I'm finding football hard to watch and most of it is umpire mistakes .

I'm told the umpires are now allowed to check the stats before giving brownlow votes nowadays. So no problem looking at the free kick count and giving the three votes to themselves.

Edited Thursday at 11:064 days by YearOfTheDees

Who doesn’t love the Lasso rule?

Completely swung the game with an incorrect call. Then Martin kicks the critical goal

What a farce

Toe pokes off the ground called as free kicks

7 minutes ago, DubDee said:

Who doesn’t love the Lasso rule?

Completely swung the game with an incorrect call. Then Martin kicks the critical goal

What a farce

Toe pokes off the ground called as free kicks

IMHO the lasso rule has been a roaring success. It's kept the ball in play more often and removed most of the 50/50 boundary calls where umpires had to make a call about 'intention'. Obviously there will be examples of bad decisions, but I think this rule is a keeper

5 minutes ago, Big Col said:

IMHO the lasso rule has been a roaring success. It's kept the ball in play more often and removed most of the 50/50 boundary calls where umpires had to make a call about 'intention'. Obviously there will be examples of bad decisions, but I think this rule is a keeper

fair enough mate

I’m not a fan

seeing players shepard the ball out of play is not in keeping with the spirit of the game imo

The Cats had the umpires in their pocket, playing on own ground and Crows had a few of their best out. That tells me the farm boys are not very good.

20 minutes ago, Big Col said:

IMHO the lasso rule has been a roaring success. It's kept the ball in play more often and removed most of the 50/50 boundary calls where umpires had to make a call about 'intention'. Obviously there will be examples of bad decisions, but I think this rule is a keeper

But they overturned one bad decision then let a way more obvious bad decision go, the one that led to the Jack Martin goal.

Just like with every single rule, consistency is the key to success and acceptance.

1 hour ago, YearOfTheDees said:

I'm finding football hard to watch and most of it is umpire mistakes .

The rules being constantly changed for the worse has killed the game. For decades I watched 3-4 matches a weekend as a neutral. This year I’ve not made it through a single match that wasn’t a Melbourne match.

As a spectator sport, it’s dead. It completely lacks any sense of tension or strategy. The [censored] at the AFL alter the rules to manipulate how a team plays and remove options and strategies in the process. It’s become aerial ping pong with an abundance of scoring, and the inconsistent umpiring calls for already [censored] rules have made it unwatchable.

I don’t want to see mountains of goals kicked. The more goals there are, the less they mean and the less I care. I want to see teams fight for them or use smart strategy and skill to earn them. I don’t want to see free kicks awarded because an opposition player didn’t stand on the spot like a dog learning to toilet train when some fool yells STAND. It’s truly pathetic what the game has become.

The most gripping moments in footy to me were grand finals like Syd vs West Coast - low scoring, hard at it, and full of tension and drama. AFL matches now lack all of that.

Rant over. Hello darkness my old friend.

Cats winning at home with a heavily lopsided free kick count is no surprise. They’re a bog average football team. If they’re a contender this year, then footy is in seriously dire times. The talent pool to stretch soon to 19 and maybe 20 teams is really showing now.

2 hours ago, Ghostwriter said:

This has gotta be the most boring four-point-margin game ever 🥱

I actually dozed off on the couch early in the 4th quarter 🥱😁

On 24/03/2026 at 21:38, Ghostwriter said:

Gotta say, I’m happy as a pig in sch!tt with Essendon’s start to the season. Two 10-goal thumpings and there’s still many more to come. I revel in their misery. It never gets old. It never will. Go North this weekend!

10 hours ago, Ghostwriter said:

It’s embarrassing… trying desperately to hype up a game between Essendon and North and all they’ve got is a reference to a period at the turn of the century when both teams were successful. Bottom of the barrel right there.

@Ghostwriter, you've stumbled onto something psychologists call morbid curiosity — that involuntary compulsion to witness catastrophe even when the rational mind has already calculated the outcome. Baumeister's work on negativity bias tells us the human nervous system attends to negative events with far greater intensity than positive ones.

What you're describing — the inability to look away from Essendon's unfolding season — is a textbook case of involuntary attentional capture toward aversive stimuli. The prefrontal cortex has already processed the result. The limbic system doesn't care. It wants to witness.

And here's the darker truth that I find difficult to admit about myself: the spectacle only works because somewhere beneath the schadenfreude is the memory of when it mattered — when these clubs were genuinely dangerous. The slow-motion wreckage is only compelling against the backdrop of what once was velocity.

The media hype you rightly mock is simply the broadcaster's version of the same compulsion — dressing up attentional capture as appointment television. This is the AFL's version of MaFS . . . on steroids.

Watch the game, Ghosty. We both know you will. We all will. This is not tribal loyalty anymore. It is the human species fascination with the McCarb.

11 hours ago, Return to Glory said:

Feels like your normal Kardinia Park Freekickathon

It’s a huge reason why they make finals every year.

They rarely lose at their home fortress where everything goes their way.

35 minutes ago, Queanbeyan Demon said:

@Ghostwriter, you've stumbled onto something psychologists call morbid curiosity — that involuntary compulsion to witness catastrophe even when the rational mind has already calculated the outcome. Baumeister's work on negativity bias tells us the human nervous system attends to negative events with far greater intensity than positive ones.

What you're describing — the inability to look away from Essendon's unfolding season — is a textbook case of involuntary attentional capture toward aversive stimuli. The prefrontal cortex has already processed the result. The limbic system doesn't care. It wants to witness.

And here's the darker truth that I find difficult to admit about myself: the spectacle only works because somewhere beneath the schadenfreude is the memory of when it mattered — when these clubs were genuinely dangerous. The slow-motion wreckage is only compelling against the backdrop of what once was velocity.

The media hype you rightly mock is simply the broadcaster's version of the same compulsion — dressing up attentional capture as appointment television. This is the AFL's version of MaFS . . . on steroids.

Watch the game, Ghosty. We both know you will. We all will. This is not tribal loyalty anymore. It is the human species fascination with the McCarb.

That reminds me of Paul Roos' veil of negativity ...commonly known as mfcss🙂❤️💙

I also enjoy the Ess spiral - karma be damned!

Edited Thursday at 22:033 days by Lucifers Hero

Does anybody know the crowd figure last night? Thursday rainy night and looked like 15k where there. I love Thursday nights on the tv but would hate to have to go to a game then

16 hours ago, John Crow Batty said:

I found this interesting chart on teams playing Geelong at Geelong. Looks quite damning and the big drawing Melbourne based clubs have a hard time finding their way to sleepy hollow. The corruption of the draw is sickening.

Of COURSE we have had to play at that dungheap the most of any other club

11 hours ago, Big Col said:

IMHO the lasso rule has been a roaring success. It's kept the ball in play more often and removed most of the 50/50 boundary calls where umpires had to make a call about 'intention'. Obviously there will be examples of bad decisions, but I think this rule is a keeper

Whether you like th erule or not, how is a toe-poke a disposal? To dispose of the ball you first have to possess it.

2 hours ago, Queanbeyan Demon said:

@Ghostwriter, you've stumbled onto something psychologists call morbid curiosity — that involuntary compulsion to witness catastrophe even when the rational mind has already calculated the outcome. Baumeister's work on negativity bias tells us the human nervous system attends to negative events with far greater intensity than positive ones.

What you're describing — the inability to look away from Essendon's unfolding season — is a textbook case of involuntary attentional capture toward aversive stimuli. The prefrontal cortex has already processed the result. The limbic system doesn't care. It wants to witness.

And here's the darker truth that I find difficult to admit about myself: the spectacle only works because somewhere beneath the schadenfreude is the memory of when it mattered — when these clubs were genuinely dangerous. The slow-motion wreckage is only compelling against the backdrop of what once was velocity.

The media hype you rightly mock is simply the broadcaster's version of the same compulsion — dressing up attentional capture as appointment television. This is the AFL's version of MaFS . . . on steroids.

Watch the game, Ghosty. We both know you will. We all will. This is not tribal loyalty anymore. It is the human species fascination with the McCarb.

— <- that there is a ChatGPT tell - please attribute writing sources 😁 xo, or at a minimum, replace with your own - , or even ... 😇

How would I know? Well... 😅

Edited Thursday at 23:433 days by Engorged Onion

18 minutes ago, sue said:

Whether you like th erule or not, how is a toe-poke a disposal? To dispose of the ball you first have to possess it.

I'm of similar thinking, although I do think it's a bit iffy given how kicks off the ground are counted as a disposal, they must be deemed intentional to count as a disposal, so again comes back to AFL putting too many variables into the umpire's decision making.

1 hour ago, ucanchoose said:

Does anybody know the crowd figure last night? Thursday rainy night and looked like 15k where there. I love Thursday nights on the tv but would hate to have to go to a game then

they reported 20k. lowest crowd in Geelong since the redevelopment.

Side note: Anyone hear ANB after the loss interviewed by the broadcaster? He said that there will be a lot of "learnings" for the young Crows. Straight out of the Goodwin playbook

17 hours ago, John Crow Batty said:

I found this interesting chart on teams playing Geelong at Geelong. Looks quite damning and the big drawing Melbourne based clubs have a hard time finding their way to sleepy hollow. The corruption of the draw is sickening.

Interesting how, apart from GWS, Collingwood is the only AFL club that is close to an even win/loss record.

33 minutes ago, sue said:

Whether you like th erule or not, how is a toe-poke a disposal? To dispose of the ball you first have to possess it.

So if you toe poke it through for a goal it shouldn't count?

17 hours ago, Maldonboy38 said:

I will watch tonight with a leaning towards the Crows, but it is a bit of a meh weekend for games.

North to beat the Bummers, and then they sack Brad Scott, go and get James Hird, and the whole thing implodes down on Hird, Solomon, Sheedy and all those other entitled pie-in-the-sky armpits.( I will forgo the Monkey Shoulder and break out the Bunnahabhain 12yo if this happens).

Edited Friday at 00:093 days by Wodja

11 hours ago, Lord Travis said:

The rules being constantly changed for the worse has killed the game. For decades I watched 3-4 matches a weekend as a neutral. This year I’ve not made it through a single match that wasn’t a Melbourne match.

As a spectator sport, it’s dead. It completely lacks any sense of tension or strategy. The [censored] at the AFL alter the rules to manipulate how a team plays and remove options and strategies in the process. It’s become aerial ping pong with an abundance of scoring, and the inconsistent umpiring calls for already [censored] rules have made it unwatchable.

I don’t want to see mountains of goals kicked. The more goals there are, the less they mean and the less I care. I want to see teams fight for them or use smart strategy and skill to earn them. I don’t want to see free kicks awarded because an opposition player didn’t stand on the spot like a dog learning to toilet train when some fool yells STAND. It’s truly pathetic what the game has become.

The most gripping moments in footy to me were grand finals like Syd vs West Coast - low scoring, hard at it, and full of tension and drama. AFL matches now lack all of that.

Rant over. Hello darkness my old friend.

I really could not agree more. This post represents my thoughts word for word.

This incessant need to alter the rules every 2 seconds and force teams into playing a certain way and scoring more is not something I'm attracted to. Obviously there were necessary times to makes changes and evolve things like when congestion was getting out of control but the work they've done overall has tainted the spectacle.

I viewed this sport as having different ways to play it. Some more glamourous than others. The dour, flooding, stoppage seeking teams made the beauty of the quick, rebounding, skillful play even more to appreciate. In and under, contested games were beautiful in their own way.

Watching 4 matches on a weekend was so easy for me to do once, now I really can't watch more than our game unless it's highlights or the odd mini. Time is precious.

I can understand why people want scoring but I never thought people wanted it to this extent. It's like blast beats in heavy metal music, they are amazing but if you have them all the time then where are the lighter contrast elements to make you appreciate them more? It becomes bubblegum and having 6 games in a round where the score is 20 goals to 23 isn't going to make me watch the sport more.

16 minutes ago, mauriesy said:

So if you toe poke it through for a goal it shouldn't count?

Totally different. If you toe poke it through for a goal it would be intentional. I'll ignore hair-splitting arguments about a rare accidental toe-poke through the goals.

If the AFL wants to award a free for an accidental toe-poke between the arcs, fine. But don't use the word 'disposal' in the rule.

We'll be in last-touch land before long anyway. Already we have arguments about if it is deliberate if a player deliberately knocks the ball out to prevent a lasso free being awarded against his team.

21 minutes ago, Whispering_Jack said:

Interesting how, apart from GWS, Collingwood is the only AFL club that is close to an even win/loss record.

The AFL should have forced Geelong to standardise their ground dimensions to be in line with other AFL approved playing surfaces when Kardinia park was redeveloped. Is currently the extreme outlier to every other AFL ground in the country with its enormous length, narrow width, ruler straight outer wing and deep tight pockets. This gives the home side an enormous unfair advantage. Geelongs winning percentage is 84% at home where a normal home ground should be nowhere near that extreme.