Deecisive

why would you elevate anyone now, wait to see how the preseason and nab cup etc goes before you choose your rookie to promote, that way you have 4 players all vying for that spot in the senior list.

We are giving him a chance to prove himself. if he feels his AFL career is over then he is basically admitting that he cannot or does not want to play any more or believes he cannot do better. If so his career is essentially over if he cannot make it at melbourne.

if he wants to be at the club then his manager has a funny way of showing it. certainly not doing Evans any favors. Most players will only get one shot at playing football at this level, if he does not rookie with melbourne then he may find his dream of playing alf is over so are the large pay checks he has been receiving. Being a rookie gives him a chance to continue to improve himself and strive for that dream of staying on the seniors list for another 6 years or so, taking the money and running is likely to be the end of his career.

You would have to think that the Dom go home factor must be in the back of clubs minds when they look at Cockatoo. I expect only a top club who has talent to spare will take a chance on him.

He obviously does not want to be at the club and seems to not have faith in his ability to progress to the level he needs to be at to be on the senior list. Let him go and draft someone with the right attitude.

List lodgement day tomorrow

hopefully the afl will cut us some slack so that if he decides to come back he can rejoin melbourne at a later time, i.e. maybe next year as a player/rookie. in the meantime going home for a while may be the thing he needs to really experience the change in his life that being home full time is going to give him, and may this can help reignite his passion for football. ideally we should try to get him to visit the boys in our NT games.

I'm not a big fan of coincidences, Dom quitting just around the time we are trimming our lists. I suspect that the coaches had chats to a number of players after they returned to see how they had looked after themselves in the off season, maybe put them through some training to see how they go and asked them questions on their current level of application and if they can step up. I suspect Dom had a think about it and decided it was too hard. Sad to see him go, i hope he can cope with the change back to living and working in a local community.

there is only 3 or 4 real permutations that are likely to happen, all are good for the Dees. I just wonder if Roos is considering possibly playing frost forward, i thought i read somewhere that he could play both ends. If Frost can play forward that does change the dynamics of what we may be looking from our pick 3.

Agreed. Every club is weighing up who to pick hoping they make the right decisions, every player is a potential risk, that they will continue to develop, dont have injuries or gain injuries that screws their careers, also there is going to be a lot of heated arguments over which positions need to be covered first. St Kilda will have supporters for taking the best mid or taking the best forward, up until a name is called out they like us will are not going to stop having those discussions. Also i wonder if some list managers are influenced on which players they cut from their list before the draft based on who they think maybe available to them.

Lets compromise and draft McCartin as a mid

amen

they could potentially put Terlich, Jones, Evans or McKenzie onto the rookie list to make room for extra picks.

i lost count on how many times our players last year had the chance to kick it inside 50 but went backwards or sideways and then lost it. Also we had a massive number of failed 50 entries because we had no forwards there. Improving our forward line will provide multiple credible targets that players can kick to, it also gives us another marking tall who can kick from outside the 50 meters arc giving us better range as well. The game is about getting the score on the board, having one more mid is of no value if the joint output of all of our mids has no one up forwards able to convert their output into reasonable score.

more changes to our list to come then... given we now have some good mids and crumbing forwards, i think he must be considering another kfp with pick 3. One other thing to remember, if we dont go for one of the Key forwards available then these players will slide to Brisbane, Footscray, north melbourne etc... teams that will be the main ones we will be competing with next year to move up the ladder. Brisbane is already looking good with their midfield give them someone like McCartin up forward and they will be looking to challenge for the 8 next year.

hmmm not being able to get into two of the best sides to play does not necessarily mean poor drafting, it can also mean the competition for the spots they play in was intense and that they may may need to do years of development before they get a go. With the Dees and other bottom feeders its more a matter of trying everyone they can at some stage to see if they can improve their performance, hence we may be playing players earlier than we wish.

i think it may still be a little early to discount Mccartin, there will still be more list changes to come from a lot of sides, so there maybe other opportunities to pick up more mids via FA and save pick 3 for McCartin or Wright as we definitely have a weak forward line reliant on Dawes and Hogan, and we will be in deep trouble should either or both of these get injured/suspended, as we really dont have a backup plan.

Which goes to show our rookie picking over the last 10 years has been as bad if not worse than our drafting.

How many rookies picks have actually been successful and resulted in players coming through and playing well, Tom McDonald is one of the few

do you also remember how many dud players we have kept on our list long past their use by date. So one success makes up for the years of failure? McKenzie and Evans are two who are just not up to AFL standards, how many more years to do we give them to prove it before we believe it.

Trenners is injured no different to what a lot of clubs go through, no assistance is warranted. We need to take the best players we can with the draft and we should not redraft players via the rookie draft who we have cut from our list, i.e. Tapscot, he maybe a nice guy but has failed miserably to impress in all of his time at the MFC. He is too slow and does not seem to able to find the ball, go for a new kid we can develop. The constant persisting with players who cannot make the grade by giving them another year then another year in hope that the next year they have a full preseason and show what they can do is wrong. We need to cut our losses quicker than keeping dud players on our list year after year after year.

I must say I love the comment Blease said the defensive side of his game had been under the most scrutiny, and believed it was something he could address at Geelong. "Most of the time Roosy's game plan was based more around defence and I guess I lean more on the side of offence … and defence is something that hasn’t come natural to me," he said. So I guess it must have been one of his many new Geelong coaches that pointed out that he needs to work on his defence because it is certainly not something he learnt at Melbourne and as he put it, defence was a primary focus at the MFC and yet he still did not understand that is what he had to do at Melbourne, but now realizes he can turn this around at Geelong. Sorry the guy is so far up his own backside blaming everyone for his poor effort and form that did not allow him to break into one of the worst teams in the league. A good player can still find and use the ball which is something Sam was really not that good at most of the time. Thanks for the salary cap relief Sam, enjoy sitting on the bench with Mitch.

I would assume we still have some room to spare in our salary cap, if we paid these players out would that be with this years salary cap allowance, which we have to use to a certain level, or next years salary cap. Either way I say get rid of them now, start fresh with some younger and cheaper kids, which would leave more room in our cap for next years bidathon

Are they perhaps trying to take us over by Stealth? Geelong is a very disciplined side, everyone must do their job and do it well, they have a lot of depth so if you dont follow the game plan and put in then you dont play simple as that, I think Sam will struggle to get a game.

It makes no sense to put JT on the rookie list, we risk potentially loosing him for what purpose. If he goes on the LTI list then we can promote one of our rookies, if he goes on the rookie list then we have to nominate who will replace him, so instead of having possibly 4 rookies to choose from by the start of the year will will have chosen someone in a months time. Makes no sense to me..