Players off-contract for Roar: Manuel Arana, Thomas Broich, Joe Caletti, Joseph Katebian, Nathan Konstandopoulos, Jamie Maclaren, Jacob Pepper, Michael Theo, Avraam Papadopoulos

how have you not locked in Caletti yet? Crazy.

Papadopoulos is good.

Muscat, sign Caletti and Papadopoulous. You can keep the rest. 

The cricket pitch has been under covers and the Gabba’s sand-based outfield is allowing quick drainage.

There was no word from Stadiums Queensland why the AFLW grand final could not be played there in dry weather a week ago due to concerns about the pitch for next summer’s Ashes series, yet two men’s teams can play this weekend despite a belting from the weather.

The Lions’ neighbours, the Gold Coast Suns, called off their training yesterday, as did the NRL club Gold Coast Titans. They had no choice as their new training field, west of Southport, was under water.

The Titans players will now miss two days of training, so they will travel to play the Warriors in New Zealand on Sunday on very limited preparation.

The Brisbane Broncos played last night in Sydney, so escaped the worst of the weather. But the Queensland Reds will play the Hurricanes in Super Rugby tomorrow night at Suncorp Stad­ium, which will be followed by the A-League match between Brisbane Roar and Central Coast Mariners on Sunday.


“We’re confident both games will go ahead,” communications manager Greg Adermann said.

“This is vastly different to recent floods when it was the swollen Brisbane River from dam releases that pushed the water back up a labyrinth of pipes,” he said.

“But any decisions will be made closer to the day. The weather is expected to pass through. The field is fine even after today’s drenching.”

Neither Suncorp Stadium nor the Gabba makes the call this weekend. They can only offer advice.

The governing bodies of each code — AFL, NRL, FFA and SANZAAR — in conjunction with their clubs and broadcasters, will make ground inspections on game day before a final decision on play is made.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/lions-to-face-essendon-at-the-gabba-despite-cyclone-debbie-deluge/news-story/b26abe2c54409d2b9088c9cc92306327

@ JonoMV

No point in Caletti joining MV seeing as you guys never play youth, even when you have the chance due to international call ups

question : what does a partnership with a club actually invlove ?
Lots of platitudes are thrown around like.."creating an elite pathway for players as young as 6 "
How exactly ?
Do the Roar send coaches out each week to assess and then train these players ?
How hands on is it ? how do they monitor a players progress ?
Who actually coaches them ?
A real academy is where elite players are plucked from clubs and taken and intensively trained to maximise their talents...ie Messi
Anyone know how these Partnership type Academies work ?

@ miron Mercedes

I can tell you how Roars set up has been explained to my junior club, we have nearly 2,000 kids playing so are on Roars radar.

Roars academy will run its own teams from U8 to U20 for both boys and girls. This is starting top down with the U20s in place now so presumably they're working their way down as Logan comes on line. So Roar will have hundreds of kids under their direct supervision within their own academy, all running out in the Orange & Black which will be weird when they verse us lol

Partner clubs (and we won't be one) act as an extension to that academy and will cooperate in scouting, training, coaching, and medical areas. There will be a flow of people both ways which will include both players and coaches. And Roar coaches will invest time upskilling the best coaches at these clubs. No one has said how many partner clubs there will be but the feeling seems to be 4-5 in Brisbane itself and 4-5 more in state.

Then you get to non-partner clubs, which includes my junior club, Roars TD (Drew Sherman) has already been out on several occasions and met - and impressed -our senior coaches and explained what they're looking for in a kid, how to evaluate them for skills, and taken two of our best coaches for training and development which has been magnificent - the nearest equivalent courses are all in Sydney or Melbourne which proves prohibitive. What firm this cooperation takes is unclear but they asked us what we were looking for and we basically said "upskilling our coaches" and for them it seems to be an extension to their scouting system.

Thanks Waz. That sounds pretty positive .

There's an open Fan Forum this coming Wednesday with Mark Kingsman & Ross Aloisi. They're going to be asking for input on the refreshed club badge for next season as well. Details via Facebook:

https://m.facebook.com/events/1807019559515858?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A%22104%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D&aref=104

p.u.i.

ive watched more premier league this season than ever.  i think maclaren is comparable to aguero.  sure he isnt going to hit 27 in 37 in the same comps.  but as is i reckon maclaren would be looking at at least 15 in the same comps if he was in front of the same man city team under the same coach.

@ Broadmeadow Brah

Maccers weakness lies in the ones he misses. The header tonight is forgivable as he's clearly getting better but the first half miss (a simple feint shot would have led to a tap in and 1-0 Roar) and the second half one on one that he missed are typical of him.

If he gets a good coach and plays in the right team he'll develop those weaknesses - then I'd agree he can step up but he's still two years away from top flight football imo

Get the next move wrong and he's back in Australia in two years like taggart

We saw the real issue around the weaknesses of Macca last night.He is still a good player,but he will struggle if he goes overseas.
But we also saw the real issues for the Roar team last night.Their style of play is just too loose and they are incapable of attacking without opening up at the back.
Players like Holman,Arana and Borrello are also frustrating to watch.They are all over the place with form.They do good things they do bad thingsit's embarrassing when Caletti ,a youngster sets the standard of how to be disciplined in attack and defence and not keep turning over possession.Watching Holman trotting around like a park player sets a poor example for other players.
Unfortunately last night confirmed for me that Roar are just pretenders making up the numbers.That last twenty minutes was amazingly poor.The lack of drive and enthusiasm was shocking.
I have no idea what Aloisi will do next year ,but the current Roar squad and style of play won't win anything.

I think that Maclaren is crazy if he goes anywhere but the Roar, next year.

He is improving his game.  Imagine how many goals he scores if he has a 50-70% success rate with his one on ones and simple tap ins.  Potentially, i think he could improve these areas at the roar for certain and it guarantees that if he hits good form, he will be in the mix for the soccerroos. IN turn, this gives him his best chance of getting a big money overseas contract, or a well placed overseas contract.

At any other A league club, there is a huge danger that their game is not built around him and he does not maintain the prolific scoring rate.  At overseas clubs, a few of those easy misses he has been making and he wont play a game for a year.

I agree with your assessment of Roar, in that they are currently pretenders.  But, dont forget the problems (which were mostly midfield and poor defence) were exposed by playing an understrength side.  Kristansen for Pepper improves that side massively.  Presumably Papadopolous for probably North is a slight improvement also.  And Broich for Arana is another big improvement.  I do think that they are still capable of winning the grand final, if they play a full strength side in the semi and grand finals.  But it will take a huge turn around in form.  

Roar may be capable of winning if they play at their best and SFC at their worst.But based on form and their leaky defence ,I think not.
SFC are really hardened and practiced at defensive structure and don't have to do anything other than do what they so every week.The other teams are way behind and have no form.

All the goals from this season, been busy the last few months but managed to chuck them all together in the past couple days. Quality is bit low but will upload a 1080p copy later tonight or tomorrow morning to youtube.

I am thinking of doing a Thomas Broich tribute video soon and want to add as many special moments of brilliance from him. Obviously there are so many moments and I can't remember them all, I guess the only way would be going through every game, which I will probably have to do. 

If anyone could try and remember some moments to help it would be much appreciated, tekkers, nutmegs, passing display etc Goals are easy enough to find since as he does not have that many but he does so much more than that and I want to capture that in the video.

Cheers.

Broich put away a header at the end of last season that made me comment at the time "Shit that was copy book perfect.  That's exactly what you are trying to teach."

Next season membership renewals are out with a 12 month payment plan - Den $300 with $110 for kids. Haven't got other prices

Be interesting offseason with a few few players coming off contract. Especially some of the senior players. With Broich being the big one left out. 

Striker and a creative player is a must. 

Agreed.

A disappointing performance all around really; and that's where Maccers limitation shows up the most. He might as well have been in North Korea tonight.

There's not a lot wrong with the squad but man, you have to ask questions of the coaching team - they can't win fuck all away from home.

Which is why I want Ross gone. You've got two inexperienced guys running the show.

Also Brisbane really lacked a creative player. Holman and oar are not what is needed.

I think we need to get a big strong striker that can hold up the ball for the likes of holman, Borello and oar to play off. Plus be strong in the air for an oar cross. If we have oar and Holman as our marquee you need to build around them. 

90 minutes of being steamrolled put a downer on things.

That's two years in a row where we have fallen just short. I thought we over-achieved last season and this season were a little unfortunate with injuries. Never really had our top 11 fit and on the park consistently - lack of cohesion was evident tonight.

All trolling aside, that looked like a Melbourne Heart performance. Lifeless and devoid of creativity, with Maclaren and Oar chasing scraps- which is made worse by the fact that we weren't even that great tonight.

Last season I thought the Roar were a natural DM away from winning the league, oi got that in Kristensen but now look even further behind.

I think Aloisi needs to move away from the 433 and blood Caletti next to Kristensen with Holman in front of them as for as good as his work rate is, he's much better around the box moving into the channels.

Keogh for Perth holds the ball up so well, would be nice to have someone like that for a change. 

feel sorry for the roar with that shithouse long balling put on tonight.  when the roar keep possession they are dangerous and dictate the game.  how the hell is your striker going to get a touch when you lob the ball up to a 1 on 2 time after time after time.

Roar have been lobbing it long for a while now and it has worked out on quite a few occasions on the counter this season, but of course it should not be used all the time. There was one one moment when Oar was about half way up the pitch, plenty of time to keep going and do something with it but he decides to cross it from the half way line, with no chance of Jmac doing anything with it. 

@jlm8695 - It would be interesting to see how tonight's game would go if MV were the ones who had played two additional games in the past 9 days (including 1 that went 120 mins) and had two experienced players who hadn't played for a month coming in.

Having said that, I have no idea what aloisi was thinking in not saving Broich for this match. He must be the only person on the country who thought we would have more chance of winning by not playing broich.

Yep, probably the worst thing to take from tonight, of course it sucks not to make it through but they just didn't look up for it tonight. Mckay should never have started, I don't think he should have got a year extension either. We looked so much better while he was away, Caletti really is a great young talent. 

JAs has got us playing a 4-2-3-1 formation not 433. Can only think of a handful of games where we've played 433. The issue is Maccers is poor in 4231 - how many goals has be scored against the top two sides (1?) versus the rest?? Broich doesn't suit that formation either.

Let's just hope the bakries give him a winter with normal recruiting none of this last minute signings where players aren't fit until after Christmas ffs

I just can't wait for more of our youth squad to come through. They play on the groud and always look to play out first before going long.