Good Times Grimes

Still waiting for one flag in my lifetime...just one

I cannot wait for the 2024 draft.

Hey McQueen, if you ever have a chance to speak to him, there's no need to bring any of this up. Focus on Perth's bad features if you feel the need to talk about the place.

Absolutely brutal. Our first line is made up of fourth liners (despite Komarov's great season, he's no more than a solid grinder). I wouldn't be surprised if Kadri was being punished by Babcock for his suspension-worthy threat to Wideman in the previous game. It also seems that Connor McDavid can play. 5 points against the Leafs.

I think Pittsburgh is the big dark horse. Crosby is on fire, Kessel has finally found a linemate who he can produce with (Hagelin), Letang is playing the best hockey of his career and Malkin is still to come back into the lineup. On another note, the Leafs finally offloaded Phaneuf by trading him to the Senators. Biggest win for the Leafs in a decade! We're currently on a West coast road trip, and have left Lupul, Bozak and Matthias in Toronto to recover from injuries, while van Riemsdyk is still on the IR. Last night's team was one of the worst lineups I have ever seen...ever. Now it looks like Kadri will be missing a few games after making a visible threat to Giordano, and Bernier set to start the next game, so things are only going to get worse. Last place, here we come!

I don't think anyone would have believed you if you'd said that by 2016 there would only be three of those players left on our list and six of them no longer in the AFL.

I think he might've played before.

I doubt they're telling McCarthy he'll be second fiddle to Hogan, a player who still has two seasons to run on his contract. If he wanted to play second fiddle to Hogan that badly, he'd come to the Dees. The reason he wants to go to Fremantle it to go home and to play at the club he grew up supporting. I don't think Hogan has or will have anything to do with his decision. That would be like us finding out that we'd recruited Jeff Garlett with the promise that he'd be playing alongside Dion Prestia in 2017.

Fremantle will be able to get McCarthy at a very low price due to his current issues. No other club would want to touch him, bar maybe the Eagles. I think signing him will reduce the urgency for them to sign another forward, but I don't think it would deter them from making a play for Hogan. If they think they're a chance to get him, they'll do everything they can to do so. That being said, we've still got Hogan for this year and next year. That means that even if we have a season that's below expectations in 2016, we'll still have a chance to right the ship in 2017 before he makes his final decision. He's said that he loves Melbourne, and it's obvious that he has great relationships with a lot of his teammates. He plays with passion and looks like he's committed to the cause. While it would be an awesome boost to the club to sign him before round one 2016, I'm not overly concerned if he wants to wait until mid-season or even after the season to negotiate his contract. I'd feel uneasy if he went into 2017 unsigned, but even then, that's not the end of the world.

Connor McDavid's back!

You're right, I wasn't considering Casey. I can't wait for the footy to actually start so that we can move past this whole mess.

The more time goes by without us hearing about the club lobbying for a top-up player for 2016, the more certain I become that we were prepared for this outcome when we began to court Melksham. We've got more than enough solid options down back to cover his loss this season.

CAS disagrees with this.

John Scott with 2 goals and named the All-Star MVP. Awesome.

Joel Smith effectively compensates the loss of Melksham, numbers wise.

Hopefully he's on a heavily front-ended contract that's due to pay him $1m+ in 2016 and very little for the final three years

This is a really good read by John Scott, the enforcer that was voted into the NHL All Star game as a joke by fans only to have the NHL try and interfere.

The Western Conference race is going to be really exciting to watch in the second half, with only six points separating fifth and eleventh. I think the teams that are currently in the top 8 will be there at the end of the season, but the order will shuffle around a lot over the next couple of months.

That's enough out of you. '67 was great. Or so I've heard...

Why are we still talking about this? As was often the case pre-Roos, we recruited the wrong player. It doesn't matter where he was "ranked" by experts or who wanted who, we drafted Toumpas and it was ultimately the wrong decision. Being a hindsight hero on these threads has absolutely no benefit to anyone. Our drafting and recruiting over the past few off-seasons seems to be much improved as we have as solid a group of youngsters on our list as I can remember. Let's look forward, not back. If we're lucky, maybe Wines will choose to come "home" at the end of the season.

How do Habs fans change a lightbulb? They don't. They just sit around in the dark talking about how good the old one was.

Players suspended by WADA are supposed to be unpaid, though I'm sure clubs will find a way to pay them.

Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

This article on the AFL site about Jake Carlisle suggests that due to his ban his contract will last a year longer than it initially would have. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but is this the case with all the banned 34? i.e. with Melksham's contract not begin until next season?

I'm not disagreeing with that. All I'm saying is that it's impossible to judge at the moment.