Leaderboard

Looking forward to seeing my first live game at the ground this season. Would love for us to bring home a win, but whilst I have high hopes, I'm not particularly confident that we can get the job done. Credit where it is due to the MFC administration team. I applied to claim one of my interstate membership games earlier in the week and the sent me an email with a link for me to download my ticket. Slightly unbeknowns to me was that the email didn't contain the actual ticket, so I got a polite phone call from the club this morning telling me that an email with a pdf of my actual ticket would be appearing in my inbox, as a result of the MFC administration team doing a quick round up of those that hadn't yet done it for themselves. Well done and thanks guys - customer service at it's best! ?

Good to see Selwood's knee-dropping, ducking protege, Rhys Mathieson has been dropped. That is a few 'head high' frees we won't 'give away'.

Wiz Told me that if Kobe was good enough to play AFL, he would be at Melbourne.

Melbourne Florida?

That camera was supposed to be unplugged, someone screwed up.

You're correct, we are: 2-0 in London and Vancouver 1-0 in Honolulu, Portland, San Francisco, Shanghai, Toronto and Wellington Good chance to plug my history of non-premiership games.

He's a buffoon and the game has turned to [censored] under his watch. The sooner he's gone and we get someone competent in instead of a dealmaker given the job because of his connections the better off the game will be.

World Champs!!! ?

So you should agree that Hibberd came back too early. And OP for Smith? I'm not even going to ask for your source because 9 out of 10 times your 'source' feeds you [censored].

Myself and Mrs Worship went out to Coburg on Sunday and met up with a regular Training and VFL watcher /devotee. We had an extensive discussion regarding Preuss and our friend pointed out that in the previous 3 outings watching Preuss he had been dominate in the first half and also kicked multiple goals but ran out of legs in the second half. We proceeded to watch this occur again although it wasn't as obvious as previous. This may have been because the ball was camped in our forward line for 75% of the game. We came away from the game thinking Preuss will get his chance when his engine improves or heaven forbid, Max misses a game. As an aside, this is the second Casey game I've been to where the 3qtr time huddle has broken up and I've observed Maxy walking away with Preuss and Maxy coaching and encouraging him. I like this a lot. I would not be at all surprised if Max's opinion isn't being sort when it comes to when Preuss gets a call up.

I have to say I had similar thoughts. My son play rep basketball tonIf it. If he he plays crap I might him do a beep test when we get home at 11. Unlike Andrew though I won't join in

BANG! Exactly. Gil is more akin to the producers of Masterchef, the Bachelor, A Current Affair. You say to producers of those shows "that's staged" or "this can't be good for the participants' health" or "that's abjectly misleading", and they say "what are you talking about? Look at the ratings!!!!!" Gil has lost control because his understanding of what he is the custodian of is askew. The goal review is a clown show? "Look at the ratings!"

WWE has more integrity these days. Betting sites have 'results may be scripted' on WWE bouts - this probably should be on the AFL odds.

I actually don't see the selection of Oscar on the bench as that unreasonable: a) If we lost a key back prior to the game through flu or something, he is about the only legitimate option you could bring in; b) I have hopes for Petty, but he isn't exactly setting the world on fire just yet and it's almost like he is the guy getting games for his development and future potential in much the same way as Oscar previously; c) We saw how much better Frosty played last week in a winning side and being relieved of the No.1 defense position - I think similar would apply to Oscar; d) Oscar is way better than your average VFL backman.

I don’t think we’ve ever been beaten overseas. We’ve won in London, Canada, USA,( California and Hawaii),China and , I think, New Zealand. All “JLT” type games, but most hotly contested. The USA game was against reigning premiers, Geelong,in 1963, after the Grand Final, to make us world premiers! Was there a South Africa game I’ve forgotten? Can anyone correct me by reminding me of a Demon loss abroad?

I am talking multiple high resolution high speed cameras at every ground. Let us see how much integrity the AFL Corporates have. I am sure even the Betting Agencies would prefer a correct result.... most of the time

Over the last 5 weeks (when we have played better football) Max has played game time % of: 90, 91, 88, 86 and 94. Max has been BOG or in our best each week. If Max was playing 75-80% game time or not playing consistently well a strong case could be made for Preuss. While we would all like to see Preuss play, its hard to see how to fit him in especially as Tom Mc seems to be improving as a forward.

This might interest: Why the AFL is bad for Aussie Rules. It is a long article from 'Roar', (an independent sports website) primarily about how the AFL is damaging aussie rules and its feeder community sport. Selected extracts: What is the AFL? The AFL is certainly not a sport; it’s a competition. The AFL is less an organisation that administers a football competition, more a media organisation that produces football content. None of [the] levers [to develop narratives] are open to scrutiny and decisions made often take precedence over quaint notions of procedural fairness and natural justice. The AFL can silence competing independent football narratives through cancelling the accreditation of journalists, which it sometimes threatens. An emerging perception that the AFL engineers results damages its brand and Australian football. The AFL finds problems and fixes them, only to make bigger problems that need fixing. LOL, so true!! There is a more in the article. No mainstream media outlet is going to print most of the above for fear of reprisals. One has to ask: How is the Commission allowing this, now that the conflicted Fitzpatrick is no longer the Chairman. The AFL treats the football public like gullible dummies knowing that everyone is powerless to do anything. Maybe Gill should be known as Comrade McLaughlin - he certainly acts like a dictator; a Machiavellian one at that.

What about how at the MCG they could only muster one camera view from St Kilda Road to get that head butt incident of Michael Walters. Wonder how the Umpire, who happened to be Five Metres away felt about his word being regarded as drivel. If the head motion went forward and there was contact, it's "c'est la vie"........

A high quality 4-8k camera running at 1,000 f/ps will give a precise answer as to whether a ball is touched or not. It is entirely up to the AFL as to whether they are prepared to spend the money on such technologies, or whether it goes to the AFL Executives as bonuses.

Yep same here. Phone call then the email with latest tickets. Mind you I have had 3 emails with tickets since I booked them in May, first 2 with what I believe invalid tickets and today the real ones I trust.

Memberships are not cheap anymore. If the AFL continues to allow blatant cheating to happen within games, a lot of people won’t be interested in “The AFL Brand” When i was a kid in the 70’s, the idea of turning off a game of Footy on The TV ? was never contemplated, not once. Last night i turned it off, because it was so obviously biased towards the home team.

This sounds interesting and would love to hear more about it when you sober up or fix your auto-correct issues. ?

Wow... that brings back memories of the Essendon supplement case... obviously special rules for those boys... no balance of probabilities for them.

I heard all of Gillian’s Press Conference. I found it to be an embarrassment, he really is a shocking Corporate Head. The AFL should be funding 4K Cameras at every venue to make the review system work as it should. Meanwhile Gillian takes home over $2mill a year. The AFL are becoming a Political entity rather than Football Custodians.

That's a hell of a lot of precise multitasking to do in a split second when you're trying to actually smoother the ball.

luci, i must say i have watched the vision (maybe there is more vision i don't know about) and i couldn't say whether it was touched or not. the vision is not good enough quality (for this purpose) and the frame rate is not sufficient for good quality slo-mo. also on other occasions where many have claimed to see a touch (not all cases) i have similarly been unconvinced. i think the real problem is that our technology is nowhere good enough at this stage for the marginal touch cases. i agree though that there is certainly a process problem and too many officials/commentators talking bs and jumping the gun

Has the AFL introduced a new criteria: touched 'beyond reasonable doubt'? Score review Gil: "It was reviewed for 40 seconds, the vision using the Hawkeye system which people saw, and they had to make a decision about was that ball touched beyond reasonable doubt..."That's the standard to overturn the decision. To date I thought the 'standard to overturn' was some evidence of a touch, however slight. At least that is how it seems to have been implemented. A new AFL rule invented to justify the outcome they want: Nothing to see here, walk on... Edit: a bit more from Gil: Gil won't say if decision was right or wrong! "McLachlan said he had seen the vision but refused to give his own opinion on the call...When asked what the AFL interpretation of the legal concept "beyond reasonable doubt" was, McLachlan deflected". Gil has no idea how 'beyond reasonable doubt' is to be applied. Its just more grey; more guesswork; more room for subjective calls! Amateur hour.

Not the helmet argument again. Helmets can reduce the acceleration rate of the brain at impact. There is no research that says helmets do not reduce the rate of brain injury. There is plenty of research that says helmet do not prevent brain injury. I think a reduction of brain injury is worth wearing a helmet in susceptible people. I repeat, I know helmets do not prevent brain injury any reduction is good.

I've been trying for 5 minutes... I assume you must be double-jointed/hypermobile.

Some insightful posts here.

funny because i remember a similar situation a few weeks ago when a melbourne goal was touched, the umpires went out of there way to stop the game have the goal reviewd and took the goal off Melbourne, it was in compltete contrast to what happened to Essondon

The closest I could find is: GWS are fuming! But Fox Footy understands the club is privately fuming that officials blatantly ignored an AFL directive to spend more time getting review calls right...A private memo was sent to score reviewers two weeks ago reminding them they could take as much time as they needed to get decisions right. I suspect 'officials' there means the umpire who didn't wait. Garry Lyon: "We’ve got two systems in place; if an umpire says yeah, we can review it, then we might spend 45 seconds on it and take our time looking at it and use all the angles in the world. If there’s no review, you’ve got 20 seconds left before we bounce the ball". Because the the umpires ignored the 'touched' call there was less time for the mandatory review. It is easily fixed. Central umpire does not bounce the ball until he gets the all clear from the score reviewer. Did anyone notice which umpire hurriedly bounced the ball?

Indeed. What the article does show is, as i previously noted, this issue has nothing to do with ethnicity or the fact some (i stress some) of the security guards might be international students and everything to do with a lack of training and a poorly regulated industry full of cowboys and rogue operators. Who cares where a security guard is from or whether they are a student (international or otherwise) or not? The only relevant issue is whether they have the required capabilities, training and support to do the job. And i would suggest most don't. Making this about race just suits the dog whistling agenda of people who can't see past their own xenophobia and rank nationalism. The same people, who without a hint of irony, feel they are the voice of the silent majority pushing back against some mythological leftist , liberal, PC conspiracy. (On that last point if there is indeed a conspiracy that cabal are doing an appalling job of it given the worlds democracies are lurching to the right, nationalism is on the rise, persecution and demonizing of the press is rampant and the most powerful media company in the world - and in Australia - by a country mile openly pushes a hard right agenda.Perhaps they are playing a very, very, very long game. )

Incompetent. The AFL is the corrupt entity, for permitting lousy umpiring and farcical goal reviews to go on week after week after week.

Perhaps we should relocate overseas. I suggest somewhere tropical.

I think you got it, FWIW I actually don't have a problem with Jones, yes the ump got sucked in by the flop, but you can't have it both ways, fly the flag or be accused of bruise free football. Jones was careful he was never going to maim anyone with that shoulder shot. I'd rather be known as a hard team, which I think is what Ross Lyon credited us as.

Dead set embarrassing this review system. Starting to be swayed for calls on ‘Challenges’ by the coaches. The whole world saw that ball was touched in 5 seconds of footage. What kind of system are they running?

Not often I feel empathy for GWS but tonight that was horrendous

To provide context, The blokes been injured, is that fair and reasonable? The FD clearly rate his flexibility and a prepared to back him for a run of games, rather than drop after 2.

What, you don't think the club agrees with the demonland posters who seriously believe he will never be selected again? I mean don't they know he is not AFL standard? I very much doubt he'll be selected but will go back to Casey with a very public and clear statement of support from the club (no doubt partly to counteract the white noise of virtoil out in unsocial media land) and get some form back. Good man management. As I have said he'll be back soon enough. Some elephant.

I suspect it about confidence. The club is saying we rate you. You are in the frame and will be back soon. That and trolling the naysayers on demonland.

Oscar had a great game for Casey...demanded selection.

I suspect part of St Kilda's problems aren't coach related but having an abundance of smug twats running the show. Simon Lethlean really did get a free kick in front of goal after screwing up (pun intended) in AFL admin and his recent 'if we keep improving' comments (some interpreted as earnest) were, for mine, the comments of a total vanker keen to show who's boss.

I played under him at East Burwood, winning Premierships in 1999 and 2000. Nothing I wouldn't have done for him, a great man and great coach. List management has let him down badly at St Kilda.

WOw. Just watched the last minute of the third term again and Walters subsequent carry-on to Jones hardly contacting him. What a tool. My most disliked player by a country mile.

Re Kent, it may have been a case that given his and AVB’s history of injuries we couldn’t afford to carry both. Perhaps we were willing to let AVB go to the Swans up until Kent took the offer from the Saints, who knows. As previously posted, the offer was three years versus ours of one. Kent has a young family so can’t blame the guy. AVB is a ripper when fit, I hope he gets back on the park next season.

To those saying we should have taken Joel Smith off the ground, we had a JLT cup game to win and he kicked 4 while planted in the goal square. I don't see what the problem is.

And if we boo him next time we will be branded “racist”, mark my words.

Yep, because sometimes injuries are like that. And you don't have to look at Smith, the Joe Daniher case is typical. Not all bodies respond to the same treatment in the same way and over the same time frame. If they did, most doctors would be out of business.