FireInTheBennelly

It's pretty obvious Mitch Brown wasn't at the Bombers when the drug program was in full swing.

Oh for [censored] sake, can we please stop this [censored] after making a tackle.

Chins McGuire, who's on the rules change comittee, says why don't we just pay the free kicks as per the rules. A...[censored]...men

I think it's pretty simple, no need for zones. Just get rid of all coaches and Gil sets the predetermined tactics that players of all teams need to adhere to. SSSSSSSS. Free kick Hawthorn, Gil said.

There's obviously a bigger picture at play here as these changes don't make a whole deal of sense. I'd suggest the long term goal wouldn't go down very well with current club supporters so it'll be small steps along the way that may sneak through under the radar. Raise the draft age and those now ineligible would probably play in a VFL type competition. Reduce the number of players and coaches, and those will also be looking for a gig in a lower competition. So what I'm seeing is an attempt to strengthen those comps. Is it possible they're looking at evolving into a tiered competition with 2(?) leagues and promotion/relegation depending on performance? EPL style.

Not to mention 90% of those '3rd tackles' are directly into the back. So take your pick, holding the man, or push in the back. Nope, ball up, who's rucking, Bueller, anyone, anyone. Ok, Gaz or Paddy, umm, righto, Max and Paddy in the ruck. SSSSS, Free kick to my man Paddy, what do you mean you didn't know!

Yes that's another reason to go hard at him. Might be the last straw for old Chins.

It's too early this year, but the player I'd be in the ear of is Ed Richards at the pups. I reckon he steps straight into Bernie or Lewis' spot and the upside is huge.

I said in a different thread, how often do players not hear the 'touched, touched, touched' call when marking a touched ball, and are then tackled without attempting to dispose of the ball. Umpires give benefit of the doubt there suggesting the players didn't hear the call. Where was the benefit of the doubt here? I can't find video that goes back far enough to hear the umpires call, but someone else also suggested that Ablett put his hand up to ruck as well. The Cats do this quite often to create confusion and slow the game down.

For mine, this is what's caused the increased number of 'crowd incidents' at games this year. If it's ok for the players to behave outside of the rules after play, then I can too. The push in the back when a player's on the ground is the one that gets me. I was pretty sure we had a rule on pushing in the back... The carry on after kicking a goal is getting ridiculous, apparently it's a free shot at the opposition. Tigers are the worst at this. I can't recall which game, might've been Pies/Norf, but the ball went out of bounds for a throw. Subsequent to that one player clipped an opposition player high and a free kick was called. The commentators, and I'm sure G. Lyon was one of them, discussed why it shouldn't be a free. For [censored] sake, you don't get a free shot just because the whistle's gone, it should be reportable, not frigging play on. Now Hawkins has 'no case to answer'. For a forearm to the head (with a clear punching action) of a player lying on his back, after the whistle. Remind me again what Clarry was fined for earlier in the year...

How many times over the course of a round of football will a player 'take a mark' and stop, despite the umpires screaming 'touched, touched, touched'? The result of every single one of these is benefit of the doubt, player didn't hear it. Then in a ruck contest, Geelong nominate a confusing ruck, that ruck then runs at his opposite number, rather than the ruck contest, and is paid a free kick for blocking. Where the [censored] is the benefit of the doubt? Not one player had any idea Dangerdick was rucking. At least we know how to fix up our i50-goal conversion. Every stoppage inside forward 50, nominate whoever is being tagged and get them to run at the tagger. Free kick - goal.

Very lucky we scored a goal there. Duncan had a clear hold of smith's foot and no free.

Stat watchers would be scratching their heads at the Gold Coast. Suns losing every stat except hitouts and i50s. Oh, and the main stat, the scoreboard.

Fritsch goes back, he looked well at home back there on the weekend. Baker to take the Fritsch role, unless Vanders is fully fit, although that's highly unlikely.

Very much so. You could tell how chuffed the Raz was. I reckon he's following Gus around everywhere now, Cable Guy style.

Sloane's no good anyway, he's never won a B&F or been All Australian.

I thought that was the right call. Brayshaw was going to kick and then pulled out of it but it was too late. Razor won't be washing his hand for a month.

Twice we were awarded free kicks around defensive 50, with the dogs player holding the ball far too long, allowing all their players to get back. Both should've been 50 metre penalties, yet neither was paid. I thought the whole point of the 50 metre penalty was to prevent players from slowing play down. If channel 7 wants more goals they should be into the AFL to get these things right, not fixing the draw.

Today's game confirmed for me what I thought has been happening for a while. On 2 separate occasions a player was lining up for a shot on goal and a voice came over the umpires earpiece saying '15 seconds', the umpire would then tell the kicker that 15 seconds had gone. Umpires are taking directions from a 3rd party. Who is that, and why?

Didn't he have 1 very good game in his first year? I vaguely recall it. I think he has the AFL talent, for whatever reason hasn't been able to reproduce it since. More mature this time round, I think he'll step up, like Stretch did.

Dusty dreams of being as good as Clarry

That is quite incredible considering we were awarded a total of 24 free kicks for the game. If you put that together with the i50 stat, where we had 69 to their 39, it's safe to assume a large portion of the game was played inside our forward 50, yet every single free kick was paid in other parts of the ground. Wow. May I ask Mr Leg, do you have data on free kick locations, or is that just from watching the game? I'm hoping the data is available for all games.....

I wrote this in another thread, perhaps the wrong one, but now they've proved themselves to be able to adjudicate fairly, that takes incompetence out of the equation. So what would the other potential reasons be for their poor and biased decisions?

We need to accumulate players of Gaff's quality