Sorry, I never thought that post would make posters go plumbing for puns.Never underestimate the ability of blitzers to plumb to new depths!
Trust you to pipe up!
Thank goodness the topic got back to hookah.
Sorry, I never thought that post would make posters go plumbing for puns.
Never underestimate the ability of blitzers to plumb to new depths!
Sorry, I never thought that post would make posters go plumbing for puns.
LOL! Here we go…
Hookesy is a free agent at the end of the year anyway (not sure if restricted or not). We should be offering the kitchen sink to him to stay !Great idea … I hear he really likes sinks.
If we don’t we’re sure to wind up in the hot water. Better tap into it straight away. No good flushing all that development down the drain. He may not be plugger, but he does great at FF. blah blah blah
Hookesy is a free agent at the end of the year anyway (not sure if restricted or not). We should be offering the kitchen sink to him to stay !
Great idea … I hear he really likes sinks.
Wait a minute. Ont the one hand we have people saying the AFLPA said we would be compensated and on the other people are saying they’ve declared them all delisted free agents.
Edit: Actually I was wrong. Everyone has been saying the same thing.
If Hooker gets poached on $750k a year then AFL will have no choice but to give us pick 1.
The AFL will call him a delisted free agent and give us nothing. The fact the AFLPA has come out and said all 12 are delisted free agents next year is a disgrace, as it is a green flag for our opponents to open up the chequebooks and get a bargain.
Training in mild cloudy conditions at Tullamarine. This is a joint report with Karma Bomber whose photos will appear later.Awesome work, as always, and much appreciated by those who can't get down to training!The comment I hear most frequently is “we’ll win more games than people think.” Exactly what this means I’m not sure but I’ll outline the situation as clearly as I can. Our present "predicament " (to quote from Blindside) is unprecedented. The way the ball movement is going at present as far as we can see would see us struggle to win more than one or two games. The hope has to be that as we play games together against real opposition the players will start to jell and confidence in the game plan will increase and running patterns and ball movement will be more precise. If this occurs then perhaps the popular prediction will come to pass.
Of course the elephant in the room is how many games do we want to win? I don’t for a moment suggest tanking but in the circumstances forced upon us a year devoted to player development and experimentation is fully justified and an early draft pick would be a just reward for the trauma this club has experienced. Pick one would stick it up the AFL which is tempting.
The good news from today’s session is that we are pretty much injury free. Hams did laps but Leuenberger told us he feels “fine” and he backed this up by jogging ten laps. As has been commented before the suspensions have removed both our slow midfield and most of our injured players. There is irony here somewhere.
Kommer trained strongly again today and told Karma that his knee is “pain free.” and Dempsey has been impressive with the amount of running he has been doing; one club official remarking that " it is much more than three or four years ago." Fantasia is training well and caught the eye of Mornington Bomber who joined us today. The consensus is that he is a smart footballer.
It was interesting to see Brown who has been playing in the forward line with some success moved to the backline today and his place at full forward was taken by Grimley who is a giant of a man. Of the younger players they seem to be particularly happy with Parish, Eades and Morgan.
The emphasis of today’s session was mainly ball movement and herein lies the problem. Ball movement was slow and zig zagged more than you would hope, turnovers were evident and often passes were kicked too high. Karma likened it to “keepings off” and it was difficult, despite some good passages of play, to see an effective pattern of quick ball movement.
One official suggested to me that we are in “a holding pattern” until everything bursts out and comes together. Everyone’s trying their best and this description is a good way of looking at our current position so we leave Tullamarine now while the players kick back with nachos and hot dogs to watch the Super Bowl.
we’re lulling opposition scouts into a false sense of security before unveiling our “KICK IT TO TIPPA” game plan round 1.
Thanks Jackie and team. Super appreciated from those of us interstate.
and overseas
One official suggested to me that we are in "a holding pattern" until everything bursts out and comes together. Everyone's trying their best and this description is a good way of looking at our current position so we leave Tullamarine now while the players kick back with nachos and hot dogs to watch the Super Bowl.I can elaborate further on this, I had a mate that was their today also, who I spoke to whilst the boys were training, but of reference, he is a development coach for the Dandenong Stingrays and was having a sticky beak at Gach to see how he is coming along. He told me we were better than he expected we where going to be, and looked like a bunch of guys who where still in that consolidation phase of not only a new game plan but getting to know each others tendencies as team mates, but told me that out of the 30 odd that were part of the match sim work it could be easy to see 18 that had a good handle on what was going on and to keep in mind that the sides were quite mixed as far as experience level and game plan understanding was concerned.
He said a lot of players were still in that phase where second nature has not kicked in yet as far as game plan goes, still thinking about it a lotl, the result was they missed spots and such, but said skill errors were mostly the result of pressure than form. He seemed to think we were further along than what would be reasonably expected. This gave me a lot of confidence, because he is a Hawks man and the type that if we were utter tripe he would have been sending me messages telling me how ■■■■ we were.
benfti seems to have more contacts than bd18.
Just saying.
In a good way.
Hmmm, … sounds seedy …
That’s pleasing that now we have secured Grimley that Brown can move back.
Grimley as an experienced dangerous big man will go someway to replacing Hooker’s presence up forward and easing the pressure on JD by taking the main defender.
Also Brown back with and Hartley as our two main kpd, Ambrose as our reserve kpd backup and then Gwilt or Francis as our 3rd tall defender is a setup that should be able to cope.
Here’s hoping we get some midfield cohesion to ensure that backline isn’t constantly under the pump however.
Thanks Jackie and team. Super appreciated from those of us interstate.
imo the worst outcome would be to win “more games than people think” only to finish 10-14 ish then get reamed by Fitpatricks c****s and their almost certain priority pick ie Carlton getting picks 1 & 2 in a likely good draft while we finish better than expected solely on the back of 1 year stand ins who’ll never play again - just to keep up the AFL’s TV ratings.
Pick 1 and a priority pick - if F*** Carltank get one we must too - should be the bare minimum we’d be hoping for. … we wont be getting any other compensation for whats been done over 4 years now.
Thanks to all who post training reports and pice, love your work.
Cheers Jackie.
That's pleasing that now we have secured Grimley that Brown can move back.Grimley as an experienced dangerous big man will go someway to replacing Hooker’s presence up forward and easing the pressure on JD by taking the main defender.
Also Brown back with and Hartley as our two main kpd, Ambrose as our reserve kpd backup and then Gwilt or Francis as our 3rd tall defender is a setup that should be able to cope.
Here’s hoping we get some midfield cohesion to ensure that backline isn’t constantly under the pump however.
Sorry just don’t see this. If he was actually dangerous or experienced, surely a club like freo or farkcarlton who are crying out for talls would have drafted him.
As long he puts in a good stint, 100% effort every time he pulls on the jumper I’ll be happy.
imo the worst outcome would be to win "more games than people think" only to finish 10-14 ish then get reamed by Fitpatricks c****s and their almost certain priority pick ie Carlton getting picks 1 & 2 in a likely good draft while we finish better than expected solely on the back of 1 year stand ins who'll never play again - just to keep up the AFL's TV ratings.Pick 1 and a priority pick - if F*** Carltank get one we must too - should be the bare minimum we’d be hoping for. … we wont be getting any other compensation for whats been done over 4 years now.
WTF!!There is no way we will get pick 1 AND a priority pick