Demonland

Once the season gets back on track I will remove the ads for Life and Annual Members. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Ok so I’m officially not allowed to attend games anymore. A leading health figure has suggested the AFL could tell fans to keep booing and shouting to a minimum if they’re allowed into matches later this year. There are hopes spectators will be permitted into stadiums for late-season games and finals, if the coronavirus pandemic continues to ease around Australia. However Catherine Bennett, chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, told Nine the league may need to restrict fan behaviour. “I would think they may have to include as a recommendation – given it will be hard to maintain 1.5 metre between groups anyway – that shouting, hooting may have to be eased, given this will increase the spread from one person,” she said. “One of the COVID-19 transmission concerns is increased spread when people speak loudly, sing, and therefore cheering along their team.”

A fault in the search function of BigFooty has publicly exposed private messages and other restricted items, administrators of the 20-year-old AFL forum say. The owner of the forum that boasts 103,000 registered users said it learned in mid-May the search index was “publicly accessible without restriction”. Exposed information includes content on the forum removed from public view and other data where access was restricted, such as private messages posted since mid-April 2012.

I don't see a problem with this if it will help clubs survive. Would you rather watch an advertisement play for the Demons or lovingly look at logoless jumper in a museum.

Player managers fear a middle-class squeeze that will see the league’s reliable role players sacrificed so clubs can stay under a smaller 2021 salary cap. AFL football operations boss Steve Hocking on Wednesday confirmed little work had been done on the salary cap or list cuts as key industry figures fear key decisions are months away. List managers and player agents are still none the wiser on when they will be able to contract players again as players begin to express their anxiousness about 2021 contracts. BAYLEY FRITSCH (MELBOURNE) Jack Viney is the free agent the Demons will want to lock away but Fritsch has turned into a sneaky-good utility who can play anywhere and kicked 17 and 20 goals in his first two years. Can he go big and turn a 30-plus goal year into some serious leverage?

AFL ponders bigger bench size.