Lucifers Hero

Each club can choose. Ess recently renewed their pokie agreement with local councils for the next few decades. Hawthorn are firmly committed to them. Pokies are a significant part of them being financially strong clubs. Look at their mega investments in their 'Taj Mahal' like facilities at Tullamarine and soon to be Dingley sites, while we wallow at the aptly name 'paddock'! mfc and the likes of North can claim the moral high ground but strong clubs get stronger! iirc in the press conf that announced our exit from pokies, Jackson didn't seem to keen. I concluded the exit was board driven.

'Roar' Generally good scribes. Some are good on analysis rather than 'click bait'. Insightful and largely unbiased commentary. Sometimes they use statistical analysis techniques rather than just present tabulated data.

The decennium horribilis!

Given our new recruits during Maloney's time can't see his methods worked too well. Don't think there are any left! The draftees are 'millennials' - a whole new breed on whom old school methods don't work.

https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/540240/rivers-benefits-from-draftee-camp Last week Rivers, Jackson, Pickett, Tomlinson, Brown and Landgon went on a 3-day camp with Goodwin, Jetta and Gawn where they learnt about the club, life as a Demon player and played some casual sports. On a different scale but it reminds me of the program the Hawks have to take new recruits to walk the Kokoda trail. Terrific initiative. Footnote: I wonder if there is a hint in the attendees of our next captain...

Training review from an AFL track watcher: https://www.afl.com.au/news/267311/draftees-shine-as-fit-again-dees-leave-horror-2019-behind Extracts: [vandenBerg] was able to run in the off-season for the first time since arriving at the Demons in the 2014 rookie draft and has been doing so for the best part of four months. Most encouragingly, vandenBerg took part in midfield drills. [Pickett] sought treatment for a sore left patella and had it taped but completed the session without any noticeable issues while running, leaping and wrestling in one-on-one work. He swapped comfortably between kicking on his left and right foot, was clean at ground level, showed good intensity and displayed clean hands but was blowing hard by session's end. Jay Lockhart and Harry Petty – who showed promise in attack through necessity this year – continue to train with the defenders and forwards, respectively, but are expected to play at both ends in 2020 Second-year players Tom Sparrow, Kyle Dunkley and James Jordon were in the thick of the midfield work. Very encouraging, especially Aaron!

Likely 'Milestone' in 2020: 50 games: Fritsch, Hannan, Vandenberg, Weideman, 100 games: Petracca, J. Wagner, Salem, Harmes 150 games: Hibberd, Jetta, May, Tomlinson 300 games: Jones. None will be more richly deserved than Jetta and Jones. Loyal stalwarts of our beloved demons. Along with Oliver (90+ games) and Brayshaw (90+) games, the 100 game brigade is quite a formidable midfield. It is what most clubs hope for: that their top talent grow and develop together. They are reaching the 'sweet spot' of age and experience. Bodes well.

The 2020 thread is up:

Final List for 2020 (excl Bennell) We have 1 list spot (either Rookie or Seniors) which is for Bennell. If he isn't recruited it can be used for the SSP (ala Lockhart in 2019) or the mid season draft (ala Dunkley in 2019) Ages and Games played have been updated. This year I have added the 'Free Agent' (FA or RFA) status of players at end of current contract, if applicable. More than half our total list is out of contract this year. Makes for extra competitiveness. The most critical re-signings imv are Petracca, Fritsch, Petty and Viney. If anyone sees any 'errors' please let me know. I'll ask mods to pin this thread. The 2019 version can be found here:

Lets not forget that our own coach was there for the duration of the program. Last thing we need is to be connected with Dank/Essendon doping in any shape or form.

^^. Thanks. Will update the table and start a new 2020 thread to replace this one.

Port have dumped the 'co-captain' model making Jonas the sole captain. Wines was injured pre-season and never got going with a few stints in the reserves. Then at the end of the year there was a bit of talk that he wanted a trade. Without the captaincy it gives Ollie a chance to find his best form again. Maybe with a few more years of maturity he gets another go. It will be interesting to see if we continue with two or or just one captain and if the latter who it will be. Port have given us a blue print if the club wants go sole cap with Max. Like Wines, Viney is the tough mid field, lead from the front guy but again like Wines he could benefit from concentrating on his body and his game.

The last read before Christmas 2018 was 31,759 see this thread:

I'm not surprised the Bulldogs are second. The 'List Profiles' thread shows they have a lot of players in the 'sweet spot' for age and experience. Highly likely to play deep into the finals in 2020 imv. The surprise for me is Essendon. They did virtually nothing during the trade or the draft to improve their list yet they continually get big wraps for both and now in this CD analysis. They are dreaming. Can't see Ess making finals in 2020.

The value I attach to my Redlegs memberships (other than the donation to the club for the last 20 years) is that I spend time with my niece. And hopefully, will one day have the pleasure of sharing a Demon premiership with her at the G. So the Redleg memberships for the two us will continue until I fall off the perch.

Correct! We are second highest to the saints. My eyes/brain didn't connect too well with the fingers doing the typing ?

Club Profiles and Rankings Not sure the average age per se means a lot but the profile by age group is interesting. We have the 2nd highest number of players in the age group 'sweet-spot' of 22-26yo. Second only to Bulldogs who have 22. Surprisingly, we have the equal fewest (13) of 18-20 yo so being ranked as the 14th youngest is a bit of a quirk of averages. If the number of players under 20 is a guide we can no longer say we are a 'young' team. While we have the equal highest number of players (17) in the experience 'sweet-spot' of 51-150 games we are still relatively inexperienced as we have very few (3) with >150 games. Interesting that the recent consistent finalists have 9-12 players there. It is interesting to see the bulldogs also have 17 in the 51-150 group with 10 of those having 101-150 games. When combined with their players in the age group 'sweet-spot, it wouldn't surprise to see them feature well into the finals.

I'm also on auto renew for myself and my niece. I think of those Redleg memberships as donations. Many would think the likes of you and I are fools easily parted with our money! Not fond of the 'bandwagoners' but they help with cash, sponsors, fixturing and FTA broadcasting. It was great to see them come out in force for the two 2018 finals at the G. Hopefully, the 'bandwagoners' will convert to members when we are regularly in finals, especially once they realise that without a membership it is difficult to get tickets to finals.

Anyone have any idea what our membership level is? The club no longer publishes on the website. A shame as watching the tally was a small interest during the off season. The first lot of roll-over and renewal dates have now passed so it would be a good guide as to how fans are feeling post trade/draft. This time last year the tally was about 30,000. I think we are a way short of that this year. Hopefully members get back on board.

Going by the table only 5 of the top 10 selected were ranked in the top 10 by Champion Data. The 5 ranked outside the top 10: Ash - pick #4; ranked 14 Stephens - pick #5; ranked 41 McAsey - pick #6; ranked 21 Young - pick #7; ranked 25 Henry - pick #9; ranked 35 So our pick #12 for Picket ranked 42 doesn't seem like 'reaching' to me! And in the 10-20 range two selections were ranked 59 and 110 and two weren't even in the rankings. I'm guessing the various phantom drafts would have been just as close (or as far) from the actual draft. While the phantom drafts and rankings are a bit of fun and keep the AFL in the limelight they aren't a great guide to what clubs do.

I believe it was Hawthorn and another club (either Port or Bulldogs but we were not named) that listed him to be invited to the first night flagging an intention to take him in the first round. So initially we may not have planned to take him at 12 but as there were two clubs interested who had picks straight after ours, we needed to take him when we could. To me it matters little where we took him. He was who we wanted and we have him ? Its a shame journo's keep saying he was a 'reach' and that Jackson shouldn't be pick 3. These kids were picked where they were because they were rated highly by one or more clubs. The media should get behind them rather than these silly post mortems on what they thought. No one cares what they thought...forget the 'click bait' and let them enjoy their moments of glory.

To post without quoting, scroll down the page and after the last post your 'avatar' appears on the left. Along side is a white rectangular shaped 'box' with a 'thought bubble' and the words 'Reply to this topic...' Click anywhere in the box and it opens up, then type away!

I wasn't specifically talking about trading in pick #8 or trading of 2020 first picks. I was talking about not having picks in the 20's. If anything it was the swap out of #8 that it may have been smarter to keep it till draft night or do a deal that gave us high first/low second round picks. Lots of deals were done and not sure the value of cherry picking a few. Lots of 2020 first round picks were traded but most clubs left themselves with flexibility. Port's trade was to protect their father/son draft position but they kept picks to live-swap with. The GCS was a live-pick trade and is exactly the type of trade we couldn't participate in because we had cashed our chips. I have little doubt we tried to do some live-pick trades but we lacked the right currency.

Overall we have 2 list spots available as either Senior List or Rookies. We can't delist a Rookie but we can upgrade one or we can opt not to take Brown or Bennell. There is no hurry to decide on them.

I thought we did very well. Happy with our 3 picks. We will be a much better balanced team and the quality of our starting 22 will be quite different by end of this year. Its worth noting that some heavy live-pick trading was done with picks in the 20's and very good deals struck (and I'm filthy on Geelong getting GCS's 2020 pick #11 and #64 for their #27). We couldn't play at that table as we had no picks in the 20's (or able to use 2020 pick of any value to package up). We always knew pick 28 would slide to the low 30's because of the Academy and F/S players before then. It shows the need to keep some early second round picks because once round 1 is over teams want to get their fave player that slid down the order, ala Lions and GCS and they will pay up. Some canny plays went down in the second round. We may have snookered ourselves a little bit by swapping picks too early in the trade, pre draft periods. Not sure we gained full value from them. We will learn from it.