Singin' the song of sorrow.

[Bitter but optimistic 22,239]

Bring back memories of your youth Uncle Bitter?

A Christian Bros education may have done you some good Moonie!

[Dr John Dee 1,057]

Bertrand Russel's Teapot comes to sports analysis! "If you can't see it, that's because you haven't looked hard enough."

For what its worth, I grew up in league-land and never saw AFL goalposts until my late teens.

The most basic problem with League is that it has the entry prerequisite of having a stocky, fat-necked enough body shape to cope with the repetitive frontal collisions. That excludes a large proportion of potential players.

It would be like having an AFL league with only people over 195cm able to compete. Suddenly Jake Spencer is one of your most skilful players.

Also, the nauseating macho posturing culture on and off the field does a fair job of cutting the potential talent pool.

(a) that's not what Russell's teapot is about. It's about the burden of proof in relation to an unfalsifiable proposition of which there are none involved here;

(b) nice stereotyping (Johnathan Thurston & Benji Marshall say 'hi'). While there's a tendency towards a particular body shape in league, like any other sport it's often the departures from the norm who provide the measure of its possibilities in skills. Ball handling, passing and evasion are now at extraordinarily refined levels and have nothing much to do with 'fat necked enough body shape'

© the analogy is of course absurd and perhaps meant to be if the bar is set at 195 cm. But I wouldn't want to be a kid who's my height now and dreaming of an AFL future;

(d) no argument with the final observation.

[La Dee-vina Comedia 16,754]

Wow. Sigmund Freud and Bertrand Russell both get a mention in the one thread. Maybe this is what's wrong with football. Too many thinkers.