical game and run and spread giving us a marking option around the ground. The issue is that one or both of Jamar or Spencer would have to play multiple minutes forward and neither of them offer much attacking or defending up forward.

I find this strange. Maybe they will give Dawes and Pedersen some training privately. Or we are actually planning to play Spencer and Jamar in the same side (yikes).

I got sick of seeing over the last few years the team packed with so many limited players that the chances of them all having 'good' days skill wise and therefore forming good patches of ball movement were very low. But I certainly agree. Effort is the main thing to give you a chance and McKenzie always brings that. A few nicely skilled players can cover up for one poorly skilled player if they all give effort. 1 player giving poor effort is much harder to cover. McKenzie might actually have a role to play if we were to tag Hill as well as Fyfe. That's a defensive tactic, but they are such good players it wouldn't shock me. That said I'm not sure where that would leave Crossy. Can he still be an effective player hunting the footy? And if not, if there's not an obvious match up for him to negate on the wing then should he still be in the side? He's done great jobs on Ellis and Brodie Smith these last two weeks, but Hill is a few steps quicker than those guys.

Going to need more info. Personally I still think we need run and speed. Whilst Barry really struggled to impact AFL games (and even VFL games) he had a combination of speed and endurance that isn't easily found with a seemingly solid left foot as well. Still a long way left to go in this season but if we can hold similar form to the start of this year then using some late list spots on speedy types would be smart targeted recruiting. Certainly not worth more than a late rookie pick and he'd do well to get himself back to Victoria and in the VFL with no more talk about finding his community/identity (I'm not trying to devalue that as an idea but you can't be an AFL player based out of a remote NT community).

Both he and Jamar are liabilities forward and are still likely to lose the ruck. Better off with Pedersen to hopefully provide something forward and around the ground and give Jamar a bit of rest or no 2nd ruck at all and wear the loss at the clearances knowing we aren't going to win them anyway. If I thought Spencer could actually nullify Sandilands I'd be all for the strategy but I doubt it.

I'm leaning towards bringing in Pedersen and probably going with JKH or Newton as sub. Otherwise Riley comes in and starts as sub. If Pedersen comes in then as well as keeping Dawes in his up the ground lead up role I'd also bring Hogan up the ground much more and see if he can get involved in general play more. Could be something different for him. Might drag Johnson and McPharlin out of the play a bit as well and maybe isolate Ibbotson deep on Pedersen.

1. TB - Winston (QB) 2. Tenn. Trade to the Eagles for pick 19 (acquired from Cleveland for Bradford), pick 20, Eagles 1st Rd 2016. Eagles pick Mariota (QB) 3. Jack - Dante Fowler (DE) 4. Oak - Leonard Williams (DT) 5. Wash - Vic Beasley (OLB) 6. Jets - Amari Cooper (WR) 7. Chic - Trae Waynes (CB) 8. Atl - Bud Dupree (OLB) 9. Giants - Brandon Scherff (OG) 10 St L - Kevin White (WR)

He was really good on Friday night. Just mixed in the usual bad moments. I'm all for dropping him and getting him to be the man at Casey and shoulder a big work load. Play as a traditional CHF and take some big aerial contest. I think his game has always suffered from never having that chance. As soon as he played good VFL he was in to the team and not dropped since. I don't buy much in to players feelings. If they aren't tough enough to deal with it then I don't think baby-ing them along will ever help. That said. This isn't the right week to drop him. There will be a number of forced changes and as I said he played well on Friday night. Dropping Watts now would be like dropping Jamar for not getting 15 touches or dropping Cross for a few poor kicks. It would be throwing out a lot of good just for one bad trait.

After you take away 715 days of intense pressure - in the coaches box and in the media room is it really that stressful? If you don't read the papers or turn on talkback radio I think the day to day stress of life as an AFL coach is overblown. Footy training is footy training, you get outside, direct blokes where to go and encourage them. The meetings drag on I'm sure but they are breaking down games of footy. Delistings at the end of a year would certainly be stressful but coaches aren't the only people who have to routinely hire and fire. Particularly the last 10-20 years, since about the start of and the probably the end of the Daniher era we've seen an explosion in recruiting, development coaching, sports science, leadership (pseudo)science, TV and technology to review games. But before that when Mick was at Footscray, Richmond and probably even the formative Collingwood years I reckon footy coaching would've been a pretty good gig. Although the pay was nothing back the compared to now so it evens out. Personally I'd love to be an AFL coach, but I'd take the Paul Roos advice/method if I could. Serve a long and varied apprenticeship then put a limit on how long I'd do it for. Pretty much as long as you aren't terrible you then get either decent media opportunities or a job at another AFL club with usually much less pressure.

Never knew Stevens' misses was paying for it.

Nothing says AFL star of the future like winning the Gibbs-Lines medal. But in reality: Established members of our inside midfield brigade - Jones, Tyson and Viney Flexible options - Vince (could be moved to wing/half back/half forward in the future), Salem Likely future members - vandenBerg, Bayshaw and Petracca Possibles - Neal-Bullen, Harmes Still sorting - Newton, Michie, Riley, McKenzie Woodward would (excuse the tongue twister) be a strong addition to the list as at minimum a good depth player, but in terms of inside mids I think we should work with what we have. I presume Hawthorn or another club would still have interest in his services and therefore we'd have to pay up either a draft pick or salary for him if not both. I'd rather use resources on talls (rucks or either end) and some more outside run and skill.

Tank and speed. If he's playing on the wing I think he needs good rest so when he comes on he has as much burst speed as he can gather. I'm not fully convinced his athleticism and traits are ideally suited to modern AFL. I mean to be play half forward or half back it's better if you have either pace or height to take more marks and make spoils. Inside midfielders these days are a usually bit bigger and stronger than him, outside players faster. He is young enough to work on all of that. But I think he does a nice job as a versatile depth player and that should be the main aim. Right now we have a distinct lack of outside run. He has nice skills and solid decision making so he plays on a wing. If we get another starting quality wingman at some stage then I think he can mix it up and play more half forward, wing, into the the middle, half back. If he keeps plugging away for nearly 20 touches a game then hopefully he has a break out game soon and maybe that will spur him on. He's played so few AFL games that he's probably still focussing really hard on his role, particularly if the wing isn't his most natural position.

Except for that F up in the middle of the ground between him and Newton. That was old Melbourne! And got the blood pressure climbing. But probably just a case of 2 players who have never played with each other before.

It's his running between contests that bothers me more than flat out pace, same with Riley. Neither seem to break the lines that much either although Viv was very good at getting on to his right foot and getting a kick in when required on Friday night.

I can live with Griffiths get a holding free against Howe even though he initiated contact because Howe did reach around him and hold him a little. I can live with high contacts being paid to one side more than others because the umps can't see them all. I can live with seemingly a run of free kicks for off the ball stuff going one way, sometimes that happens. But the Garland one was a shocker and the JKH one was worse. So I'm glad they've admitted those 2. The umpire/s who paid those would be feeling very silly come their review. No comment on no 50m penalty for Dunny? I guess Dunny exaggerated the contact but that was as blatant a late push way over the mark that you'll ever see!

An example please. Any racial slurs to an umpire could easily see you kicked out. Not sure what you mean so much by sexual slurs or innuendos.

Except at least one of those guys roles will be to get 25 touches, uses them well and win a bunch of clearances against Fyfe, Mundy and co. If we play all of those guys in the same side we might have to work out how to leave the sprinklers on for a few hours before the start of the game.

If it's loud enough to hear then you have the right to ask security to request that person to be removed because you shouldn't have to hear other peoples thoughts if they cross the line. If the person is famous then they can be publicly shamed. The issue here is that we have a he said, she said situation and it sounds like Steven Price is the witness in defence of Burns and probably the person reporting the incident has someone on their side as well.

You say that like 3AW breakfast radio is a step up.