Moonshadow

How many years? If kept, will be depth players only. In and out of VFL/AFL.

Fair point i'll take that. If there were two good mids available I would take the mids over Cloke no doubt. When Beams and Sidebottom were both un signed I wanted us to offer them 500k a year each for 5 years. But it doesn't look like apart from Boak that there are many mids available.

And Cloke is a FA, so he'd cost us no picks or trades, in theory.

But that's a lot of $ for one player. Would make him in the top half doz highest paid players, I'd think.

How bout Montagna and Sewell, instead, as FAs? $550k p/a each (or similar rated FA mids). Would they be better than Cloke for $1.1?

I don't get the "he isn't worth the money" point of view. The contract would be Heavily front ended to the point when Cloke is 30 he would be on bugger all. Right now we don't have many players who command high salaries and Jones,Howe and Trengove are all signed up so no one will be pushed out by Cloke's wage. The aim of front ending the contract means if we are any good in 5 years time we will still have cap room to pay our good players. It's all gravy baby!

I think what many are saying is that we could perhaps get 2 very good players for what we would be paying Cloke, regardless of front loading. Over $1mill per year is speculated as the asking price.

Bad Flu, or was is a head cold, or maybe just Sinus problems? They can impact muscle strains you know.

He's got man flu, my missus tells me. Pretty common at the moment. She know all about these things, thankfully. My best sauce.

Taylor is definitely on Coll's staff list still. No mention of Rendell on it, though. I was under the impression Rendell had been poached by Bucks. If Taylor's future is with us, why doesn't he just resign and leave? Everyone in AFL circles gets poached if they are good and has to break a contract at some point. Neeld did it to come to us, Malthouse did it to go to the Pies (and broke it to leave them). Could it be deemed a restraint of trade to force him to stay? As many have said, this could be a make or break draft for the Dees.

Imagine if we got his mate?! The big doofus beside him?

Still wouldn't mind Cloke though...

Not saying that I want Dawes, but good lord, he'd be useful in our current undersized forward line. At least for the 2nd half of the year temporarily anyway. Then I'd like to hand him back. At no cost, of course.

Can someone arrange this please?

What can we do go to get the players to rally?

Culture. Roos have a 'backs to the wall' attitude. Call it shinboner spirit, or whatever...

Good list. Very good coach. Great leaders. Now have good facilities. Know the coaches game plan. Big bodies. Good skills, on the whole. We have some of these, but not many.

We looked at this several months ago. Worth discussing again IMO. Isn't Rendell now at Coll? What's happening with the 2IC at Coll who is supposedly coming to us? Are we largely going to be led by Tod Viney and Tim Harrington going into this draft? Now we only have a couple of 2012 games to go, the draft must be a major priority.

Edit: Interesting that many have bagged Prendegast for his legacy, yet no one has commented on Harrington part in our list selection.

Disagree. We won and he is shite so they are spot on.

Actually, we are sh!te, they are sh!ter.

*Yawn*

.....Another plainly obvious run through the list thread.

Over-achieved for a pick 55.

Good looking bloke (not that there is anything wrong with saying that.....), but also perhaps punching above his weight matrimonially!

Both very relaxed, affable guys. Don't think they have a problem.

On a slight side note, perhaps we could have had both of them if McNamee had got his way with swapping Brown for Melb's no1 2008 draft pick.

I'm not sure if I heard correctly but I am sure that on Wednesday night, Gerard Healy said on 3AW that Melbourne had offered Cloke a 7 year deal. Please tell me I dreamt that.....

You are mistaken. He has been offered a 17 year contract. That way he is out of other club's reach when he becomes eligible for free agency for a second time.

Yep and how do they get it?? Mids. We could have Jesus H Christ there himself at FF and we would still struggle with our I50s which are amongst the lowest in the league. As well our delivery is bottom of the class.

He's too small for FF. Better as an inside mid.

I've heard some [censored] tunes in my time, but Passion Pit takes the cake.

Should rename themselves to Passionfruits.

I remember watching in awe the day he kicked that goal over his shoulder from 45m out. Could not believe I had just seen that happen. Looked like it was not physically possible.

Love to see you back next year LJ.

All the best.

Except Scully. A number 1 draft pick.

Tough job. Not a lot of applause or spotlight for assistants.

Still....... LET'S GET LING!

May be starting to get a bit on in years and having a few more injuries, but Rivers is should be retained for 2 more years IMO. Veteran list eligible?

Probably finish in top 3 in the Bluey this year. Regardless of our situation, that will speak highly for him.

But of those, only Cheney was a trade.

To get Blease, GWS would have to either get permission from us, or trade.

All of the other players (other than Bruce), were delisted by us and subsequently picked up by other clubs. There is approximately a 0% chance of Blease being delisted by the MFC at the end of the season.

Maybe splitting hairs and not wanting to digress any further, but the point Nutbean was making that i commented upon said nothing of trades or delisting. It was about players leaving one club for another.

I was making the comment that while we think we have the upper hand, Blease is the one wanted by us and out of contract, so he has the ability to leave to another club (not specifically to any one club) if he wants to. Statistics from 2010 are not applicable for 2012 in this regard.

Yes, you are correct that Blease won't be delisted by the Dees in 2012. Well done on that point, good Doctor.

Easily swayed ? You say players dont have a choice on who drafts them - by the same token if a players doesnt want to go to a bottom side and the club plays hardball then the player doesnt have a choice of where his next destination is.

The below figures are taken from 2010 which eliminates the GWS and GC factor where they had a window to take uncontracted players.

3.3% of players in the AFL moved to other clubs - thats around 1 player per club. Of those trades (and drafting via the preseason) - 70% of them would be considered mature players. That means less than .5% of young players will leave your club every year.

GWS cannot take Blease as uncontracted as they took Scully last year but I think the can take him in the preseason draft if he falls out with the club ?

Unless he wants to go to GWS or GC or the Dees wont play ball on money and actually decide to trade him, then the chances of him going are slim.

From here on in the traded players average will increase because of free agency but FA doesnt affect the youth.

In short - unless Blease wants to go to GWS or GC , he aint going anywhere

Not sure that quoting figures from only 1 year is a big enough sample to close the case, Nutbean.

Of late, MFC have lost (regardless of quality) Scully, Cheney, and Buckley to other clubs - none of them 'mature' players. We've also lost mature players in Junior and Bruce (and now possibly Green to GWS). There may be others i havent thought of. How does that fare with your stats?

Some of what you say is true, but in this individual case, Blease can leave quite easily, regardless of whether he is part of the 3.3%, 0.5% or whatever stat applies from the past.

Add Miller (mature) and the Emo (not mature) to that list.

I'm not so sure it's the dollar amount as much as it is the security of a longer-term deal. People ridicule the Clokes but what's Cloke Snr really doing that's so bad in looking after his son? If his delaying tactics land his boy an extra year well I'm sure he doesn't give a rats what people think about him.

And why would his next club worru about Cloke Snr if Trav is tied away for 5 years?

We can have our cake and eat it too here. Mids, mids, mids through the draft and big Trav as a FA.

Time to think big Demon fans.

Hey, just because some are not sold on Cloke - myself incl - doesn't mean they are not thinking big.

David Cloke has been a thorn in the Magpies side at various times with his big mouth and family conflict of interests. In the past, he has suggested taking his various sons to other clubs if one son's deal is not met. His interfering could be an issue at MFC. David, of course, is very vocal in putting his son's interests first. That's what any father would do. But is this in the Clubs best interests?

Two big forwards on massive money (about 20% of our TPP) and a bunch of kids with unproven potential (Jones excepted) running around the midfield. Hmmmmm.......

What I am saying is that unless we get Boak or a couple of FA quality mids or a mix of these in '13 and '14, then the money spent on big power fwds in Clark and Cloke may not be money well spent. That's why I believe the priority is mids, mids and mids.

Get Cloke, get Boak, get another FA such as Montagna, get 2 x high draft pick mids, get Viney and I'll be creaming myself. A tough ask, though (not necessarily the last bit...)

Time to think big AND WISELY Demons fans.

That's garbage, adc. He isn't leaving any decisions to his manager; who would do that? "Mr Manager sir, I'll play for whatever club you tell me to next year". Please.

He clearly meant that he was leaving the contract negotiation to his manager. That's a long way from leaving the decision to his manager.

Yes, but many of these kids are led wholely by the advice of their managers. Very few, if any, seem to go against the managers direction.

Seems like every second AFL player, when asked about contracts, uses the line that they are leaving that up to their manager. They are not old or mature or smart enough to say to the manager, "right, I'm playing for X club next year so get the deat done now!" Nor are they necessarily wise to do so when the managers get them top dollar that they couldn't achieve on their own.

If it was only about contract negotiation, then players would simply hire a lawyer to negotiate and draw up a contract each time theirs was up for renewal.

Unfortunately, AFL player managers are an industry unto themselves (and in cases like Nixon, a law unto themselves). Dimwitreou and his pals have only just started scratching the surface regarding the reining in of their power, eg. no new player club kick-backs.

If Cloak's motivation was to play finals and GF why would he leave the Pies?

He would seem to be seeking a a new challenge, and a new scene, as well as more cash. I'd suggest we are still a strong possibility given the Neeld and Leigh Brown connections...

I also think that Cloke jrn and srn are selfish crazy bastards, in that they want top dollar and would be prepared to swap Melbourne-based clubs to get it. Nose despite his face, sort of. It's like they have some mad Spanish blood in their lineage.

Is Travis really as good as what David is pedalling ($1 mill plus p/a), partic in a bottom 4 club?

Do we really want David hanging around the MFC sticking his nose in more than he should?

Is it value for money if he gets very little supply?

We'd be spending a lot of coin over a lot of years on Cloke if he came to us. could it be better used spread over a number of players, as McLardy spoke of?

Yes, another big forward would be very handy. Cloke would probably be a good match for Clarke and give some of our other mid size fwds a better chance.

But I keep thinking that our priority is 2-3 QUALITY midfielders of the standard of Jones or better (but not necessarily players in the style of Jones).

For mine, it mids, mids and mids.