Inner Demon

Funny then, how in this socialist, equality-based rant of yours you conveniently leave out that a slice of the profits made by the bigger clubs, including those interstate, are redirected to the 'battlers' of the comp by the AFL to keep them going. Be it via cold, hard cash or assistance in redevelopment of facilities, etc etc. Seriously, get over it, the AFL are not trying to damage or favour any one club of another. The facts are that this is a market system, Collingwood/Essendon/Carlton etc bring more money into the game as a whole than Melbourne/North/Bulldogs so they rightly are ahead of us in the line for some things. It's all too quickly forgotten that Eddie McGuire signed off on gifting Queen's Birthday as a highly profitable home match to Melbourne every single year. If we were to be truly equitable, this would be Collingwood's every other year and we'd miss out on the pay day. Shall we introduce that piece of equality or just the convenient ones??

Just to clear up a few things: Firstly, we are indeed paying 100% of the cap this year. We've frontloaded contracts of senior players so we have masses of space in the cap in 2-3 years time when we have to compete with GWS to keep our recent draftees. Now, this doesn't mean we're paying Aaron Davey $1 million or anything silly like that. That $8 million sounds like an enormous sum, but remember we have 46 players on the list. This averages out at a under $175K per player. As for over-inflating the value of these players for future contracts, it's not that their full contract is a long way above the odds, it's that they're getting paid a disproportionate amount of it this year, so in the 2nd/3rd years of their contract they will be earning far less than their 'market value'. For example, let's just hypothesise that Davey is on a $1.8mil contract for his 4 years, a $450K/year player. What's happening here is that he might be on $750K/$650K/$300K/$100K. Obviously there's no fact behind these number so don't quibble on the specifics, but while Aaron isn't a $750K or $650K player on the market he's getting that this and next year so in 4 years time we have $350K to spread around rewarding the young stars. Multiply this by a few senior players and that's a heap of cash. Aaron isn't coming back at the end of the 4 years and demanding $750K/year because he had one year on that amount. On the draft pick compensation, at this stage they are looking at using adjusted Champion Data player rankings rather than ranking players based on their position in the salary pecking order, because that is too easily manipulated and not necessarily reflective of a player's importance to a team. So no worry with front-loading hurting us down the track on that score. Further, there's a myth floating around that GC & GWS have inflated salary caps in their early years. They do not. What they have is a much higher number of draftees on standardised draftee contracts than all the other clubs which just means they have more money to spend on the senior players on their list. The cold, hard facts of the expansion is we're going to lose a couple of players in the process. The system is designed so that no one club can be crippled by half a dozen players jumping ship, the pain is to be spread around as thinly as possible. We just have to hope that whoever we lose isn't in our Top 5 players.

You mean the breakfast radio guy who's on for half an hour on weekdays before most people get home from work?? Yeah, he's just everywhere these days. Did you just wake up from a coma you fell into in 2002?? Get over it.

Well yes, I did. Particularly in the light of recent posts where Max Gawn's apparently told someone at training he was a couple of weeks away from Casey and he's at 6-8 weeks on the injury report, I'm not putting much weight at all in the OP.

This timeline is way off. LJ is still 4-5 weeks. That would see him potentially playing a half for Casey 2s when we're playing StK. Then this schedule gets going. I'd be hoping to see him back around Rnd 19. Sorry to ruin the party.

I'd say that constitutes extra time. Aussie's essentially got a 5 day turnaround for this weekend in recovery/rehab terms. I'd be quite amazed if he came up for the Geelong game.

Hear, hear. Particularly on the first set of points.

I would be flabbergasted if Garland in any way re-injured the foot we held him out for a year rehabbing and they jabbed him and sent him back out there. That would threaten his career.

Why do people keep suggesting specific players for a rest??? It's one thing to engage in a bit of educated guesswork as to whether players might return from injury or miss due to injury, but what could anybody possibly be basing a guess upon in stating that any other player would be 'rested'?? Please don't say it's because they're young or because they 'looked tired' in last week's game, because that's just rubbish.

The idea that anybody who is not in our best 22 or 19/20 years old is automatically a "list clogger" is misguided. People seem mildly obsessed with the idea of churning players through our list in the blind belief that there must be an 18 year old waiting in the next draft who is vastly better than the 24 year old with finals experience currently on the list. Whilst still sometimes a harsh assessment of a player, I would prefer the term "depth player" in about 9/10 of these instances. It's usually a far truer reflection of their place in the team than "list clogger".

Yes, you are quite mad. Again, Jetta was near enough BOG. Not getting dropped.

This is a pretty realistic possibility excluding the unknown of how players recover from Sat night.

Yeah, I should certainly hope he doesn't get 'tough' training sessions. I don't see what that would achieve. If he comes up OK then a half for Casey, but if not, a 2-week preparation for either a full Casey return or facing Carlton.

That mustn't give you a lot of enjoyment considering he only takes 1.2 marks per game. This is the most damning stat on Naitanui for mine. The bloke's 6'6", plays on the ball, jumps like a roo and runs like the wind, you'd reckon he could find a way to take a grab here and there. Just has no ability whatsoever to read the play.

AFL.com article So great seeing articles like this written about us already. Imagine what it'll be like when we're actually a contender!!

On the back of this news I don't think I've ever been happier to be going to a game at Skilled. With any luck 3AW (match-call) & MMM (pre-game) are covering the game too for radio enjoyment.

Pretty much confirms they were planning to rest Aussie for this week. Otherwise there's no way you'd take a player coming back from long term injury off for an adventure rather than send them back for recovery with the rest of the team. Not necessarily complaining mind you, there's every chance an opportunity to go home for a visit and effectively take a two week recovery could be the best way to handle him at this stage and potentially see him come up for either the Carlton or Collingwood games.

He had a couple of kicks on his left. He's skilled on both sides. He's not Jack Grimes though, he must be one of the best in the comp in terms of his ability on his non-preferred.

Quite ridiculous these calls for Jamar to be rested. We're not talking about a 19/20/21 year old who's body is still developing. Mark is turning 27 in August. He's only a few months younger than Sandilands, and you don't see him needing a week off, nor do you see Fremantle just playing kids like Zac Clarke who aren't up to it yet simply because they don't want their ruckman getting a bit tired. I would much rather see someone like Sylvia concede a couple of hit outs for 5 mins or so each quarter while giving us more run through the middle while Jamar has a rest than see Spencer or Martin learning on the job while their Casey form doesn't dictate them getting a game. How are we supposed to take your response seriously when you imply that Sylvia taking 2 or 3 centre bounces somehow results in him not playing as a 'regular midfielder'?? If anything, it makes him a more involved midfielder than usual as he is starting in the square.

Well, no, not really. This comes back to my discussion in another thread about what defines leadership. Just doing what you're supposed to do on-field doesn't count as leadership. To not follow his man and 'cheat' back in the forward line would've been undisciplined and lazy. Leadership is more than not being undisciplined and lazy.

He just followed his man back there. I'd rather see him appear in the backline under those circumstances than stand alone in our forward line while his opponent kicks the winning goal unopposed.

What the hell?! Jetta was arguably BOG last night and you're dropping him for Strauss???? Why?? Because he was a higher draft pick???

There's not much telling who will and won't come up from a game like that. Everyone was out on their feet and the boys now have a long flight home before getting into their rehab so really anybody could wind up too sore to go next week so it's difficult to accurately predict the changes. However, I think Aussie may be going with the Club's group up to Tiwi Islands with Jimmy, Cam, etc. To me, that would say the footy department made the very interesting decision ahead of time to rest Aussie next week as a trip home would see him not joining the group for rehab. I really hope Bate & Bruce are right to go for next week, aside from needing their experience against Geelong we are going to need quality players to bring into this side to replace blokes who won't have enough gas in the tank to play with the intensity required to hang with the Cats. For this same reason I could see players like Gysberts & Cheney given a real chance to get a game next week. I'm pretty worried about what might happen to us next week, it's hard enough keeping up with Geelong, particularly at Skilled, under normal circumstances but our young players are going to really struggle to bring the run after that slog.

This depends what you're referring to. Yes, his selection in the team was most certainly 100% vindicated. He earned that spot with hard work and good form, he then followed it up with a very good performance. However, his spot on the list beyond this year is far from vindicated. I really like Brad, he works as hard as anybody, he's a leader, and he's a hell of a great bloke. He needs to serve up what we saw last night on a more regular basis to get a new contract. I really hope when he doesn't kick 5 next week, in a game we're going to struggle in badly, everyone doesn't turn on him again and call for his head. He's earned a few weeks to prove his ongoing worth.

We are certainly starting to see what young Jack is capable of. He is wonderfully clean below his knees and he has the ability to find teammates in traffic as well as bring them into the game when he contests the ball in the air. He is indeed highly talented. All that remains for Jack is to continue to improve his mental application, particularly in his attack on the contested ground ball and the man with possession. Much of this will come with more experience, physical development and the associated confidence this will bring. Very, very exciting.