Inner Demon

WHERE IS JOEL MACDONALD?

Is He injured? has not played with Casey seniors or reserves recently.

Yes he has. He just didn't play last weekend. He was BOG the week before.

If you look at Jones' trip diary he does mention recovery work being done. Quite a few of the guys had played before going, so it shouldn't have been an issue.

Nobody else on the trip had played the week before and was playing the week after.

Either way, if anyone is seriously suggesting James Strauss was invited on the camp and begged off because he's soft and didn't want to be punched or anything remotely like that, then there's probably no reasoning with you anyway.

If they'd won by 5 goals I'd make the same observations. Have you heard of 'calling it as you see it' ?

You and others are welcome to spend your lives making excuses for players and I'll critique what I see - good, bad, or indifferent.

There's no need for me to outline any of the reasons why a player may have performed in a particular way, such as coming back from injury, lack of preseason, first year player, etc, as I've got 95% of forum members that do little else.

Not factoring in the circumstances around a player's performance is called "an uneducated opinion".

Didn't stop Fitzy going.

He didn't play the week before. He had no recovery to do.

I thought Miller played really quite well against Collingwood. He worked very hard in a lot of contested situations to hold up the ball when there was nobody ahead of him, often against 2-3 opponents. The kind of stuff that isn't reflected in stats. Furthermore, unless my memory has totally failed me, he kicked 2 goals.

I fear all that means is that we won't die wondering what may have been if we gave him more time.

Hope I'm wrong.

I know it's only a little thing, but I wish I had've seen him get on board for the boxing weekend.

Just to show he really wants to get amongst it, for my own peace of mind.

There's no way he was given the choice of going or not. He would've had a compulsory recovery program to complete between VFL matches.

No change why do we need to. We drew with Collingwood.

If our captain, and potential B&F leader to this point in the season is fit, he plays.

You're getting carried away with the excitement about McKenzie's potential if you think he deserves a spot more than James McDonald.

As teams improve, getting dropped doesn't necessarily mean you have underperformed or are no good, it just means you're not (yet) as good as the player who is taking your spot.

In this case, James McDonald & Colin Sylvia are better players than Jordie McKenzie & Jack Watts.

I really don't get all this talk of dropping Jetta, I thought he was very good on QB. Especially in the 2nd & 3rd quarters so can't see him getting dropped.

Assuming McDonald & Sylvia come in then I'd say drop McKenzie & Watts.

McKenzie: Hasn't been the same since he missed the North game in round 6, him being out will allow Scull and Treners a bigger run in the middle.

Watts: Hasn't done a lot wrong, but with Miller & Dunn's impressive efforts the other week their form needs to be rewarded. Giving Watts another 2 games with Casey wont hurt him get some more confidence, will also help him qualify for VFL finals.

Hmmmm, my first reaction to the part about qualifying for VFL finals was, "how ridiculous", but upon further consideration I wonder if there might be something in this...

I don't know how many games the qualifying criteria calls for, but if it was few enough that rotating a player like Watts just a couple of times through Casey might be worthwhile in giving him exposure to finals games once the MFC season is over. Obviously you'd only do this if his (lack of) form warranted it and there was a player deserving of promotion, but it's not entirely without merit.

IN: Sylvia, McDonald

OUT: McKenzie, Watts

We can't effectively change the emblem this season so there's no way we'd bother revealing it until we can actually use it.

Are you sure? I thought Green was eligable for vetern status at years end?

Happy to be proven wrong though.

Well there you go, you're absolutely right. I guess I'd lost track of time. Greeny does turn 30 next year.

In light of this, I would say the heat turns up decidedly on the retirement of one of Junior or Bruce.

Wasn't aware his time on the rookie list is up. That makes it an interesting decision that could go wither way IMO. Out of interest, how did we keep Hughes on the rookie list for so long??? was that because he had that year or two in the wilderness?

Yes, it was because he had a year not on any AFL list that he was eligible to be re-rookied.

I notice a lot of people are upgrading Spencer to the main list. Why on earth would we do that when he is still years away from being anywhere near good enough. I am happy for him to stay on the rookie list and continue his development but he shouldnt be promoted and take the spot of a potential draft pick.

As for PJ, I stuck by him after a bad year last year, but he was pitiful when given his chance again this year and has to go.

Clubs can only retain one player on their rookie list for a maximum 3 year term. Spencer's rookie list time is up. He's either being promoted or cut. The prevailing leaning at this stage is we can continue to develop him and he's worth a list spot.

If you're of the belief that PJ's time is up, then that double the argument for promoting Jake.

Ah. I get it now.

But given that there is a rule that each club must make 3 selections at the ND (at least I'm 99% sure that's a rule), then it follows that we have to make enough room for 3 picks. So it's not 'we shuld have 3 picks', it's 'we must have three picks', and then given that McKenzie and possibly Spencer are going to be promoted, it follows that we must clear 4/5 spots from our senior list. So whether or not Miller gives us the spot we will eventually fill with a 1st rounder is somewhat irrelevant: 4-5 players have to go. Those would be the worst 4-5 on the list. Miller is one of them.

That rule has been changed with the new franchises compromising the draft and upgrading rookies counts the same as taking a ND pick.

Also please remember that neither Junior nor Bruce open up access to an extra draft pick. They are on Veteran's List and nobody on our list is eligible to replace them next year to open up the senior list spot.

The only benefit of either of them retiring is that we would be able to elevate a rookie at the start of the season to fill their spot, ala Fremantle with Barlow.

I must admit that I didn't read your post word for word (I rarely read any post or anything at all word for word) so I missed your point. However, I'm still not sure the analogy works. If I were to apply that analogy, I'd apply them in the order of delisting. First cab off the rank in that regard would be the 'unanimous' delistings - so Bell would release pick 8-13, Johnson pick 27 or whatever and so on. In that regard, Miller still only releases a third round pick at the earliest.

Bell & Johnson free up the spots for promotions of McKenzie & Spencer. In these cases we're 'trading' a midfielder and ruckman who didn't make it for a developing midfielder and ruckman.

I'm happy to alter my analogy somewhat however.

If a player is poached by GC, that happens before we finalise delistings and would satisy our minimum turnover rate and also open up our 1st draft pick.

From there I stand by the train of thought which would see us weigh up further delistings the same way you would consider trades. This time you're looking at an uncontracted player in return for a Round 2 pick, and so on.

The point I'm really driving at here, which I've made in another thread before, is that it's too simplistic to just say, "We should have 3 draft picks so we'll have to delist 5 players, one way or another". For each delisting decision it must be considered what we're giving up and what we're getting in return, in this case, another draft pick.

Yeah, then we'll get Ablett for pick 95.

Hmmmm, seems I was too quick to praise everyone's reading comprehension in another thread.

Try again kids. Perhaps trace a finger along the screen as you read how I justified the analogy of Brad Miller as being released for a 1st round pick.

Big +1 here. A 2m forward who roves the pack and snaps a goal is always a good thing. He's got a long way to go, but I think he's starting to show us a bit. On the down side there was that marking contest where it looked very much like he pulled out rather than take the front-on contact...

I saw that passage of play too, but I saw it as Jack arriving to the contest a moment too late and taking the option to not hit the player who had already secured the mark late and give away a 50m penalty in front of goal.

I think 5 delistings is an ambitious target given the youth and freshness of our list.

Bell & PJ are the consensus delistings. I can't see anything changing that.

I would agree that McKenzie & Spencer will occupy the spots opened up here.

From this point we come down to making decisions regarding whether the player potentially being delisted is of more value to the team than the correlating draft pick they will open up. It might help to consider it like a trade.

Brad Miller for 1st rounder - roughly pick 8-13. I love Brad, but nobody in their right mind doesn't see the value in that. It's unfortunate for him.

Tommy McNamara was recontracted last year for an unspecified period along with Bartram. I am speculating that these players were put on 1 year contracts with a 2nd year activated by meeting performance targets, ie. senior games played. Bartram would have activated his 2nd year but things don't look so good for Tommy. This brings us to the question:

Tom McNamara for 2nd rounder - pick 27-30. On the surface it seems another easy call, but I don't know what kind of players are shaping to be available at this stage of this draft so it will be a decision that would require a fair bit of analysis.

According to the records the only other questionable ones like Cheney, Maric, Martin & Dunn are contracted to 2011. I'm not sure whether the 'delist and rookie' trick used with great success on Newton & Meesen last year is so simple it can just be freely applied to any of these players, and we know the club isn't going to just cut players loose under contract.

The dark horse here is the impact of GC which could make our decision for us by luring any of a number of players we would otherwise recontract like Rivers, Bail, Garland, Petterd, etc

Must be a quiet day. Nobody sucked in yet.

Or perhaps the critical reading skills have improved.

I do like the sound of the top, middkle and bottom 6 playing off in the last 5 rounds in theory, but the idea of 5 dead rubber games concerns me especially in terms of crown attendances. It also means that injuries in the start of the year to key players would mean goodbye season for some teams and gives no chance of building late season momentum. To me it would also mean that the last 5 rounds would pretty much be like a final series anyway, which is goo in some regards, but puts in to question the purpose of playing beyond 17 rounds...

I would suggest that if a couple of injuries was enough to knock a team out of the Top 12, they weren't a premiership contender to begin with.

The crowd thing is somewhat of an issue, but really, are the teams out of the race with 5 weeks to go pulling good crowds as it is???

Playing beyond the 17 to a full 22 is a commercial situation. This might not be 100% ideal, but this is a reality of what keeps our competition going. The league needs that money.

Ok, now that you have broken it down further in detail, I get the picture. Looking at the greater picture it seems a reasonable concept or perhaps the best alternative to accomodate 18 teams. It still means there is effectively 22 rounds (with the additional 5 rounds) after round 17. So you get a tick for not lengthening the season.

My only gripe (I can't see how it could be solved tbh), as I'm sure it is for alot of people, is with the first 17 rounds, which ever way you look at it, it will still be seen as a "fixture" (with emphasis on the "fix")...ie. who gets the home games and who doesn't ? ie. Who gets to play GWS in Melbourne and who has to play them in Western Sydney... .

But I suppose this kind of thing has been happening for sometime anyway. Maybe the amount of Collingwoods games at the G will be reduced....I suppose that would be a positive.

Home game issue fixed easily. Rotates year to year. We play GWS in Melb in 2012 and we play them in Sydney in 2013. And so on.

For the last 5 rounds it's randomly drawn, obviously 3 home and 3 away for each team.

Wouldnt creating conferences be just as inequitable? Teams get lucky and get a perceived 'weaker' group, whilst some teams may be shafted with the strongest teams in the comp in their group.

It will not be solved. The only way to do so is for every team to play twice, home and away. There will always be inequities in our draw. Conferences will not work to fix that.

I'm not advocating the conference options. I'm talking about every team playing each other once for the first 17 rounds then the league splitting into 3 divisions for 1-6, 7-12 & 13-18. 1-6 play to determine the Top 4, 7-12 play for the last two spots in the finals, 13-18 can play off for draft lottery balls.

Obviously the dead games in the 13-18 are an issue, but it's only 5 games and I would contend that those teams have usually given up anyway by that late stage of the season and are just planning for future and disrupting the integrity of the finals composition.

Huh ?

I'd like to hear more before even considering an argument. What about the bottom 6 ?

Do they just drop off into the abyss ? B)

Don't they already??

Teams that low on the ladder that late in the season give up anyway. They just wind up manipulating the makeup of the finals by lying down and getting flogged because they're blooding kids and sending veterans off for surgery and so forth. Let them do it without disrupting the integrity of the finals series. No longer will teams on the edge of finals get lucky by running into poor teams at the end of the year while another contender gets knocked out because they ran into the best teams at the same time.

The bottom 6 can play off for draft pecking order or maybe some kind of lottery system.

Please God no

Why not?? Don't you want a solution to the inequitable draw issue???

I understand the 'leave the game alone' argument, but we're not talking about rule changes with frustrating, inconsistent interpretations. We're talking about finally removing the biggest yearly issue in teams getting a perceived advantage over others in the fixture.