bing181

They have to earn it, and Bedford was always behind Pickett, probably Chandler as well. Sorry to see him go, but just the way of it and there's nothing the club should have done differently.

"McLachlan will host and call on Thursday nights, with Pearce – shifted due to her commitments with the Cats – providing the special comments for the increasingly important Thursdays."

We are loading. That's the point of pre-season. Once the season proper starts, no more loading, emphasis only on management, maintenance and recovery.

Almost with you, and we seem to have good depth - but we also have a few players who are in a class of their own and irreplaceable. Longer-term injuries to any of Gawn, Petracca, Oliver and in particular, May, could be enough to tip the balance in terms of going deep into finals. We saw how much even the losses of Tom McDonald and, effectively, Salem affected us last year.

Yes. Also (posted this elsewhere), the difference in what we'd come from is stark. In 2021 we'd come off 2020 where we only played 17 reduced-time games. In 2022 we were coming off the 2021 season where we'd played 25 games, many at high intensity.

No-one here is saying that they're happy with the way 2021 turned out. But winning back-to-back premierships is a near impossible task and you need a lot to go right - which for whatever reason wasn't the case last year.

It's actually not obvious at all, it's conjecture. There could be (and are) any number of reasons for our failures at the end of the season, many of which we're not even aware of.

People keep saying this, but move on to who? By his own admission, JVR couldn't even run out a game at Casey, yet alone in the firsts. Howes looks likely but had a long term injury. Turner got a run, but then concussion + other injuries kept him out. etc. etc.The idea that we could have gone deeper in the finals playing the likes of Baker or Dunstan is just ...

We really need Salem back to his best. He was a key to our 2021 success.

The other consideration in comparing 22 to 21 is to look at what the players had had to face the previous season. In 2022, we'd come off a long season of 25 full-length games, many of them high pressure/intensity. Contrast that with 2021 where we'd come off 2020's 17-game season of shortened games. Little wonder we were flying in 21 - and that it all caught up with us in 22. (In the various 2022 post-mortems this hasn't been discussed enough in my opinion.)

Lingering injuries, yes. But as both Gawn and Goodwin commented at the end of this season, we didn't really get a break at the end of 21, the two seasons virtually rolled together. With predictable results. No accident that back to back premierships are so hard to come by.

- Longer off-season break for all.

Made it through the first slab of pre-season without any (additional) injuries. That in itself is something given the news out of a couple of clubs with their 'training mishaps'.

Perhaps. Equally, he did seem to improve as the year went on and had a couple of 20+ disposal games. Also, depends on where he played as Port SANFL didn't 'win many matches and if he was being used up forward mightn't have seen much of it. Still, he has a pre-season to state his case.

Daisy and Tayla get in on the act. https://7news.com.au/sport/aflw/daisy-pearces-sentence-i-never-thought-id-say-after-getting-premiership-tattoo-with-aflw-icon-c-9062114

Great to see that the coaches are trying new techniques/approaches, pushing both themselves and the players. Not nothing.

Interesting. WC had all those problems with Covid and had to bring in players from their top-up list, which skews the figures somewhat (AFL average). Also interesting that there's a kind of trend for the teams up the top of the ladder to use fewer players, presumably because of having more settled lists. Would be interested to see the Players Used lined up against games lost to injury.

Interesting snippet here re Goodwin's role in getting the Davey twins to the Dons: They are the two oldest sons of speedster forward Alwyn, who played 100 games for the Bombers from 2007-13. But for his four sons to be eligible as father-son picks, Davey had to reach that 100-game milestone. He was banged up at the end of the 2013 season and so were the Bombers, with coach James Hird suspended for the last game against Richmond because of their drugs scandal. But caretaker coach Simon Goodwin – now the Melbourne premiership coach – made sure Davey reached 100 games. https://www.afl.com.au/news/870487/dons-double-davey-delight-a-plan-nine-years-in-the-making

Toumpas wasn't a poor pick, it just turned out that the 18 year old Jimmy was a good as it got. No-one has a crystal ball on 18 year olds and their football careers. Here's "Draft Guru" Callum Twomey back in the day: 4. Melbourne - Jimmy Toumpas Height: 182cm Weight: 78kg DOB: 12/01/94 Club: Woodville-West Torrens Draft range: 2-5 The Demons snare Toumpas at pick four, despite the South Australian being touted a top-three prospect for most of the year. And they'll love him, too, with his class, poise and goalkicking skills excellent for a midfielder. He had an interrupted season with a niggling hip injury, which required surgery at the end of the year, but he'll be fine for the club's pre-season and for next year. Announced himself as a draft pick in this sort of range late last year, when he starred for SANFL side Woodville-West Torrens as they charged to the league premiership. Has excellent leadership qualities that were on show as captain of his state this season, and some already see him growing into an AFL captain.

Not to mention, we need Petty to continue to develop down back so that he can take over when May moves on or starts to decline - which could be only a season or two away. May will be 31 next year. There's no reason why the bulk of this group can't be up at the pointy end of things for 5 years or so and we need to draft, list manage and develop players accordingly.

I find this suggestion of throwing Petty forward just bizarre. It only weakens our backline. Heck, if we really want to solve the KPF question we could just go the whole hog and move Steven May down there.

"We should have played Baker, Weideman and Dunstan more" is a hell of a hill to die on. As for the rest, nah. Nothing but conjecture, projection and hindsight bias.

Maybe - work with me here - we just didn't have the alternatives. Oscar Baker for a banged-up Ed Langdon? I'd take the banged-up Lingers any day. People just have to accept that sometimes, for reasons you can't control, things don't work out. True in life, especially true in sport.

Yes, because playing players who had consistently failed at senior level was a sure-fire recipe for success.

Add to this the sense that 21 just rolled into 22 without enough of a break, both physically and mentally. Not to mention missing key players, especially McDonald and (effectively) Salem. But it was clear that players like Gawn, Langdon and Lever were carrying something, at least for the last part of the season. It all adds up.