Earl Hood

I was driving through Richmond today and saw Dawes getting out of his car near Lennox Street. Looked to be moving very smoothly. Just thought I better report in.

Hey what about The Hood??

Watching Neitz was great but what stood out was Jeff White dominating the ruck (pre ruck rule changes), our slick mid field, dominating the ball and of course the delivery to Neitz, not always great but he made it so. Oh it has been so long between drinks to see that sort of red and blue play. It is just amazing how inept our mid field has been since 2007 in comparison.

RTG While on your sabbatical you would have missed Nasher's thread on What level of football Demondlanders had played? Most of us reported that we coulda been champions of course. VFL/AFL bound if only we had some more talent! Just wondering what footy you played given your in depth footy knowledge?

RTG where have you been?

Latest news is up to 1400 scientists and technicians jobs will be cut from the CSIRO under Tony's public service cuts. No science minister to put up an arguement in cabinet of course. Welcome to the 21st century and all its challenges that lay ahead. I'm sure an eminent persons group set up by Tony could develop a solution to work through our problems; Barnaby Joyce, Corey Bernardi, Hugh Morgan, David Murray and John Howard to name just a few of the eminent conservative voting members of Australia's Flat Earth Society would be obvious candidates.

I will take another Neitz anytime. Forget versatility, I will take the pack crashing key forward who kicks goals and scares the shytes out every backman anytime.

Oh for a super fit Clark! I see him as much a super ruck rover causing mayhem in the centre square a la Roughie, in between rucking stints and periods up forward. A fit Clark can do all three rolls and drive opposition coaches to distraction (well only if the other 21 players are doing something).

One problem is that I think Norm Smith was still there when Sheedy went down to training in 1965 or 1966 and was dismissed. So I wouldn't be blaming the G&T boys. Odd that he didn't pick up Sheeds potential as a hard arsed centre man to replace Barass just when we needed leadership. I think there were still some decent players running around post 1964 but lacking leadership. I can think of Hassa Mann, Townsend, Johnston, Vagg to name a few. However it would not have stopped the rot over time.

Of course if you have enough money you organise to fly here on a tourist visa and then disappear. You could be fleeing from persecution but the last thing you would do is tick the refugee box on your immigration questionnaire for heavens sake. The illegals are so called queue jumpers with limited resources. If you have the money to fly over the queue, your in.

If I can use the Orchestral analogy, I am hoping our improvement next year will be because P Roos is the AFL equivalent of a virtuoso conductor of an orchestra. He is able to get everyone working in unison, working off the same song sheet, knowing their role and when to put it into use at his cue. Importantly the songsheet must be relevant and it must work, the players have been trained and their instruments are tuned. The members of the orchrester have to be good, well trained professionals but not extraordinary talents, but must be willing to follow the conductors lead for it all to work. After the worst season by any club by an AFL side where we were abominable, non competitive and what other descriptive words could describe the efforts at times? I would equate Neelds team as what you hear when the orchrester is warming up where there is no cohesive tune just orchestral noise as members play as individuals playing their own tunes to best prepare for the show and ignoring the music sheet. I am hoping Roos turns this on its head. We have a few new players that may help and hopefully we have a big forward back, fit and playing like he did in 2012. But the big improvement may come from us working as a team, willing to take risks, to attack the ball in the knowledge that team mates will Shepard, make space and present up forward as the conductor demands.

OK I will bite! What did the Venetians do for us? I thought it was the Romans.

The Wikipedia on Sheedy says he was invited to MFC but didn't like it and later MFC gave permission to the Tiges to look at him. I think you can say we looked at him and were not interested. Hafey talked about him as the cultural leader at the Tiges who thrived on Tom's extreme physical regimes that gave those teams the edge. He had mongrel and Tom loved him for it.

I learnt something else last week when I listened to a motivational talk from Tom Hafey. He was listing players who had been rejected at one club but fought on to prove themselves and became champions. He said Kevin Sheedy was rejected by MFC so he must have been in our zone and we went past him.

Yes they did. I have wondered did our zones finally start to produce some real talent just as zoning came to an end? Lyon, Schwartz and Neitz is not a bad hit rate between 1986 to 1993 for KPP's anyway. MFC were duded in the great equalisation experiment of the 60's that was designed to weaken us and Collingwood and promote the Hawks and others. For the 20 previous years all our zones ever produced of elite status was Robert Flower.

Yes I think his comments were code for Col might be part of the problem rather than part of any solutions

In the never ending nature versus nurture debate I believe that nurture (development) is important but it can be irrelevant if the nature part is deficient. When you meet certain levels of ability, self confidence, work ethic and ambition then development can take you further. If you are lacking in basic ability or the want to succeed development wont get you much further.

Sorry Hardtrack I have mistakenly dragged you into my response to BH and co. Sorry about that.

We could send a ocean liner up to Indonesia to cut out the smugglers and take them on board over there. And then process them on board but I don't think you would be happy with that. That is not really a solution but Malcolm Frazier has asked why successive Governments have not worked with our Asian neighbours to establish refugee camps to process these people like we did in the 70's with the Vietnamese diaspora. The fact is we cooperated but we also took a lot of Vietnamese people on board and they have largely added greatly to our society. Why can't we do this again? We once feared the Viets like we now fear Afganies or Iraqies. But largely they turn out to be very like us once they have learnt the lingo and even started to play Aussie Rules. The thing that I find difficult to deal with you "rusted on Liberal people" is that Malcolm now comes across as a bleading heart lefty. I don't think he has changed that much at all but in the past 25 years we have all been pulled toward the extreme right. And I mean both sides of politics. These boat people however tragic it is for them is not a sovereign border, security issue of national proportions. We do not have a standing army off our shores ready to invade but you could be forgiven for thinking that listening to the shock jocks. And let's face it they are inferring these people from strange places coming in rickety boats are dangerous in some way.

If you know what you are looking for you could get a feel for his confidence levels, ambition and leadership abilities. You ask the kid to give examples where he has taken a lead role etc. if you looked at his CV you would be looking to see if he had captained most of his junior sides. Is he a leader or a follower. These are attributes Todd Viney has spoken about in draft selections. If the kid has not got these attributes, he better have some other big positives going for him. The idea is that he does most of the talking, you listen. You soon get an idea of a kids confidence and maturity. Of course you are right because BP would not know what he should be looking for in a kid.

Just to confuse things, I am sure I saw an interview a few years ago with an Olympic athlete who was using an altitude facility at a uni here and he was sleeping high at night then training at full intensity low altitude on the track. The theory was that the gains in red/white? Blood cells that increases your oxygen uptake happen over time as you sleep but you can train intensely at sea level during the day.

Agree if the NT Govt is our major sponsor, why wouldn't we at least visit preseason. Good PR exercise.

The silence is courtesy of News Limited Robbie; oh and add to that the Singleton Shock Jocks in Sydney. Their frothing at the mouth outrage at every Government initiative has suddenly disappeared. But strangely the new Government has not changed much as yet. Budget crisis? Well no not really we will just carry on as usual really; fairwork Australia, BAU. The Boats, well no new changes really just a three star general and a new monica "operation sovereign borders,oh and a new minister who tells us nothing. But suddenly Alan Jones and co are calm. Actually I find it laughable that for nearly 3 to 4 years the captains of industry and heir acolytes, the various industry groups spent a lot of their time trashing our prospects and the Gillard Goverment to such an extent that economic growth was slow at best. Why has that achieved? Answer zero.

Agree with your thoughts but how did he get All Australian CHF??? That gave the pick some legitimacy at the end of the day. And I think BP worked off that fact. Did we actually talk to the kid and work out his work ethics and ambitions? I don't think so. At the end of the day some kids play great footy under age with other kids! But the jump to playing with men can be a big ask for some kids. I know I found it very difficult at first. It took me probably 3 years to become comfortable playing with mature age thugs.