TOPIC:

Kasey Nicholas no longer at the club. 

Hopefully BH won't be fined for incorrectly leaking the impending arrival of Hartley......didn't Nicholas make the WAFL 2022 team of the year? If so, that is a big loss......good to see some great names on the track down at Perth for their first day of pre season .....Cousins, Rumble, Priddis and Smith.....and German of course.

personal demon wrote:

Kasey Nicholas no longer at the club. 

That’s a shame. Would have liked to see him go around again. 

There are others who have left but most have been mentioned. We’re going to struggle to cover all our losses through recruiting. You just can’t do it that way. Rough times next season. Hopefully we’ll see some improvement in our young group of players. I figure 5 wins might be optimistic. 

personal demon wrote:

Kasey Nicholas no longer at the club. 

Do you know the reason why? 

Why did Nicolas leave? He finally grew into his body and came good. Only about 25 perfect age. Terrible news. I had a look at our players and gee we look small and skinny. Another 6 Manzone’s required or 2023 will be a complete disaster. 

Confirmed outs: Ainsworth, Fisher, Busher, Nicholas, McInnes, Mayne. Likely outs: Giblett, Smith, Quill, Jones. Possible out: Sinclair. Ins: Manzone, Jackson, 3 NSW country players. So that's 7-11 players gone, of whom 9 would, if fit, be comfortably in our best 22. Of the ins, so far, only Manzone is a proven WAFL standard player.

Unless we do some serious recruiting after the draft, I can only assume 2023 is a season where the coaching panel is going to assess the existing group and work out what is required for 2024. As things stand, I can't remember going into a season with a weaker team on paper. 

OMG, that is just the worst news. Be interesting to find out which WAFL club has poached him.
We certainly cannot afford to lose a player of his calibre. Arguably he was in our best 5 on our list. Anything known?
Losing Sinclair would be huge. He is just short of his 150th. Has played with great courage fighting various injuries.
Ted, those outs, other than Nico and Sinclair were mainly only depth players. I agree that we will have to do some recruiting to top the squad up again. My fear is that any new recruits are going to cost points. Will we have enough?
 

I wouldn't call those guys depth players. You could say that in the sense that their impact was curtailed by injury, but on paper, McInnes, Gibba and Busher were among our 3 most important players. Mayne, Ainsworth and Fisher were definitely in our best 22 - Ainsworth didn't have much impact, but you need an accumulator. 

We should have a ton of points. Looking at our list, Smith would be 10. I am surprised there has been no announcement on him yet, but if we needed his points to recruit, we shouldn't hesitate to cut him. I think Ajang is a 5 point player and there might be a couple of 3 pointers, maybe More or La Fontaine. We have used 10 on Manzone. Jackson may be 3 points. I don't know about the guys from the Ovens league. But given that just 2 years ago we had Masten, Smith, Grey, and Langlands for a total of 42, we should have plenty. Have we been given any extra points in light of a winning percentage of 20 across the last two seasons? 

Yes Gibba, Smith and Mayne although great players and club men didn’t play that many league games last year. Ainsworth, Jones and Quill won’t be missed. Fraz was great in 2020 when he had McDonald next to him but went off the pace the last two years.

That leaves only the Bush, Sinclair, Nicholas and the Fish (4) who will be sorely missed.

A big fingers crossed for our recruits to be strong, fit, big, interested, injury free and quality footballers.