DeeSpencer

Nice post not so filled with hate even if others disagree. I think Lyon knows what he's doing. The De Boers, Clancee Pearce, Crozier a few others that Sylvia is keeping with are all reasonable players. But none of them can kick goals on the run from 60 like Syliva, or burst through traffic or take strong marks over packs. They don't need Sylvia to win games in the first half of the year, they just need him either in the 22 or putting serious heat on the 22 so others lift. That he starts in the WAFL is probably good as he can learn the defensive systems whilst still get touches. It's very hard to learn Lyon's system under pressure and I think we've seen young players and even his teams when he first gets there struggle. Best result is Sylvia is like a Mitch Morton at Sydney. Hardly sighted most of the time but then comes from the clouds and stars on grand final day, that wouldn't bother me too much. If he has one of his rare 30 touches and 3 goals games against us I'll be mad as hell!

See the Colin Sylvia thread. Concussed at training. Failed the cognitive tests through the week according to Ross Lyon. Insert your joke here.....

He's in the squad. May not even play. He's also done more consistent training than Salem and hasn't had health issues. If he does play I'd imagine he'd be a sub. The real one who's been thrown in as a young guy is King but that's mainly because so many of the rucks and forwards aren't fit.

Ah actually especially in the past a lot of players saw Jones as a bit selfish and only friendly with a small portion of the list. They had more respect for Grimes who was more friendly and outgoing with more of the list. Of course respect is vital for a coach. You can still get that and be a hard tough nosed disciplinarian, there are plenty of successful coaches or leaders in sport or life who are like that. And I'm sure there will be times we see the grumpy and angry Roos deliver a spray to the players. I think the main issue is trust. Everything Roos has done so far is about building the players trust. In the game plan, in their team mates, in him and in themselves.

The opposition isn't my concern. Geelong are pretty young these days and the Hawks cut you apart more than they crunch you. It's a little the length of the season but mainly the priorities for a young player. Roos wants Salem to learn how to be an AFL player before he is an AFL player. It's a pretty simple philosophy of learning to walk before you can run.

Maybe because as Roos has stately continuously he's not a fan of throwing the first year guys in. Salem doesn't have AFL level endurance or strength. He's had a set back in preseason with a thyroid condition. He's only done part of sessions in training. And he's only played parts of two pretty modest intraclubs. He sure impressed in the first but then in the second just did well nothing too exceptional. Time to adapt to the Roos way of thinking. It's likely for the hawks game that we decrease the squad from the current 26 per game back to something like 22. I highly doubt we will see Salem.

AFL football moves so fast (and I mean the speed of a game and the speed at which tactics change) that I'm hardly surprised that commentators can't keep up in games. At least if they provide simple stats in clearances, inside 50s, kick/handball ratio, disposal efficiency and tackles you can start to decipher what's happening yourself. But what really surprises me is in the pre/post game analysis as well as in the footy shows that so called AFL experts still can't succinctly provide much of benefit. David King kind of tries but I sense he fails a lot. The invention of fox footy's 3 keys to winning a game (I think disposals, efficiency and clearances or whatever it was) was at least trying something.

No Clark, Dawes, Gawn or Jamar suggests we at least have a decent list of players not ready for this game. Not sure if it's 3 very's worth.

But they don't do it for the broadcast deal. We only get a small amount of compensation for our bad commercial fixture. Which in any one year would be fine but after consecutive years of bad fixtures it will never catch up. Right now Port and North are the best of the poorer clubs whilst St Kilda, WB and us are down the bottom. That alone should tell you something is wrong. But I bet you Port and North don't get any great rewards with fixturing this year. When the saints were good they got a few Friday nights and a lot of Saturday nights but they hardly went close to what Collingwood or Essendon got who were lesser sides.

Well what you do if you discount the price of the broadcast deal! If 7 get 25% less big games then you charge them 25% less. You then cut the cost of the AFL CEO's wage and the rest of the executive. Cut the costs clubs are spending on salary caps and cut the costs of football departments and over the top spending on all sorts of coaches and training programs. Maybe then you might have to dial back the way games are played without all this additional coaching and fitness and we might get 90's footy back. At the moment Demetriou and the commission keep pushing us in to bigger is better in terms of broadcast deals and dollars in the game. I don't agree with that. Yes we need a big broadcast deal but the game should be judged by the strength of the competition between teams and by attendance at all games not just big block buster games. At the moment the natural order of things just promotes the bigger clubs. Which in turn makes them even bigger which in turn gives them more of the blockbuster games. It's a vicious cycle. For Melbourne to win games we will have to dip in to debt to spend enough to match the bigger clubs and only then can we get profits to pay off the debts. It's the entire reason why we tanked and tried new coaches and things like that.

Bleasy, Byrnesy, Maxy, Matty, Kenty, Georgy, Wattsy. Classic Roosy. By the way he's mentioned 3 times in the first 20 seconds I do get the feeling Blease is a massive pet project of Roos. If he can fix Blease he can coach just about anyone.

I think it was just a point not to throw stones at Coll and Ess when we get QBday. I try to stay out of the ANZAC debate for that reason.

But that punishes teams who work to increase their crowd and also means teams who get poor support just coast through. I'm fine with Melbourne having to draw decent crowds to be able to spend big but there has to be some control in the system that makes the gap stop getting wider. I'd love a juicy pokies tax if it hurt Collingwood and Carlton but it would probably hurt us as well.

Ok. - Friday nights are the big games for TV let's leave them as a slot for high rating and big matches. However the top 8 from the previous year guaranteed to host 1 game per year and all clubs host 1 game at least every second year. Any team that hosts a second Friday night game per year splits the gate money with the AFL and then gets it distributed to the clubs who miss out on a game that year. - Saturday nights all divided equally - Free to air v Foxtel games divided equally

If they were fully fit they would be playing this game and then the one against the Hawks with the week off leading in to round 1. It makes no sense to rest Viney and Dawes if they were right to go. Yes there is travel involved but it's not impossible and the benefits of them playing with their team mates in 2 consecutive games are worth any travel risks. I agree that they can still get up for round 1 but they'll need to be ready by next week. With Dawes' soft tissue history last year would you only give him 1 week off with calf tightness?

No what I mean is you get 6 on the bench AND 2 subs.

You get 6 on the bench for these Nab Challenge games so pick 2 more Emerg's to play. I suspect in Alice that Barry will be one of them. Who knows with the rest, maybe Byrnes given there's no JKH as a small forward. I do hope Hunt plays. I like the idea of giving a kid a chance in a game that doesn't matter just to make him feel comfortable with team mates and know that he can do something at AFL level. For example I'm sure young Max King is really fired up for the VFL games now that he knows that he can get some touches against AFL players.

I think resting Kennedy Harris isn't a bad thing and he's still in line for round 1 if he can play well against the Hawks. Disappointed there's no Viney, Dawes and Gawn. I wouldn't fully rule them out of round 1 but they aren't looking great at the moment. Gawn and Viney you probably say ok we go with Fitzy and other mids, but really hope Dawes is back otherwise we are looking at Pedersen round 1! Dean Kent is the other one I'm surprised has got a chance. He showed plenty in the intraclub and has been training for a while. He's a big favourite of mine so I hope he gets in the team soon.

This is how I'd represent the squad in team view: FB: Dunn Frawley Georgiou HB: Grimes McDonald Terlich C: Watts N. Jones Vince HF: Toumpas Pedersen Trengove FF: Blease Hogan Howe Foll: Spencer Tyson Cross Int: Michie, Matt Jones, Bail, McKenzie, Fitzpatrick Plus take your pick of 3 from: Barry, Hunt, Clisby, Jetta, Nicholson, Byrnes

I just don't see how any amount of money can make up for the lack of exposure created by the fixture. I see PJ doesn't mind the unbalanced fixture as long as we are compensated. I don't agree with that. I say fix the root cause of the inequity and go from there.

Besides Hannath, Tanner Smith and Matt Taberner who are young key position players vital for Freo's depth given the age of some of their big men I'd say that pretty much every player on that list is better than Sylvia. Sylvia will be competing with Clancee Pearce, Sutcliff, Crozier, Sheridan, De Boer and Danyle Pearce for a spot in Freo's best 22. De Boer and Clancee are classic Ross Lyon defensive based players. Danyle Pearce was last seasons FA signing. Sutcliff, Crozier and Sheridan are young players with talent on the rise. Skinny types but with speed and skill. Sylvia has a lot of competition.

Yep. I agree with Roos' philosophy when applied to first year players. Especially if the team has been as bad as we have been of late. I think for young JKH and Salem we put up plenty of hurdles and make them clear them all so we really know they are ready. But Toumpas, Kent, Viney as second year boys and Hogan as a guy with the club for a year and dominated VFL well there's no reason to hold them back in practice matches. If they are fit then we know they have talent lets get them out there. By the way. John Butcher. I know Trengove hasn't set the world on fire but I'm glad we didn't draft Butcher and Scully. Yuck.

Not Jack Viney. He served it up to Freo last year when we were getting monstered by 100 points. That kid doesn't need VFL. What he does need is protecting his body by plenty of time forward or on a wing and maybe still a week off or some part in the subs (on or off) at some stage. Toumpas might need VFL it's just a matter of how well he's tracking in the AFL. He looks set to play high half forward a lot under Roos probably with only brief stints in the midfield. If he's playing well enough and improving I don't see any need for him to go back to Casey. But at the same time if Kent, Blease and Salem are dominating Casey and can play the same role in the team it might be best to share the games.

I don't think it's done for any tactical benefit, I think it's done just out of respect for the injured player and for the professionals treating him. All we know so far is Dawes had some ice on a calf after the practice match. It could be that he tore the calf, or a small strain or no strain at all just tightness. Likely that means getting a scan which takes time, then if there isn't a tear seeing if it settles and so on I'm not a physio I don't know. Once the club get a proper diagnosis and understand how long things will take to get better they have been reasonable publicly stating the injury and time frame. Things went a bit quiet on Clark with his hammy I'll give you that much but at the moment he truly is indefinite. If Dawes doesn't play Friday then I would expect a public statement at some stage detailing something with the prognosis of the injury. I'm not sure we need NFL style injury updates after every training with players listed as doubtful, questionable or probably at all times. Especially in preseason at least.

There's certainly a few more NGE's on our list than most but that doesn't concern me too much because we should keep the numbers down to a minimum in the team each week. I think it will be the top end of our list where we still have problems. - We don't have one of the superstar top 15 mids of the comp as I think Jones' best is still below the best level of a real star. - We don't have a reliable gun big forward (although we could have 3 if Clark, Dawes and Hogan get it together). - We don't have a dangerous small forward (we're all pumping up JKH but he's not going to be Betts/Garlett/Walters/Wingard/Motlop/Bruest in his first year) - We don't have the complete AA level half back flanker (although we aren't alone there) - We are yet to develop a consistent deep level of talent across the midfield. We need the 4 we brought in (Vince, Cross, Tyson, Michie) plus rejuvenated Trengove and Watts plus time in Salem, Viney and Toumpas plus continued improvement in Matt Jones, Evans and McKenzie on top of Nath Jones that only makes 13 mids. Considering you need at least 10 playing each week we really don't have a lot of room for guys to be under performing. A lot of those can be fixed over time with good development we have the pieces on paper. But I don't see any coach coming in with the list we've assembled (which definitely is a lot more ready in the midfield) could produce a Port like season.