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It's a nice read, I'm interested in the author's take on Oscar Baker - as the only 'inside news' I get is from Demonland - and not sure where he sits.... https://www.theroar.com.au/2019/01/29/melbourne-2019-season-preview-best-22-and-predicted-finish/

Any action that removes even the smallest amount of autonomy from the clubs is a bad move IMO. Let them focus on ruining the game by changing multiple rules each year without sufficient analysis. I think the problem with the AFL, and even society in general, is that they constantly feel the need to legislate against perceived problems. I'm reading an interesting book at the moment which suggests that the solution to any problem only causes new problems. In this case, lets say we enforce these clauses in all contracts. Great, now players are legally obligated to not partake in dangerous activities. Now here are the new problems - how is this stuff enforced, proactively or reactivity and how much time and effort will need to be allocated for that? What are the outcomes for a player caught wake boarding in December? Who does the initial assessments of what a dangerous activity is? What happens when players are found to be getting injured doing activities that weren't deemed dangerous? (duty of care now comes into it). I dunno, that seems like a lot of effort and resources simply because a handful of players have accidents over the off season. At some point everyone should accept that you can't prevent everything, bad things happen to people with good intentions and that life is full of problems that don't necessarily need to be addressed with more legalese.

Why would you break your shoulder, then dislocate it?

Just so glad I got to see it in the flesh! Being the one game I attended (living in Sydney), it was the right choice! Such a great game!!!

Hey @binman - great thread but I thought I'd condense all the rule changes into a block. Many are unaware of the changes (at least in detail) so here's the overview. Traditional playing positions at centre bounces Clubs must have six players inside both 50m arcs, with one player inside the goalsquare. Four midfield players must start inside the centre square with the two wingmen stationed along the wing. Kick-ins At kick-ins, a player will no longer need to kick to himself to play on from the goal square. Following a behind, the man on the mark will be brought out to 10m from the top of the goal square, rather than the existing five metres. Marks and free kicks in defence When defenders mark or receive a free kick within nine metres of their own goal, the man on the mark will be brought in line with the top of the goalsquare. Runners and Water carriers Team runners may only enter the playing surface after a goal has been kicked and must exit before play restarts. Umpire contact Players will be prohibited from setting up behind the umpire at centre bounces. 50m penalties The player with the ball: Must be allowed to advance the mark by 50m without the infringing player delaying the game. Will be able to play on while the 50m penalty is being measured out. Kicking for goal after the siren A player who has been awarded a mark or free kick once play has ended: Will now be able to kick across their body using a snap or check-side kick But must kick the ball directly in line with the man on the mark and the goal. Marking contests The 'hands in the back’ rule interpretation has been repealed so a player can now: Place his hands on the back of his opponent to protect his position in a marking contest Provided he does not push his opponent in the back. Ruck contests: prior opportunity A ruckman who takes direct possession of the ball from a bounce, throw-up or boundary throw-in will no longer be regarded as having had prior opportunity. Where there is uncertainty over who is the designated ruckman, the ruckman for each team will still be required to nominate to the field umpire.

Poor old Demon supporters! Foxtel have been showing selected "classic" matches since the early 80's. Apparently we haven't been in ANY of them. I know we were pathetic in most of the 80s, and 2007-2017, BUT.....we had some pretty good teams in the other years, and had some great matches. I wonder if Foxtel take into account the likely audience, so that Richmond, Coll, Essendon etc get priority. Has anyone else noticed how rarely we're on?

He’s waiting in the sauna.

We will need the money he would cost to keep and develop our own.

i think the rule where you don't have to kick it to yourself from points and playing on will make a bigger difference to the game than 666. I can see situations where fast players charge from the back of the goal square and find it much easier to baulk the opponent manning the mark at speed to get past him, where as before you had to kick to yourself from pretty much a standing start and run 5m before getting the kick away as your opponent could get a better read on which way you were going. I can now see the huddle coming back into favour again to allow plenty of space to run into, in this situation. therefore you'd think faster defensive players like Hunt and Frost will come into greater consideration now, because they can cover ground better when playing on from 'kick outs', or make position from these fast play on situations, or in Hunts case dropping back into D50 from the starting wing position as well. plus both have booming kicks. I think they'll become more versatile, while I think guys like O.Mac and Lewis might find it harder to get a game due to being slow. same goes in the fwd line. i'd expect we bring in a genuine speedster like Garlett or Bedford, to stand the 10m mark at the top of the goal square and try and chase down the oppo player when he plays on.

Forget Fox Footy just go and get the Legend Pack, 6 games for under $20 and watch them till your hearts content. 1987 Rnd 7 vs The Filth. 1990 Rnd 22 vs The Squawks. 1991 Rnd 18 vs The Aints. 1998 Rnd 4 vs The Team that needs some Blood on their jumper. 2002 Rnd 1 vs The Squawks. 2007 Rnd 11 vs The Filth. Just over Three bucks a game. Bargain.

I must admit being a fan of Ollie and still am a bit peaved we didn’t get him. Just pleased he isn’t playing against us.

Recently had 6 weeks off and tuned in regularly to see if we were on. I saw us once, a 113 point defeat to Norf in R17 1996, real bloody classic.

87 elimination final was pretty cool; as was the following semi final; equally the 88 elimination and semi and the prelim sensational the '90 elimination that killed hawthorn's triple premiership hopes was a classic, tight, Northey arm wrestle with the right ending us versus bombers with Ox in full flight was a ripper from 94 but yeah, we won by 12 goals so maybe that doesn't cut it. how about jeffie with nine second half goals v the pies? i forget the year but an absolute ripper. I could go on but instead I might apply for program director at Fox (except it would mean working for Rupert, an enemy of the people and of people's government).

This poster has been making the same mistake for as long as he has been posting. ALWAYS uses "then" in place of "than". He also gets very offended when you correct him.

I thought our play in the second quarter was simply superb. and didn't kick a goal !! possible our best 'general play' quarter for the year.

A walkthrough has more intensity.

It can be difficult to get passed the semi's.

I think that the rules committee is "overruled" by the Networks who aggresively push in these rules before a new year. Then the Rules committee have to adapt after the coaching departments react to the new laws and try to bend them to their will. The Rules committee in turn, then adapt by extremely small adjustments. This means that I too see KB blowing a gasket. It seems that the rules wont drastically change the game, but lets see what Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong coaches come up with.

My favourite part is not stressing that Omac is on Dixon every time port goes forward.

The Dees had attitude, that game. Had not seen it like that for many years, only in last-ditch patches (eg: when Farmer kicked nine}.

I agree this rule will the one most likely pen to variability in interpretation and will have implementation issues. But rather than more goals, perhaps they operate from any news is good news principle and wanted another contraversial rule that has lots of grey. You don't have to be einstein to predict all the rabbiting on in print, on radio and TV there will be about marks, frees, non frees related to this rule. Did he bend the arm, did he shove, no he was just holding his ground, Hawkins is just using his strength and that is why the defender was propelled forward, love this rule, hate this rule, just going back to how footy has always been played, l ed ta slow down the video blah, blah, blah

Mitchell 180cm Spargo 172cm That's a fairly large difference. He could rotate on ball, but he's always going to giving away 5-10kg when it comes to crashing and bashing as well as substantial reach.

The bookies are only really worried about the top 6 or 7 players. The rest is highly correlated to the stupidity of each teams supporters. It's why they didn't bother with any other MFC players but put odds on 6 of Collingwood.

Wingard and Polec will tear us a new one

I reckon with this new-new 'hands in the back' interpretation we'll end up with the same issues that previously existed and they'll change it back again. Unless they stubbornly refuse to - and that's always a possibility. Do they want forwards to be able to take more marks? Thus creating more scoring opportunities and therefore more goal breaks and more advertisements? Pardon my cynicism.

I hope Melksham’s available for round 1. He’s such a massive goal source - from both a goal kicking and assist point of view.

Last year we thought it was tough for players on the fringe (e.g. Tyson, Garlett) to get a run. This year I think it’s going to be even mor competitive. Good problems to have, but I just hope that a relatively fixed team gets a lot of game time together.

Hes a star in the making, without doubt. I think its easy to forget too that he played the entire season as an eighteen year old ! Played 18 games including all three finals. Melbournes record with Spargo in the team - 14 wins 4 losses

Broken ankle or not, Dixon will still kill OMac.

Aaron vandenBerg vs Kade Kolodjashnij James Jordon vs Tim Smith Braydon Preuss vs Tom Sparrow Toby Bedford vs Jake Lever Corey Wagner vs Sam Weideman

P.S. After 10 years of misery in AFL terms and never having witnessed a MFC flag in my lifetime, I similarly have a no sympathy, take no prisoners policy with respects to our opponents.

I pulled the pin on Fox Best decision I've ever made I aint filling Murdoch coffers anymore

Whilst I understand the sentiment that it wasn't a 'classic' for Melbourne supporters, that night was the best individual performance I've ever seen by a player: Wayne Carey: 15 marks, 31 disposals, 11 goals 2 behinds... could play.

Yeah true, but I only care about rd1 ?

and probably more

That's not very sporting of you, but I agree. I guess the other thing is that if Wines is injured and doesn't play, it could save us the irritation of watching him play and thinking how much better it would have been for him to be playing alongside his best mate for the red and blue.

We have been on 4 times so far. A 120 point loss to North and losses to Pies and Saints this year and another loss I can't remember. They haven't showed one win. Probably been on less than any other team. We have been treated disgracefully by Fox Footy over summer.

Gorg, for the love of god can your boys knock off the Pats... Brady's constant whinging about doubters & hatters is wearing seriously thin... STFU you moron

I watched it all yesterday afternoon. Geelong missed some sitters and the free kick against Selwood when Hawkins was shooting for goal muffled their chances. Had we kicked straight it would have been game over. I'm not sorry Tyson is gone, he was tres ordinaires. Weidemann was not very useful as a second ruckman and he'll need to get involved a bit more as he has a tendency to sit outside the action, a criticism a friend who has watched Weidemann since he was a junior made as well. What I liked was the grunt, the skill, especially Tom McDonald's marking in the first half, and the relentless attack on the ball.

BooHoo - I'll take any advantage we can get.

We also previously saw a lot of forwards playing from behind using their hands. I see it as cheating and don't like it at all. But you're spot on rjay, they cleaned up the rule and now they've opened up the rule to be exploited again. What are the chances that they un-repeal the new new rule? ? Use your body, use your forearm, use your knees - but not your hands. One thing I can almost guarantee - the new rule is going to cause angst for the lack of consistency. And with grey areas such as these, you will never get consistency. The sport is difficult enough to officiate now. The other changes I'm ok with although the ruckman having to nominate themselves seems a bit overly officious.

From memory, the biggest issue with Petracca's injury (the gripe) was that he was doing it in bare feet.

I wouldn’t have thought that water skiing was a particularly ‘dangerous’ or ‘wreckless’ activity for someone to undertake. May be a case of Kane Cornes being Kane Cornes and over-dramatising things, big I too have read some angry Port supporters slamming Wines online. FWIW I was also surprised by many Melbourne supporters and even Paul Roos’ comments about Petracca’s ankle injury whilst playing backyard basketball...

I'm surprised we don't have them. It's about time we did. The players are well paid, that money comes at a cost. You don't get nothing for nothing.... If I was on 500k plus I don't think I would see too much problem in not riding a motorcycle, skiing or other activities. In all honesty I would be looking to protect my income.

One issue with the 666 starting formation will be IMO a greater importance to the role of the ruckman (and may be why we have recruited Preuss to play alongside Gawn - something I have concerns about), a good tap ruckman who can give his midfielders first use of the ball and a quick entry into the 50 will be worth the weight in gold. On that, quality contested marks in the forward 50 will be of even more importance due to many of the clearances being long and direct forward 50 entries. This rule has the potential of being enormously beneficial to the Demons

The big question to talk about is who matches up on Jack Watts? Ooops, I forgot Casey doesn't play in the SANFL!

....and that settles it, can’t argue with that, he is a jet.

Because Melksham is a Jet!

The idea of losing 47 goals with Hogan going is obviously a pretty abstract one. The key question is not the number of goals but the number of wins. I hope we avoid revising history, particularly in light of Hogan's partying presence on social media. The fact is Hogan was a terrific player for the demons and was a key element of our successful 2017 and 2018 seasons. We will miss way more than 47 goals - his gut running to provide an outlet pass from the back line for one thing. The fact that he took the best defender another. It is easy to forget Weid was dropped twice (i think, or at least once) and could not break into the side until near the end of the year. Also easy to forget he has only played 20 games. That said i am super confident Weid will take the next step and be a key player for us this year. He brings different things to the table, one of which is think he is better as bringing the ball to the ground than Hoges as he really launches at packs, whereas Hogan seems to prefer wrestling on on one. This suits our style of chaos balls inside 50 i reckon as it brings our small to medium size forwards into play. His height is also a worry for opposition coaches, hard to match up on. And he is better kick for goals than Hogan - and importantly a much longer kick which increases the danger zone for opposition defensive units.