Ted Lasso

I would almost guarantee this would have been driven by Sparrow and his management backing him to improve his stocks and sign a much more lucrative deal in 2026 rather than the club being conservative, if we could have locked him up for 5 i reckon we would have jumped at it.

I'd guess we will set our year up very similar to last season where everything is built towards hitting our best form in the finals. if we're healthy i am confident we will be playing in a prelim at least.

Very well said.

I think we should be incredibly proud of the way the club has handled this off season, it's been a mess, and some of the interesting articles coming out of the herald sun haven't helped, but i feel we have shown our culture is strong and we're ready for the season. on a side note, it sounds like Clarry has been to hell and back so for him to tick all the boxes and be selected for round zero is an enormous accomplishment and something i hope he's very proud of.

Awesome signing! Sparrow has played a really selfless team role the last 3 years which probably hasn't allowed him to show supporters how good he actually is! i've spoken to a couple of people involved with the club and they both said they rate him as an elite prospect and think he can become an All Australian level midfielder. I would expect he will play a more balanced role in 2024 and we'll see him kicking more goals, taking more marks and being a real handful around the ground. there is a lot of Luke Parker about him

It's perfect for the club really, no pressure or expectation externally compared to the extreme levels of the last few years. I've got a feeling we're going to make a few "Experts" look a bit silly in 2024

It's ultimately a practice match and means very little in the grand scheme of things but the things i noticed: The improvement in efficiency inside 50 was obvious the midfield and stoppage set ups look good, McQualter has made an impact. Tommy Sparrow is ready for his best year. Windsor, Howes, Billings all improve the team

Hard to take much from a practice game, but the inside 50 connection finally seems to have improved.

Max Gawn is in my opinion the best ruckman to play the game and the best Melbourne player to play the game.

Also lets be real, we'd only be punishing our own club, it would be a move you'd expect from the filth because of their lack of self awareness. a better protest would be find some way to scam all the Pies tickets and make it a sea of red and blue all holding up pictures of Gus.

The best way to get back at the Pies and honor Angus Brayshaw is to win the 2024 premiership, i'd be pretty disappointed if the players viewed this any other way. I can guarantee you that Maynard and the Pies will be hoping the players target him because we showed on queens birthday we're more than capable of beating them on the big stage if we're focused and locked in on the task.

Genuinely, supporting Port Adelaide might be the only thing worse than these lists.

What evidence do you have that anything happening with the players involved is the direct responsibility of the club and it's leaders? I've not seen a shred of evidence to suggest the blame should fall anywhere but at the feet of the individuals involved.

you're making a lot of assumptions here.

Agnus is worth minimum 16 first round picks.

Nothing but respect for a Demons legend!

I agree with you, but if you look at Geelong, who are held up as being arguably the benchmark for football culture in modern AFL history, their most recent 20 years has included a lot of years when they've dominated home and away and not quite been rewarded on the level they probably expected. I think the reason has a lot more to do with how difficult premierships are to win and how much you need going right for you to win them, then it does anything the cats have done or their culture.

I agree some early wins will certainly take the wind out of the sails of a media that doesn't seem to rate truth and credibility anywhere near as highly as it should. I think there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about what we might be able to achieve this year, we will need a lot of things to fall our way, but that's not different to any other year. I find it incredibly interesting the talk of deep cultural issues being linked to a team with 3 consecutive top 4 finishes, a premiership in the AFL, VFL and AFLW, stability on all levels, record membership, the vast majority of required players re-signing long term and year on year profits. I'd say with a reasonable degree of confidence most other clubs would absolutely love to have this sort of a record. What i've stated is fact though, it's not media hyperbole. we've had an incredibly successful 3 year period by virtually all measures and realistically we've probably underachieved slightly based on what a club in our position is capable of. it's very hard to marry that up with the suggestion we are an absolute basket case with massive cultural problems.

I still think we're pretty comfortably in the best 4 teams barring a bad run with injuries so i've got us top 4. i honestly don't think we're that far off being the benchmark again, if we see a 20% improvement in our efficiency inside 50 and our conversion i think we're playing in a grand final.

You couldn't have nailed this any more, i don't think 2023 Collingwood was an especially great team by any measure, but geez they're well coached and they just win the big moments because they obviously drill those into the players. in both finals guys tried to rip the game away from opposition when we didn't need to, we had dominance for long periods in both games, we just needed to hold our nerves.

He reminds me so much of Clarry when he first arrived, strange guy, bit rough around the edges but he's got a bit of animal about him. pretty excited to see what he can become.

2022 and 2023 are examples of what will continue to happen if we don't take a step back and correct the deficiencies in our gameplan and on our list. I said at the end of this season i don't think we can win another flag with our current list and gameplan and i stand by it, we need to re-shape the whole list and tweak the game plan to keep up with the modern game, we are making top 4 on talent and being exposed by teams that are just simply doing it better than us.

I think this is logical, especially given the profile of our list, given JVR is still so young, as is Petty and the entire core still has 6-7 years left a mini re-set could allow us to push for more flags, continuing the same course would likely see us consistent contenders, and maybe we'd pinch another flag, but we'd need a lot of luck. My concern with this, is the risk it carries is that if Gawn or May suffers a significant long term injury, we're in a lot of trouble, we'll be relying on trade/free agency and a very aggressive pursuit of an opposition star

you can just tell he's going to be our Tom Papley or Jack Ginnivan, opposition teams will absolutely hate him haha

Happy with Windsor, a little dissapointed we didn't take Leake. trust JT and the team know what they're doing.