On 24/03/2019 at 04:58, Petraccattack said:

Saints by 1 point over Gold Coast.  Would have loved the Suns to get up.   

Saints are going nowhere.

nor are the Suns except (I hope) to Tasmania

Thought GWS might struggle a little this year after losing some good players but they are doing okay against the Bombers.

42-17 half way through second quarter

peptides have continued on with their preseason form, and look terrible

the only reason the dons arent down by 60 before half time is that the giants aren't kicking straight.. all over them.

 

 

If the giants kicked straight this would definitely be over. But seriously only 2 goals halfway through a 3rd quarter for a team that was meant to go places this yer. I hope the giants thrash them and people talk about how bad the scum are. I know they don't have daniher but they still have got good players and wasn't shield meant to be there saviour?

 

Bombers need to bring back 'the weapon' and Shane Charters. At least they were interesting then.

come on giants beat them by 100. At least this result has cheered me up a bit. I was hoping the giants would win but never saw them winning by this much. 

Essendon has bumped Melbourne off the back page for the next week.

massacre

still reckon they will be okay in the long run 

  On 24/03/2019 at 06:41, TeamPlayedFine39 said:

Essendon has bumped Melbourne off the back page for the next week.

It's one positive to take from the weekend.  Bombers have been absolutely deplorable.

bombers fans going nuts on twitter about there team. Its good to have footy back. 

Oh damn. Is this really happening? A storied club, a team fancied (by the most astute of experts) to challenge for the flag ... falling in a heap and scoring just over a goal a quarter ...

And now they'll be bottom of the ladder and wondering if they just saw a sneak preview of their whole season.

Disappointing. Really, really disappointing.

Coach killing performance by the bummers........silver lining

Freo on 75 points with 42 inside 50s at half time. Way to go Ross.

Dockers smashing Norf at the moment, they’re looking a lot cleaner with their ball movement and making smarter decisions. If they can maintain this form you’d think Hogan might bring them close to the 8

Freo up by 82 over North,  not even halfway through the last quarter yet.

Norf and Bummers bottom 2. Brilliant.

Wow just saw the final score. How did freo suddenly find goal kickers and start kicking high scores? Ha have a nice flight home nth and brad. Hopefully tomorrow people are talking about essenscum and nth

Poor Dom, he would want to see the back of Optus stadium rapidly. 148 point combined losing margin in his last two games.

Good to see Ben Brown get looked after at least, 6 frees for 0 against.

Freo competitive could hurt WCE's top 2 chances.

WCE would have banked both games into their calculations

This weekend raises some interesting discussions, but for me 3 main things:

1. The general quality of football was very poor across most games, with many quarters almost unwatchable. Some atrocious kicking, dropped marks, handballs to no-one. Most games saved by some amazing end-to-end goals that were great to see, and/or some close scores at times the only point of interest. As a footy fan I found  most of it fairly boring.

2. Round 1 is absolutely no indication of how this season will unfold. Dees, Eagles, Crows and Pies are nowhere near as bad as they played and we will see a pattern of gradual increase that we saw from Sydney in the Roos era, where he gave no credence to the pre-season games and started most seasons slowly, building  through the home and away rounds towards finals. 

3. Freo, Lions and Blues will worry a few this year.

  On 24/03/2019 at 10:02, Dee Zephyr said:

Poor Dom, he would want to see the back of Optus stadium rapidly. 148 point combined losing margin in his last two games.

Good to see Ben Brown get looked after at least, 6 frees for 0 against.

I thought the new interpretation of the hands in the back rule was going to stop all of the free kicks players like Brown received. 

  On 24/03/2019 at 05:00, Diamond_Jim said:

nor are the Suns except (I hope) to Tasmania

GWS, Carlscum, St Kilda or Norf to Tassie.

Grassroots  participation in Qld is through the roof - justifies two teams.

  On 24/03/2019 at 12:26, Ethan Tremblay said:

I thought the new interpretation of the hands in the back rule was going to stop all of the free kicks players like Brown received. 

Not sure how you could develop a rule to stop favoritism of an umpires pet.

On a serious note, I wish they would stop paying free kicks for some pretty incidental high contact.  Only have to give a feathers touch of anything above the shoulder and they are paying it.  I know they need to protect the neck and head, but some of it is just plain silly in a game of such close combat/contact.  Honestly it even frustrates me when these frees go our way, because you know there will be one comming back the other way at some point, potentially an even more critical time.

My perception from what I watched was also that the umpires went pretty soft on the deliberate out of bounds rule this weekend.

Went to the Freo/North games (son was playing the HT auskick, he was the dancing boy when they showed them :  )  )   The skills by North were shocking, basic, errors, fumbling, made Freo looked good.  But Freo did put their foot down and it showed they could be dangerous at least at home this year.  What to do with McCarthy as they weren't even going to play him and he had a day out.

It was a really hard round to judge some sides and it seems the JLT standard went a week longer for skills  and touch wise.