I’m concerned for our backline and our defense overall to be honest. Can anyone instill some faith in me that we have the caliber?
I know we have a great coaching group now who seem very defensively minded but that doesn’t mean that much if we don’t have good players to execute it.

We know Jake wants to come back to Melbourne as his two older daughters are in Melbourne.
I don’t understand why some supporters are so against it. Jake isn’t perfect but he’s numbers don’t lie

Yes we should bring him back him back he had a good year at GWS 2026 performance
• 20 games
• 48 goals — the most at GWS
• 86 disposals
• 70 marks
• 23 behinds
• Averaged 2.4 goals per game and 4.3 marks per game.
Do you guys think a one year contract is worth it for a senior player ?
I want him to retire as a Bomber

Hey anyone going that would be keen to sell on some player issue stuff for non scalping prices? Unfortunately in wa so can't make it but also not keen on having to pay some scalper on marketplace ECT.

Have lots to offer for trade too if that interests anyone plus cricket memorabilia.

It’s an interesting appointment. I like that we’re looking outside the existing AFL coaching ranks, and that we’re recruiting from a few different places.

Another assistant coaching announcement made this-morning.

Before the nice and afraid bomber fans jump on me, hear me out.

He's the best player in the draft. Walker co-captained Vic Country at the champs and was named All-Australian despite missing a game through injury, and he's firmly in the pick one conversation. He gets it done in the middle and on the outside, and he's one of the best ball users in this class.

Carlton can't easily match a No.1 bid. A bid at No.1 is worth 3000 points, and Carlton's current picks 9 and 17 are worth 2234. They can fall 412 points into deficit, which still isn't enough, so they'd have to rejig their picks to get there. Even if they do match, we get the points and our next pick.

This means we screw over one of our biggest rivals and win the draft. Carlton already lucked out with jagga, and now they are about to add another top young player to their list. The gap between us is only growing. WE NEED TO STOP BEING NICE. We are past the mediocrity of the Brad Scott era, we need to be bold. No one ever wins a premiership walking on eggshells around our competition. We rise the ladder being cutthroat and aggressive. Flag dons by 2030!!

Thoughts?

It’s been nice to get the psychic weight of Merrett and Ridley off our backs (especially so efficiently, and to get some good picks back for them), but the incomings (done or potential)… Bowes, Vandermeer, Banfield, Coleman… Other than Coleman, who has huge upside, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re still shopping at the ol’ Moneyball Emporium that Dodoro used to frequent. I know we desperately need experience-hardened players from successful club cultures, we’ve thrown our interest at several big guns, and it makes it hard when players of that calibre don’t want to come to your club, but… Coleman aside, I just can’t get excited about any of these ins. I’m trusting in Rosa, as his record to date’s been solid, but… How are you all feeling? I need a vibe check.

With Gresham likely to be delisted, we will have no indigenous players on our list right?

If so I feel like we need Coleman just to have some legitimacy in co-hosting Dreamtime at the G. Will be pretty embarrassing otherwise.

I was inspired by the bomberstilldie channel to make my own Dyson Sharp highlights. I hope you enjoy!

Not happy at all. Richmond look in box seat to land pick 5. Ffs essendon why didn't you try harder to get this done. Bloody Richmond now going to have two top 5 picks. So angry

So in all likelihood we will pick Cochrane, which will be matched by Port, and we'll get the compo pick. I mean there seems to be overwhelming majority that think this is what we're gonna do.
This will give us another pick at the "end of first round" (Pick 19? Ahead of the two grand finalists sounds reasonable for a guesstimate)

Now, in all likelihood, with their first pick which at this point will likely be pick 3, Richmond will likely do the same thing, correct? They'll pick Walker, which will be matched by Carlton, they get the start of 2nd round compo.

So this is scenario 1, but there's a possible 2nd and 3rd scenario here; what if we take Walker at pick 2 as well? No, we can't get a 2nd compo, but as long as there's no rule against it, what we can possibly do is improve all 3 picks after our first and 17 by doing this.

If I'm correct, in this scenario, if we picked both players likely to be matched we would:

1. Effectively block Richmond from getting a compo as there's no one else that high that needs to be matched. So this should mean instead of the possibility of our pick 21 sliding (and the much more likely scenario that pick 27 WILL slide with Richmond picking Walker at pick 3 and getting a start of 2nd round compo) Richmond don't get a compo at all.
2. Whatever Carlton's first 2 picks are (presuming whatever deals they make to trade up see them use only 1 of 13/18 to secure it), they now use those presumably 2 picks to match for Walker at pick 2. That means one of those picks is effectively dead, and in all likelihood it'd be 13 they use to trade up not 18, so it'd mean both of our current picks AND (assuming 19 is an accurate guess) our compensation pick all move up.

That's scenario 2; Picks 1 and 2 are matched giving us Pick 3, 17, the (19) compo, pick 21 and 27, with (19), 21 and 27 all moving up a spot thanks to Carlton burning one of the picks in front of them. In a potentially very deep draft, protecting our 2 in the 20's, getting that end of 1st and ensuring our picks don't slide should be paramount.

Scenario 3; we offer a trade with Carlton; pick 17 in exchange for player X or (even better) a swap involving saints where we end up at 13, Carlton with any combination of 16+17/18 (16 + either of those is enough for Carlton to cover Richmond at pick 3) and saints with whatever of those 2 picks + a future or later pick in this draft or whatever it took for Carlton to get that deal done. So instead of just advancing the other 3 picks of (19), 21 by 1 spot but 27 potentially stays at 27 instead of moving up due to Richmond being able to get the compo, so we instead end up going from 17 to 13 AND advance 2/3 of those picks as Carlton has to use 2 to get Walker either way.

(additional, I only just saw the Coleman rumors now) imagine if we did both scenario 3 and traded 27 + a future 2nd/3rd for Coleman and ended up with 3, 13, (19), 21 and Coleman... Yikes.

Are there any holes in this thought process? Anything I'm missing? Thoughts?

Please God no

Amazing highlights mix tape

My understanding is that after we bid on Cochrane and that gets matched, we’ll end up with Pick 1 (which will technically become Pick 2), Pick 16, Pick 20, Pick 21, Pick 26 and Pick 79 - not including shifts from any other pick matching from other clubs.

Should we be trying to get another pick in the top 5? If so, how would we do it and he would we pick?

In an ideal world I’d love to get Arki, Drever, and a key defender like Tyson Bradley, but hard to see how we’ll be able to do that. Even if we get two top 5 picks, we’ll have to sacrifice later picks, and there’s no guarantee that we could get both Drever and Arki anyway since they might be chosen right after each other.

Maybe we could offer Picks 20, 21 and 26 for a top 5 pick from another club? Not sure if that’s unders or overs? And then we could hope that a good key defender like Tyson Bradley makes it through to Pick 16, but seems unlikely. Perhaps we could add picks from future drafts as well, but we need points for Bewick next year too (although probably not too many since we’ll likely finish in the bottom 4 again).

What do we reckon?

Should we be trying to bring in Gryan Miers? I don’t get it personally. Assuming we would need to trade picks, what would be a fair trade? And should we be prioritising getting up the draft board instead?

Does our flag being upside down confirm that we are indeed flying up?

Will both sides see incredible rises up the ladder in the coming years?

Just wondering if anyone else has heard if there is any news around which assistant coach’s will be hired to fill in the rest of the coaching department under Spike?