Deecisive

as i understand it we had to take 3 players in the draft so 3, 8 and 97. so what were we going to pick up with our last pick, not a lot. We obviously happy that any of the top 10 or so players available are all capable of giving us a good player. We can argue until to cows come home over which is the best of those available at pick 8 or 10, but truly how much better do people think pick 8 is from pick 10. The main benefit of this deal is that instead of using our last pick which would probably turn into something in the 70's we have a pick around 30. i think its a reasonable sacrifice.

is brown still a go if we go after Jackson in the draft?

he is worth a senior spot, if we dont give it to him someone else will. A rookie spot should be for someone who needs to grow into a role, and is not ready to play yet. This guy is a ready made player. pick him up now if he is available, or risk losing him to someone else who can see his value.

happy for us to bid on Green, if GWS want him then they need to paid up, or possibly give us a trade that we cannot resist.

teams will remember what Carlton did, especially GC who will have a nice crop of young top footballers wanting to leave the goldcoast in the next couple of years.

agreed Quality not quantity

we had lots of stats last year on how poor our kicking was, how poor or non-existent our tackling was, how often we turned the ball over and were scored against. Knowledge of those stats unfortunately did not really see us address those issues in any meaningful manner. I hope that we now have remediation plans to break players of bad habits.

if he is a player we want we should be trying to reel him in as soon as possible to reduce the chances of other teams snapping him up, or driving his price up.

been a demon supporter for many many years, i still remember melbourne having a massively good half back line led by Gary Hardiman that turned defense into attack with their rebound football. Frost was one of the few players who took the game on this year and tried to generate that rebound football. Lever, May, Salem and others all seem to stop and wait, look sideways, look backwards, and often go for short passes that opposition players intercept and goal on. Young is the players we need at the back end of the field with Langdon who will get the ball run 10 meters and kick it another 50 meters away from the opposition goal to one of our players. I just hope they can then mark the ball and kick straight. Faster and better delivery down field / fewer kaos balls will give our forwards a better chance to score. still not sure we should be wasting pick 8 on a small forward, again I would be looking for clean kickers, someone like stephens who has run and good kicking skills. No point getting a player who gets the ball 20 times a game but turns it over 6 or 7 of those times. If we can split pick 8 and still get two highly skilled players then great, but if we are getting two average skilled players, then forget it, use pick 8 and take the best available.

there is a lot of good players being picked up by GWS and Sydney through their academy programs. What exactly is melbourne doing in this space?

just the sort of small forward that we need.

Thanks for the link Wattsy, not bad but i still think stephens highlights are better.

his kicking did not look that bad from the highlights i have seen. I like the dash he provides when he has the ball. that is something we sorely miss. too often melbourne players stop and look sideways and even backwards instead of charging forward. I think he is a pretty good player now who will now be a lot more hungry for a chance to play again. he does not cost a draft pick, we are crackers if we dont have a serious shot at getting this guy.

i have not seen any clips of Kemp and what he could do, shame about that. of those videos i have seen both young and stephens appear to be standouts. I would love to see stephens running off the half forward line, he has speed, skill, pace and knows where the goals are. i think he would be preferable to us going after a small forward as he could also play on the wing and rotate through the middle.

i'm not sold on us trying to take a small forward with our picks. there is nothing to say a mid size player cannot also kick goals. We have a few small guys dont waste a top 10 pick on a 20+ rated player.

poor bugger, his indiscretion, that the AFL will no longer consider an indiscretion.

i agree the Kelly deal was a failure, to try to repeat it by swapping a top pick for two lesser picks is just plain dumb, and proves we have learnt nothing. We have done reasonably well with our recruiting so far this draft, if we can get bennell and maybe another top free agent we will be well ahead of last year. We can then use pick 3 and 8 to get the two best players available. that would mean 5-6 new players into our starting line up next year..

use the minimum number of picks we need to satisfy draft requirements. 3, 8 and 97, or if we split 3 and get 8, ?, ? and forget 97. get the best DFA's around some of these are reasonably good mature quality players who just need another chance. I think this is a better approach than taking some kid at 97 and beyond.

i forward who cannot kick, sounds like he is made for us to take at 3.

so we dont play Jake any more?

Agreed we should be seeing if we can pick him up, that would mean that we dont have to waste our draft picks on another small forward so that we can take the best possible players with our two picks.

if he is available take him. this guy will be hungry to play and get back to AFL football. We need players hungry to play, not just feeling they are safe because our list is thin. He now knows what the downside of his bad behavior he is very unlikely to do it again.

I agree make Carlton think we can pay a hefty sum year one, so that they have to more heavily load their first year. then see how his team mates at carlton think about how much he is getting paid when their contracts come up for renewal, especially if he is not playing well, or injured.

if he is an accurate kick why not try him out on the wing, that way he is likely to be able to also get a few kicks at goal. We need a winger who can add to our scoring capability.

well if nothing else push carlton to pay him heaps...