TOPIC:

Our biggest fears are losing our bookends Pav or McPharlin. Well last week we lost McPharlin for 90% of the game and that was easily the difference in winning and losing but what replacements do we have for Pavlich? I can't think of any and this is where our recruiters have failed. Over the years we lost Justin Longmuir to injury and let Leigh Brown go and tried a patch up job with Chris Tarrant which was a monumental failure as a forward and we got little more than 20 odd good games out of him as a backman.

The club is going to have to roll the dice here and try to unearth something. Zac Clarke is the obvious one who's been tried up forward before without any significant returns and I think they had him in mind in a forward role this year. I think he is still a couple of weeks away from even playing WAFL which doesn't help so who else?

Tanner Smith or Jack Hannath could be worth a shot up forward but neither stand out as being specialists in that area, Kepler will probably spend a fair bit of time there. Then there are a couple of medium forwards like Mellington and Duffy who could be given an opportunity but that leaves us very short. I would love Sandilands back right now both as a ruckman and to impose himself up forward.

McPharlin will need to go forward now & leave him there, Johnson & Dawson will need to grow some balls & hold down key back posts. As for Sandilands going forward.. he cant even take a pack mark & when the ball hits the ground he's no good.

anchorman wrote: KNOCK,KNOCK,KNOCK.

Anchorman that's a pretty pathetic post from someone who's made a lot of noise about people not posting about AFL on this forum. I put up a topic worthy of more than that and it took you how long to respond?

Anyway, I thought we would be in for an almighty flogging yesterday so to come away with a 42 point loss is a good result providing we can get some key players back and start winning again. It has always been our worst fears, losing our bookends Pav and McPharlin and that really showed yesterday. I didn't watch all of the game but i skimmed over it. It could have been a lot worse. Great effort by the boys to hang in there, pity the margin couldn't have been a couple of goals closer but they got a couple of late ones.

We are really light on in the big man dept and I don't know how that is going to be fixed in the short term. They just have to play what talls we have and hope something emerges.

Looks like Suban might be having an extended stay in the WAFL, he got subbed out early and when Lyon was quizzed why Neale was subbed in for Suban asking if Suban had an injury, Lyon said "No, no injury he just hadn't touched the footy so I thought we needed some spark and I thought Lachy Neale gave us that". Not very often a player gets subbed out (think it was qtr time or early in the second qtr) based on form. I reckon the writing is on the wall for Suban.

Correct Johnno childish stuff once again from him..

I didn't watch the game and of course I am not privy to what Lyon may have said to Suban before the game but it seems to me that perhaps an appropriate thing to do may have been to wait until half time and then tell Suban unequivocally that he is not doing what is required and see if there was a change in attitude in the third quarter.

As it is now I suspect that Suban will not play again for Freo for the rest of the year; good luck Claremont and bad luck to Swans as Neale will play the rest of the year with Freo. I would also think that the logical extension is that Suban would be traded or delisted at the end of the year.

swan42 wrote: I didn't watch the game and of course I am not privy to what Lyon may have said to Suban before the game but it seems to me that perhaps an appropriate thing to do may have been to wait until half time and then tell Suban unequivocally that he is not doing what is required and see if there was a change in attitude in the third quarter.

As it is now I suspect that Suban will not play again for Freo for the rest of the year; good luck Claremont and bad luck to Swans as Neale will play the rest of the year with Freo. I would also think that the logical extension is that Suban would be traded or delisted at the end of the year.

I suspect your last paragraph is spot on, the ball is in Subans court. Ross Lyon has shown and stated "players buy their way out and buy their way back in". Ibbotson is another one who has fallen out of favour recently. Suban started the year well against the WCE but has dropped off since that game. If RL didn't make the change early we might have fallen 8 - 10 goals down. Lachy gave us an instant spark, it was a brave move by RL and it sends a message to the rest of the team, if you don't get involved and have an impact you will be subbed out and have an extended stay in the WAFL.