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1
The Sports Desk / Re: God help me - the Test Cricket thread
Last post by LP -
Quote from: dodge – on
Congratulations to Starc.  His form has been pretty solid for a while now, and is getting rewards.
Agree, credit when it is due.

I admit I'm not a Starc fan, basically because to me he is a 1 good game in 3 player, but he has been consistently good the last few tests, more so than at any time in the past. It's almost like something has clicked as he nears the end of his career, Pink Floyd wrote Time for a reason.
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Ladies Lounge / AFLW List Management 2026
Last post by crashlander -
Time to create this thread, ready for the trade and draft period.
Something says we don't like the years women's crop much better than we liked the 2025 men's cohort; we've traded out our 1st and 3rd round picks.
Instead, it looks like we're going to be an aggressive trader.

Out:
[1] Kerryn Peterson:
A hard call, but we do seem to be going young. And a lot of girls want to be in our colours. The question will be, is it a year early? Possibly. But better to go out before you get dropped.

[2] Tarni Brown:
After an excellent first season with us, Tarni has struggled and wasn't available this season at all. She pulled the pin, thinking that she'd never get back to her best again. A pity, but there it is.

[3] Charlotte Brewer:
The replacement of the replacement, Charlotte never really got a chance to show off her wares, not with Jess Good in career best form.

[4] Eliza Wood:
Our VFL captain, who originally replaced Kerryn Peterson, but who then had an ACL. Hope to see her back in VFL ranks at some stage.

For all that, it didn't open many spots on our list.
We have been linked to 4 or 5 young ladies at this point, so it will be interesting to see who we manage to land.
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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: List Building - More than one way to skin a cat
Last post by Thryleon -
Any way you skin it, had we stuck with the same old, we thus far would have jsos and tdk on an interrupted pre season. 

Charlie is rumoured to be cooked to the point he'll never be the same again, but that will remain a rumour until otherwise. 

Can I request that number 30 stay away from key talls from now on?  The last 2 talented ones we had ended up injury prone and leaving the club.
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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: List Building - More than one way to skin a cat
Last post by ElwoodBlues1 -
I prefer specialist KP talls and not trying to cheat with hybrids who play ruck and forward, or ruckman you try and turn into KP players, we have been there with Hampson, Kreuzer etc and it rarely works. Id rather specialist forwards like Jeremy Cameron, Georgiadies, Hogan, etc and same down back with specialist Key backmen. You get handy dual purpose types like Luke Jackson who can play ruck and contribute while resting down forward but even with Jackson who is a class player its necessary to have specialist key forwards in Voss and Amiss to provide consistency because Jackson down forward wont work every time and its more of a tactical move every now and then to play him there.
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Robert Heatley Stand / Re: List Building - More than one way to skin a cat
Last post by DJC -
Quote from: Lods – on
That's the way I see things
And it's probably 'it' in a nutshell and the centre of the whole debate.
It goes to the heart of the thread title-"More than one way to skin a cat."

Of course KPP's are important.
They are the 'backbone' of any side.

But as is generally agreed...they take time.
We drafted a spine in one draft, talented kids, that still took several years to hit their peak.
The problem was that when they did we were lacking in the supportive talent.

There are two ways to do it.
Draft the talls, and develop them, in the hope that when they reach their peak there is enough supportive talent around.
Or lay a foundation of talent and then bring them in via trade and free agency, ready to go, or well on the way to reaching their full potential.

The first one may be the more traditional way.
I suspect the second option is the direction the club has taken.

It's basically what were arguing about and I don't think anyone's going to change their mind before we see what happens on-field in the next year or two.

And there are other options.

There's the low risk, high reward approach of bringing in untried or discarded talls as rookies through the Rookie Draft, SSP, MSD or as Cat B rookies.  Austin's had many goes at that with Luke Parks, Oscar McDonald, Dom Akuei, Sam Durdin, Hudson O'Keeffe and Matt Duffy and may finally succeed with Skull.  And that leads me to the final option; discovering/developing a KPP by changing their role.

Liam Jones is the obvious example but older folk may remember Gordon Collis who couldn't get a kick at CHF but won a Brownlow when switched to CHB.  Then there's Jack Silvagni, who went from a "third tall" forward to everyone's favourite CHB in just 12 games and won a monster contract as a result.

Skull's role has changed from ruck/forward to KPF/ruck and the signs are good so far.  With some notable exceptions like Paul Salmon, Cowboy Neale and Darren Jolly, turning ruckmen into key forwards isn't all that successful but Skull is a reliable kick for goal and that's a good start.

The tall that I would have liked us to have gone after in the draft is Louis Emmett but the Doggies got in first.  Emmett is a ruck forward but he's said to be earmarked for a KPD role at AFL level.
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The Sports Desk / Re: God help me - the Test Cricket thread
Last post by dodge -
Agree - as soon as we thought England were going to declare, went stupidly defensive, which gave them so many free and easy runs and zero pressure.

The notion of not even 25 overs a session is abhorrent to everyone but the players out there.  Part of test cricket is that you need to manage bowlers in order to get through 90 overs in a day - taking into account DRS and time that the batting team wastes - they need to be accountable as well.  The penalties could be runs - 10 runs for every late over.

Selection is a mess.  It doesn't really seem as if they have batting plans - I'm certainly not convinced Head is an opener or that Ingliss is of the right quality! And they obviously don't know who they want to bowl - Starc, Neser, Boland, Doggett and Green - only slight variation.  Lyon would have been handy to get through some overs and offer something different.  Through the fixturing of domestic cricket, often there is little exposed red ball form leading into the test series - better this year, but there don't seem to be great standouts.  Having said that, the only change to the team really needed to be a bat in for Khawaja.

Imagine playing a game where when it is your turn to do the thing that you are paid very well to do, you say 'No thanks.  We'll wait until it's a bit easier and we'll slow the game down ridiculously in order to not do what I get paid to"  How many more free runs will they get today...

Congratulations to Starc.  His form has been pretty solid for a while now, and is getting rewards.

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Ladies Lounge / Re: AFLW Awards 2026
Last post by LP -
Quote from: DJC – on
It’s a changing of the guard, and more so with the departure of Kez Peterson.
Nobody likes the tap on the shoulder, especially fans when it happens to a fan favourite, but it's always better to go a season early than a season late! ;)

It would have been nice to see Peterson side by side with Cordner, if they were both at their peak, fit and firing, but it won't ever happen so it's just a pipe dream.

In any case, it looks to me like the coach is taking the AFLW side in a different direction, I hope the AFL team is watching. It's amazing the difference just a couple of players can make, I can also see this happening with the AFL squad as long as we don't cling to the old ways.
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The Sports Desk / Re: God help me - the Test Cricket thread
Last post by LP -
Quote from: DJC – on
Khawaja out is a step in the right direction but replacing him with Inglis?
The squad is welded in, looking at Shield form right now you'd have to say Inglis is bit lucky, but perhaps Australia is buying into the Bazball ideology a bit more than fans would like.

To me the Poms look brittle, if an old fashioned test batsmen comes out and makes 300 against them they look to me like they'll disintegrate.

I wasn't that impressed with how we finished the day, nor was I impressed with Smith's captaincy, his field setting was downright lunacy. He set fields like a bloke who did not want to go out and bat last night. D-Grade muck, suburban cricket clubs would sack a captain for that rubbish.

I'm a bit disillusioned with the selection policy as well, if true then no wonder Lyon is miffed. The Gabba is a known wicket taking venue for quality spinners because the good spinners get wickets with bounce. All in all, it doesn't come across to me as a Test Cricket mentality, it's looking more like a dog and bone(dog and pony) show.
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Ladies Lounge / Re: AFLW Awards 2026
Last post by DJC -
Well-deserved awards to Dayna, Harriet, Erone, Maddy, Poppy and Sophie.

It’s a changing of the guard, and more so with the departure of Kez Peterson.