Curry & Beer

i was under the impression McLean and Judd were about neck and neck as the two best at Carlton?

surely the only thing that could stop him is if he gets offered a job at VISY

This is fantastic, I agree totally with the OP on his thoughts on Morton - this guy is going to be the ultimate nightmare for opposition coaches, Bails will be able to use him to exploit whatever weakness the enemy has. I also agree he will start playing CHF and that this is probably a major contributing factor to us not drafting any KP in the recent draft. Without getting carried away, there are probably only a handful of lpayers in the whole league who will be able to run with AND compete in the air with a player like Morton, shutting him down will have to be a priority and then they'll have to worry about Jurrah, Watts, Scully, Trengove etc. I think we got the pick of that draft except maybe for Kruezer but I wouldn't swap. Probably the most important player on the list right now. It often occurs to me that if Chris Judd wasn't the mercenary piece of trash that he is, both Morton and Sylvia would have gone to WCE in a trade for him. I reckon it was a blessing in disguise that he didn't come here. The fact that Scully can burn him in terms of fitness proves that he is indeed the freak he was reputed to be. He must be right up near the top of the list of fittest blokes in the AFL before he has even played a game! Someone told me last night that Judd runs 3km in 10.30-ish while Scully runs it in 9.30ish... can anyone confirm that?

i'm still getting them pretty often

doesn't sound like a storm in a coffee mug to me! Glad to hear the coaching staff are hardasses, apparently Bails doesn't put up with much s--t either still, this is the first we've heard of anything like this, up until now it's just been glowing reports on the character of the bloke and where his head is at mentally/emotionally

that poll result is a thing of mathematical beauty, tells us 8 wins is the expectation, with 80% picking between 7 and 9

i've heard he kicks longer goals than Sylvia, gets into space better than Morton, kicks better than Davey, beats Jurrah in marking contests and is a bettler tackler than Moloney

I'll give it a slightly more optimistic alteration say 6 out of 9 for group A 2 out of 6 for group b 1 major upset that's your 9 wins

hahah my nate made a similar mistake you should have just put the $200 on us to make finals which would net you a cool $1100 profit but that's not as satisfying as taking 200 from a magpie

no he's too old

probably takes the most physical punishment of anyone in the side, and does the most critical job in winning the pill out of the packs ... still a couple of years from his peak football, will be one of our most important when we make our surge at the cup. So underrated

don't worry about that, the boys down at Windy Hill will get the cheque book out and make sure he agrees

so you're 18 years old and you've just established yourself as probably the 2nd best draftee of 2009. You are looking down the barrell of 15 years of playing footy and being famous, probably walking away with about $15 million by the end of it. You get a cab from Crown to Hoddle Street and you do a runner on what would have been about a $10 fare, then when you are caught out you respond by attacking a bloke who is probably one-quarter as powerful as you must be a real quality person that one

did Whelan ever play a bad game?

Think back to his 08 season, it was a shocker for the club, I don't remember many ringing endorsements of what a great year McLean was having, perhaps that's the point, when you have a year where McLean is 2nd best then a lot of others must have been pretty bad, or been injured, or just better players earlier in their development. Davey, Moloney , Jones and Sylvia have all improved vastly since 2008, Col and Beamer were hardly even on the park, and Cale Morton has entered the picture very strongly while McLean has gone backwards... he is about half the player Sylvia is, they started the same time and colin missed the first 2-3 years because of injury (although I do admit you can make a case for McLean also being subject to an interrupted development, just not to the same extent)... the fact McLean had a better year than that group 2 years ago is not particularly relevant when you are talking about 2010 onwards. The heirachy/pecking order has shifted around now and he's on the bottom. Anyway, like you say, fingers crossed we don't live to regret it, of course its all speculation until we see how he goes, but remember even if he does well at Carlton it doesn't mean he was going to here.. it all also depends on how this wonderful midfield hand we're holding actually plays out on the table and whether we will look and back and say we created a gap in our midfield that was never plugged. I doubt it. and just to swing it back the original topic's way, if Dean played some deliberate role in the trade happening I think it was a good move. Certainly Johnstone-Grimes was, an absolute monster of a move

In the 2009 best and fairest, McLean finished behind Davey, Moloney, Jones, Sylvia, McDonald and Morton. That puts him currently as our 7th best midfielder, and you best believe if he was still on our list and round 1 is tomorrow I would be picking all of those players before him. Then you realise we have SIX midfielders all taken in the top19 of the draft who haven't even played. I don't know how anyone could imagine a future where McLean would have been a player of any importance... as has been noted, he can't do anything else but play in the guts. There is room in the side for 3 or 4 of his kind, Jones, Sylvia and Moloney all have him covered easily at this stage and you would have to give Sculgove a huge chance. I just don't see where you are coming from. The difference with Carlton is that they have a vacancy for his type where we have a surplus of 5 others that trump him

if anyone was at the info night nearly a year ago, Connolly said they have a policy that all new players are given high numbers, and added jokingly that the policy was only put in place after Jack Watts' number was given out

Did he? Or did he realise, or was made to realise, that not only would he never captain the side, he would be battling for a spot in a midfield that "might be the best midfield in the competition by a long way"* in a few years. Since his biggest asset was supposed to be winning the hard ball out of the packs - and he can contribute very little else - when you see Jones and Moloney already doing that with Sculgove coming in too, coupled with his terrible history of injury, the odds just weren't great of him being an important player in our future. There is some speculation also that his paypacket might have reflected that the club is of this opinion. We also don't know with what regard he is held by those around the club, Bailey already showed with a couple of others that poor character is not welcome in his side. When you look at it objectively, pick 11 was very good for him. In most other recent cases, when a player has walked out, the team he walks from has tended to be short-changed in the deal, makes me wonder how and why we got such a great deal and even more curious was how quickly and quietly the deal was done, an in-principle, in-advance deal, quite a rare thing. Also, the reasons cited - that he was disillusioned with the club's attitude towards playing finals, and that he felt he was being played out of position - just don't ring true to me. * quote from Emma Quayle after the 09 draft

Bob, you've just hit that for 6 and a fat bloke in the crowd caught it

Sheesus mate does trading Johnstone and McLean ring any bells? What about agressive list management to secure Trengove?

what about the 90% of us that voted for someone other than McLean you muppet

Good move MFC

Totally with you here, it seems a lot of people don't rate him all that highly, and seem to consider him a senior player, in that they don't expect much improvement from him. The fact is he turns 22 next week, he just seems older as he's played 70 games in his first 4 years. His best 6 or 7 years of footy are out in front of him now. He has a couple of weaknesses in his game but I have no doubt he'll fix them and become our Sam Mitchell, an important cog in the packs, it will be he and Scully winning all the tight ball. Fantastic attitude too.

Naming them both in Round 1, as well as Watts, would really bring a lot people through the gates

There was a thread on bigfooty* the other day where people named their 'young' AA sides (under 22 or something) and heaps of people had Frawley as a key back. When you consider that a lot of people don't even bother watching us play i think it speak volumes for him. BTW some Bombers fan had 5 Demons in the starting 18 of his side *yes I aware it is full of DHeads, but not exclusively, and it still represents the populous