Still, can you really expect much from a couple of Dawk supporters?

:p

He’s definitely not hindering the development of Pears and Hurley - if he was, he’d be taking the no.1 forward each week, like Essendon knows he can, and not letting the young defenders (Pears, Hurley, Hooker, Daniher) get the experience they do from playing on the competition’s best.

You also implied that Fletcher is being dragged along by the younger defenders until he gets his “gold watch”, which suggests to me that you haven’t seen any of Essendon’s last six games - he has been the glue that holds the backline together, and is preparing these youngsters for his retirement by giving them the big jobs, not the opposite.

You say he hasn’t had an opponent for years, which is incorrect in that he just takes a weaker forward so that he can play this all-encompassing role and take a man out of the game at the same time. Look at last weekend’s example (from FanFooty, monty): “Moved from Post to Riewoldt in Q4″. You guessed it, Post kicked two in the last quarter to seal the game for the Tigers.

He’s played on guys like Lockett, Carey, Modra, Dunstall, Kernahan and Ablett Sr as a youngster and even last year he was playing on Brown, Fevola, Pavlich and Riewoldt, so he certainly has the ‘flexibility’ to take a star forward.

The Bombers lost 3 out of 5 games while he was injured (not when Essendon had its good run of wins), proving his worth to the side. Re James Hird’s comments, Fletcher was easily Essendon’s best player for the whole day (in my opinion), which is to be expected, in that a defender was our best player in game where the team was beaten, because the ball is always down there! It certainly doesn’t suggest that he is detrimental to the team, if you said that about Dom Cassisi in PA’s loss to Melbourne, for example, you’d be called a fool: a player playing well in a loss and then being blamed for it is ridiculous.

If you’d watched Essendon this year, you’d notice that Pears and Hooker have both stepped up (like Bower, as you mentioned), and with the presence of Fletcher, and they take the opposition’s best forwards each week and consistently win. Bower’s also two years older than Hurley and Pears, who are both just 19, so that comparison is slightly flawed. And if you look at Pears’ stats, he’s been averaging 17.5 disposals a game since Fletcher came back in round 12, which is fairly impressive for any 19-year-old, let alone a key position defender, so he certainly does get the opportunity to rebound and attack.

Its not a curse that we have to play Fletcher - he’s one of the most underrated players in the AFL, and I’m sure Matthew Knights is in a better position than you guys to know whether Fletcher should or should not be playing. Sure, Knights’ job is to get rid of the dead wood (see Jason and Mark Johnson, Peverill, Michael etc) but his decision to continue playing Fletcher shows that he is not dead wood at all, and still playing a vital role in the development of a successful backline.

I’d like to take issue with your definition of bottoming out, too. Essendon have finished 12th, 15th, 13th and 13th in the last four season, and that, to me, is also bottoming out - a common misconception is that you have to do a St Kilda or a Carlton, and get all these number one draft picks to build a successful side. Look at Geelong as a prototype: their lowest position in recent years was 12th in 2003, and their side will go down as one of the best, even if there’s only one flag to their name.

Anyway, keep up the (mostly) good work! Just had to get that all off my chest.