1 hour ago, wheaters31 said:

Interesting that Melksham was brought in from outside the four emergencies announced yesterday.

I wonder if one of the four emergencies got it as well as ANB, and Melksham was brought in.

As I said when the team was announced..... there was not much coverage for the mids in the emergencies....

58 minutes ago, Demonland said:

They will be out of isolation but will have missed the whole week of training.

Thats what I was inferring

I would think the AFL may be getting a bit nervous with additional players dropping out daily.  A real risk to infecting Hawks players, umpires and other officials.

I know their rules are to draw on reserve players to field a side which isn't a problem for us but the risk of infecting others is real.

Hopefully, they switch to PCR tests tomorrow morning and just before the game.

From Hawks bigfooty re an SEN Mitchell interview:

"It was an interesting take from Sam in his chat with the brain's trust (Kingy and Cornesy). He said score involvements are a good indicator of who you should tag and not just disposals. He said Petracca and Neal-Bullen were the highest SI dees, which was really interesting".

ANB out will make them quite happy.

Lucky we have the depth to cover them, Melksham is a quality player. We wouldn't want many more that would seriously test our depth. 

20 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

Last time it happed was when Todd Viney coached the team for half a dozen games, following the sacking of Dean Bailey.  Todd actually did a half decent job too I thought from memory.  Won a game and at least seemed to have the boys playing with some spirit an intensity. 

My memories have to politely disagree on this one Balls, not due to a suggestion of incompetence though. We were still sitting only the one game outside of the eight following the Geelong flogging, with five rounds to go. It was a tough but not insurmountable task, but in my opinion Todd was only after basic respectability again rather than driving outright competitiveness and taking risks to make the finals. I appreciate that it would have taken a lot to get us off the deck after the demoralisation and subsequent disruptions, but I don't think he even tried to get us through, which seemed to me at the time counter to the Viney character. He was just care-taking, and I also reckon we tanked that final round.  

5 players down and likely more to come

hawks still paying 4.80

what a world 

2 hours ago, CYB said:

Day after Queens bday. Someone in the team needs to host a COVID party and bolster immunity for the remainder of the season. 
 

There is a 10 day break. 

In the radio interview he did on SEN on Demon Day (refer Demonland thread of same name), Garry Pert mentioned that most players at the club had already had COVID, so hopefully this is just flushing out the dregs that hadn't. 

From what I understand it is possible to get COVID twice, but it might also depend on how recient or more significantly distant the original infection as to if the players could be deemed to be 'immune' and not subject to iso rules.

In the same interview Pert also mentioned that COVID prevention protocols at the club outside of onfeild training had been stepped up i.e. mask wearing, meetings via zoom etc.

1 hour ago, Skuit said:

My memories have to politely disagree on this one Balls, not due to a suggestion of incompetence though. We were still sitting only the one game outside of the eight following the Geelong flogging, with five rounds to go. It was a tough but not insurmountable task, but in my opinion Todd was only after basic respectability again rather than driving outright competitiveness and taking risks to make the finals. I appreciate that it would have taken a lot to get us off the deck after the demoralisation and subsequent disruptions, but I don't think he even tried to get us through, which seemed to me at the time counter to the Viney character. He was just care-taking, and I also reckon we tanked that final round.  

It was a while back and you might well be right with some of your assertions there @Skuit, however would we have actually acheived anything much making finals that year?  Yes, establishing a winning culture would have been good, but I think from where we were, just reestablishing basic competitiveness and belief was what we required.  When Paul Roos came into the club, those were his priorities and my recollection was that Todd went about it with a similar approach and objectives.

I think it's also worth noting, that I don't think Todd had any aspirations of ever being the head/senior coach (in fact quite the opposite), so in this respects, caretaker coach was really all it was ever going to be and perhaps that had it's limits at the end of the season with respects to player buy in?

Interesting that the list of players out with Covid includes basically one player from every 'line' on field. Would seem very difficult to contain that, but on the other hand you'd expect to get these 5 or so back next week, and as mentioned many of our players have already had Covid. Confirmed on the Gus & Gawny podast, too!

Ramp up the protocols, flatten the curve, all that jazz.

Booster shots in the bye round, all set for September.

In the meantime, trust in the power of Bowey to get us the win over the Hawks.

 

4 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

In the radio interview he did on SEN on Demon Day (refer Demonland thread of same name), Garry Pert mentioned that most players at the club had already had COVID, so hopefully this is just flushing out the dregs that hadn't. 

From what I understand it is possible to get COVID twice, but it might also depend on how recient or more significantly distant the original infection as to if the players could be deemed to be 'immune' and not subject to iso rules.

In the same interview Pert also mentioned that COVID prevention protocols at the club outside of onfeild training had been stepped up i.e. mask wearing, meetings via zoom etc.

i believe it's absolutely possible to catch covid 2 or more times, but (for most people) the more often your immune system has seen the virus the quicker it will react to it's presence therefore you may not show symptoms.

Unfortunately this dosent mean much on the AFL because I'd imagine they have mandatory testing so even if you aren't displaying symptoms your still out.

It will be interesting to see what happens as the rules relax further. I can see a world where covid is treated similar to the flu(influenza virus not the common cold). It's not illegal to be out and about withe the flu but it's good manners to stay home.

35 minutes ago, Josh said:

i believe it's absolutely possible to catch covid 2 or more times, but (for most people) the more often your immune system has seen the virus the quicker it will react to it's presence therefore you may not show symptoms.

Unfortunately this dosent mean much on the AFL because I'd imagine they have mandatory testing so even if you aren't displaying symptoms your still out.

It will be interesting to see what happens as the rules relax further. I can see a world where covid is treated similar to the flu(influenza virus not the common cold). It's not illegal to be out and about withe the flu but it's good manners to stay home.

From what I understand, the iso rules that apply to the general public are that you don't need to iso for 2 months (to be confirmed and may vary between states) after you have recovered from COVID (i.e. standard 7 day iso rule doesn't apply). Would depend if the AFL also apply this rule or something stricter.

7 hours ago, Lucifers Hero said:

I would think the AFL may be getting a bit nervous with additional players dropping out daily.  A real risk to infecting Hawks players, umpires and other officials.

I know their rules are to draw on reserve players to field a side which isn't a problem for us but the risk of infecting others is real.

Hopefully, they switch to PCR tests tomorrow morning and just before the game.

I have the sensible answer to your question......

 

All Umpires  and players should wear N95 masks during play.

3 minutes ago, David-Demon said:

I have the sensible answer to your question......

 

All Umpires  and players should wear N95 masks during play.

How long would player masks last in a tackle...

...not to mention the possibility of spreading the virus from handling the ball...

This is going to get very messy very quickly

Reinfections aren’t even a question (to the comments “I believe it’s possible”). It’s happening right now. Most states don’t publish data on it (some don’t even record it). Not yet anyway. Victoria I think does, with IIRC 10k reinfections but I didn’t look at the breakdowns by variant, time lags etc.

Infection doesn’t confer immunity forever either.

With the new BA.4 and new 2.x.x.x (forgot its exact strain), expected to become the dominant strains really quickly, and with their infectiousness at the same level as measles (which should  alarm everyone given vaccines aren’t sterilising), things are going to get a little wild.

Not sure what the AFL can do. What happens if an entire best 22 is knocked out. 

At some point too, I wonder if we’ll need to consider getting away from the idea a player will have mild/no symptoms then hit the track again right away. This seems to imply a measure of caution may be needed:

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/54/19/1174

On a personal level, masks are probably a prudent precaution when in public. 
 

Be interesting to see how things progress with the Brace TB vaccine trial vs Covid goes and whether prophylactics like the Heparin nasal spray start to come into play. Or the US Army one.

Brace: https://www.mcri.edu.au/brace

Heparin:

https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2021/december/nasal-spray-to-fight-covid-19-heads-to-clinical-trial
 

US Army: 

https://www.cnet.com/health/a-universal-vaccine-to-end-covid-pandemics-its-in-the-armys-sights/

Edited April 29, 20222 yr by Superunknown

Who knows what this mornings testings will reveal. Not out of the woods yet.Would expect further late changes!🤯

1 hour ago, Lucifers Hero said:

How long would player masks last in a tackle...

...not to mention the possibility of spreading the virus from handling the ball...

Innovate.

Sports masks and there would need to be a new demasking rule bought in to pay a penalty if one player interfered with the mask of another or something 🤣

2 minutes ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

Innovate.

Sports masks and there would need to be a new demasking rule bought in to pay a penalty if one player interfered with the mask of another or something 🤣

I meant the masks might just slide off or beak off.

And, it is a lot harder to breathe with a mask even when walking for exercise, let alone breathing to play elite sport.  Could be wrong but don't see masks as feasible on the field.

5 is more than enough ... NO MORE .... please !!!

Interesting that out of all the 5 players not one is one of our depth/VFL regulars.

#conspiracy 

6 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Interesting that out of all the 5 players not one is one of our depth/VFL regulars.

#conspiracy 

True, but none of our uninjured A graders - May/Lever/Gawn/Langdon/Oliver/Petracca ... 

I suspect ANB isn’t showing any symptoms at all given he trained. About 20% of the people I’ve known who tested positive had no symptoms. I got sick but bounced back quickly - but even my gym sessions were at 60-80% for the first week or so back. It definitely makes it hard for elite athletes and I’d expect all involved to be down in output for 2 weeks following. 

Also, and this is one for the track watchers - Wondering if post Christmas any of these lads were away from Melbourne when the first wave struck? There’s a lot of SA and WA boys out.

Does someone have the stats for the games played by players coming into the side today as against those going out?

13 hours ago, gs77 said:

I'll be spewing if Oliver's consecutive games streak gets torpedoed by this bloody virus in the coming days/weeks.

Yeah, but I'll spew more if Bowey's does!!

...and what's with all this spewing stuff about?  I thought COVID was more a case of needing to buy more TP.

Edited April 30, 20222 yr by Rodney (Balls) Grinter

I think the clubs approach to this has been correct in terms of acknowledging the reality that a week like this was inevitable and it's much better to have that happen at week 7 than later in the season. 

really hoping to see a really strong performance from Bedford and Melksham in particular, even McDonald, just to really keep the pressure on the guys in the 22 to hold their spot.