Hardwick finally finds a den

After being passed up by North and ummm forgot which other club were looking at him, anyway, Richmond has signed on the hard man Damien Hardwick.
It follows a pattern of the bottom eight teams realising that their teams need some aggression and hardball getters.
Hardwick played 2007 games as one of the toughest defenders in the AFL amd should bring that to Punt Rd.
So what does this mean for the veterans, Richardson and Cousins?
Hardwick says, he will wait a few weeks….
Port Adelaide! That was the other team!
Anyway read more here.

North have a new coach.

North Melbourne have announced today the appointment of the new senior coach, Brad Scott.
Brad Scott will take over in 2010 with Crocker remaining in charge to the end of this season.
I do not remember Brad Scott playing for Brisbane in their premiership 2001 and 2003 sides. In fact I can’t say I remember him at all.
Saying that, is credentials look great. Currently mid-field coach of Collingwood (and how bloody good is that mid field with the likes of Swan, Pendlebury, Beams, Wellingham and so on) before that he was their development coach. In his playing days, he was a hard nut and renown for his fierceness at the ball.

If he can bring across the fierceness to the Roos, and develop a strong mid field, I can not wait.
Now all we need is a forward line.

*EDIT* I do remember Scott from his playing days finally. And yes he was a hard ball defender. If he can bring with him the hardness and commitment back to the Roos, (specially the tackling!) I will be excited to see where North will be in 2 seasons.

Dream Team. Round 20, The Semis!

What a match last week! With gaps all over the field, Dal Santo pulling out last minute, captain Bartel playing crap and both ruckman failing..not to mention Franklin!
So what was the outcome?
Lucky for me, Dodgey Fellas also had gaps in the field including their captain!And the VC was SJohnson who had a shocker!
Kneejerkers win by 13 points!
Hell yeah!…..then this weeks team line ups were released….
Hell no!
I have more holes than swiss cheese in my backline again. No Grimes, Geary, Post and Petrenko is an emergency!
What does this mean for this weekends semi final against the Indefatigables?
Well I do have a lot of guns back in the side but 1-2 doughnuts in the back are going to hurt. And with out of form Franklin, SJohnson and unpredictable Russell, I am not overly confident.

DEF: Gilbert, McMahon, Hodge, Drummond, Houlihan and possible Petrenko
MID: Bartel, Dal Santo (vc), Lockyer, Griffen, CCornes, Beams
RUC: McIntosh, Sandilands
FWD: Riewoldt, SJohnson, Didak, Pavlich, Franklin, DThomas, MBrown

Gadget, I hope your Geelong players fail miserably…cept Bartel and SJohnson of course.

No sir. I don’t like it.

As soon as the retirement of Dean Laidley was annouced and North Melbourne were on the hunt for a new coach, I had one name for the Roos to chase. John “Horse” Longmire.
But of course North mucked around with the Nathan Buckley option and now it is too late.

SYDNEY Swans coaching co-ordinator John Longmire says he had no hesitation in accepting a two-year agreement to replace Paul Roos as senior coach, despite the lure of a return to North Melbourne.

That’s right, Longmire has signed up for a 2 year deal at the Swans to start in 2011 after Paul Roos leaves at the end of 2010.
This, for me, is very disappointing as I thought Longmire would have brought discipline, hard work and real heart back to the Roos.
I think Crocker is a great choice as a caretaker coach but I am not comfortable about him being the long term coach. But who does the signing of both Buckley and Longmire leave?
Apparently there are 3 left: Darren Crocker (North caretaker), Damien Hardwick (Hawks assistant) and Brad Scott (Magpies).

Dream Team round 19…the finals!

After a loss last week, I thought I was out of the eight. But it happens that from 6th to 10th all the teams were on 32 points. It came down to the percentage……

And this is where the Kneejerkers excelled! With the 4th highest average in the league I managed to hold sixth place with a percentage of 107.23. JOY!
So it it round 19 in the AFL which makes it the 1st round of finals for Dream Team. As I finished 6th, I play the Dodgey Fellas who finished 7th. There is no second chance, it is a do or die match.
Anxiously I awaited the release of the teams , hoping that my DT was injury free as I have no more trades.
NOOOOO!
I have been hit with injuries again and some big names are out!
Gone – NRiewoldt (my highest averaging forward), JGrimes (my 2nd highest averaging defender), Gilbert still gone (my number 1 defender), Skipworth and even Petrenko can’t get back in.
This leaves me with a big doughnut in my backline and a big offensive gap in my forwards.
Dodgey Fellas looks to have a few missing too but will still field a full team. This is going to be tough.
What I do have going is Dodgey’s players to seem to have a lower average overall to my blokes…but he has a full team….dammit!

DEF: Mcmahon, Hodge, Drummond, Houlihan, Geary, Post
MID: Bartel, Dal Santo, Lockyer, Griffen, CCornes, Beams
RUC: McIntosh, Sandilands
FWD: SJohnson, Franklin, Pavlich, Didak, DThomas, Russell, MBrown

So fingers are crossed that I can get over the line this week. Based on averages, my score does not look pretty. Oh well…see what happens.

Dream Team round 18…

It is the final round of Dream Team before the finals begins and my place is no where near locked in.
I play the I Love Footy team with only 3 losses to their name. The battle for the 6th to 8th position is tight, where only percentage is keeping most teams apart.
If I pull off the win this week, I am into the finals. If I lose this week, it comes down to percentage. With 2 teams vying for the top 8 playing ‘bye’ teams it will be close.
Therefore it is all or nothing for me and my last 2 trades are being used. OUT Higgins who has performed greatly throughout the season, only to get himself injured for 3 weeks, and OUT for PBurgoyne who really has got worse throughout the season. So who comes in?
IN: The Hawks are playing so much better, almost to their Grand final win level so in comes Hodge to bring some run into the backline. IN: To add some selfishness and style to the forwards, here comes Didak which makes my team a little heavy with Collingwood players but it should give me a great score.
Now the problem is, my most consistent defender, Gilbert, is being rested with back soreness and this hurts. This leaves a doughnut in my backline with the only players able to fill it have both been listed as emergencies only. Crap.
The line up:
BACK: McMahon, Hodge, Grimes, Drummond, Houlihan, Post with Geary or Petrenko hopefully filling the gap.
MID: Dal Santo, Lockyer, Bartel(VC), Griffen, CCornes, Beams
RUCK: Sandilands, McIntosh
FWD: Didak, Franklin, Riewoldt(C), Russell, DThomas, SJohnson, Pavlich
Yep, that is it. Hopefully this will give me a score of at least 1924 plus captain which is 200 more than I Love Footy’s average but they do have the Ablett factor.
Oh well, here goes.

End of a Shinboner era

A great servant of the North Melbourne Football Club has called it a day.
Adam Simpson, 15yr veteran and great leader has called the match between North and Carlton this Friday night, to be his last.
Simmo was never as flashy as Wayne Carey, nor the cult following of Mick Martyn or Glenn Archer but he was the rock that kept the team together through the good times of the 90’s and the ‘rebuild’ stage of now.
He still is a great competitor on the field (33rd in the midfield Dream Team averages), has been a shinboner since his 1995 debut with the club, played in both 1996 and 1999 grand final wins. The 306 gamer will be greatly missed on the field and lets hope the club can get over the top of the Blues this friday for a proper send off.

Press conference here.

The AFL Tanking debacle

It is that time of the season where every man and his dog starts accusing teams of tanking games to get priority draft picks.

What is tanking? Tanking is where a coach pulls their best players from the field (or even the match), match up rookies vs stars and just playing to lose the game so they can get themselves a priority draft pick.

You see, one of the great things about AFL is the draft pick. The teams that finished lowest on the table get the 1st picks, the best teams get the last of the picks. What this does is, makes for a more even competition and each club generally has a success cycle.

What happens at the end of the year, where teams can no longer make the the top 8, some team’s tactics have a very sudden change and most people feel that they are tanking the rest of the season to get that all important pick.

Now if you were a coach and your season was in essence done (cant make top 8 ) would you continue to put players on the field that are carrying niggling injuries? or would you rather rest them, let them heal completely ready for next season and bring in some new faces to get the rookies blooded? If I was a coach, I would.

I just read this “Tanking? Long-term thinking’s ok” and one of they key notes straight away is, if you are in the top 8, guaranteed a finals berth and rested a player, which Geelong has done recently, then that’s ok but if you in the bottom 8, you are tanking.

Last nights AFL Footy Show started talking about the tanking debate and there were calls to changing the draft system to a lottery. Come on, you are kidding right?

As said earlier, one of the great things about our game is the fact that each year, teams are fairly even matched and for the weaker teams, the draft helps them get to be stronger teams.

Oh and just because you have the 1st pick, does not mean you are going to pick the best player. Have a look at Melbourne’s number one pick Jack Watts. Played just 3 games this year and not really making any impact. Compare that to say Brisbane’s Daniel Rich at 7th pick who is probably the favourite for the NAB Rising Star or even North Melbourne’s Jack Ziebell (9th) and Liam Anthony (43rd)

In the end, leave the drafting system alone. If a coach starts to deliberately play to lose, I think the club needs to remove the coach and not put hope on who they will pick up for the next year.

Laidley is gone

Dean Laidley has resigned as the North Melbourne senior coach as of today.
And I for one, am pleased with the decision.
Even though North this year, have been wrecked with injuries, they have played their worse season I have seen for a long time. Yes some blame goes to the senior players but I feel that is where the coach should have stepped in and got more out of them.
North lack discipline, hard ball gets, consistency and a game plan. I thought, Laidley, at the beginning of his 7 year reign, would bring with him the hardness of how he played for North. This has not been there for the last 3 seasons. His selfishness has shone through more in this and last season where his feelings are over ruling the goodness of the team; prime example is leaving Daniel Harris out of the team for most of the year because they don’t get along. Harris is our only consistent hard ball getter and tackler.
So what happens from here? For the rest of the season, who will step up to interim coach?
Darren Crocker? He was a great defender in his day, and our backline currently is playing ok…well the younger players are like Urquhart and Thompson are.
Darren Bewick? Has been in charge of our forward line….hmm, we have no forward line and that has been a major problem this year.
Anthony Rock? In charge of the midfield. Well that would be the hardest job as our midfield keeps changing because of injuries.
My choice? Good question. Crocker for his hard ball defensive style or Rock for his Collingwood experience and therefor discipline? I think I lean towards Crocker to get us through the year but not to be the Coach next season.
Coach for next season I would love to see John Longmire come back and bring with him the discipline and hard work that Paul Roos brought to the Swans. Other candidates would be John Blakey, David King or Ross Smith. From the Senior coaches, of course we would love to have the hard nose Mick Malthouse to come over but I don’t see Collingwood letting him go.

Crocker has been announced as interim coach
A little spill about Laidley here

Note I just reread this ramble. It come across that I didn’t like Laidley as a coach. That is not true. It just was time for him to move on and North to get a fresh face in the caoching role. Laidley did very well early into the gig. He had to break the senior players out of Pagan’s Paddock and introduce a different style of play. He did very well at this. But it is not working now and his focus just seems to be lost with North. At another club he would bring something very useful but I think North have got as much as we will get from him.

Round 12 Dream Team line up

After the team listing being released yesterday, I had little choice but to make another trade. Say goodbye to Krakouer who was the worst pick up of mine as I picked him up after he made a lot of money and then played very very ordinary. And that made room for the most pick fwd there is in the AFL Dream Team…Lance Buddy Franklin.
Yes, he is only averaging 78 but he has one of the smallest standard diviations and you know he will come good soon.

So my line up for the split round (I have split rounds..not enough footy for 2 weekends):

DEF: S Gilbert, J Geary, S McMahon, P Burgoyne, R Houlihan, J Grimes, J Petrenko.
MID: J Bartel (capt), T Lockyer, N Dal Santo, R Griffen, H Skipworth, B Muston.
FWD: S Johnson, N Reiwoldt (vc), M Pavlich, S Higgins, J Ziebell, D Thomas, L Franklin
RUC: H McIntosh, A Sandilands
Now Pentrenko could be another dougnut but with Drummond out for a week, I’ll just have to cross my fingers.