poita

I was tempted to say no, but then I look at the bottom end of our list and realise there are at least six players there who will never be AFL footballers. I'd keep Bernie at age 33 on a moderate salary ahead of any of McKenna, Vandenberg, Johnstone, Kennedy-Harris, Bugg, King, or Filipovic. Same goes for Pedersen at age 32 next season when that question is posed shortly.

Dear Simon, the current forward / ruck structure was working fine. Why have you not replaced Weideman with Pedersen, so that he can back up Gawn in the ruck? I get that Smith is in better form, but he can't ruck. Now you'll either go back to your stupid idea of rucking Harmes, or you'll drag McDonald away from the forward line. Both ideas are just plain dumb. Please get your act together before you cost us more wins. Signed, Poita.

Both are outstanding players and will be stars of the competition for many years to come. I'm more than happy with Oliver, but I suspect Cripps might benefit from having some quality around him and from getting a full season in. If the 2013 draft was re-ranked Cripps probably sits top 3 with Kelly & Bontempelli - a fair few clubs would be regretting not taking him with a top 10 pick. Oliver is surely the best player from the 2015 draft by a fair margin - thanks Sydney for matching our bid for Mills.

31 has very little significance to anyone born in the last 50 years. Yes, we know the history, but it has been a very long time since a top player wore it. 2 and 11 are clearly more significant to the recent generations.

I see some parallels with Billy Stretch. Stretch was going along nicely, then the coaching staff tried to add layers to his game, and now he is a complete mess of a footballer. I suspect Hunt is also being told to improve certain parts of his game, and he is torn between playing his natural game and focusing on the advice he has been given. Hopefully he can sort himself out quickly, because he is a crucial part of the team at his best.

The whole concept is a joke really. You would do more to promote the game, and get a better crowd, by scheduling it in any one of 100 country towns across Australia. I am all for the expansion of the game, and am very comfortable with the second Sydney team (less so about the Suns), but China will do nothing other than give the AFL executives another junket to take advantage of.

I wish we were playing Adelaide this week. We have been playing decent football for a few weeks and are ready for a challenge against a strong side. I expect us to beat Carlton, hopefully comfortably, but I worry that by next week we'll have been up for too long. This side is not good at remaining focused for long periods.

Mark Neeld and Essendon were a match made in heaven. Today is a very sad day. Thankfully we have finally moved on from Neeld's legacy, but as the primary architect of our woes, I'm glad he is far, far away from the club and hopefully never to return.

This is a distinct danger game. We should win, and win well, but Carlton will put in for four quarters. Will we?

I've said it before, Petracca needs to start doing the simple things well. He keeps trying to make the big play, when he should be just doing a lot of little things properly. Others have said that he is not team first. I think the opposite is true to a degree - you see him run to 50 metres out with a straight forward shot in front of him, and he will try some ridiculous pass over his shoulder to a teammate which will miss by 5 metres. I'm disappointed that Brayshaw, Salem and Harmes have all gone past him this year. He should be playing decent midfield minutes, but he just doesn't have the endurance to do so.

Viney in for one of Neal-Bullen, Fritsch or Hannan. Petracca needs a kick up the backside, but should stay. Weideman gets one last chance to do something useful. He is basically a witches hat at present, but it is not hurting the team yet. No way he should play against Adelaide if he doesn't get double figure possessions or hit the scoreboard this week. Garlett needs to come back when he is nice and hungry, possibly for Spargo. As for Bugg, never, ever again.

"I have suffered extreme racism during my time in the AFL and post my career from the AFL until this very day." If the AFL and the clubs were racist organisations he would not have been working in the industry and he certainly wouldn't have been paid a salary that is many times the average wage. I'm sure he believes he was harshly treated but I hate the thought of living in a world where anyone can just sue anyone else and demand financial sanctions because they feel aggrieved by things that other people may or may not have said. People become so bitter and twisted by things that happen to them, that it clouds their judgement as to whether a course of action is justified. In the long run he would be much better off by moving on with his life and not wasting it feeling angry about things that happened in his past.

We just need to be smarter with our use of players in games. I couldn't believe it when I saw Gawn rucking in the last five minutes of the St Kilda game. 4 games in 19 days and Gawn is running around like a maniac in a game that we had won 20 minutes earlier. At one stage he appeared to have tweaked his back, then he was off and running again. Like Viney, he needs to be saved from himself sometimes.

We should have been working on extensions for both Tom and Oscar pre season, but hopefully we can now lock them both away for at least three years, hopefully four.

There is far too much expansion happening far too quickly. Even the better clubs are already carrying players that are not at the required standard. Increasing the player pool by 75% over two years is just ridiculous and will clearly have an impact on the quality of the games. Expect to see less scoring and more packs developing as you have more players who can't kick straight or more than 30 metres. Hopefully we can keep the big 3 (Pearce, O'Dea & Paxman), which surely means that one of O'Dea or Paxman has to replace Hickey as a marquee player. You would think that all of the Casey players would stick around, so it then becomes a matter of prioritising the rest - would losing Hickey at her age be the worst thing if she is worth enough points to meet most of our delisting obligations?

I suspect football has always come so easily to Petracca that he has never had to work particularly hard to succeed. For the first time in his football life the expectations of him are now exceeding his performances. I hope he can respond, because he clearly has all the attributes to be a super player. At present though, he is a player who is trying to do several brilliant things a game, rather than a large number of very good things, and he is failing (eg his putrid kicking on Sunday). Brayshaw looks like someone who has always had to work harder to get to the top, and that will hold him in good stead if he can keep healthy. He'll never be a superstar, but he can be a very good player in a very good team (not the same type of player necessarily, but a Joel Corey / James Kelly type at Geelong).

You mean the guy who was slow and had poor foot skills before he missed two years of football with a foot injury?

I'm not sure how some of the people on this website function in the real world. "Mummy, the mean man on the TV didn't say nice things about my football team". If you don't like the commentary, turn the sound down.

I'm not particularly a fan of Weideman, but I do like the three tall forwards. Whilst I would prefer Pedersen to play, I'd still rather Weideman play than neither. Amazing though that three weeks ago we played Hogan as the only tall - what an absolute debacle that selection meeting was. Neal-Bullen surely has to come out - he has had about five last chances now and he continues to regress. Viney plays if genuinely fit, otherwise Garlett given that he starred in his last game at the Gabba. I'm assuming Salem won't be right - if he is, maybe Hunt comes out. I still have grave concerns about the ability of Melksham, Fritsch and Hannan to play in the same side. We look much better with Garlett in the side, assuming his attitude is up to scratch.

Happy to see McDonald and Spargo in, although I sure hope the medical staff know what they are doing with McDonald's foot. The last thing we need is another Viney-esque debacle. Not sure why we have Hannan, Fritsch and Melksham in the same team, and I certainly wouldn't have brought Lewis back without a game at Casey given his recent poor performances. That said, Pedersen is the only one at Casey who is worthy of a call-up, and clearly he is out of favour. None of Garlett, Stretch or Wagner could feel too aggrieved by their omissions, although Neal-Bullen and Harmes should feel very lucky.

Yep, the only reason we lost on Tuesday was because of the umpires. ?

The only problem with Nathan Jones is that 13 years into his career he is still the second best midfielder at the club. Oliver has gone past him, but not one other player in the past decade has come close to matching Jones' output. Viney is the closest, but he misses too many games at this stage of his career. Any thought that Jones won't be at the club next year, or shouldn't be captain is just ludicrous.

Our lack of depth is criminal, and is why I was so upset by our lack of activity during last year's trade / draft cycle. We had to turn the list over by 4 - 5 more players (Vandenberg, McKenna, Johnstone, Kennedy-Harris and Filopovic were obvious starting points), even if it was just to get a couple of rookie picks. And then when we do get some picks we waste them on even more slow, inconsistent half forward flankers. Our bottom 8 or so players on Tuesday were truly awful and you could make a case for dropping all of them. Harmes, Stretch and Neal-Bullen have to go, plus Kent is injured (yet again). Vince and Garlett are close to the end of the road. If we wanted to play Weideman it should have been against Brisbane - he is miles away from being able to compete against the best sides. Wagner was invisible after the first quarter and Jetta still looks injured to me. Thankfully Lever and Melksham lifted from last week. In: Pedersen, Hannan, Spargo, Balic Out: Stretch, Neal-Bullen, Harmes, Kent

We have reserved seats on level 1 of the Southern Stand. There were large numbers of Richmond supporters in that area on Tuesday who had purchased seats on Ticketek. I don't like it, but I don't blame the club for selling seats when Melbourne supporters don't bother coming.

Certainly a far stronger and better balanced side this week, but there are still a few passengers on board (Melksham, Harmes, Neal-Bullen & Lever to name four). Hopefully those guys can make a contribution this week. I'm no Weideman fan, but clearly we needed another tall forward in the side. All I ask is that he consistently presents and crashes packs when he needs to. If he can give us 8 minutes or so of decent ruck work a quarter, that will be a bonus. If Sam doesn't show some appetite for the contest, I hope he is sent straight back to Casey and Pedersen is in for Essendon. The key to us winning is to play through Rance's opponent and make him accountable. If we just bomb the ball inside 50 and allow Rance to be third man up against Hogan and Weideman, we will be flogged. They are too good at moving the ball for us to stop them once they break from half back.