poita

Actually the opposite is likely true. I have been through many ATO audits and you always give them some easy wins so that everyone leaves happy. I'm sure Geelong have offered up some low hanging fruit so that the AFL can claim they have taken this issue seriously and lessons have been learned all round.

Hi Palace Dees, Crystal Palace are my EPL side for exactly the same reason. I don't remember there being much other than a loose alliance at the time, but clearly something stuck for a few of us. Having Mile Jedinak there for a while probably helped keep me interested as well. It has been great watching this group step up over the past 18 months, and hopefully they can add some more depth to the squad in the offseason so that the Europa League doesn't become a massive burden next year. (Like you my son also jumped on the Liverpool bandwagon, so we are both pretty happy at the moment.)

McDonald is twice the player May is at present and ten times the player Lever has been in the past three years. In a year of poor selection calls, this is by far the worst. I'd actually drop at least 15 players before McDonald based on contributions this year.

Just to clarify, your argument for not having academies is that we would have drafted Callum Mills instead of being left with Clayton Oliver? Notwithstanding Oliver's recent issues, that's just bizarre.

What is a score involvement? Does that mean the full back has a score involvement if a kick in travels the length of the field? Are we that excited about Spargo's score involvements if the ball is touched 3 more times before we score? Or if he jams his teammate in the pocket on an impossible angle? Footywire lists him as contributing 1 goal 4 behinds and 4 goal assists in 8 games. How is that an acceptable return from a permanent small forward?

Just confirming that this is actually round 9, and that there is not another ridiculous bye on the horizon. The game is being played in Preston at 2:05pm on Saturday 24 May.

Tholstrup isn't nearly as good a player as he thinks he is. Until he realises this, and starts putting the work in, he's going nowhere.

Johnson, Petty, Melksham and Fritsch might just be the slowest forward line of all time. Is that this week's cunning plan?

6 potential inclusions and I would be happy to never see 5 of them wearing a MFC jumper again (Petty the exception). Our depth, as has been obvious for two years, is abysmal. I don't understand the point of cycling through our tall forwards every second week. We need to have a run of games with Van Rooyen and Petty playing together and see what they can do. Fullarton and Johnson aren't AFL standard and we're wasting our time giving them games. Jefferson is probably in the same bracket if he doesn't have excellent VFL form behind him. I'm glad Tholstrup has been sent back to Casey. He looks miles off the level to me, and playing him without VFL games was ridiculous. To date his strongest attribute seems to be his uncanny knack of being where the ball isn't. I'd be playing him 60% mid / 40% fwd at Casey and telling him he come back to the AFL side when he has picked up 30 possessions 3 weeks in a row. And finally I'd love for someone to tell me what Charlie Spargo's KPIs are that make him a guaranteed selection each week. They clearly don't involve kicking or creating goals, which I thought would be a prerequisite for a small forward.

I'm more than happy to dodge Thursday and Friday nights, and the club can hardly complain about missing out on these given their woeful performances and horrible brand of football. Sunday games are not ideal with junior football, but its up to the club to make this work.

Every junior player in the country, and most senior players, deal with training and playing in substandard conditions. Most of them kick for goal better than some of our players. There is absolutely no excuse for highly paid, professional footballers to not be able to deal with variable wind conditions. Kickers and punters in the US play in snow and seem to manage okay.

Marty Hore listed as 5 - 7 weeks on 1 April. More than six weeks later he is listed as 3 - 4 weeks. It is such bad list management to keep fringe players who are never available to play.

I just don't see how he can possibly be worse than players such as Tholstrup (1 goal and 1 goal assist in 4 games) and Spargo (1 goal and 4 goal assists in 7 games). At the very least Brown's tackle numbers will be off the chart.

Forwards who have been dropped this season: Van Rooyen, Fritsch, Johnson, Turner, Fullarton, Henderson, Jefferson (likely this week). Forwards who deserve to have been dropped, and would have been if we had anyone decent to replace them: Melksham (2 goals in 5 games), Tholstrup (1 in 4), Spargo (1 in 7), Sharp. That list includes premiership players, 200 game players and first round draft picks. At some point you have to say that its less about the personnel and more about the method. That is the responsibility of the senior coach and the forward line coach to fix and, given that most of these issues have been around for three years, it is completely unacceptable that we are still dealing with them.

8 wins in the past 24 games. We're so far from being a decent side its not funny, and all our promising youngsters are already playing. In other words there is absolutely nothing at Casey that is going to help us. There is a fair chance that we go backwards before we go forward (particularly when Gawn retires), and once again we have timed our fall to coincide with the arrival of expansion teams.

Cripes, Collingwood add Houston & Perryman to a side that won a premiership under two years ago, Hawthorn bring Battle & Barrass into a top six side, and our supporters are still ruing our inability to land Wade Derksen 8 months ago. We really are comfortable with being average.

I simply don't see the upside with Jefferson as an AFL player. He could be a great player if he could find the time and space that is simply not available at this level. But I don't see him ever developing the size, strength and aggression that he is going to need to make it.

The list of things that Clarry is not at the moment is already lengthy and is growing by the week. A tagger is one of the few remaining roles he may be able to play in his current condition. At the very least, the Newcombes of the world will take him to the ball. However, the bigger issue is that most opposition midfields are much deeper than ours. Many coaches would be happy to sacrifice one of their gun mids to a nil-all draw with Oliver, and let the others feast on our B grade midfielders (as happened with Worpel this week).

So Melksham needs to be rested after playing 1 consecutive game, are they for real? Maybe don't take an almost 34 year old to Perth to play the bottom side if he is not capable of backing up the following week in a much more important fixture. Hard to believe that Jefferson is the best replacement either.

I see the club is handing out free tickets to this week's game and 3 game memberships to residents of the City of Casey. I'm guessing the cost of this is fairly negligible given that these people probably wouldn't be attending games without the handout. Although maybe some smart Hawthorn fans will take up the offer instead of buying tickets at the gate. However it is further evidence that membership numbers are completely bogus and pointless given that our membership numbers might increase, but our membership dollars don't.

This is what I don't understand. MFC signed a contract to pay Oliver $XXX over seven years; Oliver signed a contract to play football for the MFC for seven years. MFC has, to our best knowledge, done everything required of it under this contract, whereas Oliver is clearly not delivering on his end of the bargain, at least not by performing at the expected level. Yet the football world seems to think it is okay for Oliver to say I don't want to play football for the MFC any more and bugger off to Geelong whilst still getting his full salary. Like you, I don't see how any potential trade happens without Oliver agreeing to tear up his current contract. That will be the truest test of where his priorities lie, although he could probably take a lot of pressure off himself by renegotiating his contract and staying at the MFC..

May has been on a steep decline for at least 12 months, and the end is coming very quickly. His best is still very good, but his worst is really poor, particularly when he doesn't have confidence in his body. If we think Adams is the answer as a replacement, he needs to be getting AFL games alongside May and McDonald this year.

That would be an incredibly big loss, if true. He has done a wonderful job keeping the AFLW list competitive. That said, it is hardly surprising that other organisations would come knocking. Its just a pity that we couldn't find him a role with the AFL list management team, because I'm not a fan of Tim Lamb's work. I posted when Ben Brown left that we have been losing a lot of quality people out of our AFLW program over the past year or so. I would like some reassurance from the club that these are being replaced with people of similar quality.

Imagine thinking that forward line could kick a decent score. This club is utterly clueless.

I think we should be aiming to do significantly better than what either Sharp or Spargo can provide, and Culley has no exposed form in that role. Tholstrup is another who doesn't do enough. Tackles and pressure acts are important to a point, but they also indicate players who are not winning the ball and who are second to the contest. We have far too many forwards who don't kick goals and don't win enough contests. It means that opponents can focus their attention on the few who can hurt them (Pickett, Petty & Fritsch), and know that they don't need to worry about Spargo standing by himself on the outer HFF. Chandler has generally had a very good year in his new role, but needs to maintain his form across a full season.