Hard to believe the footy season is supposed to start in a couple of days. This Opening round BS really is a buzz killer!
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Pre season scratch matches and community series games.
- Thread starter tigerman
- Start date
Reid already looks bigger, this draft is shaping up as one of the best in recent memory.
Hopefully Alfredo can finally knock this sh!t round out of the AholeFL's mind. Useless. Now the Huns and Bummers game is also affected and there's no risk in waiting until the last minute to decide if they play or not.
We usually go best available early then go for need. Took 3 gun midfielders so then went for a tall who will take more time to develop as talls do. Got in early. Don’t want to b like north and just draft midfielders and have to wait 4yrs for talls to develop or reach for one (paying overs) as they did in 2024 draft.
An awful lot think Jonty Faull was a reach. Most think the key forwards were pretty evenly rated. Everyone knew the talls would start getting picked at around #20. Every one thought the top end talent mids and flankers would be gone by 20.
Imo while Faull may have been best kpf available very debatable by the way, he was definately not the best available player.
While we were patting ourselves on the back and getting Faull the other clubs were falling over themselves to get at the last of the highly rated mids flankers.
What people are forgetting our list at the time had Lynch, Lefau, Kossie, Bauer, Gray, and Fawcett. It still does and now it has Faull, Armstrong and Sims to go with them. If Faull is similar to Faull Armstrong Shanahan Whitlock etc then there was absolutely no need to reach for Faull plenty of highly touted talls would be there who were rated very similar.
Geez Trainor and Armstrong lasted to 21 and 23 and i think a lot of clubs had them rated higher than Faull the fact they went in the twenties tells me the other types were heavily rated.
He was definitely a reach when you consider he's out for the year, that's now an extra year of development required, not sure how you can justify that when there were players like the Whitlocks available.
Where's all this news about Faull and back stress fractures and out for the year coming from? He had back stress fractures last year, came back to play a game or two, was drafted and then our medical staff put a recovery program in place to make sure he wasn't going to suffer recurrences. Caesar reported this week that Jonty had his first full training session. Doesn't sound like he's out for the year to me.
Ok, just going on earlier reports that he was in cotton wool, I have no idea about the severity of the injury, if he's playing this year then we can assume he'll be tracking on a regular 4 year plan.
Nah its important to call it a reach now before any games are played so we can judged in a few years time on who was right and who was wrong.
Bloody Nora, talk about over rating the existing talls.
Lynch, 32 y.o. hardly played the last couple of years due to injuries, has hardly been sighted over pre season and extremely unlikely to continue beyond whatever he manages to play this year.
Liftmykiltup, 26 y.o. rugby convert currently rehabbing through a 2nd knee reco n while an interesting prospect is all of a 10 game hopeful.
Koshitzme, 24 y.o. at his second club and we're not sure whether he's gunna be a forward or back, so far appears to be a limited player.
Bauer 22 y.o. 3rd fwd size, was a mid season draftee who's struggled with some injury issues n played all of 7 games.
50 Shades, 21 y.o. another mid season draftee, plucked from the Essendrugs VFL side has so far played 12 VFL games before ripping a hammy.
Leaky Tap, 19 y.o. late 2nd round draft pick who virtually missed all of his first season with illness n a back injury, played the last 3 VFL games.
Not a real lot of excitement yet in that lot to be writing home about.
I agree but All of them remained on the list clearly the club thinks they are worth persevering with.
All of them bar Lynch have only been there what two years. So in some ways like the newbies are unknown except Kossie..
Are you saying the club got these picks wrong and they are all duds or ready for the knackery.
Was there one key forward available that stood out above the others that much that we just had to take him over higher rated types.
The answer is no. Not imo anyway and not according to a lot of pundits. Did we take the best player available? Imo no.
Was he even the best kpf taken who knows maybe maybe not they were all so evenly rated.
Clearly for the first time in a long time we had key forward numbers going into that draft the obvious question is are they all duds.
Seems you think so.
There were lots of similarly rated tall forwards there at pick 23 onwards and that is where most of them went. This was widely spoken about at the time and it panned out that way. yet no one here wants to talk about it. The question should be was Faull a reach.
With our track record of the last 5 or more drafts in mind, did we even target the right one when you consider what NM gave up to get Whitlock at pick 27. Good talls were available WCE fell over themselves getting his name out when Shanahan was there.
Gunna be interesting to watch how the Whitlock one pans out the next 3 or 4 years.
Even with the 3 mids we took the mid stocks are still horribly depleted and will not improve much at seasons end with Prestia likely to retire and Dow being delisted and Sonsie may go as well. Sheesh Dow on the list tells us just how few good mids we have.
Quality small forwards are needed Joe Berry was there Port did backflips to get a go at him.
At the end of day all im saying is we should have used pick 14 elsewhere knowing full well good kpf options would be availble to us with our picks in the twenties. Have said it all along and nothing has changed.
Seems to me Blair is an untouchable around here with everything he does. Im not in the camp of he gets everything right and i think Faull was a reach.
Was not happy giving up so many picks for pick 20, it was obvious if we had hung to them we could turn them into better picks which Brisbane did. not cutting chronic underachievers and older blokes clearly past it. Long contracts to underachievers Yep he got enough wrong imo.
He played match sim today.
Check out Caesars training report.
If i think there was better options there than Faull, if there were others who were regularly being talked about as top 10 and we took Jonty who by the way i dont mind, it was hard to seperate any of the talls , what do you call it?
It is not a slight at Faull i just think on this occasion there were better options who were different types in front of him. Not just one or two given what we knew about the draft before it had even begun. Maybe a seven pick differential is not a big reach maybe not even a reach.
I still think Allan, Reid, Berry, Oliver, and Hynes were better options. everyone knew after these guys the mid flanker types was going to decline a little.
I agree that Reid and maybe Berry were better options than Faull at 14. as they have that elite level of class I don't agree that Allan (hits less targets than Taranto), Oliver or Hynes were better options. The latter 3 not at the same level of class as Reid and Berry.
crikey, we took
2 big bodied mids with our first 2 picks - tick
1 small mid/forward with X factor with next pick - tick
……… and your rabbiting on that our next pick being a KPF (which we have desperately needed) with our 4th pick should have been another mid.
Our next 4 picks were
1 x KPD
1 x KPF
1 x KPF/ruck
1 x small forward
I think your tying yourself into knots when we haven’t even seen 1 game, let alone 1 season.
Just let the players develop and play……….
If he plays his first game on Easter Sunday, we’d definitely have to anoint him “Jesus H Faull”
