DeeSpencer

Yep heads up football is what they are preaching in high schools now and it should slowly follow through to the Pros. The idea is you tackle with your head up. That way your arms and shoulders make the contact not the helmet. They will react to the targeting of the knees as well. It's come about from players not being allowed to go high so they now go low. The other thing that the NFL needs desperately is a MRP. I know our one is a joke but they hand our indiscriminant fines that don't touch the surface on what these guys earn. They then rarely hand out suspensions but the most recent guy got his 2 game downgraded to 1. The two 1 game suspensions before that got let off on appeal. NFL is a lot of ways would be much easier to get clear definitions of illegal hits considering all the camera angles in HD and the helmets and so forth. If they are serious about preventing concussion then a simple MRP and demerit system will do wonders for weeding out dirty players. A proper fines and carry over point system will allow players to actually understand what they've done wrong.

Schiano is out Neelding the great man himself. Just replace Freeman with Moloney and a few other names and you get Mark Neeld at Melbourne. A power hungry fool is Schiano. And that cannon might just be Tampa's version of Melbourne's bugle. Anyway my frustrating sports fan life continues with the Bears. We finally get a coach in who has a clue about offense, O line play and protecting and utilising your above average QB in Cutler and our successful defense goes over the hill age wise and then has injury after injury. 3 DT injured, 2 starting line backers injured, gun CB Tillman playing on a dodgy knee and most of the rest of the defense is average as well. Bears are 4-3 and we've been in the games in the losses but the combined win total of our opponents isn't pretty (Minn, Cinn, NYG, Wash). Anyway it might be a slow decline for the bears this year with Cutler out injured. Wouldn't be surprised that despite being 4-3 now we finish 6-10 or 7-9. Major off season remodeling of the defense coming up. The offense got retooled nicely last year and this year we should re contracted Cutler and have contracts and talent in place on the O line, at TE and receiver. Defense need the past rush and front 7 completely remodeled and fresh talent in to the secondary. Change of plans to get back to good special teams would be nice as well. Losing our special teams coach to KC was a big loss. Seeing what Rob Ryan has done with the saints and watching Rex get the Jets back and going this year I think it might be time that the Lovie Smith 4-3 Tampa 2/cover 2 is out and we go for a 3-4 defense.

Callinan would be best 22 but he's 30 turning 31 in December and surely that's too old for a guy who doesn't come with a large amount of positional flexibility or AFL experience. But he showed he was too good for state leagues and probably still is. I hope he gets a gig at a contender. Sydney are way out of depth players, would fit in well for a season.

No I preferred the Bailey style tanking where we at least accumulated a bunch of kids and thought we had some talents about to hit their prime. The Neeld style non deliberate tanking wasn't any fun at all.

We get Billings and it's 2 birds with one stone. A man can hope.

Yeah we should be more like Freo with Viv Michie, Jayden Pitt and Morabito. Or Essendon with Gumbleton. Or Geelong with Vardy and Menzel. Or Sydney with Garry Rohan. Should I go on? Or just avoid guys who have had injuries in their junior careers like Joel Selwood and Jack Darling. AFL footy is a tough game. You can't reliably tell which bodies are going to stand up to it when looking at 18 year old kids. Remember most of these guys when drafted have to add about 10kg of muscle at least. Even some of the heavier ones have to strip fat, add muscle and triple their endurance. Garland, Grimes and Evans have all played good footy surrounding injuries. And Garland this year showed what he could do when not injured.

Who would really know but Allison was development coach at Sydney then an assistant at North and therefore you would think he is the senior man and gets the responsibility for actually working with Roos and the line coaches to work out what content needs to be taught in the develop. So he's in charge of the particular skills and drills and things. Nichol on the other hand comes from a school teaching background as well as working for us the last 2 years so I would've thought the manager part in his title would show that he will be more responsible for plotting the development and reviews and so on. Miller is the 3rd member of the team so nice spread of experience. Either way it's nice to keep another member of the old coaching staff in this development role so he can pass over to Roos where the players are at. For example he can tell Roos that Strauss is a good kick but they need to work on his tackling and close defensive skills as well as making sure he finds more ball. And so on. Completely wiping the slate and starting again really sets you back I think.

Nope remember we got him from being a senior VFL coach and now he's coaching Ammo's. That's a backwards step in my mind. The idea for a coach to come in to the AFL system is to then stay in it and move up. At the same time De La is still a pretty decent gig so we didn't completely destroy his career!

Yes but our 4th pick in the national draft will be pretty high up. Which is fine if it's Clisby as a rookie promotion but if it's a live pick there's probably more benefit waiting and getting the guys we want to train with us rather than pulling the trigger early.

Mav Weller, Matt Thomas if we want a more mature depth mid, other players on the fringes might get delisted from clubs who wanted to trade them but couldn't find a buyer.

I liked Pedersen until I saw him rock up to preseason training and be looking like sausages Pedersen. Then in the preseason games where he was out performed by Sellar I thought we were in trouble. The thing is I don't see him as a finished AFL product yet. I know he's 26 but he hasn't been in the system all that long and his body still has a heap of work to do. He can kick, he marks nicely at CHB and he knows how to find the footy. He could legitimately be an average or better AFL CHB if it all went to plan for him. You look at the last two premiership CHB's in Heath Grundy and Josh Gibson and they really aren't that special. Certainly they dont do the quality work that their number 1 defender they play along side in Richard and Lake respectively do. Anyway we vastly over paid for a guy of limited talent, poor work rate, poor on field character with soft efforts and we played him in a position that he couldn't ever succeed in - ruck/forward. At least this year we can set up some programs that might develop his work rate and utilize the talents he does have by putting him in the right spot. Do that and he'll likely play very well for Casey at centre half back and might be good enough to impress if/when he got a chance back at AFL.

um no that's wrong.

That kicking action looks Dan Nicholson-esque, plus he's got some weird speech thing, plus he's from the Eastern Ranges and I don't trust them. Combination makes it a no for pick 9

Only bit I didn't like. The midfielder/defender will coach the forward line. But oh well. Paul Roos - Senior Coach George Stone - Midfield/Strategy Jade Rawlings - Backline Daniel McPherson - Forwards Andrew Nichol - Development Manager Brad Miller - Development coach Ben Mathews and Brett Allison fit in there somewhere. Roos has been known to have a stoppages coach so it wouldn't surprise me if that role went to Mathews. Not sure where Allison will fit in.

Ideally Clark doesn't ruck for the first month or so of the season anyway in which case Fitzy is back up ruck and Hogan and Clark the key forwards if Dawes isn't ready. That's the silver lining. Either way having a luxury of 4 guys into 3 spots is a good thing and Dawes getting a reasonably routine surgery now he should be fine to go by round 1 anyway. No details about the type of arthroscopy but remember Stevie Johnson played a game only a few weeks after having a knee scope one day.

That might be the recruiters theory not neccessarily a 100% truth. Remember GWS put the main chunks of their list together through 4 different ways. - Out of contract players - Davis, Ward, Scully - 17 year olds - Shiel, Treloar, Jeremy Cameron, Bugg - here they likely took best available but Shiel and Bugg went to school together and would've played junior rep footy with - 2011 AFL draft - Patton, Coniglio, Greene, Tyson, Adams etc - 2012 AFL draft - Whitfield, O'Rourke, Ploughman They have shown a liking towards Vic Metro but in some ways the Adams and Tyson trades have highlighted the value in doing that. They got good return on those guys. Compare that to what Brisbane have got for Yeo to West Coast and Polec back to Adelaide.

Brisbane are likely to end with picks 7, 22 + 34 (Polec), 28 (Yeo), 33 (Docherty) and probably 25 (Longer). Not sure what they can do with them though. I would've thought they could trade some of them in pick down grades for players on one or two year deals.

Doesn't necessarily run or kick with the smoothest of actions but I'll be damned if there is a more efficient highlights package out there than this one. Of course it's not highlights against the best Under 18 players and it's only highlights but if the rest of his game is half as good then I'd take this guy with pick 9 yet alone pick 40. http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-10-20/will-maginnes

Hawthorn showed tremendous foresight and got on the Tassie and Launceston bandwagon. At the time we were selling a game to Brisbane and then to Canberra for a while there. But when Hobart comes up what do we do we let bloody North get hold of that. Instead we sell a game to Darwin. 4 hours away plane flight - as long as possible in the AFL that's problem number 1. Much more expensive for supporters to get than Tassie and without any legitimate supporter base growth potential. One game a season in a town that's main sport in getting [censored], and other sports include rugby league, toad racing and barramundi fishing. But I can live with one game up there a year. The actual game we can have an advantage in by being regulars up there. One of course that is dissipated by playing often Port who are always the away side so are used to the conditions and well supported or last year Brisbane who have less travel time and train all preseason in similar conditions. Not to mention we should all but demand a bye the week after but in recent memory I can't recall us getting the bye the next week. But now what do we do. We add a preseason game in Alice in the middle of summer. Now preseason games are pretty useless....unless you are a team that's won 6 games in 2 years and started the last two years 0-7 and 0-4 with record breaking losses and desperately need wins of any kind. Not to mention bringing in a new coach and therefore needing as much preparation as possible. There are a few positives here. The Alice regular season game is first. It's in Indigenous round which hypes it up. It's against Port who as far as I know have limited Alice background. The preseason game isn't part of a NAB cup so there's no performance pressure. And Freo are an inspired choice for Darwin game. They'll smash us anyway why not put it out of sight. I understand that the finances don't add up at Melbourne FC at the moment. We pay off debt, we invest in the footy department, that investment goes belly up but we have no choice but to invest in Paul Roos and therefore we need more revenue to pay for it. But we can't pimp ourselves either. Hawthorn have dictated to all and sundry down at Tassie. They play a few token games and mix it up with Port, North, WB, Freo etc and rake in the coin. If we are doing this NT stuff we have to milk every last cent and at the same time minimise the loss to the football department. So we get the fixturing we want, we get the teams we want etc or we tell them to stuff themselves. I do believe in the post Darwin drop off next week. AFL is a game of inches and Darwin takes a few and widens the gap. We have to get more sports science bang for our buck coping with these trips. Whether it's working with the AFL for special flights or even a private plane set up, I'm just tossing ideas. I know the AFL banned IV fluid replacement and that it's a touchy subject in the AFL but in the NFL and US College football players often get an IV drip during games if they start cramping. I would suggest that post game at least the AFL allow club medical staff under AFL medical supervision to provide IV fluid rehydration which could improve recovery.

Like the Howe to half back idea. He's a long penetrating kick and has the physical tools to match up on lots of different players. Also like the midfield focus. Don't like Dunn in the team when you've moved Howe to half back, seems unnecessary and think we need to get Tyson to the midfield mix as well. So I'd replace Dunn and put the replacement to half back and move Tyson to the bench. They have weaknesses for sure and aren't Malceski or Nick Smith but surely you can fit one of Terlich, Clisby or Strauss (or other options) from half back or lock down small defender.

Watts will be in that role for sure. Play off a wing and get back to defense and out in space and try to get forward as well. Toumpas as well. And I think Bernie Vince will feature like that as well at times if we can get enough drive from Jones and Viney and co at the stoppages. Same for Cross who not only is a competitor in close but has the over head marking ability and elite fitness to be a great two way runner. In fact I think we will see Cross getting back and taking a lot of crucial marks but we will need someone for him to handball to! Same forward we just hope it's 30m out directly in front! Michie and Tyson not so much. They are recruited to be the future alongside Viney and Jones at the stoppages. They might not be seasoned physical bruisers but that will be their role I would've thought. That said Michie will play half forward to adapt to AFL and Tyson will play outside mid or forward as well to protect him from too much stoppage stuff too early.

Speed and run sure, but is a poor kick. Often kicks over the head of a leading forward, very frustrating. Trengove is much slower but more reliable and can mark. Toumpas can't find the ball as regularly or get out of pressure but when he is out in space can use it better. Watts the same. I like Evans because he has all round game - inside, outside, marking, kicking, tackling. There will be competition for the midfield spots that's the positive.

To put pick 9 ahead of Jones is presumptuous and wrong I agree. But I make a case for Michie - better skills, as consistent in WAFL 2013 and Jones was VFL in 2012, better clearance player and more natural half forward in the rotation. I make a case for Dom Tyson - former pick number 3 and when fit has played some very decent games. And Watts is expected to receive a long run of time on the wing. If (like I do) you rate McKenzie as a pure tagger plus throw in Vince, Nathan Jones, Viney, Trengove and now Cross then Matt Jones is fighting with Toumpas and Evans for the last couple of midfield spots. Matt Jones was one of our top 5 consistent players hence his finish in the B+F but Evans and Toumpas' best were as good as his and based on improvement they might go past him. Either way it doesn't bother me as long as they play good VFL and we finally have some depth and competition for spots. It would be a miracle if our top 10 midfielders don't suffer any injuries for the entire year so I expect to see quite a bit of Matt Jones. The only thing that could consign him to the reserves permanently would be amazing production from our first year draftees and unlikely improvement from a few at Casey - Taggert, Nicholson etc.

He wasn't so much pushing for selection than others were pushing to be dropped. He's got the prototype size and some skills but just hasn't found enough of the footy consistently at VFL yet to even get a look in at AFL. Consistently averaging 25 touches at VFL and regular midfield time there should be his first goal and he needs a big preseason.

Anyone else checked out and liked Blake Acres' highlights. To me he looks every bit as good as Scharenberg and might be the best big bodied midfielder in the draft. He's got strength in the air, composure and neat skills. I'd say he's the reason why West Coast went back to 11 because they'll be happy to get either one of him or Sheed