Nathan Lonie

[labrooy]

Ryan may got to the Hawks, you just never know.

Maybe as part of a trade for Shane Crawford...

[Johnson#26]

Nup. Ryan is one of our better players, and must be kept. He has the third best skills in the side.

[labrooy]

J26, ask yourself this question, is 13th good enough? We clearly do not have the list to be competitive against the better teams in the competition.

In order to improve we need to trade. If we start saying that every player who played senior football should be kept then we are going to stay in the bottom half of the ladder forever. Any trade is possible so long as it improves our prospects of making the finals.

Lonie, Didak, Presti, Shaw, McGough etc are all on the line to be traded. It depends if we can improve our areas of deficiency as to whether we trade them or not. No trade should be done for the sake of trading. No trade should be done if it means we make our team worse. However any trade that makes us a stronger team has to be done.

You have to stop thinking of players as being untradeable. There is no-one in the team in this category.

[erniedog]

Everyone is tradeable but of course we must expect 100% loyalty-I don't think so. If players believe that the club has no loyalty to them they will have no loyalty to the club. Thus when contacts come up it will be "put up or shut up and don't talk to me about loyalty". It also means that players will perform to maximize their own value not that of the team. Its a dangerous philosophy to have.

That does not mean no trading, but it means balance and taking the players desires and their contributions into account. For example, I believe that Presti is surplus to our needs. However, in view of his contributions, I would only trade him if he was willing and if it was clear to all his teamates that agreements were mutual and that there were no ill feelings.

[Johnson#26]

Of your tradable list labrooy, I would not get rid of Dids, Lones, Presti and McGough. Only Goughy if the right deal comes up. I think we've had one bad year. If it happens again, then do the trades. Lets see if the same group that took us to 2 GF's can go up there again.

[labrooy]

J26, in order to get quality we have to trade quality. MM went into this season with the list that got us to 2 GFs and look what happened!! We have to improve and drafting young players won't achieve that on its own. We have to trade to improve our weak areas. Players like Lonie, McGough, Didak, Presti etc offer our best chance of getting quality players from opposition clubs.

[Cannibal]

J26, ask yourself this question, is 13th good enough? We clearly do not have the list to be competitive against the better teams in the competition.

Sorry, pal, but I disagree with this. I think we DO have the list to be competitive and the reason we finished 13th was because we had a pretty damn bad run with injuries, compared with 2002 and 2003 when we played GF's and because of our relative youth.

Because of that youth, what we didn't have was the experienced depth to cover those injuries, by virtue of the fact that we've been recruiting for the last five years to build up a list capable of winning a flag and it takes time for those kids to gain the experience that Brisbane has.

I think you forget that Brisbane started off much like us. They endured years down at the bottom, even after recruiting blokes like Michael Voss. Voss was drafted by Brisbane in 1991 and made his debut in round 18, 1992 (not much of an earlier start to his career than, say, the Clokes). His first GF was in 2001 and, although he is now a triple premiership player, it took him ten years to get there!

It seems to me that so many of us think Brisbane just suddenly became a premiership side but their team was many, many years in the making. Clark Keating was recruited in the 1991 draft (as a Qld "zone" selection), Justin Leppitsch in 1992, Nigel Lappin in 1993, Jason Akermanis in 1994 (also as a Qld "zone" selection), Simon Black in 1997 and even Tim Notting, widely thought of as a recent recruit, was drafted in 1996!

This is a collection of players who have spent years and years together. Our kids are in the very early stages - roughly comparable with Brisbane in the early 1990's - in terms of player development but we've played in two GF's, FFS! We're actually progressing quicker and better than Brisbane, OK?

If we were to allow our guys the same amount of time as Brisbane took, we wouldn't have played a GF until 2011 and, yet, you guys think we're travelling badly?!

Get real.

And give MM the time to develop the kids properly instead of demanding massive turnover to satisfy your cravings for an instant premiership.


[edit: I'm moving this to a new thread; this is mainly about the Lonies and I'd like to post what I've said on a new thread for discussion]

[Johnson#26]

But Labrooy, with a good run with injury next year, I expect us to be in the top 5. What about you?

[labrooy]

J26, I have tipped in the past that we will make the top 4. That pre-supposes a good run with injury which we can't rely on. I would love a bit of depth as well.

[Adz]

I think people need to relise we are not the same as 2002,2003. We need to trade. Clearly St.Kilda, Power, Lions would flog us with a full strenght lineup on both teams.

[Johnson#26]

And depth we will get with some good trading...