Dees2014

Since this is unknowable, let's just pick from the current players, and therefore we will pick the ones who will develop fastest 2013 1 Clark 2 Jones 3. Frawley 4. Trengove 5 Grimes 6. Howe 2015 1. Watts 2. Clark 3. Toumpas 4. Gawn 5. Hogan 6. Jones 2017 1. Watts 2. Hogan 3 Gawn 4 Toumpas 5 Viney 6. Clark Are the 2017 top six capable all of being in the afl top 20, and therefore form the basis of a premiership side?

Yes, I think we can make the top four if certain things happen and they are big ifs: 1. We get ourselves a young very large dominant mobile ruckman who is capable of dominating sides. I think a fit Max Gawn could be that person if he can stay injury free. He is mobile, the second tallest in the AFL. He has the potential to develop into an A grader; 2. Watts becomes the superstar we all believe he can be; 3. Several of our top 1st round draft picks develop into A graders: I would nominate Trengove, Hogan, Viney, toumpas, Grimes, Jones, tapscott, Frawley 4. Several second and third rounders, develop into Aand B graders. The ones I think have the potential to do this are MacDonald, Barry, Bleese, Garland, Jetta, Dunne, Howe 5. The new attack of Clark, Hogan, Dawes, tapscott, Davey, Howe develops to its potential. In my view we have the potential to be the best in the league here. Incidentally, with Clark, Dawes and a mature Hogan, as well of course the high flying Howe, it will allow us to us a lot longer kicking gameplay, where the likes of Dunne, tapscott, toumpas and even Kent become a lot more important - long kicking players all of them. That will in turn encourage us to use the corridor more, not unlike North Melbourne in the Carey years and seemingly the Buckley coached collingwood. I must say our forward line in 2 years will be a lot more potent than Collingwood's today. We can all see Hogan's huge potential: I counted five potential contested overhead marks which could have been paid to Jesse at the weekend and with a different umpire may have been. He is very close and in 12 months time after a year at Casey and training with the seniors he will hold them and several more. A huge bonus for us. The weakness though remains the midfield. For us to get top four we need Trengove, Gawn, Grimes, jones, Watts, Viney, toumpas and maybe tapscott to all become A graders. If all of the above happens then I predict top 6 in 2014, and premiers 2015. Around 10th or so this year though I suspect.

Yes, I was there for most of the morning and a warm one it was too. Apart from seeing the welcome return of Trengove and Clark, there were a few missing including Bleese. thought the drills were a bit different too. The concentration seemed to be on running at full speed and foot and hand passing, then they practised after a few minutes doing interchanges also at full pace. Interesting in the light of the debate about the limits on interchange in the future. They also had the ruckman Gawn, Jamar, and Spencer doing some high marking in competition with one another. I think Maxy is easily the most skilled of those three. He will be great when he returns, but i accept WJ's caution about getting him absolutely right before we throw him in the deep end. I hope we will see him on regular first ruck duties by mid year.

Just looked at the replay (by the way I thought who ever was responsible for it at Port they did an excellent job in difficult circumstance - the commentator even bothered to memorize both sides' players!). Some observations: 1. Sellar surprised me. I always thought him to be pretty average, but on Sunday he was almost neitz--like. He even looks like the great man at times - similar gate, even kicking style and his contested marking I thought was great. If he can add a Neitz-like fast lead then we might really have some thing. I would play him next week at full forward and Gawes at CHF. when Clark comes back if he (Sellar) maintains the form, I would leave him at FF, and have Clark play in the pocket. I don't see any point playing his down back unless you swapped him occasionally for Watts, but a hefty presence up front with a commission to throw his weight around a la David Neitz I think would give those around him a lot of confidence. Great signs and I'm sure an unexpected, but very welcome bonus. Without putting too much of a dampener on it though I understand he kicked 5 in a practice match for the Crows in Dubai a couple of years ago, and never got near to that form again, so I will reserve my judgement for a few more weeks but encouraging nevertheless. 2. The Flash is back! Aaron Davey looked at home for the first time in about three years. Gone was the running around (slowly) like a headless chook, and being easily pushed off the ball, and intimidated by opponents, and back was the hard fast running, the heavy tackling, and the pin point accurate kicking, including ( hooray hooray) goal kicking. This alone, if it get his confidence back, would make Renmark worthwhile for the MFC. 3. The tackling in general was very good - something that has been missing from sides coached by Neeld, and the fact that it was done by the youngsters was a great sign. I hope their seniors take note, but I fear they won't. 4. Also the run and carry, the spread, and the willingness to use the corridor was great. This obsession with the Collingwood like hugging of the boundary line was there but not nearly to the same extent as most Neeld sides of the past I have seem. With it came intelligent use of handball and running in numbers which was not only good to see, but also effective delivering scoreboard pressure. All in all it was an encouraging performance. I assume this week's side will look more like round one. I will be much more convinced when I see the same traits from the senior players, but in the meantime well done the young guns.

I think we would be very unlikely to recruit a better "tall athletic ruckman" than the one we have got. A fit big Maxy Gawn would rapidly become our no. 1 ruckman, and the second tallest in the league after Sandilands. We have now put three year's development into Max, and hopefully this will be the year for the payoff. Certainly, the fitness staff on the latest injury summary on the MFC site suggest he is coming along nicely and are saying he could be playing matches in a couple of weeks but will be held back to make absolutely sure. I saw him training two weeks ago for about 45 minutes after everyone else had gone in with three others doing run kicking/marking drills from one end of the ground to the other and he is very quick for one so tall and a good kick on the run -,certainly much superior to Jamar and Spencer. And he can take pack marks. It is a pity the one time he took a strong mark in front of goal in a real game he missed from 15 meters out! Max could be anything. I suggest we see how the year plays out before we make decisions here. The solution may well be resting in our backyard, almost ready to go...

Well said Jack. Another David neitz I'd like to think, although Hogan is taller and I suspect faster. I think we have missed Neitz more than any other footballer in the last 10 years. Getting someone else like him will give us some backbone at last. I watched Hogan in the practice match at Casey very closely where I thought he beat Frawley pretty comfortably. What I really liked about him though was his engine off the ball. Truly Carey like. Yes we do have a gem here I suspect. The other thing I like about it is that hogan is 18, Dawes 24, and Clark 26. We should have 5-7 years of them heading up the forward line, and throw in Howe and Toumpas (who impressed greatly as a forward last night) it al goes well for the future. All we need now are some tough mid fielders....

Yes Jesse Hogan was pleasingly impressive indeed. It maybe that in the future the deal done over the draft period to get Hogan, toumpas, Barry, and Viney with picks 3,4, 12 and 26 will look inspired and maybe THE move which will get us back in the game. If the deal was as rumored: picks 3 and 12 for Hogan and Berry, plus an agreement that Gold Coast don't nominate for Viney in the early round to allow him to slip through to 26, and pick 4 for toumpas, then it shows a welcome ruthlessness and steel which I think we have lacked in our deal making in the past. Neeld showed the same to get Clark. Will we show the same to get Franklin, as rumored? Personally, with Dawes, Hogan, Clark (and Fitzpatrick waiting in the wings) and later possibly Watts stepping up as our key forwards I don't think we need another key forward. I would rather we spent the money on a mid fielder A-grader. I was extremely, and somewhat surprisingly, impressed with Toumpas. He is such an elegant and seemingly tough footballer for one so young and relatively slight: great kick for goal (about time we had a sharp shooter),hard at the ball, a great mover, and someone (like all the greats) who seems to have plenty of time. Reminds me a bit of Travis Johnstone at his best. All we need is for Dom Barry to show his wares and this deal will look like a stroke of genius. I thought Barry struggled at last week's practice match and wasn't surprised he was left out of the NAB Cup squad. He has the speed and size though to be good. I hope he develops into something exciting. Our Neville Jetta....

I am not talking about them. I am talking about what remains of the list he inherited: Frawley, jamar, Trengove, grimes, sylvia, Bleese, Gawn, Watts, jones, macdonald, McDonald, Fitzpatrick, Davey, tapscott, garland, etc etc. these are the backbone of the club and all I am saying is that without considerable improvement here we will not improve. So far, as a group, they have gone backwards under Neeld.

I think you are agreeing with me. The only fair comparison with Danihar is how he was tracking in the first three years of his tenure. I seem to remember he made a grand final in his third year did he not? Do we really expect this current regime to do the same in 2014?

Yes, three, and I went to about 7 or 8 last season. Let me clarify my comments. I have little problem with what we are trying to do to enhance our list . The decisions around Hogan, Viney, Toumpas and our other recruits this year I think have been better quality than in the immediate past. My doubt is I have not seen any evidence that Neeld and his team have the leadership qualities to get the maximum out of middle ranking players. Apart from Jones, can you name one player with more than 40 games to his name when Neeld arrived who has improved in performance terms under the present regime. I can't. In fact, most of them have gone backwards. I think that was the biggest reason for our abysmal performance last year. Say what you like about Neal Danihar but he did manage to extract maximum performance out of a mediocre list. I think the jury is out on this current regime. In corporate terms it is called Leadership. Producing a champion team rather than team of champions, the Swans being the most obvious example. What I am saying is that unless there is substantial improvement this year in this direction we will not improve overall. I very much hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not, and rusted on long term Demon fanatics like me, if they are honest with themselves deep down they would agree.

I was there for the first half, and all I can say it is going to be another long year. The fact that our discards Roden and Byrnes were best on ground up until then does not bode well. Admittedly, it is February and it was very windy, but I thought it was very lackluster overall. The encouraging signs for me were: - hogan will be a gun. I was watching him off the ball and he seems to have the running ability of a Carey. Very impressive for one so young and I thought beat Frawley while he was on him. Exciting, and a good reason to watch Casey this year. Pity he can't play round one, he would be a ready made replacement for Clark who apparently will miss the first five or six games. - both Viney and Tompass lived up to their hype. I thought they both showed class, and Viney in particular looks like a "hard nut" - jack Watts has filled out and I hope we play him on the ball this year, perhaps in the centre. He is very classy, and given his size and speed could be a real handful. By the way, I think a lot of the commentary about making Watts into a permanent back misses the point. We should all remember that David Neitz spent most of his early career down back, and even Carey said he was his most difficult opponent. Watts I think will be the same, except he eventually will be our fourth tall forward behind Clark, Dawes, and Hogan. A nightmare for any team I would suggest. - Tom McDonald was also very good. He is a real find and gives real grunt to our "spine". The real concerns are similar to last year. The middle ranking players are not yet stepping up. Sylvia, Jamar, Bleese, Grimes, mckenzie Nicholson were in and out of the game at best. For us to move up the ladder this year we have to get a substantial improvement out of this lot. I think this is one of the coaching team's biggest challenges. A"smokey"?? I think Jack Fitzpatrick possibly could see some AFL action this year. He is big, a strong mark and for his size very quick.i would not be surprised if he saw some success this year.