Ted Fordham would be the best in #20 in EFC history. Modern times, players that were decent were Peter Berbakov, Henry Slattery, Glenn Kilpatrick wore it for a season or 2 before he left for Geelong. Prior to that Tony Buhagiar wore it and was a pretty good player.
PS: Kieran Sporn was a good player in #17.
It sounds like it, which seems pretty strange
That canât be right though, didnât Redman play that practice match? Yet thereâs a photo of him being presented with his jumper
I think this has been really great from Rutten. Heâs made all the right moves off the field. Hope we can make some positive ones on it.
Even the nice photo has a silly blue line across it!
Side note: nice to see Marc Bullen present #37 to Dylan Clarke
And thatâs my biggest concern. Will the supporters give him / them a chance? Itâs going to take 2-3 years to development the new team. He needs time and our only chance of success is if heâs given the time he needs to build this team (1) and that heâs actually the right man (2). We canât succeed if either fail.
Heâs definitely reconnected with the club. Heâs often at coterie and club functions.
Bullen handball to Hird for that goal 
Iâm pretty lid-on when it comes to the club at the moment but I canât help but see some similarities to when Jurgen Klopp took over Liverpool. One of Kloppâs big goals was to bring back that belief for both players and fans, who much like us have stuck around for so long without ultimate league success and through all sorts of drama. To give them a real reason to cheer and to really believe that they can achieve that ultimate goal of adding to the trophy cabinet.
I really hope Truck continues to build on what he has started, to continue to build belief, to recruit well over the next 2-3 years and â â â â â â â finally return to the glory days heâs been focusing on at the moment.
Pretty good by Llyod
Thatâs pretty much last seasons ladder.
Hard hitting.
News from Herald Sun John-Ralphio
The 10 most intriguing people in football for the 2021 AFL season
Jon Ralph takes a look at some of the biggest storylines involving footyâs biggest characters entering 2021.
NATHAN BUCKLEY
Crazy old business, footy. Buckley has taken his Pies to within a minute of a premiership in 2018, to within a kick of a Grand Final in 2019 and to a famous away finals victory against West Coast at Optus Stadium in an insane COVID-affected 2020.
In comparison, Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley just signed a fresh two-year extensionthrough to 2023 despite a single finals victory in six seasons. And yet Buckley is the one in the gun. As usual, timing is everything.
Bucks is in his 10th season as coach without getting the chocolates, his mob followed last yearâs finals win with a 68-point semi-final loss to Geelong, he is out of contract, and the Pies totally butchered the off-season. Not only did the race furore intensify â with Heritier Lumumba targeting Buckley and senior players â the club was seen as heartless in dumping Adam Treloar and Jaidyn Stephenson.
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When Buckley did speak to explain the trade period, it was on a radio station that pays him well for his appearances, and then he addressed the âDo Betterâ racism report in an AFL-mandated interview with the league website.
His explanation that Treloar had taken his dumping personally rather than professionally seemed to go against all Buckley has tried to build, encouraging players to invest all of themselves rather than just taking a cheque to perform. So it might not be fair, but Buckley will need at least a finals win to get himself another contract.
JOE DANIHER
The former Bomber had every right to leave Essendon given it spent the better part of two seasons curing his groin issues â even if Daniherâs lack of total professionalism was a contributing factor. But Daniher has found a perfect landing spot: a Lions side in the flag window, a side that doesnât necessarily need him to win matches off his own boot, and a club that did not have to forfeit draft picks because he was a free agent.
Daniher at his best is a bona fide star. He is also wayward when you consider his accuracy rating across his career: 23 per cent, 45 per cent, 51 per cent, 46 per cent, 56 per cent, 32 per cent, 50 per cent, 27 per cent. Picture this: 2021 preliminary final, the clock at the 30-minute mark, Lions are down by three points and Daniher has the ball in hand 45m out, directly in front.
Does Daniher kick the goal to get Brisbane into a Grand Final? Hopefully his groin behaves in a way that allows him the practice time to cure the yips that have plagued his entire career.
BEN RUTTEN
By now the ground rules have been set for Essendonâs first-year coach. The Dons will play the kids, fix the culture, reconnect with the past players and heritage, cop some heavy losses but attempt to play in a manner that makes their fans proud. Essendonâs new coach needs to do all that while weeding out the selfishnessthat existed in the clubâs game style.
Against Carlton recently, Dylan Shiel ignored a surging Archie Perkins, U-turning into a blind corner instead of handballing to a first-game kid desperate for a touch. Then Devon Smith ignored a teammate in front of goal to snap over his shoulder.
They are exactly the kind of tendencies Rutten needs to eradicate.
Essendon will not break its 6000-day plus finals winning drought this year. But a club that used to be ruthless, selfless and disciplined can still win back the fans under Ruttenâs direction if he can get the likes of Shiel and Smith to worry less about the stats sheet and more about improving their teammates.
MITCH MCGOVERN
As McGovernâs manager Colin Young said last year, if McGovern wanted the fattest contract possible he would have returned home to Perth.
But the fact remains he signed a huge deal with a Carlton side desperate for an exciting, high-leaping, X-factor forward who could take it to the next level. That player has not appeared yet.
He returned 22 goals from 16 games in 2019 and booted only 9.2 from 12 games last year. McGovern has all the attributes, including a great goal radar.
Charlie Curnow will miss at least the first half of the season in a Carlton forward six that finally looks potent when you consider Jack Martin, Zac Fisher, Jack Silvagni and Eddie Betts buzzing around the feet of Harry McKay.
McGovern doesnât have to be a Tony Lockett, he just needs a 40-goal season. And if he has one, wary Carlton fans will pile on to the McGovern bandwagon lickety split.
ADAM TRELOAR
For all the column centimetres devoted to Adam Treloarâs move from Collingwood, his task is disarmingly simple: Help the Dogs win a single final. Thatâs all.
He could follow the example of St Kildaâs Paddy Ryder, who last year started slowly at his new club, spent time in the reserves then took the Dogs apart in one majestic elimination final performance.
Treloar is on $900,000 a season, but the Dogs need to cover only $600,000 following the Piesâ extraordinary fire sale and deal under which the Magpies continue to pay a third of his wage.
The Dogs have few issues winning home-and-away games, but since the 2016 flag they were bullied by Greater Western Sydney in a cut-throat final in 2018 and jumped by St Kilda in last yearâs elimination final.
So Treloar doesnât need to win the best-and-fairest. He can even endure some of the soft-tissue problems that have plagued him. But he needs to get it done in September.
DAMIEN HARDWICK
The Australian Bureau of Statistics records that in 2019 there were 113,815 marriages and 49,116 divorces across the nation. So why does the break-up of Damien Hardwickâs relationship suddenly mean the end of the Tigersâ era?
It was the ultimate storyline for the social pages: a triple premiership coach who often referred to âMrs Hardwickâ in press conferences suddenly in a new relationship with a younger club staffer. As the club reviewed a potential workplace issue, the public was asking questions about a potential rift with the players.
But as the drama quickly subsided the headlines about Hardwick tarnishing his legacy, and potentially ruining Richmondâs season, seemed ridiculous. Everyone has a mate or colleague or parents caught up in the breakdown of long-term relationships and as painful as it can be, everyone around them moves on. Canât see it being any different at Richmond.
LANCE FRANKLIN
When Lance Franklin surged past Matthew Lloyd on the AFL goalkickersâ tally in Round 5, 2019, he had 928 career goals with Jack Titus (970), Gary Ablett Sr (1031) and Doug Wade (1057) firmly in his sights.
Since that day 23 months ago, Franklin has played just five more games for 16 goals, with hamstring, calf and groin issues nobbling the 34-year-old. Can he kick the 54 goals needed to reach the magical 1000-goal mark? It is a legitimate question given that Franklinâs soft-tissue strains now seem to sideline him for multiple months instead of the standard 21 days.
The last three games of his career in late 2019 returned 5.4 and 18 disposals against West Coast, four straight from five kicks against Hawthorn, and then 4.2 and 14 disposals against St Kilda in his 300th game. All of them were wins.
Franklin is the last man standing from the 2004 national draft, with 200-gamers such as Travis Cloke, Mark LeCras, and Nathan Van Berlo long retired. So if it is churlish to say we want more from Buddy, can the footy gods at least spare his hamstrings long enough for him to make a tilt at 1000?
EDDIE MCGUIRE
Eddie often looked like he had gone 12 rounds by the time he entered the Fox Footy studios for Friday night footy. Seeing it over the past eight years was to witness a remarkable transformation each night. He would arrive with the weight of the world on his shoulders given his workload and/or blues with that weekâs foe â the media, social media keyboard warriors, the politicians, or his own board.
By 7.01pm the studio lights would go on and the ultimate TV professional emerged. Post-show, as a wind-down beer was cracked and the stories started, Ed perched at the edge of the green room trying to leave but invariably drawn into the banter. It was Ed at his best, his eyes shining as he reeled off tales tall and true.
The jaw-dropping stories from the past decades flooded out with Dermott Brereton and Jon Brown â no strangers to holding court â struggling to get a word in. It was never less than captivating.
Surely without the Pies presidency and a breakfast radio show, Ed is a chance to emerge on a more regular basis. Now that he is no longer at war as Pies president, he has what Kevin Sheedy basked in after 27 years coaching at Essendon: freedom.
He will be riveting viewing discussing Collingwoodâs plight and a man who was once footyâs greatest news breaker will surely drop the occasional bombshell that he might have kept quiet as the Pies president.
His TV arm Jam TV has helped produce Amazonâs excellent Making Their Mark series, and McGuireâs level of access will surely see more of these type of projects.
NAT FYFE
The dual Brownlow Medal winner was happy to sacrifice his midfield game last year to push forward and allow Adam Cerra and Andrew Brayshaw to shine with increased onball roles.
Now having stockpiled enough young talent to surge up the ladder, Fyfe is telling the footy world not to fall asleep on the Dockers.
If he can win a third Brownlow Medal during a year in which the Dockers play finals, that would be Fyfeâs equivalent of a two-fingered salute to those who question him. Freo needs him to be a leader, but the best captains turn the course of games and few are more capable of doing so than the brilliant Fyfe.
STEVE HOCKING
The AFLâs football operations boss has been accused of ruining the gameâs fabric and even turning the code into AFLX after the leagueâs latest batch of rule tinkering. But the leave-the-game-alone brigade need to realise they are not footballâs future.
Hocking needs to retain enough of the gameâs tradition and look, while also appealing to the next generation, kids with shorter attention spans who also turn to Xbox and social media for entertainÂment. But from the very limited sample size, it would seem he has hit upon changes that will encourage the best of football without resorting to contentious zones or some of the more dramatic rules suggested in the bid to save footy from the coaches.
Pretty much spot on from Ralph, regarding Essendon.
Reckon we are starting to see some of that Joe and Fantasia were definitely two players that only thought about their own stat sheet
Donât think we have too many more selfish players on the list
wow brutal on Shiel and Smith
Yeh must have been looking specifically at the Smith/Shiel to find pieces of play where they burnt team matesâŚor Ralph is a Archie Perkins Fanboy
Wouldnât have to look too hard with those two
