Inner Demon

I'm yet to hear a good argument against the idea of breaking up into 3 conferences after 17 rounds where the Top 6 play off to make Top 4 and the Middle 6 play off for the last 2 finals spots. It's a terrific idea.

Very exciting stuff. Still on target for the Essendon game in Rnd 15. Great to have him back.

Huh?? Your obsession with China knows no bounds. Are you Steve Harris?? Do you think China is some kind of land of giants where Yao Ming is just an everyday guy of regular height??? We have 7ft tall people here too you know.

How is "keeping your list churning" different from just "change"?? You've just substituted some words. This draft is a very different situation to previous years. The pool is frightfully shallow with all of the concessions to GC & GWS. The best 11 players in the draft are gone before the wooden spooner gets a look in. Then another 4 of the next best 8. Why is it you value a 'fresh face' over an existing young player?? I can understand moving on 'older' guys like PJ & Bell in favour of an 18 year old, but do we really advance our list by moving on a 20 year old who's just getting going like McNamara or Strauss to start all over again with a new one just because it seems like the thing to do?? Besides, if we made one or even two draft picks along with turning over our entire rookie list, that injects 8 'fresh faces' into the squad.

This is just going from the list that someone here put together, assumedly from researching news releases over time. I had a quick look myself and found an article confirming Cheney is 2011, but couldn't find anything concrete on Bartram or McNamara. It's possible they are on deals that have criteria which activate a 2nd year, hence the non-disclosure. Bruce & Junior retiring wouldn't open up list spots as they are on the Veteran's List and we have nobody old enough to replace them next year. Having them off the list would just mean we can elevate 2 of our 6 new rookies at the start of the season. On an earlier question, it is my understanding that we cannot retain Spencer for a 4th year on the rookie list.

From the players you mention there. PJ & Bell are probably in trouble. Miller is a line-ball call McNamara, Maric, Martin, Cheney, Dunn, Wona & Bartram are all contracted to 2011. Jetta is contracted to 2012 Bail & Strauss are coming out of contract. So from your list of candidates, to obtain the 2nd & 3rd round picks we would have to be delisting Strauss & Bail. For this to be an appropriate decision we would have to feel we would get better players than these two. From my admittedly uneducated point of view in terms of the depth of this year's draft, I wouldn't think that would be the case.

So change for the sake of change??? Personally I would want to see Tim Harrington sacked for delisting players purely for the exercise of participating in the draft. A delisting to open a draft pick decision has to be made giving consideration to whether the draft pick could yield a player more valuable to the list than the one being delisted. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see us take a first round pick this year and then stock up in the rookie draft. Remember that a 2nd or 3rd round pick in this draft isn't what we're used to. Firstly if we stay at 13th our 2nd & 3rd come in at picks 28 & 45, and then consider that the best 8 or so players in this draft already got scooped off the top last year by GC so it knocks them down to around 36 & 53 in real terms. Not terribly exciting.

And where does he fit onto our list??? As it is we're going to be struggling to drop the required 3 players. The only ones whose papers I have stamped so far are Bell & Johnson. We still need to find a 3rd to move on and even then those 3 spots are filled by elevating McKenzie & Spencer and a Rnd 1 draft pick. We've grown accustomed to big list turnover for the last few years, I think we'll be seeing extremely little this year outside of the rookie list. I'm expecting to see a full 6 player turnover there and to completely re-stock in this year's rookie draft.

Hang on. For starters we are nowhere near anything remotely resembling an EPL situation. In a single decade of 2000-2009 every single club played in a Preliminary Final. The evenness of our competition over a pretty small time sample is sensational. As far as saying it's unfair for any VIC club to have to play at Skilled. How ridiculous. Geelong are not a Melbourne club, as their name should suggest. Geelong is where they are from, frankly they should get to play all of their home games there. Do you apply the same reasoning that it's unfair for clubs to have to play Sydney at the SCG or WC/Fre at Subi?? Both of those grounds have unique dimensions and overwhelming crowd support differences.

3 Jamar 2.5 Moloney 2 Morton 1.5 Jones 1 Davey 0.5 Miller

In light of the abundance of reports over recent weeks about Liam looking good to go, I've hypothesised that he's been completing a "pre-season" before being considered for selection. Very, very sound management, particularly considering this would only be the 2nd he's ever done.

GC are strictly forbidden by the AFL from announcing any current player signings. And thank God. Could think of nothing worse than the NRL situation of having players on the list who have announced they're moving on??

Glad someone made this point. There's an annoying habit when the team's struggling a bit for people to convince themselves that various players at Casey are going to be the answers to all our woes. Strauss is a favourite in this regard. Just checking, incidentally, I hope you realise my quote you use in your signature was pure sarcasm.

No late fine. That only happened because we replaced him with someone not listed as an emergency. We don't have to finalise our squad until tomorrow afternoon. We can make whatever changes we wish until then. The Collingwood player who is out is Shane O'Bree. He's been replaced in their squad by Brad Dick.

He still is very promising.

Which young player/s is Miller depriving of a spot??

Sigh... 1) He's 20. Has years up his sleeve. Patience. 2) Not every player turns into Stephen Tingay. Cale will never be physically imposing. For what it's worth I have no recollection whatsover of seeing him "ragdolled" in a game. I suspect that's been invented to try to prove a poor argument. 3) He got us back in the game last week. Was immense in the 3rd quarter.

Wait, what?? When did this happen???

Relevant though. The 'go home' factor is enormously over-hyped. For every player you can name that went home, we could probably give you 20 who didn't.

I'm not sure there's really been that much Maric 'bashing' as such. Moreso that when his name is put forward for selection it's pushed behind 3-4 players who are ahead of him. Addam is a clever and talented player but to play his role in the team successfully he needs to be an ultra-hard worker on field. Plenty of equally and more talented players have tried and failed in this role due to a lack of work ethic. Guys like Paul Medhurst & Nick Davis. It appears Addam has the same issue and if he doesn't overcome it, he will not make it.

The AFL would tell you that our red strip clashes with Adelaide, Brisbane, Essendon & Sydney I would suggest. Recent events would suggest they've decided it clashes with Carlton too, which is pretty surprising I must say, but there it is.

No, not really. I don't know how many times it has to be repeated that GC isn't running a QLD footballers repatriation service. Kurt Tippet & Nick Riewoldt are from QLD too, but they aren't rushing out of their clubs to get home.

No club announcement as yet. They often like to announce the new signings in a batch. Perhaps just waiting for another one or two to drop before making an announcement.

That's not particularly relevant reasoning for why all of our tall forwards shouldn't have the benefit of a specialist or consultant type key forward coach.

Care to support that claim with some kind of reasoning? I don't think any club would accept wearing a clash guernsey on GF Day. I have no idea how it will be resolved. Hopefully there's a test case of sorts that doesn't involve us.