Ted Lasso

Ben Hobbs from the dons is someone i rate highly, i'm surprised to see him out of the senior team, i think he'd slot nicely into the age profile and needs of our list. It's unlikely he'd want to go/they'd be willing to trade him but i think that's the type of player we should be looking for, young top end talent that perhaps isn't getting the opportunities they would with us.

I am probably in the minority that thinks the changes to the NGA rules are pretty fair enough, Mac Andrew is an incredible talent, if any club other than the MFC looked like getting him far later than his projected pick i think most posters would think it was a bit unfair. I don't like that the Swans got Gulden, Heeney, Mills and have potentially built a dynasty off these rules either, the best talent needs to go to the worst teams, that's the natural order of the league.

I think Petty is only worth a meaningful contract from us as a key defender, Tmacs form is a major curve ball for Harry.

Kane Cornes has made a career on saying controversial things and taking zero accountability when he's made to look silly as a result of them, i rarely take any notice of any of his commentary like this. It would be ridiculous for us to pay someone to take Oliver off our hands and he would be the first to crucify us if we did this and then Oliver bounced back to his best in 2025. The only way we trade Oliver is if he has a significant backslide in the off field stuff in my opinion, and all indications are he's making progress in that area.

6. McVee 5. Rivers 4. Pickett 3. Langdon 2. Melksham 1. Windsor

Jason Taylor is a gun, one of the best in the business, i have question marks on Tim Lamb who i think has probably made a few blues ion recent years

It makes us a really tricky prospect for Essendon because teams know exactly what Max brings and it locks us into how we play to some extent so Max out of the team throws that into complete chaos, it means the mids can just rove to Goldy or Draiper and hunt the ball and makes us much less predictable

I think it might be time for Verrell or Fullerton to come in, i'd say Max will battle through any pain he's in, but if Goldy and Draiper both play it's a massive job to ruck one out against two very very handy and very different rucks

Windsor was amazing today! his work rate is incredible, the fact he can run like he does and still just find some juice to sprint the way he can when required is amazing! not many players have the speed/endurance combo like he does, and even less also possess incredible footy IQ and poise. Loving the Rivers move into the midfield! I don't think it's any coincidence sadly that Van Rooyen and Fritsch played their best games in some time the week Petty was out and Melksham was in, the sum of all parts was significantly better today and it really did highlight to me how big a hinderance Petty has become up forward.

6. Rivers 5. Van Rooyen 4. Windsor 3. Pickett 2. Viney 1. Melksham

It's hard to get too excited because West Coast are putrid, but it's nice to see us being a big more aggressive with the ball and giving our forwards a look, it's amazing how forward 50 connection doesn't look like such an issue when it doesn't take 3 hours to get it in there and it doesn't just get dumped to the square every time

It's pretty clear that we are lacking a lot of class in our midfield, unsure where we are going to find it at trade time but i hope Tim Lamb and the team get creative, maybe Richmond would move Taranto for another good draft pick?

This is amazing, it's so great to see so many young players being given a go, from Goodys presser it sounds like Jeffo is very close as well

It's absolutely embarrassing that Mark Robinson and others would suggest Steven May is a cheat for something that happens 100s of times every weekend, staging has been a part of the game for years, you can't pick and choose when you're outraged if you want to retain any sort of credibility. lets see if Mark Robinson would call Zach Merrett a cheat the next time he exaggerates contact to get a high free kick. Joe Daniher would have 10 oscars for the dives he's taken over the years.

Sadly i think Weid just lacks the bit of animal you need to be a successful key forward.

the Weitering/Curnow/McKay draft is pretty special, it's ultra dissapointing considering we could have drafted either of the latter two and took Sam Weideman instead. If we drafted Charlie Curnow instead, i believe we'd have 3 flags in a row right now and be going for 4.

I find it incredible that legitimate football commentators and media personalities are more upset with Steven May for pretending to be hit in the head than they are at Brayden Maynard for actually hitting a guy in the head resulting in a premature end to his career.

I am not at all defending what Steven May did because it was clearly staging, but far out, there are dozens of incidents every single game that fall into the catagory of staging ignored. blokes raising their arm to draw high contact, diving forward to draw in the back, throwing their heads back. if they're going to issue fines for staging i completely support it but it just looks ridiculous when there was probably 100 staging incidents this weekend and they've fined 1. Some blokes would probably end up in the negative by the time they paid all their fines if it was officiated consistently.

I am not sure what others thought, but i felt like you could see the stress and frustration written all over Goody last night, he looked rattled. Personally i wonder if he'd benefit from a move back to the box just to change things up and perhaps let Mark Williams a premiership coach and head of development run the bench area

I think this whole discussion ultimately depends on where the club thinks we are in our premiership pursuit, it's not clear to me if we're going to be able to just bounce back and win it all in 2025 without some pretty big changes. I'm all for loading up and going again while we have Max and May, but we will need in my opinion 3-4 best 22 recruits and one of them needs to be a key forward, if that's not going to be possible then i think we just keep adding to our young core, try to get an extra first rounder in this draft as it's midfield heavy and re-build our midfield depth. I think we'd be crazy not to try and lure McDonald and Stengle, we're going to have money to spend, picks to trade and we need a forward line that can score goals. McDonald, Van Rooyen and maybe Petty with Stengle, Kozzie and Fritsch looks dangerous on paper, if we can sprinkle in some forward craft that'd be wonderful

Trac isn't going anywhere.

I'd like the see the new game style start to take hold and by the end of the year we charge towards finals with some momentum, maybe Petty and Van Rooyen find their feet as a partnership and the forward line is functioning better I still think we can play finals in the bottom part of the 8, so i'd say a pass mark given the talent we still have even without Petracca is to make the 8, show this new game style can work and build some momentum heading into 2025, we sort of need this to be a repeat of 2020 where we found form in the back half of the year, just missed the finals but the momentum carried us to the 2021 season where the rest is history

Not sure if you've noticed, but not many aspects of our game are in great shape at the minute, we can have the greatest defense of all time and it won't matter if we can't score or win the ball in the middle.

From memory Charlie Curnow slid a few places in the draft because of a similar issue with drink driving, imagine if we took him instead of Sam Weideman! we'd have won the last 3 flags

lets get Taj, Bowey, Rivers and Windsor into the midfield rotation, if we don't have the star power we once had, perhaps the best tactic is to share the load and change the look of that area. It's pointless to front up with the same B minus midfield mix and get beaten the same way for the next 8 or 9 weeks, we've got the rest of this season to try a few things, re-establish our identity as a team, work out who is going to help us win our next flag and re-launch for 2025 we aren't going to win a flag with Petracca out and Oliver and Viney so far away from their best footy.