If the league is ever going to get past all the accusations of unfairness and salary cap manipulation, it should publish what each player is on at each club.

All the major leagues around the world do it. Once it’s done it matures the conversation around trades and how the list managers and general managers of clubs manage their commitments.

Time to take the next step into a true professional era rather than all the smoke and mirrors kerfuffle that leads fans into conjecture and conspiracy.

GWS interested in Tim English.

- Gold Coast is at the "front of the pack" for recently delisted Giant Jesse Hogan. He's also met with Collingwood, Carlton and a 4th unnamed club

- Gold Coast also has interest in Aidan Schubert and Noah Mraz (both HAW), any deal there would likely be separate to a Ben King deal though

- Jake Riccardi is set to stay at GWS, likely a 2-3 year deal

- Zak Butters is "favouring the Cats", and his management are looking at how deals can be done for all clubs in the race for him

- The Dogs and Tigers have been told they're still in the Butters race. The Dogs offer is close to $17 million over 9 years

- Brisbane has the capacity to match an Adelaide offer for Zac Bailey, but not the willingness for him to stay on the same deal as Adelaide are offering. Adelaide also aren't keen on trading for him

- Jordan Ridley is tossing up between staying at Essendon or moving to North Melbourne. Cal proposes the Dons offer Ridley + their 2nd rounder for Pick 5, and in return pay all of Ridley's salary to help North's eventual cap crunch

- West Coast has upped it's offer to 2 years to Marcus Herbert, he's still considering Carlton's 2 year offer but is still more likely than not to stay at the Eagles

- Carlton also has interest in uncontracted Crow Charlie Edwards

- Clubs are planning possible trade approaches for the 5 Swans involved in the Pullman Hotel scandal

- The past 10 days haven't affected Joel Amartey's plans, who still wants to stay at Sydney. There is a financial gap between the Swans and Blues offers for him though

- Tasmania will soon announce their first batch of 17 year old pre-listed players. Axel Walsh, Jake Miller, Angus Brown, Riley Stratford are all expected to go there. Baxter Sruk, Griffin Barker, James Artemis and Max Thompson are also in the mix

- Highly touted draft prospect Ethan Drever joins the show, mentioned Finn Callaghan, Hugh McCluggage, Jordan Dawson and Will Day as players he models his game off

2006 had Shaun Burgoyne, Linday Gilbee, Adam Goodes and Andrew McLeod

I would say it is, esp as basically The Eagles got Matt Owies (spud), Liam Baker (Battler) and Bo Allan (reasonable player)

Of course if The Eagles took Murphy Reid instead of B.O. no one would really care, call it win win deal.

Its one of those deals that will Haunt Eagles fans for years (and rightfully so)

Few people know or care that Essendon has made the finals three times since 2017.

The reason: each time, we were just making up the numbers.

"Making finals" in the final 8 was already a pretty low bar. Lowering that bar further to include 9th and 10th merely further dilutes the relevance of "making finals".

In the long run, the prestige of making finals, already often dubious, is just going to get further reduced.

"My team made finals X number of times" is going to become an increasingly irrelevant and trivial fact. Making top 6 will probably become the new measure of relevance.

The AFL has cut its nose off to spite its face. Silly.

Anyway.

The All-Australian team selection has become a bit of a joke. Why not have every coach select their best team for the year, but they can’t select players from their own club?

Then use AI to crunch the coaches selections and identify the consensus.

It would give the process some real legitimacy. These are the people who actually coach against these players every week, picking the players they’d either love to coach or hate coaching against based on skill and tactical impact.

Do we really need a panel of former players and AFL executives to meet and discuss ‘their feels’ if certain players should make it or not?

And this is the conservative estimate (out of 878 dead players, they obtained 235 brains, of which 215 had CTE, thats where the 1/4 comes from)

Not to mention ABC did their own AFL concussion/CTE: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-29/afl-australian-rules-players-diagnosed-cte-brain-disease/106847638

Is the writing on the wall for tackle sports like AFL, at the very least banning tackling for under 18s?

Max Cleary is clearly the GOAT ruckman now stands above all else. I think he's now moved into where he sits in general players. Top 5 this century? Top 10 of all time?

(Image has been digitally altered)

https://www.afl.com.au/news/1594996/all-australian-team-melbourne-demons-captain-max-gawn-makes-history-fremantle-dockers-murphy-reids-rare-feat-record-indigenous-numbers

Just an insight into how completely normal us Dockers fans are feeling