Inner Demon

Did anyone tune in to this?? Another good initiative from the Club's comms dept.

Fair bit of drifting from the rules here.

To fill in a few gaps:

Hughes cannot be retained on the rookie list. We had special dispensation to allow him to stay a 4th year due to his year off. He's done.

Trading away half a dozen players in return for a clutch of top 20 draft picks is fantasy.

No matter how much you kick & scream and point at Newton & Meesen, "rookie demotion" isn't real. Those players were delisted. They were then drafted at a later date because every other Club overlooked them half a dozen plus times each.

I love Junior, and consider him best 22 currently – but have doubts whether that will be the case next year. As much as I'd love him to stay, our list spots have become much more of a premium. The only way I would keep him is if the unlikely chance that the rumours about Bruce and Gold Coast are true.

We can’t re-rookie Spencer (maximum 3 years on rookie list at one club)

I don’t think Cheney or McNamara have much of a chance of playing in our premiership 22 – but think McNamara has more potential for upside

Retire: Junior

Delist: Bell Miller Johnson Cheney

Draft: Rounds 1,2,3 (Upgrade: Mckenzie, Spencer).

I’d look towards getting some ruck (Jamar injury) insurance in the rookie draft, but would not expect much to be available since other clubs + Gold Coast + GWS will be looking for the same thing

Cheney is contracted through 2011. Source

delist: Bell, McNamara, Martin, Meesen, Newton?

Gold Coast: Bate, Miller, Bruce?

Retire: McDonald?

Well that didn't take long...

Read the first post and try again.

Furthermore, Gold Coast can only poach a maximum of one uncontracted player.

PJ. I'd rather we play kids in the ruck next year than him.

It's an interesting one. I've wrestled with that myself. In the end I'm falling on the side of giving him a 1 year contract to serve as Jamar Insurance. If, god forbid, the Big Russian went down during next year that leaves us relying completely on Spencer/Gawn/Fitzpatrick/Martin. I'm not comfortable with that, it's just a little too soon.

However, I have no idea whatsoever what kind of players Barry and his team have pegged as floating around that point in the draft so it's tough to make any sort of educated call.

More threads than not seem to eventually wind up debating the delistings at season's end, so we might as well have an actual thread for it.

Now, I am going to lay a few 'ground rules' in a bid to keep the thread from devolving into people suggesting a bunch of unrealistic scenarios and everyone bickering over whether we can/will/should do it or not when it's irrelevant.

1. We must delist a minimum of three players from the senior list. No mentions of McKenzie, Spencer, Newton, Meesen, Hughes or Healey.

2. No "demote to rookie list". This is not a real option, this is just a delisting. What we do with our rookie selections is an unrelated topic.

3. Try to stick to the unofficial, uncontracted player list which has circulated in other threads. I have copied it here for reference. If you insist on delisting a contracted player you should have a good explanation for why the Club would take such a risk with the trust of the playing group.

Warnock, Bruce, Jones, Watts, Bate, Miller, Johnson, Bell, Moloney, McDonald, Bail, Blease, Strauss, McNamara.

4. Having Bruce & McDonald retire does not open up 2 list spots. It would only allow us to elevate a rookie at the start of the year as well as mid-season. One of these players moving on would allow Brad Green to move onto the Veteran's List and open up a spot on the Senior List.

Now, remember that the number of delistings relates to the number of draft picks we will take and also consider whether there are any rookie listed players you would like to elevate. If you do, they happen before we get a draft pick. So if you want to elevate McKenzie then your 2nd delisting gets us a Rnd 1 draft pick.

My selections:

Bell (McKenzie elevated)

McNamara (Spencer elevated)

Miller (Rnd 1 Draft Pick)

McDonald (Rnd 2 Draft Pick)

At this stage I don't have a 5th player to delist since it would only give us access to a Rnd 3 Draft Pick which with the GC concessions won't actually come until around Pick 50 in the Draft. In my opinion, a Draft Pick 50 is not a better prospect than any of the players remaining on that list.

Have at it.

Aside from resting Aaron Davey next week, I'd hope fopr a Hawthorn thrashing against the Dockers and go for it against the Power.

Yeah, probably a solid idea to "rest" the bloke with a broken leg.

I think we're going to wind up giving a few young blokes (it's an interesting way to put it given we've got 3 players over 27) a game over the last 2 weeks just due to some injuries creeping in.

Aaron's gone. Grimes is gone. Jurrah might miss with the dislocated finger. There's no telling which players have been carrying injuries so we could see some surgeries.

By the same token, more important than putting games into kids is putting wins into kids. Our 22 is loaded with young players, we need to field the best team possible in order to win games of football.

Miller, Bell, Meesen, Healey, Hughes...

And I think Junior will be gone also.

Rookies don't count as 'delistings'.

Miller & Bell delistings account for the promotions of Jordie McKenzie & Jake Spencer.

Junior retiring gets us our Rnd 1 pick.

If we want more picks, we have to delist more uncontracted senior list players. Or have GC poach one of them.

For me:

Miller

Bell

McDonald

McNamara

I can't find anybody on our list who I would delist in order to get a 3rd round pick which won't come until something like 50 this year.

I think we'll turnover our rookie list in its entirety so there's another 6 kids into the club which gives us an injection of 8 new players. Feels like enough.

Probably the first one. Not mad on the stripes.

Would something like that please you??

I think you're on the right track with your take on the topic. But what's the depth for? Quite frankly for all Miller's endeavour he's never going to be a premiership player and if he had to come into our GF side as depth I'll be looking away. In the development years up to then I think it's more productive to improvise some variation in forward structure with a mix of better quality players than persist with known inadequacy. I note that this may seemingly contradict my previous case for retaining PJ on the list as depth for Jamar - but if you've got no ruckman it really does destroy structure - forward structure is more maleable. But to take the good essence of your argument and run with it I'd be inclined to think that if Bate left it may improve the chances of say Newton or Hughes being retained - with Miller WYSIWYG, the jury is ever so slightly out on Newton and if Hughes could get fit ...

Far worse players than Bate or Miller have premiership medallions. When you consider that poor players like Hawkins, Lonergan & Nathan Ablett are Premiership players but neither of Nick Riewoldt or Matthew Pavlich are it should give you some perspective.

I hope so too. Like you, the white doesn't bother me so long as the design is good, and I'm not a fan of the current design. Too much like the Bulldog's white jumper.

The insignia would be nice. Better than the demon IMO.

Well we'll be moving on from the current demon next year, and all indications have been that we'll be going towards something more like that little demon from the old membership card. I don't think he would go too well on a guernsey so at least our white guernsey won't have the 'cartoonish' tough that so many of them do.

It goes without saying, I'd imagine, that everyone would prefer we didn't have to have a white guernsey, but since we don't live in lollipop land where we always get everything we want, I am more concerned with having a good clash strip that we can learn to be proud of.

Yes.

We shall see. Essendon members must vote on this. A Fight like this one is never over. AFL Commissioners are Transient beasts. The MFC will outlive Vlad, Anderson & co.

I think you'll find that "part of our constitution" business is a lot of bluff & bluster.

It interests me that a lot of people don't tend to look at list management in terms of a list of 38 players. If players aren't in someone's Top 25 they seem to dismiss them as extraneous and unnecessary.

Depth is absoultely crucial to a list. Injuries & suspensions happen in this game. It's just as important to have better depth players on the list than other teams as it is to have better 1st choice players on the list.

For all the knocks on players like Bate & Miller, they have more runs on the board playing AFL than a lot of other depth players in their position across the league. This makes them valuable, not in terms of trade compensation, but in terms of team stability, and importantly, competition for spots.

Non-serious shoulder injury.

"Bask in the glory ?"...ugh.

Ugh indeed...

And what rubbish suggesting we will no longer be made to wear a white clash strip just because we win a premiership and become financially strong.

This fight is over. The final holdout, Essendon, has acceded to the AFL's will and is going to have a predominantly white clash guernsey next year.

You might as well be screaming and banging on about returning to an all-Victorian league. The world has moved on.

I'm afraid it would appear all the maintained rage is going nowhere fast. Cam Schwab tweeted earlier that the new clash guernsey being worked on will be predominantly white. He adds that it will have a more heritage feel about it though, which I am looking forward to. Best guess would have to be something involving the interlinked MFC logo.

Yep, first thing that occurs to me is that if Bate goes and Watts goes down we'd be very thin for tall forwards.

Would destroy our structure.

Miller won't get a reprieve, in my view.

Those two thoughts don't really marry up. So you think that if Bate went to GC we would still delist Miller despite recognising that our structure would be destroyed with a single injury/suspension??

Sam Edmund from the Herald-Sun tweeted earlier that after speaking to Dean Bailey this morning he got the impression we wouldn't see Tapscott debut this year. No further info.

Rather than go back and forth about whether Bate is any good or not, or questioning the validity of the rumour. I am interested in what the flow-on effects of Matthew Bate going to the Gold Coast might be in terms of our list management. The first thing that springs to mind would be a reprieve for Brad Miller. If we were to lose Bate then surely we couldn't also afford to lose Miller, we'd be completely bereft of depth for tall forwards.

There's no guarantee whatsoever that we will lose anyone, but if we're going to have a speculation thread it might as well include a discussion about the impact of the hypothetical at hand.

I know what i am argueing thankyou Mr Smart Arse-I trust this AFL with nothing.

Each year rule changes, new Jumper combinations, slowly creeping in

Don't tell me what i am thinking about 25, i will not cop that one bit.

Each year higher attendances, higher TV ratings, higher membership numbers, greater revenues.

Yup. The AFL sure is messing everything up lately...

Given it's a Sunday match, we'll have 3 players as 'ins' on the extended bench, even though we're likely to have no change.

I'll go with Miller, Morton and Tapscott.

I'd say Miller, Morton & Grimes.

Still no change though.

There isn't a lack of atmosphere, but it could be a hell of a lot better if the ground was full of fans from the competing clubs.

To say that the revenue is a 'massive percentage' of incomes for clubs is an exaggeration. But, it is true that it does represent some income. Nonetheless, there are myriad other ways of replacing this for non-competing clubs, without ripping the soul out of the biggest game of the year.

No, it isn't an exaggeration actually. It's worth about $1 million.

The EPL did a very thorough study on colours a few years back. I suggest you read it. White was the most passive shade by far...& there is no reason to have it on our jumper as we are the Red & Blue. Where is my arguement absurd??

The AFL stance is absurd.

Your argument is absurd because you are suggesting that white is only a sign of a surrender if it appears on the guernsey, but not on the shorts. Is white no longer passive if worn below the waist????