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Hmmm... what's this thread? Oh, I see, a cheap Spackler ripoff... next! :p

Agreed - that is the one thing Gollant has actually looked competent at.

O'Brien has been okay in the stoppages. Not special, but okay. Passable. The real problem is that our entire gameplan seems to hinge on bombing it long to him every time we get the ball in the back half of the ground, and he simply cannot take a contested mark. Every now and then his opponent...

It's not just Port... pretty much all clubs except ours do it.

Yep, the club will be at pains to point out how they were fortunate to be able to give the players a "taste of AFL football" so that they could discover the required level.

I think there will be a couple, yes. Dowling and Curtin the most likely. However I doubt a single debutant gets 5+ games.

The problem the club has is they clearly tell themselves "we need a decent second ruck" or "we need a decent depth KPD" but they don't actually have any. So instead they just keep cycling through the same set of disappointing players over and over again. Himmelberg isn't the answer, neither is...

I guess the small victories here are Smith out, Murphy not rushed back in, and Pedlar given another go. Pretty ******* dire outside of that though.

I agree, but with Murray and Keane in the side Butts wouldn't be playing as a KPD anyway. He would just be another tall defender, a role which Curtin could fill in even if Borlase became unavailable. In any event, the point is that we don't need him, so if we can get something for him, take it...

I'd take that and run. He has served a role but is not much better than Borlase and much more injury prone, and with Keane coming on and Murray due back soon, Worrell capable of playing tall and Curtin in the reserves, we don't need Butts.

If we were even remotely strong this year you could make an argument for keeping your senior players in and making the youth force their way in. But we're not. I'm not saying you drop every senior player and play every youth, but you definitely start searching for opportunities to bring in your...

Nah, McHenry would have run into an open goal. Way less margin of error than Rachele kicking it. He should have handballed it, but no harm done in the end.

Obviously it would have been better if he didn't have those moments at all, but this is a pretty impressive response. Acknowledge it, own it, and vow to improve.

I'm not the club. I'm a fan. The club is saying "no comment" about the non-decision. I'm saying it was pathetic.

Exactly. We can acknowledge the club's deficiencies, and also recognise that this was a howler of a non-decision, an act of either total cowardice or sheer incompetence by the umpire. Should we have been good enough to not need that decision to be correctly adjudicated? Yes. Was the...

I guess on the plus side, he wasn't quite as terrible as last week. :(

Rachele had a bad last quarter, certainly. Wasn't awful before then though. You've got to back him in. Soligo brilliant again. He's one of very few players who are playing better in 2024 than in 2023. The umpiring was an absolute disgrace all match. Some of the HTB calls tonight were pathetic...

I don't even understand how he could have heard footsteps on that second one... there was nobody near him! If that was an actual squib then he's got no spatial awareness at all.

If we're going to be generous, he misjudged both of those balls in flight. But geez, man. You just have to take those!

What an absolute stitch-up.

The most frustrating part of this season is our insistence on dropping and then recalling the same players over and over again. Sholl in and out like a yoyo, Butts and Borlase just trading spots every other week, Gollant in then out then in again, Berry in then out then sub. It's only round...

What an absolute dope Finlayson is.

There is obviously no such role as a "shape keeper". Every player has responsibility for us keeping our shape, and some more than others, but nobody has it as their sole or even primary role. Maybe they were telling Ned it was the only thing he was doing effectively and he just got confused?

McHenry doesn't seem to understand that supporters aren't complaining about how much he runs. They're complaining about how little he contributes. Max's contributions are quantifiable and clear for everyone to see. McHenry's are marginal at best. If he ran 4km a match instead of 14km I'd view...

No, the point was made that in an ideal world we will find a bunch of quality youth in the next three years to force him out the side. But that could be said for literally any player on a three year contract. It is clear that the expectation is he will continue to play, presumably in his...

Probably not, but then he's not depth at the moment. He's a starting player every week and in our leadership group. He's probably not on big coin, either. Middle-of-the-road player on a middle-of-the-road salary. You need those in a team.

Butts seems to be perennially injured. He goes down injured almost every match he plays. Nobody questions his toughness, but it's not ideal. At this point I'd have him well behind Keane, and in a tie with Borlase. Certainly don't see any room for him once Murray is back. Handy depth player if...

Himmelberg has had the advantage of having players like Fogarty in the side to take away the better defenders. Fogarty has exceeded Himmelberg's output while playing on stronger defenders. Key forwards tackling inside 50 is an excellent thing, not sure why you would downplay that. Especially...

Don't mind this. Presumably we're getting him on less coin per year than we would for a two year signing. He's actually quite useful in that high-effort forward role that we've managed to kill a dozen other midfielders in. And if we end up with significant midfield injuries in a match he can...

This is where I'm at, too. It would be one thing if we had a dominant key forward killing it at SANFL level, but we don't. Or even just an untried high draft pick young forward. The notion that we could replace him with Gollant or Himmelberg seem fanciful to me - those guys can't perform at his...