bing181

The first 5 you listed there have pretty much never played consistent time as mids, or any substantial time as mids. Filling Trac and Oliver's boots is a huge (huge!) step up, and most other clubs are miles and years ahead of us "in that space". Hopefully we'll get there over time, 2 or 3 seasons at least, but in the shorter term we are going to get absolutely hammered.

Woah. Where did he say that?

We are a fair way off.

Tiresome.

And so it starts.

JT has been really successful at the key part of his job: nailing high draft picks—ones you really don’t want to waste. He’s not perfect, of course, but given the unpredictability of drafting 18-year-olds, he hits far more than he misses. When it comes to later and rookie picks, it’s a real crapshoot—most never make it. You can’t really hold the misses there against Taylor; it just shows how uncertain it all can be. But if you want to single out someone like Sestan, you also have to give Taylor credit for picking McVee who’s shaping up to be a long-term, walk-up start for Fremantle. Not bad for a rookie that every club passed over multiple times.

Winning 10 games feels pretty optimistic to me. It also depends on how you win them — and just as importantly, how you lose them. If we’re competitive and in most matches we'll be doing well, and I’d take that over a categoric win/loss ratio any day. The worst thing that could happen is that we do an Essendon, where we look like a million dollars in some matches but get seriously hammered in (a lot of) others.

In 22 and 23 we finished top 4. Most supporters would sell their grandmothers for those kinds of results, and it's going to be a looonnnggg time before we see the like again.

You enjoy losing? Because according to Schwarz, that's mainly what we're going to be seeing.

Regardless of what's out in public, we never wanted Oliver (and Petracca) to stay. Phrases like "we can't guarantee you midfield time" or the classics "we're going in a different direction" and "we want to prioritise youth", are just face-saving sops.

Could be wrong, but doesn't seem to take into account games of experience gained. 202 for Steele and 159 for Mihocek. We’ve also lost games through players who were hardly playing (e.g., Billings and Hore), so I’m not sure the ledger isn’t fairly even in real terms.

Just ridiculous. It was about the role. Also because the writing was on the wall and he knew he was gradually being squeezed out of the team at Hawthorn. Wouldn't have taken much to turn his head. "When King and Lamb pitched the move to Jiath at Connors Sports Management, the role was central to the sell. It's what turned his head. Hawthorn is stacked with rebounding run: Karl Amon, Jarman Impey, Josh Weddle and Massimo D'Ambrosio. Melbourne isn't. "They came into the office and said we would love to play you there, where you want to play. I felt the role I was playing at Hawthorn was awesome, but I needed this to get the most out of myself. That was the key reason to move to Melbourne." As for "Our drafting from other clubs has been hopeless after we got Lever, May and Langdon." CJ wasn't drafted. Nor were Lever, May or Langdon. They were traded. It was our drafting post Lever/May that got us players like Jackson, Pickett, Bowie, Rivers, JVR, Langford, Lindsay etc.

On-field maybe. But off-field ... Nothing could be clearer than that we wanted him gone, whatever the cost.

And will be hard to make that up. He may get in required levels of fitness, and even play some games - but difficult to see him making it through the whole season. Still, will be interesting watching his development.

It's irrelevant whether he was playing well or not, whether he'll ever get back to his stellar best or not, whether he could still play primarily mid or not. None of that is why he was shown the door.

Yes, wanted so much to keep him that he didn't even have a meeting with him. The club, including King, went through the motions - at least in public.

Not talking about the draft though are we. We're talking about an experienced player with B&F's, AA's, Coaches Awards, a premiership, you name it ... that no-one wanted to touch with a bargepole, even with us paying half his salary. You'd wonder if even GWS would have taken him had they not desperately needed cover for an injured Josh Kelly. While the wider public and blinkered supporters might be blissfully unaware as to what's really gone on behind the scenes with Oliver, the other clubs know only too well.

Hyperbole much? You also left out the bit where he could walk on water.

Sure, but we’ve now got a lot of younger players carrying senior-player responsibilities, or expected to in the near future. Apart from the outliers (Daicos, Ashcroft), most young players take four to five seasons — and pre-seasons — before they really hit their straps and start seriously impacting games. No amount of work on the transition game is going to turn JVR, Kentfield or Jefferson into 50-goal-a-year forwards overnight. Over the next couple of seasons we’re going to lose (or come close to losing) Max, May, Viney, McDonald, Melksham, and perhaps/probably Lever, plus the new boys Steele and Mihocek. At the moment, there’s no-one even close to filling those shoes. Still, as always, we live in hope.

Suspect it will take longer than a year. Though with the emphasis on rebuilding around younger players, I personally think we're looking at 5 or 6 years before we're seriously contending again.

I wouldn't count on it. (But who knows ...)

I suspect that Dezi Freeman can.

We're actually paying him to play elsewhere. Maybe think about what kind of situation you would need for such an outcome.

Interesting that we took him while Ollie Greeves was still available.

Going on the injury reports, could be a while before we see him.