The Corridor

This is absolutely the issue with it. You are asking for trouble playing an injury prone petty in the ruck, and I agree regarding the cost of taking jvr away from what we would hope would be further development time in his natural forward position.

In isolation I might see this selection as a bit strange but not worry-inducing. But in the context of a number of bizarre and very costly selections in recent years it is hard to not be concerned any time there is another glaring selection question mark. Even in the past year we have had: - Laurie sub for 2023 qualifying final, which made no sense at the time and came home to roost - Schache sub for 2023 semifinal, which made no sense at the time and mustn't have made sense to the coaches/selection committee either as he didn't get on the ground. Giving a fresh legs advantage to the opposition was a massive own goal. Worth 2 points on the scoreboard perhaps? - Playing Spargo in Round 0 when he was clearly not fit and clearly did not have adequate preparation That's just a sample of selection in 3 consecutive AFL games. You have to be trying hard to come up with a defence for some of these things.

It's Carlton, so no surprise there, as unbelievable as the decision is. Double standards.

Their record could easily be worse than it is too - Brisbane, Richmond and Freo wins all coinflips and somewhat dubious. Agreed re their D, which definitely needs to lift if they want to go far.

From memory, he was also part of the Freo exodus when their cap was impacted by Jackson's move.

He has certainly improved in terms of kicking and execution since the latest move. The error in q2 where he made a poor decision and then executed poorly, kicking straight to a Geelong player for a goal, was the sort of stuff that was always the question mark over his game in previous years and would have been concerns for teams taking a look I'm sure. Speed, fitness are strengths.

Well it lasted all year in 2023 - picked up some undeserved wins, especially the gws umpiring rort in the early rounds, and continues throughout the year especially late season and finals. Curnow and McKay have long been beneficiaries of flopping frees.

To anyone who doesn't think umpiring influences games, lol

Most predictable thing ever is Carlton getting a phantom free for a goal to take the lead late in a game.

Daicos just an embarrassing cheat and diver. Win a hard ball. Protected species.

Wow. I won't even touch on the Gus aspect of this, other than to say he kicked a football and it isn't his job to look for charging airborne objects heading toward his head, you would never anticipate such unusual late contact. The main thing I want to highlight is that what you have said is factually incorrect - Maynard did not go 'straight up', and it's as clear as day on multiple angles, so it might be worth giving it a rewatch if that's what your assessment is based on.

Exactly this. It shouldn't matter what the demand in the system is. The window of ticket availability for members is there, and we are entitled to our rightful allocation rather than having tickets reallocated within the first hour of availability. Why even bother having the allocation if they are going to do this? One part of purchasing a club membership is the benefit it gives you in terms of finals tickets access.

Didn't see clarry there today either. Anybody have any info on why?

What a great bloke 🤮 Media will love it.

I am all for ensuring rules are as clear as possible to ensure the players and umpires know where they stand, and I like the spirit of your post. There will always be some grey, however. The Maynard case though is unusual because, while the media has jumped on this being a 'football action', his 'smother attempt' was so far away from what any typical smother attempt looks like. Even if you remove Maynard's actions once in the air in terms of whether he turned the shoulder or not, the very fact that he launched forward into the air at high speed towards a player who had disposed of/was disposing of the ball and would inevitably result in late contact is problematic. If we allow players to do that so long as they make some sort of attempt to avoid shoulder to head contact such as having arms stretched wide as in your example, it would still be quite foreseeable that you could concuss the player who has disposed of the ball by knocking them heavily to the ground and having their head hit the ground hard. Yes, ramming his shoulder into Brayshaw's head was a terrible action. But jumping forward at high speed into an opponent to inevitably cause contact at high force where you are coming down on them is dangerous regardless of what part of your body you hit them with and can result in injury including concussion. I am not sure we really need to make the rule clearer, because if the Tribunal does its job they will find that Maynard's actions were careless and therefore outside the rules.