4jacks

The Bubbledome place is State-of-the-Art, shared with Victory and Storm i think, and we're supposed to be moving there in June/July. Goodbye Junction Oval, and good riddance. Casey is mainly for pre-season and one session a week during the year; not sure about the facilities there - I presume they're pretty good.

If he stays in the team all year, he should be a very very good chance for Top 5 RS at least.

Pretty sure I've seen part of that before. In fact, the first half of today's article was the intro to this year's Season Guide thingy from the club. Still a fantastic read second time round though, what a story what a journalist.

This. (Y)

Good bump. Choosing 4 talls in one draft looks stupid from here... lol - Talia, Panos, Griffiths and Daw? Mad. Anyway, why have all them when you can have the man-mountain himself, Maxy GAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWNNNNN

Agree, the song was definitely too quiet... although that may have been because 23,300 mad Demon supporters were going ape [censored]... Just sent an email to them. Yay for democracy.

Who cares about the numbers, the whole Northern Stand was up and about! The standing ovation given Trengove as he sprinted off after his goal was epic, to say the least. Fantastic stuff. Almost brought a tear to the eye. And given that was the hard-core of Melbourne fans, imagine how good a crowd we'll have when all the band-wagonners get on board! Could be a thing to be reckoned with... then again, let's hope we don't end up like Hawthorn.

The Grimes bandwagon is rolling. Getting the No. 16 on my back last year was a great choice, I just love the guy. Defs man crush. I have to remind myself he's only played 15 games.

slow news day... worth a little chuckle i guess.

it all went downhill fast after that tackle on Gehrig... lol.

Baaaaaad news . Keeps making me less sure of my bet with an Essendon mate - we have a case on who plays more games out of Jurrah and Neagle... pull through LJ mate, we love you. Calm down a fair bit? OK cool.

Great hustle from Bradley, definitely deserves a good showing from the rest of the team against the Pies for his courage and committment.

Didn't Freo trade all their draft picks for Croad and whoever else? Fairly sure they missed out on McLeod, Hodge, etc etc through horrible list management... not that I remember the time myself.

Agreed, it was great to see him gain confidence as the game wore on... started a bit quietly, but was turning on the afterburners whenever he got hold of it towards the end... jeez he's fast. Didn't see anything to question his kicking, either - some had said his long kicks were a bit suspect at times, but he disposed of it beautifully IMO.

I have come to the conclusion that Watts is the answer. I don't care how much smaller he may be than Lake, Scarlett, Presti or whoever, can we please just stick him in the goal square. We need a target, and Watts can provide it - I would back him to beat any full back on the lead 10 times out of 10, provided he gets some decent delivery. Sure, he'll get monstered by the big guys if the mids just bomb it to the square - so we don't do that. Abandon that stupid handball game plan for now, and go long and direct - that's how we scored goals today, with long kicks through the middle and inside 50. Our mids - Scully, Trengove, Grimes, Morton, Davey, Sylvia, Moloney (Tapscott, Gysberts and Blease eventually) - have the pace and/or talent to take the game on by running it through the middle and hitting up longer targets. Why must they waste that talent by pissfarting around with the ball on the half-back line, getting caught hand-balling around in circles? Sure, it'll cause some turnovers at first, but it will help our forwards no end - imagine the frustration of Bate, Miller et al, trying to work out when they should lead? The mids consistently go the extra handball when there are options up the ground. It's little wonder our forwards got sucked up the ground and had to turn around and run back towards the goals, almost every single time.

In: Sylvia, Garland (or McNamara if Garland isn't ready), Martin Out: Bate, Rivers, Spencer Bate had a shocker, clearly wasn't ready for AFL based on his pre-season. Rivers injured his ribs in the last I think... may or may not get up for Collingwood. He did run off the ground under his own steam so should be right, I hope. Spencer just struggled. Martin is more athletic, has a better kick and offers more as a forward.

Second that... loving the (probably irrational and misguided) hope that we have up until 2:10pm... hold onto it! Especially liked that last bit... the 'G is one of my favourite places, as much as anything today is about the time-honoured ritual of getting to and then watching the game on a Saturday arvo. Can't wait.

If we can't get a Natainui or a Kreuzer (because we won't get high draft picks now), I'll happily take Sandilands 2.0 instead - Gawn is 208cm, possibly still growing a bit, and already weighs over 100kgs. He looks an exciting prospect, a man-mountain in the making, and supposedly he can actually kick the ball alright and run around a bit. Nooooooooooo don't let him do that: solid, young spud, injured spud, part-timer, the 200cm winger. Can't see a heap of match-winning advice in there, but maybe I'm being a tad harsh

http://www.afl.com.au/news/newsarticle/tabid/208/newsid/91058/default.aspx There it is... Strauss to debut. (Y)

Yeah the game is quoted on the website as starting at 4.45pm... sounds like BS to me

not sure that squeezing every single player into one of four categories works.

As an atheist it irks me to say this, but having the 'Demons' play on Good Friday would be a bad move in terms of branding. Personally I would love to see it, but 1) i doubt there would be a huge crowd and 2) George Pell or Tony Abbott or someone would kick up a huge fuss about "DON'T RUIN OUR SPECIAL DAY, AAAAHHHHH POOR US WE'RE SO MALIGNED" etc etc ad nauseum. Unfortunate, but an all-too-obvious part of our "secular" society. That said, give it a few years.

their confidence... come on, really? IMO that could be a slight problem. Yes, they're both elite kicks, but neither are the shutdown, defensive type... Strauss is too slow to defend a small forward (as seen on Sat) and Bennell needs to work on his accountability. C'mon he's better than that. Harsh call. Agree. In fact, most exciting player in the comp just quietly.

Just doesn't sound right, dislike. Why would AAMI bother sponsoring stuff in Melbourne? Their brand here is tainted by the filth of the West.

If I had have left yesterday's match at Casey at 3QT, I would've been reasonably happy. We did good things in patches, and fell away in others, but the one thing that was consistently horrible was the kick-in setup. WHAT IS GOING ON? The West Coast players would set up a standard zone, and then our players went and stood in the space between them. ???????? More often than not, there was NO movement, no leading, no calling. The players just stood there and waited for something to happen. Poor James Strauss was put under the pump almost every single time. He has an elite kick, that's why we recruited him, and with time will become our designated kick-in guy. And indeed, his skills were on display yesterday. He hit some great targets at long range and was quite impressive. But much of the time, there was no-one obvious to kick to. Hence, on several occasions he was forced to play on and load up a long bomb - kick and hope. On other occasions he had to attempt a pin-point 40-50m pass to a player surrounded by Eagles - no margin for error. To his credit, Strauss hit a few targets like this. Where are our defensive coaches? Have they been asleep all summer? It was clear that they players had no instructions, or otherwise the worst instructions ever. A huddle possibly? Any sort of movement? A designated leading target on the 50m arc? Decoy leads? My fears are these: 1. If Hawthorn plays their famed Cluster against us in Rd 1, we will be wiped off the park with the worst possible start to the season. 2. If kick-ins don't improve soon, Strauss' confidence will be shot. The long bombs are bound to cause turn-overs, so is the boy going to start blaming himself for 'poor' kicking? Get onto it, Dean.