green_machine

I think everyone is forgetting free agency. If we get pendelbery or Goddard then afl pays compensation. These picks can be used for 1 mini draft 2 draft 3 players with 2 to 8 years experience. Ie. a gws draft pick wanting to come home I like 1 or 3 as to where these picks should be targeted. Also best to use them now as free agency is going to generate lots of draft distortion.

You really think the players I have highlighted are squandering their talent. All four of them have major physical deficiencies that they are overcoming to even look like being AFL players. Rivers is slow / lacks height and upper body strength which are pretty damning deficiencies to have in a back man. I think he does exceptionally well. Jetta is slow but might make it... Maric is slow, small, weak and probably won't make it but the fact he got close is impressive. Morton is an interesting one seems to lack acceleration and has other issues going on in his head. however, If you compare him one on one physically with most other players in the AFL he fails dismally.

The Melbourne obsession with a power forward is ridiculous. Power forwards are over rated and you could put any single power forward into Melbourne and we would still be getting smashed. It is the midfield. It is always the midfield and even if scully stays we still do not have enough quality in the midfield. Our big trade play needs to come next year with the introduction of free agency. $4 million over three years to Scott Pendlebury with $2mil in the first year. Get a genuine champion midfielder into the demons line up who can lift all the young potential to new heights.

The question is whether forceful impact is made to the head. If this has occurred the offence is the same as Trengoves however it will probably only worth one week as it will not be judged as high impact. The issue of concussion is irrelevant on the negligent and High contact points allocation, through it does play into the assessment of the force of the incident

Demon supporters should compile a list of all incidents like the one above and deliver a please explain to the AFL and MRP. There does not have to be injury as consequences should not be taken into account. Criteria are 1) Tackled / bumped player unable to prevent the head collision, due to either one hand being held or in the case of the bump above having no opportunity to prevent the head high contact. If both arms are pinned then even better 2) Forceful contact to the head / potential for forceful contact As I said there does not have to be an injury as consequences should be irrelevant to the act. I do not have time or the skill to compile a list of incidents but if we can put together the list then the trengrove incident can be shown to be an arbitrary example dished out to an under resourced club. From what little other football I watch Cyril Rioli always pins his opponents arms and is worth looking at.

most of you are missing the point. No one is saying Jones is close to Swan currently. What was suggested that five years ago (when they were the same age) Swan was crap. Jones at 22 would smash Swan at 22, on ability and perceived upside. Some players keep improving, a little bit every year until at the age of 27 - 32 they reach their peak. Others hit the peak at 21 and go backwards. Some like Swan just click and go from pedestrian to super player in a few years. The question is whether Jones has reached his peak. Currently he is a fringe 22 midfielder in every team in the competition and an automatic starting 18 selection in half of them. He is an AFL footballer. He will keep being an AFL footballer. The question is what sort of incremental improvement can we expect going forward? From what I have observed he is better footballer this year than last, and better than the year before. His decision making keeps improving. McDonald was always fringe up till he was 28+ and then suddenly he became an A grader. This was just from pure incremental improvement. Compare Jones to McDonald. I would say Jones has a much better kick similar to better pace Similar to better endurance More weight McDonald wins on tackles and overhead marking In theory I would say Jones has more upside than McDonald ever had so Jones could easily end up all Australian with his physical attributes. Anyway what matters is what is between the ears in terms of desire to improve and coach-ability. Only the footy department will know this and I will back there decision and be disappointed if he leaves. (I was disappointed with Brock and it looks like MFC has got that right so far.)

I believe he was coming off a broken leg (or something like that) at the point in time. For 12 months post that sort of injury players tend to be down on their abilities and he was in that category at the time. Sherman is not a star, stars tend to perform even when injured, but is still good. His season before the leg and last year were impressive. Reminds me a little of pettard. Does not seem that great but gee he can make a difference, he just does good things.

Probably true regarding those 4. Through there have been dozens of champions after 1 game of AFL. What I want to know who is all these other people who have more talent. You imply that the fact these 4 are better means Jones will lose his spot. Are we playing basketball now. Maric was the next great thing 6 months ago, with lots of talent to burn and where has that gone? Newton was the sparkling talent eighteen months prior and what happened. Mclean was a talent to burn too for years and where is he? Personally I can name maybe eight people with more talent. Your 4, Davey, jurrah, watts(?), morton (?), green (?) and lots who I rate below him, bennel, jetta, garland, rivers, macdonald, mcdonald (give Jones 5 years experience before comparing), warnock, moloney, petterd. bruce (?), bartram (?), mckenzie (?). Different positions for some but if we are talking talent.... Jones has improved for three years running. Others I have seen improve year on year have been mcdonald (as you rightly point out) and green, his continuous improvement is gratifying. It annoys me that many people are imagining that our untried talent are bound to be as good as grimes. Grimes has been special, if one of the untried end up as good as Jones that is a good result. If three or four end up pushing Jones out then I think we will win straight premierships for a decade.

Tapscott and Blease will automatically replace a known AFL footballer based on... based on what... A bit of form in an under eighteen's comp. Really 50% of midfielders taken in the late teens never make it in ANZ football, and maybe 5% become very good players, go look at the stats if you do not believe me. To my mind we still two quality midfielders in any case before we have enough midfielders that is assuming trengrove, scully, morton, gyst all come on. You need 10 to 12 good players who can go through the midfield and then some more for depth to cover injuries.

The thing that is most impressive about Jones this year has been his decision making. When he gets the ball I expect him to make a good decision, Bartram I still worry about, through he has come a long way along as well. Jones is in our top 22 and comfortably in it at that and I think he will get better. Will never become an ablett but he is currently a good player and I think he will morph into a very good player. I have to repeat again I am really impressed with his decision making this year. To have improved that aspect, the footy smart aspect that is the hardest to develop gives me hope that he will keep improving.

People suggesting dropping rivers are crazy. He had three goals kicked on him the first was from a down field free kick (given away by davey but soft) The second was a beautiful kick on a tight angle from outside 50 the third was after rivers got a great spoil going back with the flight and his team mates failed to help him out. I know he is slow and sometimes his skills are bad but he marked lots of eagle kicks into the fifty, pretty much shut down his man (yeah allowed a couple of marks 70m from goal but so be it) He did well. I agree with the comment above that we missed Dunn, with bate injured he would have been great.

I see the criticism of bruce as his disposal is a bit haphazard at times. Very similar to McDonald, when either gets the ball in the clear I do cringe a little, but only a little. However they are both top 22 and would be top 22 in any other team. Bate is different, his disposal is actually very good, when he gets it something usually happens with him the complaints seem to be that he is not Jonathan Brown or a Pavlich. The only similarities I can see in Bruce and Bates games is a good thing. They are both excellent man on man players. I often see both of them win one on ones and even one on two's when they are the ones. I do not understand why neither player gets the credit they deserve for these abilities. McDonald gets credit for his tackling and clearances but what Bate and Bruce do is win the ball in clear fifty fifty situations. These are very valuable skills and about time people started looking at the wider contribution of players, rather than focusing on pet winges. "Sells team mates into trouble", "too slow", "Does not mark above head enough".

I agree with demonDing. Lynch was below ordinary when the eagles had a gun midfield. No smarts, no real ability and his only trick was leading up and kicking the ball long

Did you watch the StKilda / Collingwood game? Some of the difference between the Melbourne / Stkilda games but some was just bad kicking by collingwood vs StKilda relative to against Melbourne. From a Melbourne perspective the facts are that if collingwood kicked as badly against us as they did against StKilda we would have won, vice verse Collingwood would have have beaten Stkilda if they had maintained the accuracy they achieved against Melbourne.

I can't help myself here, but that is a stupid comment. Newton has his issues but lack of upside is not one of them. He can do more freakish stuff than nearly anyone in the AFL. It is fine to have an opinion that his downsides outweight the upsides but to state that "Anyone" has more upside is downright foolish

I think Sylvia is interesting. Unlike the OP I think he is relatively quick for a midfielder, but what makes him interesting is that he has the tool kit to be an A-grade player. Compare him to someone like Bartel and Sylvia edges ahead in kicking, speed and matches Bartel in contested marking and is below Bartel in the footy smarts and probably hand balling. Which is a pretty good result. This is not a kick at Sylvia as he has demonstrated great footy smarts but he is not quite at the Bartel level yet, give him a few years of experience and he may get there and if he does he will be A grade. The other aspects that are easy to overlook but are just as vital are application / body. Sylvia has been stuffed on the body front for years which may be why he has not performed and is not worth discussing further as he will get injured or not. As for application, I am not sure how good sylvia is at this component of being a footballer, especially in the context of documented off field results. Also the lack of performance in his first five years in the system reflects potential issues here. Look at McDonald who is less physically gifted and even when carrying an injury has contributed. Given this concern why do you think his season last year represents his future years. I have distinct memories of one Travis Johnston who failed to put together consecutive top notch seasons. Contrast this to Morton / Frawley / McDonald who have just got better and better each season / game by game so Sylvia has the work cut out for him. Personally I do not think a great season by Sylvia is guaranteed, however I will live in hope because a great season by Sylvia could result in Melbourne winning three to four extra games.

I have constructed two alternative series. The first is the pick immediately before our pick and then my interpretation of the best pick available in the next two selections after our pick. This tells us how we went relatively to the other teams with similar picks over the 2004-2007 timeframe Picks one better than Melbourne (In theory should be a far better team) 2004 - Danny Meyer, Angus Monfries, Ivan Maric 2005 - Shaun Higgins, Matthew Laidlaw, Austin Lucy 2006 - Andrejs Everitt, Eric MacKenzie, Brennan Stack, Josh Hill 2007 - Chris Masten, Brad Ebert, Tony Notte,Bradd Dalziell My conclusion is that I would take our picks over the pick proceeding us across the board with the exception of Hill, Higgins and Monfries. This is an outstanding result. Picks one/two worst than Melbourne (In theory should be a far better team as more choice) 2004 - Angus Monfries ,Adam Pattison, Justin Sherman 2005 - Grant Birchall, Brett Montgomery, Tim Hutchison 2006 - Jack Riewoldt, Kurt Tippett, Kyle Reimers, Tyson Goldsack 2007 - David Myers, Matthew Lobbe,Tayte Pears,Mark Johnson You have to be very good to do better than twice the number of picks even if they are slightly pushed down the order. How did we go? Well Tippett and sherman are the two the really hurt. Having said that I would take Bate, Dunn, Frawely, Garland, Morton Grimes, Maric. Which I think is pretty good result. Over all I rank these collective picks above the ones we got but not by a huge margin. Feel free to rank how you wish but pretty much everyone with the pick before use would have done better going with Melbournes pick and there was in many cases our pick was better than the next two. I think in hindsight Melbourne did great. 2003 was also a great year for us on a relative terms however the draft as a whole was a stinker so we suffered. 2000-2002 is enough to give nightmares (Scotty Thompson excluded) as was the trading away of numerous first / early second round picks. This is why we are down now and not because of bad performance in 2004 /2007.

Are you serious? You have named 2 late first round picks, a couple of late 2nd round / early third round, 4th round and rookie picks. How terrible that none of them have gone on... mind you, you have picked out the failures rather than the successes. For example you can not bag the recruiters for dunn without including Bate in the equation and in any case you can not bag Dunn unless there are lots of picks after him in that draft that are better. In my opinion he at least would get regular games at numerous other AFL games so that is hardly a failure. Just some maths close to 100 players are picked up every year from the draft. At any point in time each list has 46 players on it (including rookies) That gives us 700 players in the AFL. Taking away players from the last three years.... you are left with about 450 player with more than three years experience. Good players play for 10+ years. That means that only 45 out the 100+ selected every year actually makes it. Over half of all players selected do not make it. That means our recruiting in 04 and 05 is probably pretty good and will set us up for the future.

I think Frawley's year will be 2011 and not 2010. For him to be all australian in 2010 then our midfield will have to start winning and I do not think that will happen till 2011 at the earliest. If the midfield is loosing then no matter how many contests Frawley wins he will still lose a small percentage and concede to many goals to get over the line into the all australian team. Having said that he will not make it I predict that he will be extremely close. If Frawley is all australian next year then Bate will be as well. With a functional midfield Bate will come into his own and star. I do not see why people knock Bate he can still become a superstar.

I can see where you are coming from kegs as I have not seen Martin dominate a game. However he has done some good stuff down back, he has done some ok stuff in the ruck and shown glimpses in the forward line. He is young, he is tall and he came to the game late. These are all reasons why I can see him improving. Even if he does not improve, most teams would have him in their team with out a second thought. A big tall with ok agility and potential upside is worth preserving with. Remember there are some ordinary talls who have played a lot of games. (Think Cloke). Basically I see your point and if he was three or four year older or (one to two years older and been playing footy since he was eight) I would completely agree with you, however he is not that old and he has not been playing footy since he was eight. So I reckon he will be a good player. History will tell and in five years you might be able to drag this thread up and say "My footy knowledge is great" through we all hope otherwise including yourself because if he is good then Melbourne has a great player. For now I am backing Martin.

How Gysberts goes is irrelevant to this debate. The pick 11 has around a 50% chance of becoming an good player and a small chance of becoming elite and a significant chance of not making it. The footy department said that those sort of odds is good enough for a Mclean trade. Judging their decision depends on how McLean performs and nothing else. (As an aside this rubbish about McLean wanting to leave so let him go is rubbish. We had first pick in the PSD if we wanted to keep brock we would have. If we thought he was better than pick 11 then we should have kept him) To my mind the trade is a failure if McLean get one top 5 Best and Fairest finish in 2013 - 2015. You could argue that the trade is a failure if McLean is playing regular footy in 2014 but if he gets a top 5 finish when we are challenging for a flag then we made a mistake. IF we transported a top 5 player into either stkilda or WB then Geelong would not have won the Grand Final. So if Mclean is top 5 in those years then we stuffed up. For the record I am with Freak. I reckon Carlton got a great deal and McLean will be top ten at Carlton for the next five years which is way better than what you can realistically expect from a pick 11. The fev debacle mucked Carlton up so they may not benefit with a premiership from the trade but if Fev was there then he might have got them over the line in a GF. Anyway McLeans performance will tell us whether the trade works. The next two years is irrelevant it is how his body holds up and allows him to contribute post 2013 that is the measuring stick that the trade needs to be measured on.

I actually think this is a good idea. A big body up forward that plays like no one else in the competition is an advantage. The lack of defensive pressure is irrelevant. If we have the tallest forward you just put three aaron Davey types at his feet and you have no problem with defensive pressure. I can happily say I know nothing about either Gawn's or Fitzpatricks skills but I would take a 208 forward if they could manage the role over a 208 cm ruck. There are different skill sets between forward and rucks and players that can ruck can not necessarily forward, however I think there is a third position possible of forward spoiler where a monster forwards only job is to bring the ball to ground. This setup will work great with three or four small forwards at the feet of the forward spoiler. It might not suit Melbourne with our embarrassment of decent talls in the forward line. Watts, Bate and Jurrah but if you place, one at CHF and the other two on the wing it could work great.

Based off this thread Maric to become the next Newton. Burdened by unjustified expectations and attacked when he does not meet those standards I hope Maric, like I hope with all Dees players makes it big time. If he does not then I equally hope that bile is not poured his way from the collective Demonland bloggers who are [censored] because they held onto him as a great hope and he failed to deliver. Everyone who has talked him up, make sure if he does not succeed as gloriously as you hope that you do not turn on him like people on footy sites have a tendency to do. Good luck Maric, I hope you become star and I think you have a good chance of succeeding. Go Dees

I am going to nominate Bate to take off this season. By the end of the season Bate to be pushing all Australian status. He was number 1 for assists this year which is often often overlooked but shows his ability to read the play and good execution of skills despite appearances. The other thing about Bate is his ability to shrug tackles and win one on ones, he is very strong through the hips like Steve Johnson when he is firing. With improved supply coming in he will blossom. If Melbourne is a final contender in round 18 (and I mean mathematically rather than reality) then Bate will be cemented top 50 and pushing for that All Australian position. The other person I would nominate is Frawley to move in the wider AFL audience from potential FB to be regarding as one of the better full backs in the competition and to be spoken about in the same manner as a Glass / Harris. The hopeful improvement in the midfield will help Frawley take the next step just like it will help Bate.

It has been tried. Daniher did it to death. Miller mis-read the ball, got beaten in too many one on ones and panicked occasionally underpressure. The last experiment of Miller down back nearly finished Miller's career. He got three brownlow votes once because of his job on Hall but it was more that the Dee's won and someone had to get them and so they went to Miller. From memory Hall kicked 2 goals & 4 behinds if it had been 6 goals straight Hall would have got the brownlow votes. Points of need aside (my views on our backline are above), I agree with shifting Miller down back, as a big strong body could work in theory but he has played down back and it just did not work. Warnock for such a big man occasionally loses one on one contests due to strength, miller surprisingly was far worst.