DeeSpencer

And a converted defender in Pedersen and an 18 year old rookie from NSW in King. So yes not a lot to scare the opposition there but help is on it's way by next week.

I'd go with FB: Dunn Frawley Strauss HB: Grimes McDonald Terlich C: Vince Jones Watts HF: Toumpas Pedersen Trengove FF: Blease Howe JKH Foll: Spencer Cross Tyson Int: King, Michie, Georgiou, M. Jones, Clisby, McKenzie Subs/Emer: Nicholson, Byrnes, Barry, Evans, Bail Backline (Garland), Midfield (Viney) and small forwards (maybe Kent and Salem pushing for a spot) aren't far off full strength so I'd like to see some competitive signs there. Pressure for a round one spot should pretty much be on from now. Tall forwards and rucks will have to do the best they can so good luck to them.

We've had a thread on this before but I'm all for it but it might be better off as a voluntary thing because if you aren't in to it you are wasting your time. A little shocked that Misson requested it thought, I'm not convinced I believe in that. And Dylan and Tyler are such average names, but I suppose with kids names these days it could be worse. No concerns about Tyler helping out with trainings as mainly a ball boy really. It's good experience for him and he seems a smart kid and isn't a distraction.

And then he doesn't take a mark, doesn't hit a target by foot and gets beaten repeatedly in ruck contests including getting pushed off the ball or horribly mistiming his leap. I like Spencer's attitude and he took a positive step in late 2013, but in reality he moved from complete waste to nearly serviceable. He still had improvement left to get to league average. I'd say this year though he's probably finally got the mix of muscle and endurance right to physically compete so I'm keen to see improvement. Taking on some big boys from Richmond as pretty much a lone hand will be a good start.

Lets combine the 2. Jake Spencer's unique brand of pace, inco-ordination and height could be just the guy to get your grandsons interest

Often because (and we've all done it) training reports can be loaded with a persons crude assessment of a player instead of just descriptions of what they are seeing. From then on debate starts and its ok for a while but does get out of hand. As of Friday we will at least get games and stats to analyse instead of random observations.

Mine neither. And he plays forward this game and hopefully by the second NAB challenge we have Dawes and Hogan back and then we can decide whether to try Pedersen in the back up ruck job if neither Fitzy, Gawn or Jamar have come up by that time (although I presume at least 1 will). There will be a lot of shuffling of the tall forwards and rucks until at least the early rounds of the season is my prediction. But that can be a good thing, competition should develop pretty quickly.

Say red and blue print 10 times quick enough and it sounds like Roos-print. It will be nice to see a team playing together in a simple and unified plan. But winning would be nice as well.

My guess now we know that those who haven't had a full load of main group training are likely ruled out: FB: Strauss Frawley Dunn HB: Grimes McDonald Terlich C: Vince Jones Watts HF: Toumpas Pedersen Trengove FF: JKH Howe Blease Foll: Spencer Tyson Cross Int: King, Michie, McKenzie, M Jones, Clisby, Salem Plus for subs/emergencies take your pick of Evans, Kent, Georgiou, Bail, Byrnes, Barry and a few others Ok we might be down on tall forwards and rucks but what a great opportunity to play a whole bunch of skilled and speedy midfielders and practice running super hard both ways, moving the ball quickly but safely and getting the right defensive structures.

I think the difference is Watts needs every minute he can get in the midfield learning that area of the ground. Presumably Spencer rucks about 75% of the game and spends the rest of the time on the bench. That means King does 25% ruck but can also play out of the goal square for a chunk of the game maybe 30 or 40%. The rest of time Pedersen and Howe can carry the load as the key forwards. If part of Watts' rotation is to half forward to then get up the ground and back then that's fine but mainly he needs the midfield experience. I would almost consider pitting him against a Tiger midfielder like a Shaun Grigg on a wing and not tag but use the opportunity for a bit of a head to head battle at least so his defensive requirements are highlighted to him.

Except Blitcavs won Geelong's time trial where as when King was running a repeat 400m earlier he ended in preseason up on the ground in a pile of spew! But I agree on the sentiment, he's got an opportunity to show what he can do. He looks a nice moving and well skilled big man. If he can dig in and compete physically then it's a great opportunity to get a kick start to his career. Plus practice match or not it would be a huge thrill for the lad to wear the red and blue and play AFL.

Max King could be the answer for Melbourne against Richmond in the NAB Challenge Sounds like no Fitzy, Gawn or Jamar either. Could be just Spencer and King in the ruck and Pedersen, Howe and presumably a bit of time for King forward.

Headline should be: "Hogan and Dawes rested from mid February practice game in order to be fully fit for round 1" That would make everyone happy. Pedersen can be a big body and a target, he's really just a less classy version of Dawes. Fitzpatrick or a second ruck can play deep and Howe can get the 3rd tall and work on his one on one game that is needed anyway. The lack of talent in the key forwards shouldn't impact the importance of defensive play, stoppage work and 2 way running which is what we really need to establish in the preseason.

How much work in rehab did Clark get through? After some heavier weeks he really hasn't done much the last week or so. Lots of reports of him walking. Did he get through some sprints? What about Watts? He obviously left early but I hope he did enough to show he's healthy and can be on track for Friday.

I'm expecting a bit of a Yes for the first point. Enough hard workers to at least stall momentum and not get blasted by 8 or 10 goal quarters too often. I also think midfield running should be much improved so a yes to this. But probably a no to the third one. No team can really stop the opposition once they've given up a bad turnover. Again I expect to see good tackling, chasing and one percenters. But no to the last point. If we get the ball forward of centre or in space I think we will attack and around the packs I expect to see much greater ball handling and movement from stoppages, but when put back in our own back 50 I don't think there will be fluent attacking play. Holding on to the ball, sharing it around and getting to the right positions will probably be the start. That's what I saw from the intra club.

Roos is very confident and self assured and if he was wrong more often then he'd come across as arrogant. It's hardly a surprise that a fringe player on a rubbish Fitzroy team would see the golden child of the club as a bit self righteous. Especially when that same person knocks your team out of a grand final when you are coaching. And yes Roos is getting near on ridiculous financial compensation but he is also putting his record on the line so he'll either do a good job and enhance that record or he will fail and he'll look arrogant and stain his record. To be honest I think Grant Thomas' failure to get ultimate success and outspoken behaviour is a bit of a shame because I think a few of the things he did probably worked really well and could've been spread through the AFL industry. He developed an outstanding young team and took them to two prelim finals. He developed elite players, his player leadership with rotating young captains actually worked pretty well. The young saints in 2004 who won 10 straight games were a great team on the rise. A lot of that gets lost now with GT.

Doubt he has the physicality or foot skills to make it as a defender, much better suited using his pace in leading to find space forward. Remember Rory Thompson was a last chance kind of guy who failed as a ruck and forward and GC had the opportunity to give him a shot down back and persevere with him regardless of form. I'm not sure we've got that opportunity with Fitzy and he's shown too much as a forward and forward/ruck to mess around with his development on a hunch. At the moment a depth key defender is high up on the draft list but it will only be if Frawley leaves that we need to panic and think about trades.

Why? Looking back through the premiership defenders of recent years in Hawthorn (Lake, Gibson), Sydney (Richards, Grundy), Geelong (Lonergan, Taylor, Scarlett) it seems most key defenders are still around that 195cm height at most. Tom Boyd and Joe Daniher stand out as the 200cm key forwards drafted recently, and our own Mitch Clark as well as Jake Carlisle from Essendon are other key forwards approaching that 200cm mark. But they are much more the exception than the rule. The best key forwards are still those around 195cm mark - Franklin, Cameron, Cloke, Riewoldt(s), Roughead. No matter what position a guy plays the taller the better of course but any defender with skills and some athleticism and reach can make up probably close to a 10cm gap between him and his opponent. Because a 200cm defender can't spoil a 195cm forward if they have a run and jump at the ball with separation, but a 190cm defender can spoil a 200cm forward if they can get body contact on.

Here's my take. 2000 grand final things were obviously ok. Not a strong club by any means but at least a club with some playing talent and so on. Things went up and down. 2004 we made finals with a relatively young list but it didn't come to much. But through that whole period Presidents and CEO's continued to change and not once did us as members manage to step up and get a stable board. In turn the CEO hires were a shambles. Further more there was no football knowledge embedded in the club at board level, CEO level or footy department level. About this time around 2005 onwards the recruiting and sports science arms race took off. We were completely left behind. When we moved on from Craig Cameron as recruiter and Daniher as coach we had no institutional knowledge of how to hire the right people to replace them. Plus we couldn't match the spending either. Schwab had good intentions to fix the debt, grow the base and pump money in to footy department but again the lack of institution knowledge of how to run a footy department got Schwab in trouble. The end lesson is that more than anyone we've got ourselves to blame. As members we have to control the board so that we have the business knowledge and footy knowledge in our club. Things are pretty good right now with Bartlett, PJ and Roos but the other position I'd like to have is a Jason Dunstall like director of footy but we can't have everything can we!

I know they were separate issues talking about young players and Watts' playing role but the public perception will still lead to Roos is trying to make Watts in to Adam Goodes 2.0. And in reality he is. But the issue of putting pressure on Watts is still one it would be wise to stick clear off. I'd hate to be looking back in 3 years and have Watts new coach (at another senior club I'd say) saying well Melbourne put pressure on him with his debut that was shocking, then they tried to make him live up to being the next Adam Goodes. I agree the players at training are completely different but the games haven't started. Once the games start if a few losses mount if we still have Roos going on about old scars and healing and things that wont be helpful. I recognise he needed to stem the bleeding, give the players some respect and confidence but the continuation of that is move on to talking about how they can perform. What I'm saying is come Friday it's time for footy talk not for talk about what has come and gone in the Neeld regime.

Agree. And whilst he hasn't had the AFL experience he has had a more consistent run of state league footy than Jetta I'd say who's VFL and AFL form have both been up and down, affected by injury and by changing positions.

The only thing I don't like is if he keeps repeating how bad things were then the players might not move on and might feel like they are coming from so far back they can't progress quickly. I understand the need to keep realistic expectations and things under check but that can be done without referring to the past so much. When Neeld came in he talked of rebuilding the rebuild. Now Roos is getting very close to harping on a lot about healing the scars. At some stage that has to switch to just getting on with football. I like Roos, I like that he is forthright and assertive. But the downside is that you can appear hypocritical very quickly. For example he lashes out at the Watts debut, which was a mistake but was hardly fatal, with a better effort by some senior players to make sure Watts would physically protected and accepted to the group it could've been ok, but then in the same article compares Watts to Adam Goodes. You would think if you are trying to keep things low key for Watts you don't compare him to a Brownlow medal winning Australian of the year.

I'm picking Terlich based on his form last year mainly. In the intraclub he played on more than some defenders, set up a goal, turned it over once, didn't noticed his defensive work either way. He's an attacking flanker and I know that carries risk but Grimes' slower speed of play might not always work. Really I'd like to have Terlich, Strauss and Clisby all in the team to compete for those 1 or 2 spots that might be available come round 1. But at the same time I'm keen to load the squad up with midfielders so they can practice running super hard and linking up with each other.

I think most share that opinion. His ruck work has a long way to go but if we have a competent first ruck he makes an ok back up but not to the extent that Clark can do that. And as a key forward he's not as polished as Dawes, Clark or Hogan either. If all 3 of those guys are healthy then he's not in the team. But right now he's fitter than Dawes and Clark and could be a chance for round 1. Best 22 is a pretty useless thing as it never exists. Injuries or drop in form of one player can provide an opportunity to another and all of a sudden everything has changed. He played 11 games last year when we didn't have Hogan or Clark, but that doesn't mean he can't play 11 this year. Even if Clark and Dawes get through the year completely unscathed there's still a chance Hogan needs a rest at some stage. Looking for to Fitzy 2014, he was one of the very few good news stories of 2013.

Yeah but the 3 touches were lace out kick to Toumpas for a scoring shot, long kick down the punt road wing from a good run that Fitzy marked inside 50, a clever handball that started another scoring chain and another pick up and kick I think. Every time he touched it seemed to be a score involvement. He was involved less in the latter 2 quarters but that's ok. Small sample size so far.