tappysquads

Howe is a born HBF...creative, marking? Forget about it! and fit, pace and can read the play.

We have enough damaging forwards.

Who are these damaging forwards??? Haven't seen them for a few years

You do realize that will most likely result in more knee injury's and tears. If anything he needs to trim it down a bit. Take the stress off his knees

You do realise that your completely wrong. Leg strength is key to ACL recovery. Bulking the vmo is the first step of your recovery. A successful recovery is heavily reliant on having the upper leg strength (quads and glutes) to support the controlled movement through the knee, calf strength to help control ankle flexion and most importantly good bio mechanics to ensure the joints and ligaments suffer minimum stress when full range of motion is applied. Having big solid legs and hips has never lead to leg injuries, strength is king. It's ensuring he has the flexibility through the ankle and hips that can cause problems

Maccaffer and krakour both played an afl game just over 6 months after injury. Traditional recos, occurred one week apart, rehabbed together and both went over seas for their rehab to a soccer club. (Can't remember which one) but that is just unheard of. I have no idea how this happened, but since they have both re-ruptured their acl's. I don't wanna see petracca even on the track this season. Gym gym gym. Come back with the biggest legs you've ever seen, and the mechanics of a finely tuned gymnast!

FB: Jetta Dunn Garland

HB: Grimes McDonald Salem

C: Lumumba Jones Newton

HF: Kent Hogan JKH

FF: Gawn Dawes Garlett

Foll: Jamar Tyson Cross

Int: Spencer, Pedersen, Frost (need extra talls), Viney, Michie, Toumpas

S: Matt Jones, Bail

Emer: Stretch, McKenzie, vandenBerg

That's a guess at a team. Although I'd like to see Stretch and vandenBerg play. Could leave out Spencer or have him as the sub and swap him with Jamar at half time, but I think they are keen to see Gawn play as much key forward as possible before round 1 and therefore I'd have Spencer and Jamar swapping in the ruck.

Jamar, Gawn, pederson and spencil will never be in the same team! Please let them never be in the same team!

Roos will pick him every single week as he should

How many experienced key forwards with serious runs on the board and leadership responsibilities do we have

That's right - one: C.Dawes

He's a key fwd who can't mark the ball.... Or kick goals.....It's sad that that's best 22 but at the moment it is. Yeh he puts pressure on, cause he doesn't win the ball very often. Maybe he should play back up ruck.....nope he can't do that..... Backline maybe, where it's acceptable to just be defensive...... Nah he doesn't jump in the marking contest

No it's not Vandenberg was coming up against some serious young midfield talent from GWS, Gold Coast, Swans and Lions

A player from my clubs 2s went there this season and played every game in the premiership team, so yeh, it is.....

Always has been, there's no money there so u get no players. It's a horrible standard of football for a state league

Some more observations

Dean kent was the real standout today for me besides maybe Salem and Jones, he has pace, he is tough and knows how to kick multiple goals, i am very optimistic about what he can offer this year, some of the run he provided today was great.

Been waiting to here this all pre season! He's the player I'm most excited about. I think his improvement this year could be the most influential on our results......he's a gun!

The Tyson/Salem trade is getting sweeter by the day!

I think in a year or two you will be changing your opinion about a few of those players, especially Frost.

I think in a year or two, what happened in 2014 will still be what happened in 2014.

I think frost and newton will be great long term players for us, but where they are at in there careers right now won't affect us much in 2015

Brayshaw will play more afl games this year than chip, what a trade!

I am with Barra17 on this one. We have added Frost, Salem and HL into our backline, Hogan and Garlett into our forward structure and we can look forward to an improved midfield with more depth, not only due to improvements through Viney, Mitchie etc, but some mature bodies through Newton and Vandenberg. This and the second year under Roos is not optimistic; it is realistic. Next year, with Petracca and Brayshaw in the mix, I am hoping for top four!

Newton, garlett, michie, couldn't get a game in the afl last year, frost was dropped from a bottom 4 team at times, and vandenberg is from the neafl which is the equivalent standard of local footy in vic.

Was he on the track this morn TDI?

Driving drunk, over twice the legal limit... he could've hit and killed one of our fans.

Ok, so anyone else who makes this mistake, receives a loss of liscence and a fine. Repeat offenders get jail time. But to get stood down from your job because of something that happened before your employment, that's a bit unreasonable. Use this as a means to educate the kid, support him, guide him through it. Give him focus. Who knows, Jeff and the mfc may come out better on the other side

Absolutely needs to be disciplined. If nothing else, so he can be crystal clear that he won't be getting up to the same old stupidity at his new club without severe consequences

This is his second chance.

Can't believe he would he so dumb as to stuff it up, especially with a young family.

Wait, so his second chance was before his first chance? Yeh he stuffed up, last year while at Carlton. He hasn't put a foot wrong since being at melbourne. The story says he didn't tell melbourne because he didn't know he had to go to court. Move on, the club will deal with it, the courts will deal with it. I'd still want him lining up for us round 1 regardless

I get the feeling that the club may have learnt from past pre-season mistakes about putting timeframes on players who are coming back from injuries. There are no games at the moment so they may feel that just letting things tick along at their own pace is a better way to go than putting time on it.

That said it is a shame that Howe is having a limited pre-season, I really feel this could be a big year for him if things fall our/his way.

He got the bulk of the fitness done, has really only missed out on the simulation stuff over the last 4 weeks, still running every session so the fitness isn't going away. He will be taking screamers before we know it (hopefully around the half forward line this year)

So a mid/half back vs a forward for one spot? Gee our match committee needs some guidance if this is the issue. People are so critical of watts, take away the draft number of all players, and we have about 16 players week in week out getting games who have a lot less influence on our performance than jack. He's doing ok, and when we improve, being the type of player he is he will improve significantly.

Toump will be a gun. He is silky. Has had a major surgery in both his years at the club. Before that he was rated top 5 in the country.

It's almost like half the melbourne supporters want our players to fail. How about supporting! You have a kid who it is well known was struggling for confidence and dealing with the pressures of everything to do with the afl (including his performance vs draft pick) and the people who should want him to do well increase the pressure on him by feeding the media frenzy with ridiculous criticism.

Wont be looked at by the dees or....?

Wont be looked at by the dees or....?

That's from the dees. He can play, aggressive and good skills, but been told by the dees he has to fix a problem with his tank.

Has a weak 3km time trial, has been told to improve it or won't be looked at.been assessed, Has an 8 month program set to fix it

I would love to see Terlich as a tagger, but Roos tends not to use them, he was playing just in front of the key defenders taking the midfielders as they came down, and then taking the ball away if it was turned over

Jeffy tended to drop back onto the wing and then come forward, making it difficult for somebody to pick him up, see my Nev Jetta comment

So terlich, as a backman, was zoning off and sitting in front of the keys, while garlett, as a small forward, was roaming up the ground loose and coming back with the flight of the ball and kicked 4.

Hrrmmm, maybe putting 2 and 2 together Terl should have gone somewhere near his man

the question i have for those medicos/physios etc. out there on Demonland , is what the recovery will be like and chance of new injuries developing because of this for

Petracca?

I know when my brother did his ACL (playing footy), they took parts of one of his hamstring out during his reco' and put it in his knee to help repair it (excuse my ignorance if this is no longer the usual procedure). Following this, due to the instability of his hamstring because of the removal of some parts, he continually had hamstring problems such as tears and strains in the hamstring they removed parts from, and has never been able to return to competitive sport properly (he use to play for the Geelong Falcons etc. so was quite a handy footballer). He did all the rehab he was supposed to and more, although obviously didn't have the full medical/rehab support an AFL player would receive.

Now looking at Petracca who has massive hamstrings/thighs, and is very top heavy (very similar to my brothers build actually) my concern are that if they do a similar operation, is he likely to be prone to such injuries? What is the recovery etc. like? Petraccas' body shape concerns me as he is much more "heavy" and "built" than Goddard etc. who people on here are comparing the injury and success that followed to.

Basically no, he shouldn't have ongoing issues. They wouldn't use hamstring grafts if this was the case. I've had 2 recos on the same knee, using right hamstring first and left hamstring second. Yes initially there is a greater chance of tweaking it but mostly it will just be the scar tissue of the cut breaking, which is a necessity anyway and isn't too concerning. Long term the issues he would be looking at avoiding through rehab is reoccurrence, stress related injuries to the other leg, mechanics problems such as spinal or pelvic issues created by protecting the knee, and any affects from the trauma of the initial injury such as torn miniscus or arthritis.

Now days this surgery is so well developed you can walk out of hospital the next day. Fingers crossed everything goes well and this kid is a star for the next 10 years

Still very disappointed about this, hell, I'm still disappointed that I didn't get to see Hogan last year! It's just not fair that's all- like almost literally the two things I've looked forward to before the season starts has now been taken away from me two years in a row, and after all the encouraging reports from training I couldn't wait to see what he would bring. Wasn't expecting game winning performances.

On a related note, if we have another season of less than 5 wins, with no youngsters showing improvement, where does the hope come from?

Wow, that's a dark hole your in. Just watch Dean Kent,JKH,Toumpas,Hogan,Brayshaw,Viney and Salem this year and you will get enough youthful excitement to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Not to mention big Maximus taking the league by the scruff of the neck and throwing his hand up for all australian selection

Some people don't have the bodies for AFL level effort?

No idea but some seem to be unable to take the punishment when others rarely have any sort of a serious injury.

From the reports it was a collision with terlich which forced an unnatural movement inwards. Same thing would of happened to Schwarzenegger in his juicing days. Was just bad luck by the sounds of it. Some people do have naturally weak ligaments or poor bio mechanics like the menzels, increasing the odds of this type of injury, but doesn't seem like this is the case here.

For those of us feeling a little dis-spirited, can someone post some names of players who've had ACL injuries and come back as if nothing ever happened?

One that I think comes to mind is Tony Liberatore, but I'm sure there are others.

Robbie gray suffered a high impact ACL, doing a lot of other damage.... All australian

Archie Thompson was back within 6 months and is still lightning and agile

In saying that, in 2013 there were 8 reoccurrence of acl's

Having done mine twice, I've played 48/48 since the second reco and that was at 28. So an 18yr old with bulk like petracca should have no issues recovering and going on to play at 100%

Things just got a little darker

On the radio....ACL. Season over from our website