Diamond_Jim

Just go through the Melbourne based VFL teams (AFL aligned) and you'll find a couple at least. A $50k pay rise for say 2 years will prise them free. Remember you're looking for a ruck not a number 1 mark around the ground player ie another Max

I'd forgotten Dunstan but you're right.. that's another as is Laurie.

Yes and the reality is that what we draft in from other clubs will probably be not as good but this is what happens when you have a relatively closed first 22/23. Not sure how it could be better handled but 4 cusp players leaving other than by retirement seems high. Throw in the possible retirement of Hibberd, BBB and even Melksham and TMac, you have big turnover

This is like a 2 week bye with all these irrelevant games. AFL are lucky they have no real competition other than B grade movies PS: Gil etc will be thinking... imagine the excitement if 9 and 10 if not 11 and 12 were eligible for wild card play offs

One Round too Many

They're only ins if they don't travel to Sydney as emergencies. My understanding is we will lose 3 players being the sub and two travelling emergencies Wonderful scheduling once again

My guess is that this is almost our finals line up. TMac v Smith and to a lesser degree Tomlinson v Turner are still open Laurie, Spargo, Smith with the outlier of Taj W fighting for the role of sub

Agree !

Thanks... No TMac ?

Will Collingwood play Jeremy Howe forward in finals ?

Sunday... 2:45pm

With Buddy gone what is the Swans tall forward make up like? Is there a role for Tomlinson?

Sam W to kick 12 against the Pies !!!

Tend to agree re Tomlinson simply because I don't see him playing against the Pies. If and when we play Brisbane... maybe Interesting that you have slotted in Smith in place of Turner. You are probably right but they may want to try Turner out pre finals

? Why so That would mean no Casey game which is the worst of both worlds

Goodwin admitted today that the Grundy experiment has not worked. You don't get a clearer.. "he's up for trade" than that “In terms of the way they function in the team together, from a forward-half perspective; I think it’s pretty clear ... that it hasn’t quite been the success that we were hoping for – and that certainly hasn’t been all on Brodie,” Goodwin said, a day after extending his tenure as coach to the end of 2026. “We were hoping for Max to play big time forward [time] as well, and between the two of them we haven’t quite had the impact that we would have liked throughout the year, and we’ve had to look down a different path to how we structure up the forward half of the ground. “At this point, that’s impacted Brodie’s ability to play in the team in the last five or six weeks, so I think from that perspective, we acknowledge that part of it hasn’t worked.

In 2021 we had 3x 2 week breaks in our finals campaign. Worked rather well I thought

So assuming Lions beat the Saints, Port have nothing to play for on Sunday and their opponent Richmond has even less. Will be interesting to see if Port have a few Sunday morning niggles

Preuss had much better VFL forward form than Grundy but as you say he couldn't bring it to AFL level. FWIW I'd be making quiet enquiries of Goldstein re whether he wants a $400k one year top up of his retirement savings. He could have an "easy" VFL year backing up Verral and acting as a "break glass" back up for Max

Can't help but have a laugh at the AFL who were salivating over all the final 8 contenders 2 weeks ago. How will we manipulate the fixture so we'll have maximum exposure. Now all they have is a yawn fest with GWS v Blues being the only game of interest assuming Dogs can beat "cue in the rack" Geelong. Perhaps the competing clubs could take a cue from the pole vaulters last night and just declare all the games a draw. Also ironic that the one extra game of the season forced on us by the Gather round fiasco has been such a fizzer.

32 of his 65 goals came in 2021 2022..23G 24 B 2023... 2G 5B Career total 65B 52B https://afltables.com/afl/stats/players/M/Mitch_Georgiades.html

In 2011 they didn't own Docklands like they do now so it's a little easier but I think you are correct. Also impacted by the relative break for the teams playing the next week. (in 2011 the Docklands deal allowed the AFL not to play finals there on the condition that it was made up in future years. I don't think they ever did before they bought it for a few dollars.)

GWS will be peeved

You have to name your final 22 by 6pm approx on Friday night. AFL will be all over us if we pull Gawn etc on Sunday due to a dead rubber. I think we will have to take a chance/calculated risk

Good news I would hope that the contract addresses the salary cut he took last time which was a quite impressive act