Ouch!

It might be the way we are trying to position ourselves for a crack in the 17yr mini draft. We might not be able to get the deal done with GC having pick 4 and us having 12. Pick 6 and a compo pick means that GC have to come up with a stronger package as well. Even if we can't pull it off it means GC have to up their price and weakens their position a little more.

Haha, no need to apologise, I read what you wrote and actually thought it was my post for a couple of moments Only reason I could see Port wanting Warnock was a) Primus thinks it is Robert or B) Primus watched the infamous Dees v Tigers match a couple of years back and thinks he is getting a forward...

Whilst the list is average, they actually have semi-decent big defenders in Carlisle, Trengove and Chaplin. Not sure why they would load up on Warnock as well...

I wouldn't be suprised to see him head to the Swans either. They lost Bolton & Kenneally from their defence, perhaps Warnock could help Ted Richards could bolster their defence. As to who/what you might get from them....they just picked up Tom Mitchell, so I don't know whether players like Jarred Moore might be offered up, or perhaps an upgrade of a pick (although the swans first pick now will be in the late 30s.)

I would imagine they just see what they are offered... and see if any club is prepared to accept pick 3 or 4 and they get enough value.... All 4 would be on offer this year, but as to whether they use them all is another thing.

IF GWS likes the offers it gets from this.... all 4 can be done this year. If they hate it, they pull up stumps and say try harder next year. The 4 picks are just that. Seems like you are geting confused by reading too much into it. OK, IF Gold Coast say we want to give you pick 4 in the national draft for a pick in the mini draft. If that's the best offer then GWS Say here have pick 1. Someone else might trump that offer with players, and then GC might say not interested without it being pick 1. It would be no different to anything else that goes on in trade week... except you are trading for picks. Some clubs might be gunning really hard for pick 1 to get O'Meara... where other clubs like Geelong, Hawks, Collingwood would see it as an opportunity to get a player who is possibly a top 5 pick in two years time (again there is a lot of speculation in draft order) but they can jump the queue offering a player and a pick given the likelihood to get a top 5 pick after being a top 4 club is highly improbable The incentive to trade is to improve your list, same as it always is!

Agree, in some ways it is a bit sad.... he and Bartram show the competitive and aggressiveness that we want to see from ALL our players. But.... lets face it, if Neeld succeeds in making the team the hardest to play against... then all should show such traits... and then these guys don't have anything.... although if they can follow the team plan and be a role player there is a spot I guess

I am not sure this is quite right RPFC. What you are stating is an outsiders perspective of the status of the coach in the football department. They are the public face for the football team, they put the coaching strategy in place, But they don't run the whole show. Neeld would work with Misson and together they would come up with a strategy for fitness, performance etc... but it's not Neeld's role to put it into place. Similarly with other areas such as player recruitment etc... Neeld would work with Prendergast on the types of players he wants... the gaps he sees in the list, Prendergast's job is to recommend the best fits and the 'likely' candidates. I have no doubt that the club when chosing Neeld looked at his vision and proposed solution to making the football team a success, and then provided the resources in order to help him achieve that. But Craig reports to the CEO, the Senior Coach reports to whoever heads up the football department. .... otherwise you end up with something more like Grant Thomas and his time @ St Kilda.... or worse still Greg Miller (Not that he was coach,) at Richmond.

Pretty certain this is correct as well. The Neeld interview on 5AA alluded to this as well. I think Craig sits atop Misson and Neeld structurally Neeld defined it as a Mentoring thing where they are challenged and discuss things with Craig. I don't think the Viney position as such was discussed, but it would unlikely fall under Neeld anyway, it has a lot in common with List management and Tim Harrington I would imagine too... As to the other comment regarding counting 8. I didn't factor Craig into the equation, and I still don't think he is classed as a coach as such. He is a big appointment and a great get, but pretty certain he stated himself that it has no match day component (Happy to stand corrected on this though) He is more a Football Director/Football Ops type of thing... and sitting above Mahoney I guess... Anyway.... as long as they know what is happening thats the main thing

The club announced that there would be 8 coaches didn't they? My assumption here is that meant 8 matchday coaches,.... Obviously the development coach for the backline still needs to be announced, but that still only makes 7 unless one of Dunbar/ O'Donnell/Viney has a match day involvement. So we still could be looking at 2 more announcements... Not sure what the role for the other coach would be.... Did anyone see Eddie saying that Eade was not appointed to replace the hole left by Malthouse, his role has a match day focus, and is there to fill the void left by Neeld... His title is football and coaching strategist .... But could we see a similar role maybe someone like Laidley who was always seen as a good matchday coach in a similar role? http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/eddie-still-coachs-boxing-on/story-e6frf9io-1226157784440

I guess it depends on the definition of a Senior Assistant.... Is it Senior in terms of experience, or given the rest of the structure where there are 2 coaches on each line.... could there be Neeld and an assistant across all lines ? Doesn't seem like you need such a thing though....

I assumed there are 3 vacancies still, the two you mentioned and potentially a Senior Assistant... Neil Craig doesn't appear to be a part of the coaching panel. Neeld and an assistant, then 2 coaches on each line is how I got 8... or is that wrong?

With all the "off field" issues at the club, since Garry Lyon went in there, it is fair to say that at least publically we appear to be doing a lot to sort out that crap. Who knows what issues remain with players and admin etc... but at least the perception (from here) is that we are putting a lot of effort/expertise/resourcing into the football department.

.... Is the role that Neil Craig has just taken up fill the shoes that Garry Lyon has been doing? or is that different again? Neil reports to Schwab, but not to the board.... so it would appear as though Garry still needs to find someone to allow him to exit the scene (Would love someone like Greg Healy to go on the board, and be the person in this role.) Happy with the appointment, would love to see a structure chart seeing how it all fits together, and excited to hear people wanting to come here, best of all listening to people on SEN questioning the number of resources we are able to throw at the football department and calling for Caps on football spending .... That sort of thing NEVER seems to be raised when discussing the MFC people!!! Still potentially have a senior assistant coach, a forward coach and an assistant backline coach yet to fill don't we?

Have to agree.... looking at the coaches we have bought in.... it feels as though we have announced all of the "easy to obtain" assistants (without wanting to sound rude) hopefully the last couple...yet to be announced have a little higher profile.... for example Neil Craig, Laidley, Sumich etc .. not saying I want these, but I guess the fact that some coaches are still to be announced hopefully means they have been involved in the last couple of weeks of finals.

From my vague recollection of the 2011 season... Brisbane whilst it didn't win a lot of games, never got blown away either, so if Rawlings was in charge of the Brisbane Defence, he did a pretty fair job. http://finalsiren.com/Fixture.asp?SeasonID=2011&TeamID=2#BigLosses says that their average losing margin was ~30 pts, not bad for a team that lost all but 4 games. (Our Losing Margin was up around 56pts) Also for those saying he wasn't much of a player (I might be biased as someone from Tassie) but he had a pretty good career whilst at the Hawks, I think he got curtailed by back injuries, and I think he saw the writing was on the wall when Franklin, Roughhead... and there was another tall forward who's name I can't recall started to come on. He got stuffed around in trying to get to Nth, but ended up at the Dogs.... never was the same at those clubs... I think it is a pretty reasonable pickup for us. Wouldn't be the most expensive coach to get, but he has some good experience as a player and as a coach.

wasnt sure which one but don't mind both of them... but don't know about the rookie-listed players, but seeing how he took that inside mid role from McLean, I can't see him staying on the rookie list, surely he played enough games and showed enough to be offered a senior contract.

Doesn't Ed Barlow play for the dogs (former Swans player) ...isn't Ed Curnow the Carlton player?

Martin was signed up last year, and Ablett was the main target so always going to behind Ablett in pecking order (and rightfully so) But when signing last year he signed for a period that took away the option GWS had to poach him. Not sure about Murphy but chose to reject perhaps because Carlton sold him on being able to win premierships... or green ambassador roles @ VISY perhaps. Kreuzer was offered the same type of money as Scully (1 Mil a year) from all reports, he just chose to stay and reject the money (See above with VISY) The ONLY reason Scully is getting 2 mil in the first year is because of front loading in their first year. They have to pay the minimum of 92.5 it's not like they wouldn't have given that deal to others if they chose to come on. Ward would be on probably $1.4mil or so as well if he is on a 800k per year package as well.... It's not a conspiracy, just business.

Couple of coaches I thought might be worth looking at might be: Mick O'Loughlin (currently an AIS AFL Coach I think) would be a good move. 300 gamer, played under Roos & Eade in Sydney, along side Plugger, & Hall, and have heard a few people rating him very highly with the work he has been doing at the AIS. Also thought maybe Justin Leppitch (currently defensive coach @ Richmond) might be worth taking a look at as well... I know Richmonds defence wasn't great this year, but I think a few of their key backs were out injured and the rest who played there are pretty young and learning. But it is the group and achieving synergy that is more important than person X, Y or Z.

Hi Andy, One thing that has me a bit confused (as to whether it is my end or server-side) is the post dates. I have my profile set up as Melb Time (even though Hobart based) which is +10 hrs but the time on all the posts is an hour ahead of actual time. For instance your post above says Posted Today, 12:57pm. I tried toggling DLS mode below it to see if it would trigger anything, but doesn't appear to have.... Am I missing something? Cheers, and I agree the new site looks great. Have done quite a bit of forum/message board development in the past and upgrades are never as smooth as they claim it to be, especially something this size.

Agree with Burns/Craig would be a good outcome, but I still have a bit of a hollow feeling that the club was public announcing it's desire to lure an experienced coach from another club, and we fell short...

Anyone find this strange? http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/afl/adelaide-goes-on-lyon-hunt/story-e6frecoc-1226136232908 Not sure if they are a little slow on the uptake.... I found it an odd article to release the day after he has apparently agreed to stay at the Saints.

Doesn't look like much will be said today about it. From some of the articles I have read they suggested that cos he has a year to play on his contract that they don't have to do anything except say through their management that they have agreed to coach next year, and over the next few days/weeks will work on the details regarding the contract extension (I presume a handshake deal for the length has already been determined) It feels like more should be coming out in the media than is actually being played out, but I guess cos Lyon isn't out of contract it's not urgent in anyway from his or the Saints view now. The urgency came from the MFC to land him

Yup I agree, I can't see him playing a lot of games. I hate to say it, but it's actually a smart move by GWS. Target some players on the verge of retirement who also are potentially going to get Asst Coach roles anyway. They have an extended list, and if you can play some of your coaching staff out there on the field (runners can't coach, but players have no such restriction) They also have a larger salary cap, and have to pay the minimum rate. None of the players would be under the illusion of being guaranteed a game, they would all be very clear that they are being picked up to assist develop, protect and apparently coach the younger players whilst out on the field, Junior, Power and Brogan etc would perhaps play a handful of games... it doesn't matter, except they won't stand in the way of developing the list. GWS is (and I hate to say it) looking quite shrewd in some of the things they are doing in regards to setting up a club from scratch. From the campus at breakfast point to this short term move of playing assistant coaches..... It would almost be admirable if Gubby Allan, and Sheedy weren't smirking so much in public. I think someone else on the board raised this, but it would be great to know if they are cheating the cap with any of this, are the players staying at this campus paying rent? or is that covered by the club (If we paid for our players rent, food, living expenses I am sure that would have to be declared under the cap) and is any portion of the cash for these assistants being covered in our outside of the cap. You can also see they are spending the BIG money on players that apparently none of the clubs expected them to, but then topping them up with players who are on the verge of retirement... So they have intentionally NOT focused where the compensation rules were "expected" to assist. When the Bears were set up they got given a bunch of guys at the end of their careers and hacks that the other clubs didn't want, we hear the AFL didn't want these new clubs to be set up like that. We can see that the GWS have intentionally targeted players at the end of their careers and then spent the big cash on the young stars. GC appears to have followed the rules moreso in the 'spirit' of how they were supposed to be used. (Players between say 50-150 games.) Scary that Gubby Allan was on the committee that set this all up isn't it?