Jerry Lundergard

This misconception has been highlighted many times in other threads. You need to win less than 5 games two years in a row. It is not accumulative to 8 games or less over two years.

Boy that 2003 draft was a stinker! When you consider Walker, Ray and Sylvia were all early in that draft as well. Nobody did well with early picks in that draft if you exclude Cooney.

In last weeks game we were outscored by 94 points in the final 3 qtrs. The Saints were by 65 points in the last 3 qtrs. The difference between us and the Siants is, you could probably name 6 or 7 players on their team, who would rate as A grade players, where as we probably have none. Make what you will out of that, but maybe we have come up against some very good teams that have hit the ground running and are full of confidence. We have been terrible, but i still hold hopes that our second half of the season will be much better than our first.

Is this the guy you want me to call?

It's interesting that the way we are going about it this year has already been compared to the Hawks when Clarko took over. If i remember correctly in his first year, he pulled the hammer down pretty hard on Crawf for missing a team function. Crawford seemed dispirited early that year and even talked of retirement. Spider Everitt was another who clearly did not like the regime of discipline that was enforced upon the Hawks, and he was moved on at the end of the year. Crawford has now obviously fallen into line and bought into what the Hawks were trying to achieve, and may reap the benefits. So hopefully a few of our senior players can use this as an example of how they can deal with situation that is being presented to them.

I would say in some cases it is not the recruiter who stuffs up, but the player himself. In other cases, injury can make a recruiter look bad. The top ten players usually pick themselves, but hindsight is always a wonderful thing. All i know is, the year we got the priority pick(2003 i think), is quickly going down as the worst draft ever in the AFL's history.

I know it is perverse to be talking about this stuff so early, but as we are referring to both the Hawks and Saints as models, it should be noted that the rules were different for them when they were tanking, and it will be much harder for us to gain alot of high picks, especially considering we will have nobody to offer up as trade to get another player in the top 20.

Can you imagine if we go the season winless, but Carlton win 4 games only and get their 4th successive No.1 pick? How would that be deemed fair?

I've been one of Dunn's biggest suppoerters, so i am not going to write him off after one poor performance first game back in a 100 point loss. He is not the greatest athlete, but is ultra competetive and has good football smarts, so i expect him to bounce back over the coming weeks.

Some positives from this round are that we weren't the only team to get belted. And there are still at least a couple of other teams without a win.

I am already hearing some of the talk back competitions this week, "Give us the margin that Geelong will beat Melbourne by" It will be one big joke on us this week.

Yeah, and maybe we could offer up Chris Johnson for Jed Adcock.

He said it on the back of the other Brownless suggesting that Stynes would replace Gardiner at the end of the year. He said he had heard something else, but would not elaborate.

Other than some improvement from the team, i think the other thing that will peak my interest this year,is whether the Blues and Tigers can win 5 or more games so they don't snipe that no.1 pick of us if we happen to(when we) finish last.

We won't get jack for Sylvia, should offlaoded him two years ago while he still had "potential". Mustn't be entirely happy with his suspension i suspect, and maybe Green's dirty about being dropped form the leadership group.

The original post was a great one. And i am sticking fat with DB and his vision of what his team should play like. I am going to use a golf anology in reference to our change of game plan. If you have been swinging a club a certain way for so long, but you haven't been able to achieve a level of standard that you desire, you can go get some lessons of a pro. He would probably restructure your whole swing in way that would see you at first actually hit the ball worse as your mind and body comes to grip with all the new processes that have been put in place. I believe with all the teaching of new postioning of players under the gameplan that we have a situation where many players are thinking too much out on the field at the moment, because the new game plan is not yet second nature. When put under immense pressure we fall back into half old habits, half new ones and hence we look a rabble and get belted. You can hit all the balls you like straight at a driving range, but how will you swing the club when on course over the tee? The only way out of this is plaenty of hard work and persistence till the gameplan becomes second nature and we can sustain it under pressure and gain some confidence. This may not happen till the second half of the season, and even then we may still not get wins. Hawthorn were awful when Clarko first went there with a new game plan, but he played much more negatively and negated the floggings. Ross Lyon with his star studded team couldn't make the finals last year with his new game plan. Harvey and Ratten are yet to win a game, and Knights was already coaching most of his plyers to a system at Bendigo before this season, so he has a slight advantage. We are just going to have to suffer some pain for a while and hope the team start to improve as the year goes on. I am on board regardless, but it is far to early to make any calls about whether DB is any good or not.

Are you getting worried that we may have some good players not wanting to sign a new contract? I am.

The ball delivery to our fowards is crap. Except for Morton, nobody can actually effectively kick to a fowards advantage. Bate should help across our half foward when he is fit again. We also need a foward to stand up and win a couple of one on one contests. Now that Davey is out, who are we going to have crumbing?

I disagree. Morton ran to where the space was, and Robbo either took too long to see him or refused to pass it. If Morton had run on any further he would have been getting too close to Dogs defenders, and the kick would've also been much harder, as it would have had to be angled over the man on the mark.

I'd say he has some other other skillsets that Ablett Snr. had, and not the ones you have outlined.

I think we all know we are in for a 100+ point belting.

I thought we were smashing them in clearances in the first half, but we were still down by 25. Of course when they started winning them we know what happened. Isn't it funny how we always complained that one of our biggest problem was getting destroyed in clearances. And now when we get our fair share of them, we are so crap at either delivering it with any purpose to our fowards, or we don't have a player in our foward line who can win a one on one contest. It's like my golf game, just when i start putting well, i can't hit my driver straight.

Can't see any positives out of Colin Garland and Isaac Weetra. But Morton will be a gun. I think he may be the only player on our team who actually knows how to kick to the advantage of a teamate. Pretty sad inditement on our team that is. The last last two teams to have smashed us were both able use the ball to advantage, we just turn the ball over through our lack of skill.....[censored], was this a postives thread, my bad.

Does anyone know how Martin has been going for Sandy? I thought he showed a bit against Geelong in that NAB cup match.

I grew up in southwest Sydney, and the last place place i would want the Demons to end up is in Blacktown, the place is a shithole. And, it is Rugby League heartland.