Hmm. Respect to Lual, he played a lot more games at AFL level than I did. Even after 12 games, all indications were that he had a great athletic profile, but his instincts to play the game were nowhere near where they needed to be to play at the highest level and his ceiling remained low.
By contrast, Artemis can play, it remains to be seen if he can translate from VFL to AFL level playing for a basket case team as we are at the moment.
Annoyed the hell out of me that we didnāt take that second pick in the mid season draft
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Why would you want to take a C grade player then have a stack of delisting at the end of the season..
Because they might turn out to not be C grade and who cares whether one more player gets delisted at the end of the year?
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Aged well
No shot itself in the foot with Fitzgerald . He was obviously up to the level
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Split round nailed it and mid season and ssp are one of our better forms of recruiting over the past few years.
So as a rebuild team I think we wasted two opportunities by not taking a second mid season pick and signing setterfeild as a ssp
We only had one player on the LTI and in true Essendon curse style had more go onto it immediately after the MSD was done.
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We could have listed Johnson as a LTI and then moved him back to the active list had we had another injury which we have
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If we took fitzgerald Blitz would be whingeing about taking midfield time away from robey and sharp. we do need speed thru the midfield, but another inside mid isnāt top of our shopping list.
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Itās not my quote, itās @dmaplestone. I have backed May from Day 1.
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I think he is deserving of a few games before the end of the season, to see if he is going to be any good or not, donāt make the same mistake we made with Pat Voss.
Sometimes these forwards play better in the 1sts with better delivery from midfielders, than they get in the 2s.
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Cmon Clayts, you must get it wrong too ever now and then. Anyhow, I reserve the right to change my mind on Gerryne too.
Of course I get things wrong, but I was just using your Archer May example to contrast against what you are now saying about Gerryne. Basically you wrote off May in exactly the same way as you have written off Gerryne. You have now done a complete 180 on May, within 3 months of your original post.
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Letās just get one thing straightā¦itās Gerreyn not Gerryne!!
ā¦as you were!!
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Was at the Casey game. Bourke got a lot of love from the coaches at 1/4 and 3/4 time. He was asked to try a shutdown role for the team. He went to Latrelle Pickett. Pickett scored his first goal with 5 mins to go in the game, which was a high tackle from another Essendon player. McGrath, Solly and VFL coach were pumping him up at the Qtr changes. Was a good, disciplined game and importantly he could match Pickettās speed. I noticed in the warmup before the game how well his kicking is coming along. In the real game he was very safe with ball in hand, but it was interesting prior to game starts he was actually hitting up some nice passes and the technique was coming along really well. Will be another month I sense until his attacking flare will come out as he is trying to fit in and not make major turnoversā¦but when he does cross to that mindsetā¦I think thatās when we see a real player come through. I really like Bourke and at age 20 (20th birthday last week) I think he could possibly play seniors in 12 months.
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Why wait, Bring Boukey in we need more pace.
Uninjured players?
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Scooter, give us a hint which position you think he will end up suited to?
To be fair, nobody else deemed him good enough either. Not when we had him in 2022 or 2023. Not in 2024 or 2025 when he played for Williamstown. Only now, 2.5 years after he left us. Maybe everyone was wrong all along, or maybe heās improved. I donāt know. But it hardly seems like we were on our lonesome in our assessment.
Um, are you advocating that he should have come in without any games back after injury?
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