DeeSpencer

Settled back 6 with Thompson, Grima, Firrito, McMahon, Atley and co, midfield with a good leader in Swallow and X factor in Wells and some good foot soldiers who play the right way and then the Petrie, Tarrant and the other big spud. Throw in Harvey once he's back from suspension. North are much more experienced individually and as a team than we are which makes them a hard side to beat if you don't get on top of them. Good sides can trounce North because their talls down back can be thrashed, their forwards can be taken care off if you have individual good defenders and their midfield lose confidence as kids do if they are getting beaten physically like Hawthorn and West Coast have done to them. But they are structurally sound and have consistent players so we don't have a hope beating them until we become an even team.

Last year on average we started to improve the longer the season went even with losing Clark and throwing Rivers and Garland forward to try and find a structure. This year Neeld has assembled players he wants in the positions he wants. Now ideally we'd magically come back in 3 years time and have Trengove, Viney and Toumpas all fulfil their potential whilst keeping a really good spine and having the players having many years of proper conditioning and playing a standard game plan. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. We've picked up pieces in Free Agency/Trade to help get the structures right and moved players down back (Watts and Dunn +/- Jetta, Terlich) and got forwards that Neeld likes (Dawes, Byrnes, Pedersen). However we really couldn't do anything to fix the midfield and we are going to have to hope for once we've picked the right guys and can develop them. Brisbane might just be setting a good example with the 3 R's and Zorko and co. Now back on topic as I said we improved towards the middle and end of last year and I think that will happen again. It's going to take time for the new blokes to pick up the game plan and for others to settle. If we beat Port we can get on to the scoreboard and some momentum and finish with 8 or so wins. If we start poorly I think we will be around 5 wins. It's just too much to ask of our midfield to win the contested ball and out work their opponents before the backline or forward line are fully functioning in the system as well. We might have to win ugly like the Essendon game last year where they were the better side but we dragged them down to our level through desperation and got over the line. If we are to win this year it won't be pretty like the Bailey days.

I liked to know KC's opinion and a bit off topic but I've found from the inner city it's quicker to get to Casey Fields by continuing on the monash then heading up Clyde road. You get the added benefit of skipping Cranbourne. Also the council must invest in at least a back exit from the fields into Clyde road and if possible a third exit as well. They should do it now before the whole joint is surrounding in housing estates. A couple of roads out will make the whole journey for experiences like the NAB cup much more tolerable. And considering how much they've pumped into the joint you wouldn't think building a quick little road out the back would be too much to ask.

Makes you feel for Liam. He gets dragged into a mess because one side of his family wants to spear another member of his family because they murdered someone from the other side. He ends up where everyone else is drunk and a fight breaks out and you'd have to think that Liam was some part of it otherwise as WJ said why would the prosecution continue this case with such little chance of a verdict based on the evidence I've heard so far. Lets be honest the damage to Basil was bad but in the scheme of NT outback disputes it was pretty low key. So now Liam still has his family fighting, his right in the middle of it and now he's seen to have gotten off soft. I hope football can save him, which might mean going to Adelaide, getting some support and playing SANFL and staying away from half his family. His AFL dream is gone as far as I see it.

FB: Garland Frawley Terlich HB: Watts McDonald Dunn C: Toumpas Jones Grimes HF: Sylvia Dawes Howe FF: Byrnes Clark Blease Foll: Jamar Rodan McKenzie Int: Pedersen Viney Jetta S: Matt Jones Emer: Sellar, Gillies, Tapscott I don't think Trengove gets up. Obvious Sellar comes in if Clark or Dawes don't get up. I've gone with the 2 big forwards and Pedersen because I think this is Neeld's preference but I wonder if we could play Clark as back up ruck with just Dawes at the end of the year. It's really difficult to predict the 6th and 7th defenders, I've gone with Terlich and with Jetta on the bench because he can play both ends. Could understand if they went with Strauss or Nicholson instead. All the forwards can rotate onto a wing or centre in Sylvia's case. I really like Kent but with Toumpas and Viney already out there I think we don't want to overload the team with young blokes. I'm really hoping Blease and McDonald are right to go. Gillies and Tapscott on standby. I don't like debuting guys as the sub but to me Matt Jones makes sense to come on fresh. Another option would be to start him and take away a bit of x factor from the forwards and bring Blease on fresh as the sub. With a good run of injuries I can see us building some depth to our forward line and backline depending on the ability of guys to take the next step (Strauss, Nicholson, Jetta, Bail, Tapscott, Gillies, Sellar are examples of guys to come in who have played some decent football). But we don't have the depth in the midfield considering I'm looking at 3 debutants (Viney, Toumpas and M. Jones) to be important players. We need to find a diamond in the rough out of Kent, Taggert, Evans or somewhere!!!

One of the funniest things about this is how many people from islander background do you see struggle to put on size or muscle. This kid has so much to work on and we worry about his size! What a joke

WYL keep sticking it too them! You are right! The only positive for this deal is short term cash flow. I'd say 3 years then get out with the money and the loss of matches and loss of relevance might just be worth it if we are really lucky.

When have we ever won in Perth. Why would we get proper decent fixturing like a bye the week after. That's never happened so far. Schwab is all about the bottom line and he's whoring out club out for money that won't get us anywhere. There is no investment here. Someone tell me how going to Darwin actually helps us win a premiership because the only advantage is the money and that is not enough. Stay put here, win games and get the supporters to gain momentum and we can build the club. 1 game may be necessary to keep the bank balance floating, but we only get 11 home games! And its not like the big majority of our away games are in Victoria or at the G. So you want to give up 2 of 11 home games we have in an environment that will offer us money but no other benefit. I simply do not believe the extra money can be invested wisely enough to recoup the damage of this exercise. And please spare me this we love our community work in the NT crap as well. All the Etihad naysayers have to turn up and watch their team when we play there. Because its better to support your club whilst they are your club before the AFL can say oh yeah we can get rid of Melbourne they already play 2 games in Darwin and don't play finals.

When we don't hear reports that the players lost 8kg in a game and we can successfully win games the next week then I might start to agree that it's not too hot. Even then there is the travel factor.<br /><br />The extra money from the Darwin games might mean we can go from 11th on footy department spending to top 8 but we won't be getting the wins from it and will be spending a bunch of the money on Darwin costs.<br /><br />This is commercial taking. Just like how we lost games to try and get better players to win games now we are losing games to try and get more money to win games. We should focus on winning now.

It used to be for every veteran you have less than 2 you could upgrade a rookie. As we only had green we could upgrade someone. I think that has now changed. Now you have 40 senior list spots and 4 rookie spots or you can have 38 an 6 or 39 and 5. If you have less than 40 you can upgrade someone. We have the full 40. Tigers decided to have 38 and stack their rookie list with recycled players. Hence Petterd and Stephenson get upgraded. I think they still have the rule that one Rookie can be upgraded at round 11. But as far as I know we won't have anyone able to be upgraded without a long term injury until then. Which hurts if you are Magner but is a good thing for Viney, m jones and toumpas. I'm not convinced Magner is a true AFL talent but we need someone in the guts to help jones, Mackenzie, Sylvia Rodan and trengove around in close.

This is just so stupid!!!!! Why didn't we snap up Hobart when we had the chance. I don't care if the money is less because 2 games in Hobart gives us a footy loving audience and a viable destination that is easy enough for the players. Darwin will literally cook our players. It's not only a long travelling distance but the games up there leave the players stuffed for the next week. Plus we keep having Port as the away team which really gives them a leg up more than anything and makes it harder to win. How many potential members and what kind of growth market of AFL fans are we looking at in Darwin. I am less than convinced. I'd rather us play in Ballarat or Bendigo where we might get some members (or at least make current ones happy) and if we fill the stands and get a good stadium deal whilst we wont get 500 garaunteed we will still get a lot more than a melbourne home game against Freo or GWS or GCS.

Neon Deon get around him.

Put him in the rape dungeon alf. Come on guys Fitzy is a remant of the old recruiting team who thought speed was important for key position players when they should of being looking for ability and strength and skill. Don't get me wrong I don't want a team of slow players but big Fitz's speed counts for little because he isn't a big strong mark or ruckman and his skills are horrendous. A good VFL player doesn't make a good AFL player

I wouldn't offer him a big money or long term deal yet. I'd let him play out the season and prove what he can do. I can't see him starring this year, I think he will still have ups and downs but prove himself a worthy player. I doubt he'll elevate his game far enough for us to be massively burnt and have to pay big dollars to keep him.

You'd think Dawes is good for round 1 so it's a matter of whether we go with pedersen and sellar or just one. If its just one I'm going with sellar but i wouldn't be surprised at all if Neeld goes for both Sellar (ff) and pedersen (Ruck/forward) as well as Dawes.

My god Neeld is getting good at making excuses for a guy who promised to be ruthless. As per MFC twitter Neeld said they played with 2 less rotations for second half

Well we need the report but if most of the guys on paper played then its a bad result. The scoreboard will show we lost by 4 goals but the truth is in the space of 2 quarters we went from a handy lead to getting smashed. The problem is we have zero momentum for round 1. We will get rolled in round 1 an then proceed to lose more confidence. Hopefully we don't have any more injuries and in round 1 we can get together something that resembles a decent side and get lucky.

Seems we've still got a lot of work to do on maintaining composure of the back half which is a shame!

For those reporting I offer a huge thanks and requests that at the end of the game that we know who was playing firstly and I'd also love more than anything to know how our centre midfielders went especially who had a go on Ablett.

Thanks for the love BH but I don't dreamteam sorry. Got enough of my plate working out my supercoach draft this weekend.

Because you are bound to be wrong! McLean played a lot of good footy before the game got too fast for him and then struggled to break into Carlton because the rest of his side didn't understand his limitations and he was in an unfamiliar team. All he needed was a free run at it and now he finds the ball because his team mates trust him and they understand he can't kick over a jam jar or out run a turtle. That's why he's transformed. Dunn has never proved to be a smart footballer or strong in the air. All we know is he moves ok and can kick the ball but theres a lot more to defending than that. I'm as excited about Dean Terlich as I am Dunn and I think people should stop pumping him up as a high finisher in a B+F until they've seen him perform consistently and display a good attitude consistently.

You're spot on BH. Being a straight ahead player isn't a knock on him either. When we need courage he'll go straight at the ball but in the midfield he looks confused about when to attack, when to stand off, how to get the ball out backwards and still move it forwards. If I was the coach I'd keep him on a back flank and develop a very good defense with Frawley/Garland/McDonald etc we know the names around the skipper. I know that means our midfield is even lighter on for depth and talent but I think thats the way it should be. Or maybe for this year play him 50/50 as a guy who rotates as the 7th defender when someone is off for a rest and as a midfielder.

Please stop pumping Dunn up guys, he's played half a decent season. Lets wait until he's played a good year and not sidestepped contact and acted like a tool on the field for most games.

It's a nice theory but big Maxy doesn't move too well up forward and neither does the Russian so there's only room for one of them in the team at once unless we are specifically focussing on Gawn's development.

Come on Ben-Hur you know exactly why the blood rule is in. No mum likes to see a player covered in blood on the field, they dont want their sons looking like that. Sure there is infection risk but the number 1 reason is image of the game and therefore it won't be changed.