DeeSpencer

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.

Betts can put on forward pressure but I haven't seen him do it for a full season, he seems more of a lead and goal type player. He'd be handy but I can't see him leaving Carlton and still being a good price. I'd look to the draft more than anything for a small forward. They can come in and play quickly if fit. I agree its an area of need for our list.

From my understanding he was staying in NZ for most of the time. I presume he might come over for a block of training at some stage and maybe play VFL (that does make sense) but the main plan is to pay him to develop as an athlete first and see how he goes. As for this VFL match it sounds like Clark and Trengove are aiming for it (but the week after might be more reasonable) and if he doesn't play this week that Dawes would be odds on to feature in it possibly with a few others trying to get some footy into them before round 1.

I'm pretty sure what the OP means is that Todd Viney has fathered both these boys and therefore we actually had the choice and did we pick the right one. That's what you meant right? Ridiculous.

Would love to see Dawes, Viney and McDonald return. Lets hope and see, I guess. If Dawes gets up to play I'd rest Hogan and go with Dawes, Sellar and Pedersen and see if the three can work in tandem.

Anything from the match review panel regarding Kosi's hit on Garland. He looked to line him up very late to me.