John Crow Batty

Actually I believe in 2003 we did OK in retrospect. After Sylvia and McLean there was not much. The best of this sad lot are Brent Stanton(13), David Mundy(19), Zac Dawson(41), Sam Fisher(55) and Michael Rischitelli(61). Out of this lot I'd take Fisher and Mundy. Sylvia is now playing good footy and looks like he may get better and we got a good deal for McLean. Not a total loss.

Heres a link with the programing for CCTV5, No football on live schedule. http://english.cntv.cn/live/cctv5/index.shtml

If it is broadcast on CCTV5 then it is good news. CCTV is the national broadcaster and channel five is their sports channel. The CCTV webstite might help.

Agree, very good point. Very ordinary indeed but we were consistently still playing finals then so had very few choice picks. But that is no excuse. We should have done better.

This should be a good lesson for us on how things can go wrong. Our choice draft picks are still unrealised potential. Many here are getting too optimistic and expect success to be automatic. There is am enormous amount of hard work yet to be done.

Have to disagree, rugby is a good example. Is growing in China but very slowly despite the game being an international game and compatible with soccer pitches. Can be played everywhere over there. Just not appealing due to the brutality. As for stadiums. Suitable grounds have been the achilies heal for developing the game overseas. Exhibition games have been played in many countries for decades without much success in raising the profile of the game. Still even struggles in Qld and NSW. And in NZ is treated as joke. The games sucks bad when played in a small area. The hybrid game hasn't helped our cause either in Ireland. They all think Aussie rules players are thugs and rightly so after the antics of some of our boys. As for the AFL investing in stadiums, I said they should consider helping develop multi purpose stadiums which can be used for all sports but also suitable for AFL. With the right kind of promotion and support grass roots competitions can start up in the right conditions.

Yep, the NBA is big in China but basketball is a [censored]'s game compared to Aussie Rules. I'm sure you will all agree. All the antics in basketball are not much different to pro wrestling. Basketball is only popular because it can be played in small arenas like school gyms and public parks just like ping pong and badminton which are incredibly huge sports in China. Another big problem for getting our game to China(or the rest of the world) is the lack of suitably large playing fields. Land is at a premium in China and an AFL sized ground will be the rarest luxury. Soccer fields are about the largest you will find. You guys are all dreaming that China will eventually embrace AFL. Billions have been spent developing soccer over there for the past 40 years and is played by millions but they still have second rate teams both international and domestic and haven't even developed any players of note. What chance does our game have? If the AFL were fair dinkum about developing the game in China they should start at the grass roots and seriously consider investing to build multi purpose Aussie Rules sized playing fields in major cities over there. Not cheap but they could form partnerships with communities and the like and given the strength of the dollar they could easily build a half a dozen for the price of one over here. This would be a far more positive initiative than having these silly exhibition games which will generate little interest and be quickly forgotten. I doubt that there would be more than a few thousand Chinese actually tuning in. PS, I've travelled on numerous crowded trains, buses and metro's over there and pushing and shoving is no big deal. You have to do it or else you will never get on or off. Everyone does it with good grace. If you tried it over here you will get a punch in the nose.

On second thoughts, it may be better for Collingwood to send their players down a mine for the entire pre season. Might keep them out of trouble.

Perhaps we could our list down a mine for a few weeks as part of their pre season. Might be good for team bonding.

I prefer Moloney. Green would be a great captian too but I prefer someone who will be in the thick of the action most of the time and has a bit of muscle. I believe Brad Green will spend more time in the forward line as he approaches his twilight years. When David Neitz was captain he spent too much of his time walking around in circles waiting for the ball to arrive whilst we were mostly getting punished severely at the other end of the ground.

Good to see the club can now afford to expand the coaching ranks. Great to see Todd back. Does anyone know what his duties will be?

Agree with that. I have worked in the newspaper industry for several years in the past. The cynic in me does not find it difficult to believe that in an exercise like this some players may be ranked in positions that encourage debate and controversy rather than the sincere beliefs of the writer. A good way to generate endless disagreements from readers thus ensuring the writer gets all the attention they wanted. No one can be proven right or wrong in these kind of meaningless exercises that cannot be measured in any rational or logical way.

A second ruckman is always going to be a second ruckman whilst there is a dominant figure around. Both Darren Jolly and Mark Jamar lived in Jeff's White's shadow which inhibited their development. Jolly got out when he saw his opportunities were going to be limited. Jamar would have likely done the same if he wasn't injured so much. Whilst Jamar is there, Johnson's got to value add to his game by maximising his physical presence which should be his best asset whether in the ruck or forward line. This is his last chance because there is no where else to go. If Hale came to us his opportunities would have dried up permanently.

Why does anyone bother commenting on a hack journalists opinion of the top 50 players. Its just his opinion. Is he the pope or some higher authority on the matter that must be respected?

I did find out where it will be played. Its the Jiangwan Sports centre. I looked at Wikmapia and it certainly looks long enough to play a decent game of AFL but perhaps a little narrow.

Does anyone know what kind of pitch we are playing on? I'm not aware of any stadium in Shanghai with dimensions large enough for our game. Most of the stadiums there have soccer pitches with running tracks around them. Are we going to play on an open field or some smaller weird shaped pitch?

Perhaps we are supposed to be talking about Alwyn Davey? I read somewhere he's not happy at Essendon.

I would like eventually to see Mark Jamar as a big bruising power forward/ruck. But for this to happen we need one of the others to step up. While the others are still developing, I'd give Johnson the first crack at taking more of the workload in the ruck. But at this stage Jamar still owns this position.

What about Nathan Jones. Is his back OK? He did manage all 22 games this season.

I,m not going to drag politics into this. The biggest aspect of our game that the Chinese would find baffling is all the pushing, shoving, trash talk, posturing and general lack of politeness by players on the field. Even more baffling to them will be when players shake hands after the game and all is well as if nothing has happened. A key aspect of Chinese behaviour is maintaining "face" in dealing with anyone. To lose your temper or show visible anger shows that you have lost "face". To humiliate someone is making them lose "face" and that is a big no no also. A person that loses face too often by bad behaviour or makes others lose face is not well respected. Also in China you won't find the typical football yobbo that you find in Europe or over here that doesn't mind participating in or like watching bad behaviour by sportsmen.

Not invalid. As I said in my first post. If it wasn't for the draft we would be stuffed. My post was based in frustration on being able to attract established good players to the club.

Picket, Vardy and Heffernan all long gone and distant memories. Picks 11 and 14 had no choice really. Macdonald. The deal was done before the PSD.

Things are certainly promising and I'd bet in a few years there might be some champs eager to jump on the bandwagon if it does start to roll. It's just frustrating after the business about Judd and Ball and whenever this club tries hard to get someone they miss out.

Looks like we miss out during trade week again. This club seems to have difficulty in recruiting quality established players. No one seems to want to play with us. Who have we got in the past 5 years? All I can think of is Moloney, MacDonald and Paul Johnson. If it wasn't for the draft, we'd be stuffed.

ICS would never get anywhere near 2% Chinese viewership not even in the Shanghai area. Given the aggressive nature of the game I doubt it would appeal to many Chinese anyway. The kind of aggression displayed in AFL would be an affront to Chinese cultural sensibilities.