Soft

Petracca had attitude in his draft interviews so we were wary
Phillipou had tickets on himself and so Essendon and others were wary

At 17 they are kids , who still have a lot to learn about life.

Losing Battle is a blow if we don’t get Band 1 and a win if we do get Band 1 Some reputations on the line at the club betting we get Band 1 and trying to game the system I’ve never known St Kilda to successfully game the system. Let’s see how this plays out. We’ve never been that smart - and the AFL...

Always felt he gave 100% which is all you can ask
Thank you for your service Seb

Very happy with him.
I’m looking forward to him getting another 40 games under his belt.
We found a good one

With Crouch out of action all year we have been shown to have a bottom 4 midfield. With natural improvement in Windy & Pou , and an injury free preseason gets us peak Dow, perhaps that helps us climb a few rungs to bottom 6 midfield - but still a long way short of top 8 midfield. That’s the prob...

What is Garcia missing at this point in his career ? Some more muscle & strength, and perhaps a little more composure ?- both are fixable as he spends more time on the list. I haven't watched enough of his VFL games to have a solid opinion just yet - but would you say kicking depth is an issue ?...

Is there a bit of ex Hawk/Cat Isaac Smith about him ? I really like the way he goes about it. I hope he can continue to build in his second and third years the way that Nas did. Assuming Darcy stays on the wing , and if Nas eventually goes back to the wing, we could quite possibly have the best wing...

Can’t take a trick with some of our youngsters

Anyone know how long the rehab is ?

If we are building our next premiership list , we are going to need a top 5 midfielder - or a couple in the top 20.
Unless we see that type of improvement in our young mids then we are just making up the numbers.

From a perspective of being an elite mid in the comp. He just hadn’t shown anything to suggest he could become one of the top 5 mids in the comp.

and I did say almost.

We over rate a lot of our players

Just as he seemed to be finally getting his mojo … fmd

Anyway you slice it, we will likely still have a bottom 4 midfield next year. Even if we somehow snag the best 2 mids in the draft pool - they will take 3 years to start influencing games at the level we need them to make a material difference. Pou will be an interesting watch in 2025. I had practic...

Absolutely no guarantee pick 5/6 will be better than Battle - and we may need to wait 3 years before they become a lock in the best 18. It’s a false economy in my books. I’d be looking to hold onto him . Our first pick will be pick 4 or 5 anyways. Look at Essendon this year - bring in a mix of exper...

Rapt for the kid. I really loved the way he was helping teammates up, patting them on the back and encouraging them to keep going. He also attacked his marks again.
Very mature performance - easily his best so far. Let’s hope he kicks on from here.

Let’s take a best 22 player and hope the pick we get as compo is also a best 18 player in 3 - 5 years time. Of course if it doesn’t work out well we just made ourselves weaker for the next 3 years for no good reason. Of course in 3 - 5 years from now , a bunch of our other best 18 players might also...

West coast much improved on their home deck They will be feeling like they can win this Confidence, self belief and attacking footy wins games A defence first mind set promotes a fear of losing and a fear of making mistakes mindset as compared to an attacking confident mindset (eg Collingwood 2023) ...

Who actually chairs the match committee these days ? Does that role even exist because selection has been baffling this year. Young kids getting promoted when they are clearly not ready , or holding their place in the seniors when they clearly don’t deserve to. The development coach needs to take so...

One more game for crouch at Sandy to build his match fitness.
Barring injury he plays next week v Suns

Apart from Garcia , have we had a mid playing at Sandy that has looked dangerous ? Even Crouch and Clark last weekend butchered their disposals. So I guess Hall doesn’t have a hell of a lot of competition is what I’m saying. He probably just needs to play 1 maybe 2 good games and then go straight in...

We are not getting McKay style compo for Battle. Furthermore , you watch the AFL rules change on compo as the big clubs pit the heat on the AFL . They want the good players from the bottom clubs as FA , but they also want access to the top end draft picks so shunting them back in the order doesn’t s...

Just shows how out of touch our match committee is
Could have left Pou in for another week, let him pick 20+ in the midfield and watch his confidence soar.
Instead, we crush his confidence by playing him when he is down on confidence and not ready .

This is what i see when i watch us play. Ball goes into forward line. Tall forwards regularly drop marks despite getting their hands on the ball. Ball hits the ground - we cant lock it in, ball goes back out of the forward line. When our tall forwards do take a mark, they arent able to convert. When...

I had planned on going - but have changed my mind
I won’t be tuning in either for that matter.

Barring injury , sure Dow comes in vs Freo.
Play Battle up forward next week, and bring big Arie in.
Garcia looks ready for a spell in the 2s - and same could be said for Hastie