Undeeterred

Trengove is 3rd at our club for disposals this season, and 2nd in tackles. Obviously works hard both ways. On top of this, he is the youngest captain in the history of the game. He has had to deal with probably one of the club's toughest years ever, and he is 20. He has come through that with flying colours and, if you disagree, watch the captain's speech from Foundation Heroes the other night. The fact that he can't kick 35m and can hardly run at the moment is not because he is cr@p. You three are absolutely kidding yourselves.

Get off his case, he'll be fine.

Not if we knock off Freo next week. Sorry, just a little joke to make me feel better.

Jake Spencer, 6 tackles. 2 more than anybody else. That says everything, both about his attitude and the rest of our team.

To be honest, that's all I really care about today's game - seeing Col have 34 against a top 4 side. Go Col.

Oh, and Blease and Tappy seem to be getting a lot of it. That's hugely promising.

Can't watch, so only have the AFL Live app, but seems promising... Sylvia 11 in the first, Nicho and Bail 8, Dunn seems to have a lot of it. How is it looking? Always great, too, to see Jakey Spencer at the top of our tackle count!!

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of turds.

I reckon Neeld will have pretty much sorted out his questions marks by now.

Right - didn't know that. Nevertheless, regardless of what the minimum is, there will be a big gap between the '2012 Actual' and '2013 Possible' numbers...

My understanding is that the salary cap is $9.139 million next year. If we were paying 92.5%, as per this year, that's $8.45 mil. Just bumping it up to 100% gives us almost $700k. I know how simplistic that is, given we are signing new contracts which presumably take account of this, but I reckon ballpark it would be pretty close, especially given Green and probably Moloney's wages will be freed up too.

True, that was just the best example I could think of! All I'm saying, and I stopped writing the post PSD just wrote about halfway through, was that its just so important to have those big guys. And at the moment, only 1 is available, and he wont cost us anything except a pile of money we have to park somewhere, so might as well be him!

That's because most of them were smart enough to draft them when they were 18, or professional enough to develop them between 18-25, and didn't need to buy them in.

Yep, that worked when we drafted Bate, Dunn, Jurrah, Green, Petterd, Maric and probably 3 or 4 others I can't be bothered thinking about. Lots of pee wee goal kicking options, and look where that got us. The reason that big marking, key position forwards are in 'vogue' is because they have been for years and years and years and (albeit with some exceptions) are essential to win premierships.

Sorry, hold on a tick. Did you just compare him to Sellar? Seriously? And have you not noticed that Buddy's fill in is Roughead? And I'd hardly say Drew Petrie has been plucked out of nowhere, even if you were to suggest that one of our non-Clark spuds is equal to him. I don't say this very often, but if that's what you mean, you have absolutely zero credibility from here on in.

Ahh excellent. Thanks.

I think that last graphic was rpfc's 'wishlist', wasn't it? Or am I missing something. The one above that (which wasn't updated for Blease yet) is the current picture.

Think people are going around in circles on this. 1. There are no decent FA midfielders. There is a big b@rstad CHF available, though. 2. We are going to choose about 1000 midfielders in the upcoming draft. 3. While those midfielders develop, we have nobody at whom to throw a substantial portion of our salary cap. 4. Why not throw it at Cloke, front-ended, and keep him until the midfielders we drafted in 2012 become truckloads of $$$, at which point we will be paying Cloke next to nothing? 5. It would sure help those youngies develop if they have Cloke and Clark to kick it to, rather than Clark and Petterd, or Bate, or some other spud.

I am seeing more and more signs that the 'poor development' thing might be a thing of the past. We are turning more players like Sellar into serviceable, 7-8 year career type players, I reckon. This year, the improvement shown by Blease, Jones, Howe, Tom McDonald and a few others gives me hope that we are on the right track in terms of getting the most out of players. Even Sylvia looks a bit more like he has got the message. When you really boil it down, the only ones who have gone significantly backwards are some of the oldies like Moloney.

No, he'd turn out to be someone for Watts to kick it at from half back, who isn't Mitch Clark.

That's ok - he'd probably fit in really well over here because we'd all be nice to him and yell out 'good show Travis' at him a lot. Maybe he doesn't kick straight over there because he's just scared of being bashed by them in the carpark after the game.

Gold. Enjoy 6 years in Breakfast Point, Tommy Boy! Thank f.... is right. We convinced the right one, in my book.

Brilliant news. A key part of the plan, and a further clear sign that the players who we need are buying in as Greeny wants them to.

Just because people on Demonland want him to play, doesn't make him ready, or even competent.

When I saw the title, I thought maybe Neeld had wandered down to Casey and let him have it there too...