poita

Neither Burnie or Devonport have a team in the TFL any more, and still there are people who believe that Tasmania could support an AFL team.

I've seen bits and pieces of womens football for about 15 years, since I used to work with one of the St Albans Spurs players, but Saturday was the first full game of AFLW that I have watched. Overall I really enjoyed the day and the contest. There is clearly a lot of goodwill towards making AFLW work and getting it right first time, and I hope this happens. A few thoughts: The skill level, particularly by foot, is poor. There are very few players who can hit a target 25 - 30 metres away. I thought GWS were better at this than Melbourne. Perhaps this is a consequence of bringing in so many players from other sports. Hopefully this improves markedly as the new draftees are players who have been in the sport better. Melbourne were much better around the contest than GWS and looked much better in the second half when they were prepared to move the ball forward by any means, rather than chipping the ball around. I doubt they will get a half to sort themselves out against the better teams. The gap between the best players and the rest is immense. You could immediately see the effect that losing Paxman had on Melbourne, as one of the few players who can use the ball well. I was okay with 13 goals kicked across roughly 70 minutes of play (1 every 5 minutes or so), but we clearly had the best game of the weekend. Anything less than 10 goals a game just doesn't cut it. I suspect the game would benefit from playing on smaller grounds. I don't see any reason for the competition to expand from 8 teams to 14 over the next two years. There isn't the player base, and with little or no revenue generated by either the competition or the clubs, all you are doing is creating a massive gravy train. Far better to focus on getting the fundamentals right and having the best product possible over a period of time, and then expand when this is achieved.

I'm keen to go around again. Let me know if you want me to transfer admin rights, or if you are happy for me to push the buttons. Have a think about how scoring worked last year, and whether it needs to be changed.

That's why the coaching and medical staff get paid the big bucks - to make the hard calls at the right times. Letting him play was a cop-out.

I would have thought after the club's last pizzweak Saturday outing (ie 26 Aug 2017), they would be pretty keen to practice performing on Saturdays wherever possible. The fact that this is a training session in Queensland in February is completely irrelevant. I'm sick of this club do everything it can to upset loyal supporters by holding training sessions, practice matches and other functions during business hours. Without members and supporters, this club is nothing. The powers that be would do well to acknowledge this occasionally.

Thanks again for your great work getting this running each year. PC Demons is back again.

I was sceptical of the clubs ability to get a deal done before the start of the season, but this is a great result (assuming the dollars are okay). Well done to Peter Jackson and his staff.

That's all well and good, but we have had plenty of players in the past who have looked like stars on the track (Strauss, Maric, etc), but who turned to water on game day. It is the ability to find the football in the heat of an AFL game, and then use it effectively, that sets the best apart from the rest. As others have said, at 170cm a player needs to be very good at most things and elite at the rest. Just being a decent kick is not going to cut it (see Maric again).

I have absolutely no confidence that Jack will be right for round 1, and little confidence that he will make a meaningful contribution this year. This is just one delay / setback after another, some six months or so after the original injury. The club can periodically release little fluff pieces such as this story as often as it likes, to kid us into believing that all is well, but it has no credibility on this issue. As I have posted previously on other threads, this was abysmal player and injury management by the club and it will hurt us big time this year, as it hurt us big time last year.

I hear this is a very big name and it has been hushed up for some time.

Good to see that the club is as dysfunctional as it has ever been. Why was there such a difference in opinion as to the value of the camp? Surely the various parties could have gotten together after round 23 to work out a plan of attack for the off season. If the coach believes the camp is of significant value, surely he has the right to make it happen. If the players don't like aspects of it, then negotiate an alternative. Don't just scrap the whole thing. This playing group is still pissweak when the pressure is on. Anything that aims to fix that problem is worth investigating, even if there are some negative consequences.

If appropriate penalties were applied for disgraceful acts, then there would be sufficient deterrent to reduce the number of cases coming before the MRP / tribunal. Allowing players to get away with a week's holiday for punching an opponent in the head is why there are so many cases to review, and hence the opportunity is there for inconsistency. Provide proper deterrents, and the number of cases to review will drop markedly. Ultimately I don't care who is on the MRP, if they are capable of making fair, rational decisions. However I doubt that Michael Christian is the answer given his history. I would like to know what made him the best person for the job.

There was a time when you recruited players because of their natural football ability, as opposed to their athletic traits. I suspect a Robbo-type who didn't perform well in time trials and beep tests would be overlooked in the current climate, notwithstanding the fact that he was an elite goalkicker, a characteristic sadly lacking in our current list.

What Jack Watts would have said if the brains trust of Demonland were writing his scripts, judging by the way he is portrayed around here: "on reflection I felt that the only reason Melbourne didn't win the premiership this year was because of me, so I did the right thing by the club and left. Now that I am gone, I can confidently say that Melbourne will win the next eight premierships in a row. Also, I only came to Port Adelaide because they are the only club who would take me. Port were crap last year and will be even crapper with me there next year."

I'd be surprised if any of King, McKenna, Johnstone or Filipovic play senior football, this year or otherwise. It would take a horror run with injuries for any of these guys to play before their contracts expire. I think Keilty is clearly the best of the bunch, but the arrival of Lever makes it harder to see where he fits in as well.

At the risk of derailing a very worthy thread, a fair number of those players never played together.

I only caught the tail end of the great man's career, but the fact that he only won one B&F in such poor sides is quite astonishing. Forget about the lack of a Brownlow, can anybody from that era elaborate on why the MFC didn't recognise him in the B&F?

Note the following story from today's HS as well: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/more-news/is-your-clubs-list-in-the-afl-premiership-sweet-spot/news-story/540bb90bc4d58552fbc5441d068cf2d3 We rank 17th for players aged 25-29, 1st for players aged 21-24. Assuming the quality is there, that would suggest we are still a couple of years away from having a critical mass of players in the sweet spot. Of course, it doesn't help that we keep trading away players from that age bracket.

Very sad to see Col struggling. I had a lot of time for him as a Melbourne player, particularly because he was so good with supporters, especially kids. There's no excusing his behavior, but I hope he gets the help he needs.

Any contribution we get from Viney in 2018 will be a bonus to my way of thinking. It's pretty clear that we stuffed his foot by letting him play too early and, Jack being Jack, he's not the person to lie down and rest for weeks on end. The medical stuff needed to put on their big boy pants and tell him to rest for the full 6 weeks, not cave in after 2. The longer Viney is off his feet through the pre season, the further he falls behind the standard that is required to perform at the elite level. I'm sure his G&D will get him to a certain point, but that is not where we need him to be.

I find it incredible, and highly concerning, that we have so many fringe players coming out of contract next year (Balic, Bugg, Filipovic, Keilty, JKH, Kent, King, Johnstone, McKenna, Smith, Vandenberg, Wagner). Add in potential retirees and there is a good 12 - 15 players who may need to be replaced this time next year. Hopefully a few of those guys step up and earn a new contract, but surely best practice would be to spread these types of contracts out and to have delisted a few more players this year so that we could have had some rookie picks.

Wow, 12 months of work by the recruiters results in us reading out the name of a midget with bad shoulders with our first pick. This ought to end well.

I have no idea who we will take but, for the love of Tom Cruise, can we please stop recruiting medium sized forwards and project players (especially developing ruckmen and players from non-football backgrounds). I hope we go hard at genuine ball-winning midfielders, given that we haven't taken one since Oliver.

That deal was already suspicious. Now it has become farcical. Hopefully the AFL investigate.

It goes to show how it is still more about who you know, rather than the quality of performance. Our recruiting was appalling for most of the 2000s (Molan, Bell, Smith, McLean, Sylvia, Bate as failed first round draft picks, plus the likes of Heffernan and Pickett as failed high price recruits). And Richmond was similarly a basket case during his tenure.