bing181

Don't know if you've been to Sydney recently, but there's a big bridge in the middle of the harbor. It's for sale.

Butcher is completely untried on the big stage, comes from a club which is travelling as badly as we are (worse?), and is injury prone. Not saying he's not worth looking at, but you wouldn't have thought he'd be the first considered if we're trying to turn the ship around.

Neeld and Brown would have detailed knowledge of Dawes's strengths and weaknesses, and what he can bring to the club. If they sign off on it, good enough for me.

... and from a far more successful club.

Speak for yourself.

Not just "almost".

No need to justify yourself WJ, you know what it's like around here. Thanks again for the post and info.

It's all smoke and mirrors. Not only do we not (really) know what's going on, even after it's over we won't really know what went on. Or didn't. Or why. We did really well last year in the trade/draft period, and there's no reason to assume we won't get the best result we can this year as well. (And people who think you can only build a successful team by drafting stars, should spend an afternoon watching a rerun of the grand final.)

He also said (perhaps in another interview) that they couldn't afford to bottom out - literally - because their market wouldn't accept it. I feel also that being the only AFL team in a Rugby city, away from the glare of AFL football, has something to do with the culture that they've managed to create. Shift that whole club to Melbourne, and things would look more than a little different I suspect. Shows also the importance of senior players on players coming into a club - you only have to read some of the comments from Mitch Morton (or previously, Darren Jolly) to see that.

Yep, we can obviously save a fortune on having a recruiting department. Just ask mums to bring in their sons. FFS. For starters it wasn't Lewis's mum, it was Neville's mum. And given that Lewis had been completely ignored by everybody in the 2007 draft and had gone back to playing bush football at the time, easy to understand why not only Melbourne, but every club in the land was ignoring her opinion. It was only after he started to play for the WAFL in 2009, that he began to be noticed. Though it's all irrelevant, because if there's anything today's match shows, it's not who you draft, but what you do with them after you draft them. Or to put it another way, put all of Prendergast's and Cameron's draft choices in red and white, and you'd still have a Sydney team in the finals.

Add Mark Williams to the list ...

Quietly astounded that anyone here would expect the club to go putting up in-depth, warts-and-all assessments of the players on a public web site. Heck, I bet even the players don't get to see other player's assessments, yet alone the general public. That kind of info is between each player and Neeld, Craig and perhaps their line coaches, presumably given in a closed meeting.

Do I? Where did I say we should hold onto him?

You didn't say "after Jamar is gone". You said: "Martin will most likely be 2nd string ruckman until his almost 30" If he plays second string to Jamar, he would be 28 during Jamar's last season (assuming Jamar lasts 3 more years). It's like hitting yourself over the head with a 2 x 4.

Lloyd is not talking about analysing or reviewing data, or being short-staffed in the back office. He's talking about monitoring (= collecting) GPS data. Which you do with a GPS unit. "only some players at the Demons can be monitored each session as they don't have the funds to monitor all players" Lloyd's meaning is crystal clear, and is that a) we don't have enough GPS units and B) the reason for this is that we don't have the funds to buy them. Which is also what Craig responded to.

Seeing we're all being very pedantic here, he didn't speak to "the" players, he says he spoke to "some of the" players. Though given how poorly the relevant phrase is written, hard to make any deductions at all: "I was staggered with the limitations the Bulldogs and Melbourne players have when chatting to some of them during the week" Based on that, it's not an article about GPS units or the lack thereof, it's an article about how the players aren't much chop at using Twitter.

You're being selective and even erroneous with your dates and ages. Martin is 25. He'll be 26 at the end of this year, and will play next season as a 26 year old. If he stays for Jamar's 3 years, he would be 28 for season 2015. Collingwood (and if rumours are to be believed, other clubs as well) are into him for a reason.

On that premise, neither Hawthorn or the Swans will ever get close to a grand final, because most of their lists didn't get over 3 votes either, and are by your definition, "spuds". Not to add, Collingwood who've been in or close to Grand Finals for years now, and whose recruiting has been widely praised on this board, are the ones who are into Martin. Obviously, they're just trying to build a team full of spuds.

Quality of discussion on Demonland high as usual.

Thread title isn't correct. I don't know that we ALL thought we got it wrong.

Well, I'm a kind of "big picture" kind of guy, and I think that the club is trying to build Trengove into the kind of all-round A-grade player that we all hope he'll become. If that takes a few small steps back along the way to develop and consolidate areas of his game that are (were?) lacking, then fine by me. I for one also felt that it started to work for him, and later in the season he started to show a bit - at exactly the time when younger, tired bodies are supposed to fade. 21 disposals, 6 marks and 5 tackles in a losing side in the last game of the season isn't too bad. To add to that, it takes years for (most?) players to develop and consolidate, and Trengove wouldn't be the first "young gun" to have a few up and down seasons till he finds his mojo. As a for example, Dayne Beams has had the same, presumably, high quality coaching and facilities for 4 years, but it's only this year that he's taken it up a notch.

Fair enough, but Bailey didn't have the facilities, the resources or the Neil Craigs to work with either. There's no single reason, it's the bigger picture and how all of the parts fit together. Trengove said something along the lines of "we didn't know what it took to be AFL footballers".

Yeah, we could probably even get Bailey and his team back in place.

It's a joke right?

Talk about ill-informed. Following the same logic, Adelaide should have gone backwards because they signed up Dean Bailey.