binman

I hadn't seen that. How on earth could he land on a D+? His 'rationale' is ridiculously flawed. Part of it is based on the fact we didn't get a top 10 pick in the Jackson trade. Sure we only got Freo's first round pick next season, and they are likely to finish inside the 8, so its not likely to be a top 10 pick. But they are not going to finish top 2 either, so if they don't make top 4 we'll still get a pick inside the top 15. In a supposedly rich draft (though surely that has to be the biggest myth in footy - the so called super drafts), in reality how different would say a pick 9 and pick 14 be? Particularly given that we will still be in the premiership window, in that draft range we will likely be looking to fill specific needs as opposed to best available. Hell, it's possible that even if we had a top 10 pick we will get the same player we have identified at 15. Taylor has shown that he doesn't follow the herd when it comes to draft order. The same logic applies to our pick 13 in this year's draft. We are every chance of picking a player at 13 that draft watchers have say outside the top 20. And he completely ignores the fact we got the deal done early, which cleared the way to get the Grundy, and to a lesser extent the Hunter, deals done - and done in a way advantageous to us. Compare our approach to say that of the Pies, a club now paying part of the salary of two former players, with henry, which just created unnecessary angst. Or even Freo, who, for the second year in a row, jerked Lobb around before caving late and letting him go. How is jerking players around good for the current players, or for future trading? He gives the Hunter trade short thrift. The best thing he can say is we didn't have to offer much up to get him. But he completely ignores the fact that Hunter fills a clear need - an aerobic beast with good kicking skills who can play on the opposite wing to langers. Surely filling such a specific need deserves recognition - i mean doing so would be Lamb's KPI. He also gives short thrift to the fact that part of Hunter's salary will be covered, as will Grundy's. Bu the biggest flaw in his argument relates to Grundy. He reckons: 'Brodie Grundy who comes in while undoubtedly a star ruckman, is also an ill-fitting piece and will likely relegate Max Gawn to playing predominantly as a key forward next season. The positive for Melbourne is Grundy only required pick 27 to acquire which is a bargain on paper. Collingwood will pay a portion of his contract which also helps, though with the size and length of his contract, it's a list flexibility killer that will make retaining existing talent and adding rival talent within the constraints of the salary cap in future years more challenging than would otherwise be the case.' So much nonsense in that palaver its hard to know where to start, but here goes : With Jackson bailing, we desperately needed a second ruck - and not just any sort of ruck; an athletic beast who can run all day. We snared a dual all Australian who has probably 5-6 years of top footy ahead of him and is probably one of the best athletes in the AFL. Given the market, how could we have possibly done better than Grundy? An ill fitting piece? Huh? See above Relegate Max to 'playing predominantly as a key forward next season'. Bollocks. It depends bit on what he means by 'predominately' i guess, but the club want to engineer a scenario where Maxy does less grunt work in the ruck and more time up forward (no doubt as part of a strategy to extend his career). Wasn't he watching this season? That is exactly how we played Jackson and Maxy all season! Still, i'd be surprised if Maxy doesn't take at least 40% of ruck time We are in the premiership window right now and Grundy increases our chance of winning a flag in the next 2-3 years - arguably even more so than Jackson Which makes the comment about the size and length of his contract being a 'list flexibility killer' bizarre - we are paying Grundy less than we would have had to pay Jackson and we would have had to probably offer Jackson an even longer contract. And Grundy make it more likely we win a flag in the next two years to boot, IMO. Grundy's deal makes retaining 'existing talent' harder? Really? Did he miss the memo that we have long terms deals signed with Tracc, Oliver, Gus, Salem, Viney and (i think) Maxy. Who else is realistically going to be hard to fit under our salary cap in the next 3 years or so? Kozzie perhaps, but i'd be shocked if we don't have the salary cap space to offer him a long term deal on competitive coin 'adding rival talent within the constraints of the salary cap in future years more challenging than would otherwise be the case"? - isn't that true of any quality player traded into a new club? I mean, just one example is Jackson. I firmly believe he will be super star of the competition. But no-one could argue that he is at the moment. And it is very unlikely he will be for at least another 2-3 years (he has just turned 21 after all). Yet Freo have locked him in on a long term contract on serious coin. How are they going to go renegotiating Darcy's contract? Or Frederick's? How are they going to go next trading period bringing in a star with so much of their cap tied up with Jackson? Freo are paying Jackson more that we are paying for Grundy. It's pretty clear in my mind who will be represent better value for money in the next 2-3 years - and it ain't the unicorn messiah! D+? Sheesh.

You get a red and blue persistence badge.

Her kicking style reminds me a player from the 80 or 90s, who i just cant place, who was a smooth right footer, but when he kicked on his left it looked like Westy's robo style. Said player was deadly accurate up to 30 metres with his left

A good name for [insert name of relentlessly negative poster of your choice here].

The n is silent So, the proper pronunciation is Bang Bag Bang

That was brilliant wasn't it. The players you mention above are all such natural footballers. Add daisy, paxy, bannon, heath and hanks (who has the one thing that only the best players have - time) and that is a significant core of highly skilled, hi footy iq players. I had more involuntary 'great kick' thoughts last night that I had all season with the men's team. Some brilliant weighted kicks to the forwards advantage. Including by Westy, my new favourite demon (accross all three teams) who last season could barely hit a target by foot. And some brilliant kicking for goal. How was that goal to Harris from the hand off by mitthen? The commentators didn't do that justice. Off one and a half steps, off balance, tackled and had to jink to her right and slightly kick on the outside of her foot. Nailed it from 40. Just fantastic.

What's the bet?

Looking more and more like number 2, with lyon being the coach. Which is appropriate, given it is a [censored] thing to do. If Lyon gets the gig, it worth remembering that he shafted the saints when he got tbe dockers gig. And in doing so Harvey was unceremoniously and unexpectedly sacked as a result. So he will have been involved in ruining the career of two senior coaches.

My gut feeling it is one of three things (in order of probability). Applying the Occam's razor principle, complete incompetence is probably the most likely reason Somewhat related to number one, back room shenanigans and shadowy conversations at board level led to identifying someone they decided they want to bring in as senior coach pronto - sack Ratten, create some space ahead of the draft and magically said person gets the gig (which might explain why the saints were so inactive in the trade period - ie they wanted to give the new guy as much input into the list as possible, and not saddle him with player types ratten was keen on) They uncovered something NQR about Ratten they knew would likely come out at some point and wanted to get ahead of that by biting the bullet and sacking Ratten now

This from an article on the sacking 'Lethlean on Friday insisted Walsh was not involved in the review that has ultimately cost Ratten his job. He said the decision was made by a review committee which was made up by Bassat, Lethlean, Jason Blake and former North Melbourne coach David Noble.' It's pretty hard core that David Noble, who was unceremoniously sacked following a 'review' was involved in a review that led to the unceremonious sacking of another senior AFL coach. What an industry.

Probably. Except I didn't know it existed. I don't go to topics via the forum - I go via recent posts. Maybe the AFL website should link to dl.

S Goodwin has his say: https://au.sports.yahoo.com/afl-2022-brett-ratten-bombshell-leaves-fans-uproar-st-kilda-195030503.html

Footy classified is for sacked coaches with HR complaints made against them!

What are odd that Brett ends up in the sacked coaches nursing home - fox footy

Maybe the Saints will put Ratten on their rookie list? If they can't find a coach, they can pop him back in the coaches chair.

Ta. As i said, i knew it would be there somewhere. But it is in the 'trade period' specific section of the website - and not in the 'draft hub' where logic suggests it should be.

The AFL website is a complete joke. So much content. So little useful information. And so difficult to search, filter etc etc I wanted to know when draft night was. The logical place to find that simple bit of info is the AFL website. But for the life of me i could not find out that simple fact - despite there being a whole draft hub section of the site with videos, podcasts, etc etc etc. Now i'm sure its on their somewhere, but i looked for 5 mins to no avail. Can someone please tell me what night draft night is?

Something doesn't add up. Sack a coach straight after the trade period, when the attention is all on the trades that happened. Maybe they didn't want to scupper any trades, though of course the go with that would have been to have a new coach in place. They won't have a coach in place for the draft, or if they do that person would only have just arrived. And their draft board would be shaped by what type of players ratten wanted to bring in. There's no way this was the plan All smacks of damage control.

I just got home from seeing agnes obel at the best venue for sound i have been to - the recital centre. Brilliant gig. And am seeing Aldous Harding there Friday week. Can't wait

I actually think the thin talent pool is a really big issue for the AFL, particularly with a tassie team on the horizon. The game is aerobically demanding now that in addition to requiring elite footy skills players also need to be elite athletes. And they need to be prepared to train to a level probably not a million miles from say Olympic level 40 metre runners. That's a pretty demanding combinations of requirements.

I think you are missing the wood for the trees. The point that was being made is our depth is no worse than any other AFL team - and arguably better than most other AFL clubs. Talent is spread pretty thin across the AFL

That doesn't really make sense. We had our share of injuries in the VFL. Not as many as other clubs perhaps, but we had at least the following injuries i can think of: Howes (out for at least 8 weeks) Turner (who was out twice, once for 4 odd weeks with a foot and then again later in the season with a broken jaw) Smith (out for a big block of time) Rosman (hammy x 2, concussion x 1) AMW (at least once, but i think twice with soft tissue injuries) And no doubt some others missed multiple games. That's a pretty big list of AFL listed players out of the side with injury - and probably north of 35 weeks lost due to injury. On top of that Chandler missed 3 games through suspension. And perhaps of most significance, we lost our number one ruck halfway through the season and never really had anything but a makeshift replacement, for what is one of the most important positions on the ground, particularly the way we play. All VFL teams have veteran AFL players running around, and most have a decent rump of VFL level players.

Lost one game for the entire season. Had two more wins than the lions who finished second. Our percentage was nearly 26% higher than the next best in Southport. What does that say about other club's depth?

Totally agree. Jackson was out of our control, but nonetheless left a huge hole in terms of the need for a second ruck. I was really concerned we would not be able to fill that hole given the paucity of such players - in a general sense and also specifically at tgis point in time. To snare a ready to go ruck of Grundy's talent was an incredible outcome. We were crying out for an outside runner with above average kicking skills and hunter ticks that box. And it's brilliant that the pies and dogs have to contribute to Grundy and hunter's salaries. Hard to argue hunter is not an upgrade on Hunt, not that the two were nessasaily linked I guess. I agree Schache is an upgrade, albeit just, on weed. And Shache won't be asked to play a role he is not suited for - which to be fair to weed, he was. And as you say the draft picks give us something to negotiate with. By any measure that is a fantastic trade period. Kudos to lamb and his team (who by the by were super proactive with grundy).