bing181

A season or two too early. Also, I don't know that she wouldn't be looking eventually to step in to the men's game?

As has been discussed here ad nauseam, list management decisions are the prerogative of the List Management Committee. Neither King nor Goodwin get to decide who comes or goes, not in isolation in any case. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone etc etc. All of these decisions are linked, but reading between the lines based on the little actual info that's out there, it would seem that a gang of 4 of Richardson, Green, Smith and Guerra were fairly active in righting the ship and implementing a No DH policy. Goodwin was the first domino to fall, but Clarrie and Trac were probably already in the crosshairs by the time that decision was reached. Sacking a leader always creates a spill of other positions and makes change easier, even necessary.

Yep, because the only reason the club makes multi-million dollar investments in players, or re-signs players or even signs players in the first place is for PR.

It's Goodwin's job to back his players, especially publicly. King will do the same, as does every coach, especially when players are struggling. BTW, in how many other games did Clarry get sent out to play as a tagger?

Geelong's reported offer was a future first, i.e. this year. Which was pick 24.

Hindsight much? Not what you were saying back in October 24: "fine him into submission, play at Casey till you earn it coupled with appropriate medical / clinical care "

Centre bounces is but one part of being a mid. Kozzie has been a (great) centre bounce specialist but has not had substantial on-ball/midfield time, he's been primarily a forward.

Losing ANB and Gus is one of the factors in why we had to move on Oliver and Trac. You can cope with all sorts when you have strong leaders, but asking for trouble otherwise.

Of course you do. Only a matter of time before Goodwin is blamed for Norm Smith's sacking.

Watch this space. Come 2027 we could find ourselves without any of The Three Musketeers left.

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.