deanox

I think he quietly became the second fastest player ever to 5000 disposals as well against St Kilda a few weeks ago too (behind Tom Mitchell).

One thing I saw on the weekend was his genuine joy and celebration when Petty kicked that goal. It was over the top joy and celebration and spoke to me of a player (Oliver) who genuinely cared about his teammate (Petty) who he knew had been struggling for form. It wasn't about the game situation it was about Petty. That's an important aspect of buying in to the team. And it's good to see that while his form is down. Maybe he does move on to get a fresh start but I hope he stays and returns to his best. It's been a joy to watch him so far in his career.

Yeah of course, I wasn't saying it was the only one, I was saying from a risk assessment perspective, maybe it's a tolerable risk as part of contact football? Firstly, there are probably less organ injuries than concussions (I am guessing). Second, my understanding is that most organ injuries are identified and treated with full recovery and no lasting effects. Contrast that the brain injuries which are cumulative, hidden, difficult to diagnose or define the "how bad is it" line, and chronic, with no full recovery expected. So based on those assumptions, I could see why tolerance for brain injuries and concussions would be lower than tolerance for internal organ injuries. Finally, concussion related injuries are based almost solely around 1 thing: contact to the head. And as there is rarely acceptable contact to the head, it's easy to introduce an effective control that is a blanket ban on such contact. But internal and organ related injuries are associated with all sorts of other impacts and contacts that usually aren't a lasting problem. It's very hard to implement controls which prevent them, while also allowing competing in a contact sport. So potentially consequence is not as high for body contact as it is for head injury, and secondly, likelihood seems a bit lower too (thousands of body hits for every organ damage vs 10s of head contact for every concussion). So the overall risk is likely to be lower.

Counter point to this is that the has been thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of marking contests in football throughout the years and few few that have resulted in an injury this bad, let alone something as bad as a permanent spinal injury. There are inherent risks in playing a contact sport. I think we are all comfortable that brain injury due to concussion is something we need to minimise as much as possible. We've identified that regular head hits makes the risk of CTE way too high and we have a lot of past players suffering. But we don't truly have a zero tolerance because if we did we would say "no contact, no species (hit your head on ground), no tackling, etc). We are just comfortable to reduce it as low as reasonably practical. So is a 0.001% chance of this kind of injury (knee to back, spleen) occuring, is that an acceptable risk? It probably is a low enough risk, but if we see a trend in them increasing then action may be required.

Sometimes, in specialist areas like this (and like vaccines, and other medical advice, etc) we need to trust that maybe, just maybe, reading about something in a newspaper doesn't make us qualified to comment on whether it was best practice or not.

But what you are saying isn't true. There are concussion assessment protocols. Do you know what they are? Have you got access to them? Even if you've heard the name of the assessment/testing protocol would you know what they mean or whether they are suitable? My guess is the answer to everything above is No. And if you happen to answer yes because you have specific medical training, then you probably know that the general public would be not able to interpret them. In Petracca's case there were protocols for assessment. The medical team has followed them. They have determined low risk of internal injury, most likely rib damage. What is the name of the tests or procedures they follows? I don't know. You don't know. We're not doctors. Releasing the details of the test procedure is not useful. Doctors are fallible, and their procedures can be fallible, and I agree that it is reasonable to suggest the independence of the AFL is sometimes questionable. But that doesn't mean they should open the books to the general public for this critique. The general public have no knowledge about this and will interpret it badly whatever is released. If Petracca wants to question the professional practice of the medical staff, he can (although he has publicly already praised them). But there proceedures were signed off by an oversight medical panel (via the AFL). Do you really think that a process that is signed off by two sets of medical practitioners independently is going to fail a test for malpractice?

It's a fine line because we do need to allow people to contest the mark, and it is difficult to judge whether an incident like this is accidental/incidental contact or if raising the knee is intended to have a physical impact (not suggesting injury intended, just meaning bump with the point of the knee to disrupt the opposition players mark). One thing I'd note is that Moore went up one fist just to spoil. So the knee in the back wasn't part of taking the mark just part of disrupting Petracca's attempt. If we moved this rule anywhere I'd consider taking spoiling attempts out of the "contesting the mark" definition, and placing them in the "unrealistic attemp" basket. So yes you can attempt to spoil, but you don't get the same protections from in the back etc as if you were attempting to mark. Difficult to police but it might stop players using physical collision body on body as the means of spoiling.

Yeah they did and they have learnt and got better. And they will keep learning. But a general supporter in the stands with no medical knowledge is not going to be able to make improvements on the doctors processes or assess whether the right thing happened. The medical community will do that as a profession. Not everyone needs to have a say on everything, especially when the topic is so specialist, and has already been signed off by independent medical review.

The club and doctors don't need to provide a public explanation of the medical risk management procedures they followed (which is what you are I playing when you say open and transparent ). The public wouldn't understand those procedures anyway. The club doctors have been open and transparent with the only people who have the expertise and authority to review them - the AFL medical team. And they ticked off the club doctors approach. That should be story over. Asking for risk management proceuto be public laid out so a lay person who doesn't understand them can critique them isn't helpful.

Are you a doctor or a risk management specialist? Then your opinion on whether you think it was handled correctly or not is probably irrelevant, because you don't have the expertise to make that assessment. The doctors did the assessment. Petracca passed at first, and subsequently failed and the doctors withdrew him. The process our club doctors followed was review by the AFL medical team and ticked off as the appropriate process. Anything else is people with no actual knowledge making judgement calls on what they saw fro. The stands, and not relevant.

I'm not convinced were making the 8, but this week is very different to what we've seen the last few...

19 shots from 37 i50s vs 17 from 35...

Question for anyone who watched the game: Was the difference in performance more about the quality of the opposition, or any noticeable change in approach to the game (I don't want to go as far as saying game plan)?

Is that a skill or a size issue? Not many players these days are true contested marking beasts. And I think we've seen that it is ok for a tall forward to be a rangy type who runs hard, marks the ball up the ground and gathers possessions around the ground more than one out. The real key though is that when they are in the wrestle situation they need to at least halve the contest).

Definitely why they were drafted.

Does anyone think that perhaps, just perhaps, it is a coaching instruction/ game plan, that Kozzie and now McAdam launch at the ball in the air? Particularly given it is repeat behaviour that the coaches obviously aren't correcting. Rather than saying "they need to stay down and crumb" perhaps the direction is "launch and compete in the air to prevent intercept marking, and create a contested ground ball in our forward 50"? Sure, we need crumbers too. But the crumbers are useless if the ball is marked by the opposition.

I can only assume the swap between Fullerton and Brown was due to Fullertons fitness.

I don't think that's hyperbolic. If we lose two on the trot to no finals teams, it will seriously affect our chances in what is a very tight year. Win well and we will be 4th and 6 points off second. Lose and we'll be 9th and only one game from 12th. Most of the rest of the season are 8 point games. Saints North and the return game against WCE are the only games against non finals contenders. We just have to win them.

@Oxdee I reckon we are competing with both Freo and Collingwood in terms of our bracket of the ladder, albeit Freo is probably nipping at our heels while we are nipping at Collingwoods. Freo were favourites yesterday but only got the 2 points, meaning they possibly lost a bit of ground against us in terms of end of season position. Collingwood got a draw, which could be seen as a win given they weren't expecting any points, but as they already had a draw, and we have a better percentage, the two points aren't as valuable to them. So my gut says in the scheme of the season it was a good result for us. As long as we win games we should, of course.

Good result for us I reckon.

Yeah I won't watch 9 games but tbh I don't mind Thursday night football. I'll often put it on in the background, and for my life circumstances I don't mind going as it frees up my weekend for other activities.

Still a better timeslot that scheduling AFLW at 5pm on a Friday night in Frankston. Tbh I actually don't mind this timeslot as a viewer, it's a good time to put on tv around while doing things around the house on a Saturday, assuming it's being broadcast.

But until 2 weeks before the season he would have been sub at best.

I'm not sure this is uncomfortable for many. We rated Jordan enough to offer him a 3 year contract and he was regularly in our best 23, in fact we selected him in that best 65 times over three years. Bedford 16 times in his last season with us I'm sure we said to both of them that we faith in them improving and becoming a more permanent fixture in our best 22, but also that the next steps of their development were around how hard they worked and where they developed. I'm sure both the players and the club understood they'd need to push someone out of the team. So when an opposition club comes and says "here is our best 22, and this is your position and your role" and you ask them who the competition for that spot it, and their answer is players you believe you have comfortably covered, then it's not a surprise what they chose - the guarantee of play time.

I don't like it. As much as I dislike Foxtel/kayo, most of it is in one place. I am frustrated that rugby union is now on Stan, meaning I can't watch it without another subscription. Splitting it further will mean I watch less of these sports.