Earl Hood

Steve why didn’t you tell us about Pickett?

Agree but there is a potential problem that we had to deal with year big time, injuries and depth. The chances of May and Lever all 22 is low. Petty may need to play forward again and Tomlinson, if he lands here, may be a swing man, half back, wing, forward, relieving ruck! Frost is at least resilient depth, he is usually available unlike May or Lever.

You are seeing it differently to me I am afraid. This year I saw Frosty’s use of the neat 20m hand drop onto his boot to a close target as an absolute plus. He has his limitations, this year he realises it and learns to lower the eyes and pick out a target 20m away, rather than boot the ball long hoping to hit a target. Not sure he butchured a heap of those, maybe he did. He still had the odd blind kick out of defence under pressure but so who doesn’t? He is not Rance but he has a lot of offensive attributes we could exploit if we had a good defensive coach.

Rusty interesting to note on your weighted scores we had only 4 improvers this season and the club seems happy to send 2 of them on their way, in Frost and Stretch! And now the gossip is Frost might want out so our trade negotiation position plummets.

If the Suns get the priority pick 2 what can you say in the AFL managements defence and the AFL Commission of Drones apathetic acceptance? . What do these commissioners get paid to rubber stamp Gills latest thought bubble? The Suns have underperformed for the last 7 of the 9 years of their existence. In the last 7 years their big problem is they can’t keep their best players so their best players leave giving them multiple first round draft picks year after year to add to their normal first or second pick for finishing last or second last. So the AFL solution is now more first round draft picks? Give me a break. For the last 10 years the AFL has run the line that a priority pick is not the answer for Carlton and MFC who have had similar multiple bad years! The real answer for the Suns is more about extra salary cap to pay more to retain players, AFL management intervention a la what happened with us with Jackson and Roos inserted into a dysfunctional administration set up and coaching department.

Up to round 3 still haven’t hit the scoreboard!

73 hit outs, 25 possessions and got most points on the AFL.Com site, so statistically best on ground. But yes I thought he could set up a Pies win in the last 10 minutes by palming it out wide but he tended to grab it himself or drop it short when he was totally in control. Mummy battled hard but in that last 5 minutes Grundy should have manufactured something, given his dominance.

That was some game, umpires finally put the whistle away in the last 15m.

Yes from me, not a lot of risk in letting him train over summer to test his physical and mental resilience. We know he has the talent.

Too many chefs spoil the broth, is that an appropriate answer for this thought bubble!

What about Ross Lyon instead??

But he was so remorseful last week apparently and this was cited as a reason for a fine versus suspension! So remorseful he does a similar thing last night and it was no accidental contact. Yes he seems to be a slow learner.

Yes that was my thought toward the end of that second quarter. Let’s see how we go in the next half but come what may I think the umpires have had a shocker so far. Paying some very marginal frees but missing the obvious.

1 for 86 at lunch great decision to send them in then. The talk was that the wicket would be good so why send them in? Up against it now but thankfully Mitch Marsh is there.

And then win the toss and send them in! What was the old saying win the toss, think about sending them in, then bat always!

Yes he is far from perfect but one of the very few players who actually improved their performances this year when most went backwards. He has been improving year on year for the past 3 years, learning to play to his strengths and limiting his weaknesses, eg limiting his kicks to 25m passes on the run out of defence most times. I believe he is still improving! Oh and we are screaming out for leg speed, so let’s move him on. I don’t get it.

Two captains who played most of our games this year in the midfield plus Gawn, then add Lewis down back and up forward and cameos from Lever and May and surely TMac qualifies as a mature leader up forward. But this wasn’t enough leadership to overcome the reduced number of instructions from the coaches via the runners? It may have been a negative compared to last year but really what are our leaders doing? Would runners have helped our set shot inaccuracies in front of goal? Or reduced our missed 25m passes to leading forwards? Handballs to players feet and all the other basic skill errors we witnessed all year. Not convinced about this excuse.

The video doesn’t look good. The lights will be on late at AFL house to work out how to fob this one off. As someone who was eye gouged in suburban football many years ago I have zero tolerance for this rubbish. If it is established that this is indeed what happened it should be curtains for Mr Green. Of course it will be deemed as something less but really what was he up to?

I think it is like a window but with a clock in it?

Looking at that analysis of our first year players All I can say is that they look really like they might be really good down the track at some stage really! What is it with Melbourne assistant coaches overuse of the qualifier “really”? This has been going on for 10 years or more. Really gives me the Shytes!

Geelong gone now. Missed 3 set shots from 30 meters and now the Pies are running riot, kicking everything. Sound familiar? If you can’t nail the set shots from 30 to 40 meters in front you can’t win matches. As we learnt this year.

Richardson coming in may have precipitated this move. Rawlings becomes 2IC to Shaw so it is a step up I think from what he would be doing at Melbourne.

Short answer is NO! I still believe Tracc can make the next step to elite. He has all the physical tools, it’s above the shoulders if anything. Get him super fit put him in the middle and see what happens for the next 2 years then reevaluate the situation.

Toured Carlton’s facilities today I think reported on Channel 7?

If we rotate Tracc, Melksham and Salem through the middle we potentially get better breakaway pace and ball use out of the middle. The reverse of this is we need to develop more versatile roles for the current insiders. Oliver can play forward and Harmes can play wing/half forward. Brayshaw needs to develop another string to his bow. I still think a great midfield coach could get a lot more out of having a dominant ruckman and Oliver with the quickest hands in the competition. The great Hawthorn midfields always seemed to have time and space to gain possession with clean hands, then flick it around to someone in the clear and moving forward. Mitchell, Lewis and co didn’t have great pace but could move the ball quickly to Smith or Hill on the outside.