SaberFang

Has he taken a mark in thin air yet, Vickery style?

On that note, that's a luxurious 4 week run of teams for a team that played in last year's Grand Final. All 4 teams finished 11th or lower last year. Gotta love the AFL's completely unbiased fixturing!

I do love seeing Richmond losing right after getting ahead of themselves, but... geez. Just makes tomorrow that much more terrifying. The stakes this season are massive, every single week. Maybe the ultimate, final ironic twist of season 2017 is the Tigers finishing 9th after all?

You won't be so thankful when they take our place in the 8.

This is where it's at, if St Kilda win: We win tomorrow, we're top 4. We lose tomorrow, we're out of the 8. Pressure is well and truly on. I'm so conflicted because Richmond are the biggest pretenders ever and I would love to play against them in finals (or see them drop out of the 8) but having the Saints/Sydney/Essendon surging is a disaster if our injury list starts costing us games. We MUST win tomorrow, or we're in serious trouble.

Thanks for nothing, Gold Coast. [censored] useless waste of space team.

Fox Footy on Tex's dirty push: Just a weird accident, nothing to see here, deserves the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who doesn't think the media has a clear agenda to protect certain players is kidding themselves. This will be conveniently forgotten with haste.

The only consistency is they never miss an opportunity to hit us with the fullest extent of their punishment scale. They also never miss an opportunity to protect players on their protected species list (and we all know which players are on that one) with ludicrously inadequate punishments that border on farce.

Yet Houli got 4 for KOing a guy. Didn't resident AFL-thug-but-member-of-golden-club-GWS Toby Greene get 2 for a clearly late punch to the head? We are consistently treated with a different set of rules to other clubs with suspensions, both in how our players are treated (Hogan, Lewis, Bugg) and how those are treated who instigate acts against our players (Schofield).

Not defending his action but this is a reactionary punishment based on the media outrage drummed up this weekend. If this happened a month ago? 4 weeks. Just think of how many ludicrous punches ended up being fines or, worse, overlooked. How many elbows to the heads were even cited? Nothing to see when Selwood elbows Mitchell in the head as he's lying defenceless on the ground. Nothing against Schofield because the media decided Oliver was staging. Nothing against Cotchin's jumper punch because he plays for Richmond and he's a great bloke with lots of mates in the media.

This is a bizarre line of reasoning. Regardless, Bernie Vince has a few more credits in the bank than the 4 involved here. Nobody is arguing the MFC needs to become prohibition-era America. We're saying it's unacceptable for players to break strict team rules regarding the consumption of alcohol. Consider that the alcohol may have been in their system Sunday morning. That's 5 days out from the Friday match, hampering recovery and their fitness programs. These rules exist for a reason and the coaches have every right to be filthy.

All they had to do was abide by team rules. They broke them.

Is there an AFL match 6 days after Christmas Day? Drinking in the off-season or 8/9 days out from a match is understandable. What isn't acceptable is flaunting a team directive to avoid alcohol during this 6-6-6 period, in case of injuries or emergency call-ups. All they had to do was stay off the grog for 6 more days! They've shown contempt for their coaches, disrespect for their teammates, and topped it all off with an embarrassing VFL performance.

Demonland is a discussion forum, Saty. Four selfish, undisciplined players having club-imposed match bans (when our injury list is in dire straits) is a topical issue. If you're so enraged by other people discussing such things, why even partake? It seems that all you're doing is belittling posters actually contributing to the discussion.

That's a VFL return around Round 19. I still think the footy department will be overly cautious on Brayshaw (and so they should) before considering him for seniors. Sadly I think the stupid VFL fixturing will make it difficult for him to string together enough games to be considered.

Thanks to this AFL chap who's taken the spotlight off Bugg by committing, seemingly, an even worse striking offence yesterday.

Agreed, Brayshaw won't play this season. He's out indefinitely and match committee won't select him for seniors unless he strings together an uninterrupted month in the VFL.

It really isn't that inconceivable. There's probably a hundred people involved with the club on match day. A group of players going out isn't going to stay secret. Injuries to key players aren't going to stay secret, especially after being broadcast on television. When you're employed in a workplace, employees message one another when there's relevant news about co-workers, such as sick days. Doubly so in a football club where an injured player might open the door to you finding a spot in the team. Whether told by club officials, other players, friends or family, these players were seemingly aware of the injuries yet chose to stay out on the turps. That shows not only a lack of discipline as professional athletes but a total lack of investment in everything the club is striving to become. How anyone can defend such selfish actions is beyond me.

Yeah, it's frustrating. And it's the reason why we really needed the Saints to lose today, because it would've secured our top 8 position for another round regardless of results. If we drop the next game or two, our backs will be against the wall big time. Considering Carlton nearly pipped Adelaide yesterday, you'd be foolish to consider next week anything but a massive challenge. Bolton's no mug and he'll have Carlton back in contention soon enough.

Next week will shape the finals. I cannot stress enough how crucial it is that we beat Carlton. Round 16: Adelaide should beat Bulldogs at AO. Giants should beat Hawthorn at Aurora. Sydney should beat Gold Coast at SCG. Geelong should beat Brisbane at the Gabba. North/Fremantle result is irrelevant for now. Collingwood/Essendon result is irrelevant for now. Now, the 3 most important matches: St Kilda V Richmond at Etihad West Coast V Port Adelaide at Domain Carlton V Melbourne at the MCG The outcomes here will have a significant impact on the top 8. If West Coast and St Kilda win, and we beat Carlton? We're 4th. If West Coast and St Kilda win, and we lose to Carlton? We're 9th. If we lose next week, we desperately need Port and Richmond to get up, because that keeps us in the top 8.

Fremantle were never looking like contenders after the bye, their percentage tells the story. It's the Brisbane effect -- we need bottom teams to keep pulling upsets on teams in that logja of 6-7 wins. It gives us breathing space until we get our injury list under control (which could take until Round 19). Saints will certainly be praying for a Blues win next week.

How do you figure that? Saints are now equal wins with us -- if they win next week, they jump us on the ladder. If Richmond win, they move two wins ahead of us + superior percentage. We really needed Saints to [censored] that up and create a bottleneck of teams on 7 wins and inferior percentage, rendering all results next week irrelevant.

[censored] Fremantle, [censored] us two weeks in a row.

You mean 3 points and locked in Saints' 50... They'll choke.

Yep, doing their very best to throw away 2 wins in a row. They screwed us last week by letting Geelong win in the dying minutes, look set to screw us over again.