binman

Ok, lets play the game. Who is your 'reliable source'. its not guaranteed he'll be with us in 2021 by any stretch? Seriously? Sheesh.

Exactly WB. Chook in Perth (and small number of other posters) has a proven track record and i trust his mail is reliable (or as reliable as any rumor based mail can be). i appreciate people hear things all the time, particularly in this day and age of people repeating texts and stuff they have read on their various feeds and implying it is real mail rather than simple old as time, gossip. A funny thing as happened in the last 10 years, in an environment where the President of the US retweets and supports bizarre conspiracy theories, the onus has shifted from the person spreading gossip and rumors proving its validity to those hearing disproving it. Crazy stuff. To even consider taking a rumour or any mail seriously i for one need a source. Or if that is not possible at least some indication of who the rumor has come from (eg player manager, club employee, board member etc etc). Even then i am skeptical but at least i have some parameters work with to gauge the reliability of the information. In the absence of either of these criteria (and often even with them) it goes though my mental shredder. Which of course is not to say the information is not accurate. Just not credible.

Spot on aw. A related issue is that tbe talent pool of players who are able to play AFL football is too small. Look at how many mature aged players are being recruited from the vfl, wafl and sanfl. 800 players needed. All need a level of athleticism that the game only demanded of 25% of a list 20 years ago. With soccer and basketball making huge inroads in tbat time there simply are not enough elite level athletes. So as you say every team will have to have their share of fringe players The advantage the top clubs have is tbat sustained success supports good depth. Players have access to strong, well resourced and long established development programs (not to mention accesd to state of the art facilities). And those clubs find it easier to attract better players. The above is one factor that works against the AFLs efforts to use the draft to support teams rising up the ladder. But even a club as successful as the hawks start to suffer when they lose their best ayers and their fringe players have to play. This issue is one more reason why next year is so important. We can't afford to stay near the bottom or even mid table.we also desperately need elite facilities. Our current set up is a joke.

Cool posting name. Fun start to your time on dl too. Incisive stuff.

Dodged a bullet there

You are the ying to my yang. Or as you might say I'm your yang to your ying.

I thought the same thing. Coincedentally i was thinking yesterday that it is remarkable how little chatter about moves to and from the dees. We have not been leaking, which is a good sign. Compare us to say the crows.

I'm very clear on this If we are going to get him i think he is a great pick up. If we aren't i think he is total dud and i was never vaguely interested in getting him. Same applies to Amon and Langdon.

He did or he should?

Love it. Comedy at its blackest.

Agree on both points. I know it is a hobby horse of mine but our comms are not up to scratch. But maybe, just maybe your two points are related. Maybe the point of the article is to give some confidence to supporters who have rumours about him wanting out that they are not true. I wonder if a sub text is also flagging the understanding of how much critical aerobic fitness is to the current game. Maybe that's a stretch.

Baw baw? Should be at lake mountain. Or gumbuya park

Interesting combination of roles/jobs. Wouldn't be many senior coaches of similar level leagues also taking on such a high profile media role. What's he like as a commentator?

Good post rusty. I get what you are saying about the reset and you are probably right. I suspect that they were actually modifying the game style preseason, though not radically. Hard for players to implement a new style at any time. I think back to the struggles adapting to a zone defence But our lack of foot skills don't help thats for sure

Agree on hurt factor. The impact of our best player in maxy was nullifed in large part because other teams basically robed to him. Simple but effective. I really think trac will go to another level and provide that point of difference. Bu5 I also think we really need to draft and trade in some real skill. The players that do the most damage are those that hit targets.

Agree on all points It's funny that one of the rumours on here about his supposed discontentment was that he he was being asked to rein in his nstural attacking flair. Who knows if that is true (being asked to curb his flair, not the rumour of discontentment) but personally I think they should encourage him to he more selfish and go for more goals.

That surely is the issue. We have invested hell of a lot in our defence. We've got so many defenders now we have to turn them into forwards.

Spot on on fitness. It doesn't matter what style used fitness is critical. But the chip and hold style that is in vogue definitely requires a a great deal of running. It was interesting to read quotes from May that the dees wanted him to run a lot more up and down the ground than was the case at GC where he stayed in the back half as a lock down defender ans that this was a factor in him not being fit enough for the game style we wanted to play. Suggests we were looking to do more running style game. Perhaps given our preseason and injuries we in fact might have been better to stay more with our existing game style than trying a new one players weren't fit enough to execute.

How is can you not remember where you heard such specific scenario? (not having a shot by the way)

At the risk of flogging a dead horse our shocking preseason prevented drilling in things over and over gain. Introducing new systems require all team availability for a high proportion of training sessions. Goodwin acknowledged that perhaps he overreached in terms of trying to implement new systems. That same disrupted preseason is the reason why we were not fit enough (and Lewis has said pointedly that some, presumably young players didn't come back fit enough, which if true would not have helped). On new game style we absolutely tried to implement a more chip and hold system. This was particularly evident after the bye. it perplexes me that so many DL posters don't seem to have noticed this. Of course all game styles require two way running but this approach requires multiple players offering multiple leads and options when their team has the ball. And when they don't multiple players running to cover outlet kicks. Together that demands huge aerobic fitness - and i said we newer got fit enough. It is for this reason that we got smashed in last quarters so regularly. We ran out of gas and couldn't stop the switch and run it out of defence style teams like WC are so good at. The interesting thing about this game style is i reckon it is one that is built for the home and away season. Contested ball is still super important but the keeping of style means there are less collisions (and much to the chagrin of the AFL less scoring opportunities - hard to score when you kick 4 or 5 times across you half back flank and then chip it slowly down the ground) and therefore hopefully less contact injuries and not as hard for players to get up and recover week after week. Very taxing aerobically but less physical toll. More than ever we have two different seasons. Home and Away and Finals. I suspect that this finals we will see much less chip and hold, quicker ball movement, an emphasis on getting it forward, high presssure around the ball, more big contests and the sort of game the dees played last year because in most games there is no tomorrow. This suits teams like the Tigers, Giants and bullies i reckon.

Reasonable scenario. I can't see them shopping viney due to the optics of trading a captain. And to be honest I'm not sure how much cuurency he would have (poor skills, fe2 tricks, history of navicular issue). Can see them shopping Brayshaw. Mainly because he has currency and we have other inside mids. But he was dropped at the beginning of 2018 (or was it 2017?) because he wasn't fit enough. And I wonder if he came back fit this year.

Agree steve. Not because he is not worth it (though I'm not convinced he is, it would have to be late first rounder). But we are not going to give pick 2 or 3. And if we split one of those picks we need to use it to bring some young talent into the club or else we risk unbalancing our list in terms of age profile. What are your thoughts on getting king and gc's pick 17 for our pick 2 or 3? I'm not sure but it would give us a top young forward with some AFL games under his belt and a crack at a first rounder (note: this assumes that for whatever reason we are not taking Anderson or Rowell, either because gc get pick to as a priority pick, they get 10 as a pp but a deal has been wirh us to give them our pick 2 or we want to bring in two young talented players)

King and their pick 17 would just about get it done. But king doesn't help address our need for skilled outside runners.

I'm so annoyed at Mahoney. How frustrating that he sorted another signature with the minimum of fuss and avoided a messy back and forth that might have become a distraction if left unresolved. I'm pretty annoyed at the club in general actually. I mean why isn't it leaking, with juicy tidbits seeping out to fan the fire and fill up the angst bucket. I mean don't they know they are supposed to be in crisis. I read it on DL so it must be true. And don't they know these days the onus is no longer on those spreading rumours to provide some evidence for their fanciful tales. It is on the club to provide evidence the rumours are not true. Where there's smoke. Hold on there's none. Give us some smoke dees. Why can't they take a leaf out of clubs like the Crows and Freo. Those clubs know how to have a crisis. External reviews. No reviews. Sack their coach (the one they one they got to replace their previously sacked coach). Sack the CEO. Pay outs. Leaks. Crazy short men. Media in a tizzy. Sources close to the club. Get your act together Dees

Viney really is a renaissance man.