Save it for trade week Andain, it's Round 1.

The season is far from over but.....

a bit early in the season to be starting such threads. Perhaps we should have a thread called posters who should never post again instead

I don't know.

You're right though, 2008 is a development year.

I would say we are developing players and they were in the team ahead of more experienced campaigners such as Saddo and Wiggo: Bower, Jamison, Grigg, Gibbs, Murphy, Edwards, Betts and Jackson, and I bet if fit we would have added Kreuzer and Hammer to that list. That's 9 kids out of 22.

A few of them have already gone past other kids too, let alone more experienced players like Russell and Blackwell. We're still finding out more about the kids as their bodies mature.

Armfield, Pfieffer and Browne haven't played an Ants game yet. Do we play Benjamin and Aisake too? What add another 5 kids to the 9 mentioned....then who do you leave out? Banno? That's one. That's not the answer.

One thing is for sure, we can't fit everyone into 22.

I would have thought Pfieffer would have been called up in Rd 1, although I hadn't selected him in my team. Synbad expected him to play every game, and Synners aint a bad judge.

Anderson is underdone but is a proven contributor who requires more game time. Is he next in line ahead of Armfield, Pfieffer and Browne?

Look, there's a lot of kids in the team, ie young bodies getting accustomed to senior footy, and the 3 new seniors are a bit underdone. It's a team game and a blend of youth and experience is needed, but they all need to be match fit and then we can find out what the team can do.

Give it a chance I say; it's a development year. There will be improvement in the kids who played yesterday and the stamina of the seniors will come to them as it did before.

I'm not head hunting. Bannister doesn't take the game on as I would like, but hey that's maybe what Banno did is what Ratts wanted him to do.

I don't know.

What I do know is that we are going to climb up the ladder sooner rather than later, and kids like Aisake will break into the team this year.

It will take time.

If we are depending on Jordan Bannister to save us games then we need to rethink...JB will probably be playing his last year but he wasnt the reason we lost.

Likewise if we are depending on Darren Pfeiffer to win us games then its going to be a long season....

Both of them are minor cogs in the team, some of you need to rethink who and what wins you games and its not Bannisters and Pfieffers

Its your Blue Chippers who win and lose you games, the players who play the major positions......if I put Jonothan Brown and Chad Cornes in last nights lineup it would have been how far Carlton....what Bannister did or didnt do wouldnt be an issue, Saddington, Wiggins could have played as well and the result would have been us winning with one leg in the air.....

I really think Jamo is going to be special.

He had a hard night but showed glimpses of his talent.

A bit of a spiderman our Jamo.

If it wasn't clear to everyone before it should be clear to everyone now that we aren't going to be shooting up the ladder this year to challange for a final eight position, despite the high upside that our team possesses as the season wears on with Judd, Stevens, Cloke, Setanta and Hadley gradually regaining their matchfitness which was clearly lacking against the Tigers on Thursday.

Now I'm not calling for tanking or any of that stupid nonsense that abounded on these boards last year. What I'm calling for is for the club to make a decision that every player who's clearly not going to be part of our long term future, within reason, should be left in the twos and be never given another opportunity again. These players aren't just the obvious older fringe players like Wiggins, Saddington and Bannister but players who increasingly look like they won't make it at AFL level (such as Blackwell who sadly is too small and slow with poor disposal).

Despite what that idiot Libba thinks playing the kids, knowing that they'll be the ones who carry us into a brighter future, isn't tanking and is the most sensible thing for a club to do when they're in the situation we are in. Carlton isn't going to win the premership, or play finals, so lets work towards the future by giving opportunities to players like Pfeffier, Armfield, Browne, Aisake, and co. The question has to be asked, would Pfeffier have been any worse an option that Bannister against the Tigers, would Deledio have kicked more goals, and does Bannister have more of a future at the club than Darren? My answer to all three is no and sometimes I wonder why the club doesn't think the same way.

Of course that's all easy to say after we lost. Maybe Ratten believed that Pfeffier was slightly underdone, or that Bannister would do a much better job and that a guarenteed victory would be more beneficial to the other players than Pfeffier getting a game. Whatever his reasons, I'm sure he knows more about footy than myself, now that we've lost our opening match and are looking at a bleak month ahead prehaps we should finally start paying more than lipservice to the youth policy were meant to have and actually play the kids instead of letting them rot in the VFL. It's harsh on players like Wiggins and Bannister who are, by all reports, great clubman but we need to look to the future and they just aren't it.

I really think Jamo is going to be special.

He had a hard night but showed glimpses of his talent.

A bit of a spiderman our Jamo.

An area of concern from Thursday night was the lack of pace. It has to be addressed. We have too many players who simply havent got natural speed.