BigMacjnr

Couldn't agree more. If what the talk out of Freo is true that is coming through over the equivalent of 3 first round picks for Jackson, then they are going to need to send through 16 (with AFL approval to trade this), F1st and the compensation for Lobb and Logue (both mid 2nd round picks?) to cover Jackson. that would be the equivalent after comp picks to be roughly pick 1 plus early 3rd rounder in draft points value. We would have the cap space to sign Brayshaw directly/match and I don't believe pick 19 is enough for Angus, so I would have them trade exciting young talent(s) as compensation or he stays. If Freo want one or either they are going to be a worse team depth wise in the short term (our premiership window).

Agree. There is no like for like replacement. This current draft has a few really good tall prospects, admittedly not an expert and don't seem to be of the same quality as the similar players are not projected currently to be in the top 5, but I think if we lose Jackson we would want a back of top 10 pick and a pick around 15 and a future 1st to pick up 2 prospects, one being a potential B.Brown replacement and another for Luke Jackson. F1st to help keep adding to our list and give us trade ammunition to add to our core. Talls like Ben Brown and Jackson don't grow on trees are aren't usually available on the open market.

you are right, to fit him in and remunerate him far in excess of the dees they lose most of these players and they lose their depth and their talent on field for the next 3-5 years takes a significant hit all to bring in Jackson, while making us potentially stronger in the next 2-4 years...agree stranger things have happened. Lot of pressure for Jackson to be a top 10 player in the future if they do that.

This whole talk of Fremantle pitching Jackson is like Melbourne pitching Adam Cerra, but Luke Jackson is worth double the price. If Cerra was pick 6 and at the time a mid 3rd rounder which brings it to pick 4ish. Fremantle can't trade their first this year as they traded out their 2nd and 3rd round picks. Even if they could, pick 16-18 is not anywhere close, and next year 16-18 is nowhere close, which means players. Which players combined with a future first adds up to 2 good top ten picks in value? Jye Amiss, Hayden Young and a future first? Are they going to be able to pay the price required to bring Jackson in? At the end of the day when Gawn is close to retiring we have Jeff White's son Kalani. I doubt Jackson would move to the Eagles. Not impossible for Freo to take Jackson away from us but far fetched they have the collateral to get it done. It is probably only between us and Freo at this point. Freo upping the coin to bring Jackson in will mean they have to let go a couple of decent players on good coin to bring him in and have the money to keep their younger brigade in the next contract cycle. They will probably have to trade Lobb and Logue, and maybe plan on Fyffe and Mayne leaving in 1-2 years (or on a tiny salary beyond that), without bringing any free agents in to cover depth. In the short run their depth is weaker, and dropping their overall talent...high risk high reward. Meanwhile Melbourne will have extra cash set aside for Jackson as well as these young prospects and additional pick to further increase our depth. Jackson is a potential superstar and will be missed but strangely enough, in our premiership window we probably get stronger for the next 4 years and Freo weaker in the same period.

Maybe look at a couple changes: In: Viney, Laurie Out: Dunstan, Melksham I think Laurie has been in good form at VFL level and probably the next best winger outside of the current 22 the team has available with Howes injured, who is both tactically astute enough to play the role as well as having the pace/endurance to play the role. Benefit being it allows Brayshaw to stay back if possible as he has been in All Australian form there. Otherwise you could bring in a half back flanker and push Rivers or Bowser up to the wing for a week.

@Davos and @adonski care to provide some insight as to where you are getting these 'vibes'?

serves me right for trusting the online draft calculator.

Is it possible that we go for Bulldogs pick 23? Taking the AFL media on face value for how many picks each team will be taking to the draft, only ourselves and Geelong have the arsenal and want (picks to take and value) to improve the dogs draft hand. If we trade 37, 49 and 57 for pick 23, dogs would effectively be 815 draft points up on the trade Without the trade and in a worst case scenario (pick 2 bid), their draft hand would be: 2, 61 (current picks slide to 61), 93 With the trade: 2, 57, 65, 93. Not sure if that is appealing enough to do the trade but something to think about. Maybe we can get the 'slider' of the draft plus a bolter at 23. Then go into slight deficit next year to match the Taj bid.

Agree, rookie deals are for 1 year, and the maximum length of time is usually 3 years on the rookie list but is now one extra year due to Covid impacts. Only senior listed players can be given multiple year deals in my understanding.

Hi Premiers, Might have missed something but I believe I counted (not including Hore or Declase) 34 senior listed players and 4 rookies. The MFC article refers to four players being retained on the rookie list: M.Brown, Daw, Turner and D.Smith. K.Chandler appears to be getting upgraded to the senior list. Current rules are between 36-38 on the senior list and 4-6 Category A and 2 Category B rookies. Based on this we have a couple of different options: sign up to 4 senior players (ie. 4 players in the draft), but technically we only need to add two players to the list, 1 required through the draft given Chandler and J.Jordon are both being upgraded.

I believe the AFL fixture is based on a tiered system for the double ups, 1-6, 7-12, 13-18. Either have 2 in the top bracket, 2 in the middle and 1 in the bottom or 3-1-1. Generally want to limit travel to 5-7 interstate games, we probably have 7 due to our NT government sponsored games. We will probably play 2-3 of Geelong, bulldogs, Port, Brisbane, GWS; 1-2 of Sydney, Essendon, WCE, Freo, St Kilda, Richmond 1 of Carlton, Hawks, Crows, GCS, Pies and NM. This year we had Geelong, WB, GWS, Hawks and Adelaide twice, so our fixture will be roughly the same difficulty, just switch the Hawks/Crows to another top 12 team.

Couldn't agree more Layzie, Nev does so much extra work behind the scenes and is so generous with his time. Plays a big leadership role in general as well with the indigenous players. An absolutely ripper bloke with an amazing family behind him. From my short stint in the club I was most impressed with him, the utmost professional.

This conversation should be actively in the other direction. Highest likelihood that we will play all of our finals outside of Victoria. We need as many people in the other states to jump on the Dees train as possible. If we can have a pro-Dees crowd throughout the finals, that would be massive. All of these nice media stories are really helping...We need to convert like the Bulldogs on their unlikely run home, without the blatant throwing of the football. We should be actively recruiting bandwagon hoppers from Crows supports in Adelaide and collectively in the WA. I don't like how the Eagles fans behaved in our final against them, but would put that behind me if we got a groundswell of support for our potential final(s) there.

Agree, I would add that Petty is pretty young and in a few short games showed more up front than Weid has over a longer period (other than a one off Geelong finals game).

Interesting that we started the season rotating our mids through the forward line but in the last few weeks they appear to be a lot less rotation. Having a set structure with ANB, Kozy, Spargo and designating Sparrow, Jordan and Harmes to primarily rotate through the forward line is actually taking away from our incredible depth in the midfield. Our best forward set up probably consists of only having 1 designated small forward such as Pickett and having a bunch of players rotating through the centre. Our best forward set up probably also has us not playing 7 players behind the ball but having an extra mid. My preferred lineup: Brayshaw B.Brown Fritsch Harmes Weideman Viney TMac Jordan Langdon Salem Petty Rivers Hibberd May Lever Gawn Petracca Oliver Sparrow, Jackson, Bowey, Kozy

Dees were able to 'fix' their issues at clearance but other elements of their game have dropped off which they can look to address at the selection table. We lost the turnover points allowed/conceded which I believe we were previously no.1 with post clearance contests and intercepts. Salem was a very noticeable out with our backline lacking the link up as well as a good distributor sweeping past the clearance to distribute on the outside. The other area of concern was the ease at which the Crows i50 where they were given time and space to pick out mismatches and hit players on the lead. A lot of this came from the inability of our forwards to maintain the pressure on defenders with Seedsman and co able to link up and deliver to Tex and Co. Great that we trialled the ultra big line up but now need to adjust the forward line for both full ground pressure and win contests forward of the ball. We also far too reliant on Salem and require an additional good ball user behind the ball to ensure teams can't tag Salem and hinder our ball movement as what we saw. My changes would be - Out: Jetta, Hibberd, melksham (inj); In: Salem, Bowey and Sparrow TMac moved to the wing, is a better runner than brayshaw and helps out the defense in a way that Brayshaw can't, which allows Gawn to work more forward. Brayshaw is a known goal kicker, puts immense pressure on and is a good distributor, an also help our oliver/petracca/harmes rotate forward/mid. Hibberd is a tough out but we need a better distributor in Bowey to compliment Salem. Sparrow is another player who puts immense pressure with great defensive running as well as the ability to rotate through the midfield. Bulldogs have some very speedy outside players which require Sparrow's running capacity without the ball. If we can match Liberatore in the contest and stop the Bulldogs spread, big if, then we win the game.

Why wouldn't they use the north game to try something a little different: Out: Jones and Melksham In: Ben Brown and Weideman Brayshaw shifts forward, TMac shifts to the wing, and Jackson shifts to an athletic 'medium' role instead that Melksham had. Should have no impact on our pressure stats should BB and Weid have the same hunger to tackle as we have seen with the rest of the team.

If you want consistent performances you need to have a relatively consistent side. Should be making 2 changes "tops". Swinging 4 changes is not a good way to provide consistency and start building cohesion. I would move Jones to be the Sub, which I think could be a role where he excels in unless there is a specific player that is underdone. In Viney (if fit), Out Jones (Sub)

Fixed, thanks membership team!!

I bought the 3 game membership this afternoon (on the fence this year) and similar to 'the Lobster Effect' I was not sent nor when logging into the member page, as you described perfectly above, I have a blank page under 'membership type' and 'barcode'. Is the membership barcode sent on a delayed basis? Sent an email to membership department but hoping for a response in time to reserve a seat through Ticketek. Purchase confirmation came through no worries though. Thanks ?

I have a feeling that TMac will be an option only if Jeremy Cameron deal is done to Geelong. Essendon and others don't want to lock away salary space if there is still a possibility to snare JC in the preseason draft. My gut feeling is he has a chance to move if that JC deal goes through in the early afternoon. I believe he has already toured the facilities at a few clubs and so it could be one deal that happens last minute. Dedoro will have a statue built of him if he is able to bring in an early draft pick, dunkley, caldwell and cameron.

@Lucifer's HeroYou are the resident expert on list matters...

Agreed especially when Mahoney publically stated that it they weren't looking at a first round pick, that would include giving up the value of a first round pick. Initial information from North Melbourne was that they wanted the then pick 23 for Brown. We might be manoeuvring to find another way to provide the equivalent value of that pick without giving it up. It would be very disappointing having been told that first round compensation was not on the table to then give up mid first round value. Say what you will about Mahoney but he is a pretty straight shooter, would be surprised if this were the case. This is the type of shenanigans you would expect from Dedoro or Bell.

Dees seem to be the most strategic making decisions based off the delay between the AFL and AFLPA arrangement. The list size change looks like it will be minimal this year 38 senior and 44 in total including category B rookies. It would seem there will be further list reductions next year which could mean that there will be less players picked up next year in the draft as well. This would help explain why there were so many players brought back on 1-2 year deals. We keep a lot of flexibility next year to take advantage with both salary and list space flexibility.

Dees want to keep pick 26. The swap that would make sense is Dees send 33 & 43 for Ben Brown and 57. This equates to pick 25 in draft points.