deanox

Still one of the most dangerous and most dirty acts i have seen on the field in recent times. Should have been 6 weeks, elbowing a bloke in the back of the head while he lies on the ground in a disgrace and a dog act.

Most of the changes I'd like to see aren't about tactics, but are about consistency in interpretations and are about reverting to better umpiring rather than introducing new rules. Interestingly, I think many of these would solve a bunch of the problems we currently have: Only blow the whistle when the play should stop (just call advantage out loud). This will allow "lots" more free kicks to be paid without impacting the game, and will also allow it to flow better without stop starting (which allows teams to "get back" and zone). Faster ball ups. If it is congested, blow whistle, run in and throw up. Do it as quick as possible before teams can "set up". This will create an incentive to stay man on man so you aren't caught out of position transitioning between structures. Penalise the third man in who "supports" a team mate who is tackled. i.e. if I tackle you, and your teammate comes and wraps us both up, then pay holding the man against your team mete. a) I didn't have the ball, so he had no right to touch me. b) this third man in action is purely designed to "tie up" the ball and force a ball up, which slows the game down. Also, if the third and forth man are penalised, there will be less incentive to have so many packs around the ball, with those players instead maintaining a bit of space to receive the ball. Pay holding the ball faster and more often. Too many players get too long to hold onto it. Too many players just drop it or throw it or drag it in. This largely happens in congestion, in mauls and packs. Paying holding the ball quickly (combined with the third man in rule above) will encourage teams to move the ball out quickly, discourage as many numbers around the ball, as they'll need players "outside" to receive hurried ball. Paying it quickly, instead of saving it up and doing the dancing horse theatrical [censored], will enable the players to move the ball on quicker. Pay 10 of these per game instead of 2 and the players will learn to move it onwards. The above are all actually part of the rules already. Nothing new, nothing controversial. I'm unsure on these following changes. They are potentially controversial rules that don't fundamentally change the game too much: Any 50 m penalty awarded in the D half of the ground will bring the mark to ~75 m out from goal. 50 m penalties in the D50 are borderline useless as the opposition just gets free time to set up a zone. Unsure if this will work, but worth considering. If we must zone, then do it on defensive kick outs only. Minimum 4 players from each side behind the half way mark until the kick is taken. It's similar to the centre square arrangement in that it is onlt at those specific set plays, and will help break down defensive zone set ups before they start. The only problem is the "quick kick out" rule which may make this hard to enforce.

I think more than arguing about a press, or any other tactics/strategies being employed, what most people are saying fundamentally is this. That we have less one on one contests these days. I agree that's a pity, but we will never fix that. It is simple math: an attacker will win more than 50% of one on ones against a defender of similar skill, purely because a) the attacker will tend to have the ball delivered to their advantage, and b) the defender is trying to inhibit, which means they will give away more free kicks. So all coaches, from now until forever will try to avoid one on ones in defnece, and create them in attack. Which means even if we set minimum players in positions, the coaches will manufacture a reason to have spare defenders. Do we really think that if coaches can't set up a half ground zone in their defencive half that they will abandon all hopes of stopping goals and go into shoot out mode? Of course not. I think if we were required to leave 4 players forward of the half way line (for example) then most coaches would a) set up a permanent 8 man zone in the D50 and b) leave at a minimum a 5th or 6th defender spare behind half way when attacking. And we'd see a really shitty rebound ping-pong between the 4 v 6 at the half way line, and the D50 zone with the remaining 14 players. The only way to beat it would be kicking goals from 60 m, before it reset. This wouldn't give us new one on one contests. I'm not sure the AFL thinks AFLX will take the place of AFL. I think they want it to take the place of soccer and rugby at a social level. A low impact/contact version of the game, great for kids and social, played on rugby/soccer fields, with only a handful of players so everyone can play. Soccer is the long term threat to AFL, and they have grass roots level, but not elite support. From a business strategy perspective, the AFL need to reclaim as many grounds in suburbia as possible. If they can get groups of friends playing AFLX the same way people play mixed netball or social soccer, they win the strategic battle.

Of course they are. There are hundreds of millions of dollars of design and marketing and science brought together for the sole purpose of trapping people into addiction. The machines aren't fun to play and provide no entertainment value. The fact that only a small proportion of people even use the machines demonstrates this. They are designed to exploit. If you think that people choose to do this, that they have any control or that they have the abilty to out smart the hundreds of millions of dollars then you lack understanding of the situation.

Pokies are designed through neuroscience to entrap and addict people. People can't simply "take responsibility" these machines are so advanced they will always catch a certain percent. The government should represent the peoples interests when they can't represent themselves. That is why government should step in to protect people even if it unfortunately limits the "rights" of others especially when the rights in question are inconsequential (who really cares about being on the pokie??).

Hogan is a god contested mark, when he has a bit of form behind him. He isn't the strongest overhead; that is Weeds thing though. Weed attacks the ball high info the air. Once he gets the pace of the game he'll complement well.

Having Gawn and Hogan out for most of the year has really hurt us in this department. But looking at it subjectively, we are the 6th highest scoring team in the competition; the lack of marking hasn't hurt our ability to hit the scoreboard.

I think I disagree. Ice got a theory that our defensive zone works better at Ethihad as it is narrower than the G, where the extra width opens it up allowing teams to find a gap. Subiaco is 15 m longer, but narrower than ethihad again. "Bigger" in this case doesn't affect modern defensive. I'm really interested to see how it works for us.

Hibberd > Melksham Pretty happy with this. We paid overs last year and unders this year. Both are best 22 and I think Hibberd will be close to top 12 for us for the next couple of years. At his age he is effectively a very good quality upgrade on Matt Jones. Make our list run much deeper.

Id love us to say that publicly.

Just to throw around some other possible scenarios, how would people feel about: - Hibberd and Essendons 2016 2nd rounder (19?) - for - Our 2017 first found (12?) - Hibberd and Essendons 2016 2nd rounder (19?) - for - Salem and our 2016 3rd rounder (46?) - Hibberd - for - Grimes/other fringe player plus or 2016 3rd round (46?)

It has been a tough year for fringe players at the MFC. We have had virtually no injuries, particularly to the midfield group, we've had a couple of kids come on, and we've competed most weeks. Usually the guys on the fringe (ANB, Grimes, Trenners, Newton, BenKen) would all play 8-12 each and we'd be taking about how important it is that we have depth. With our best 6 available almost every week and kids rotating through the last couple of mid spots, these guys just haven't been given the opportunity. Unless we get upgrades, I hope we have some stability. Dumping good depth performing at tier 2 for the equivalent incoming from the opposition won't help us.

It's rough but it comes with the territory of a $60k per year job straight out of high school in an industry where you are the focus (everything is done for you and tailored personally to you: coaching, fitness, personal trainers, massages, specialists looking after you), with a chance for that to jump to $200k plus within a couple of years.

I suspect the crowd will stop obsessing about draft picks once: a) we play some finals so we have other things to get excited about b) we play finals so we don't have a top 10 pick (less exciting than pick 3) c) we have 25+ regular senior players who everyone thinks are better options for round 1 than an untried 17 year old who gets drafted (will be accelerated if the 17 year old is ranked 10-15 rather than 1-7)

I really enjoyed his highlights clip. A couple of things really stood out. His ability and the way he avoided tackles obviously, but also the ways he gathered the ground ball so easily, particularly the way he freed his arms and got handballs out to advantage and the number of overhead marks he took. I'm assuming the potential knock on him is fitness i.e. endurance, and perhaps pace over 2-3 steps. Pretty happy.

That being said i have no knowledge of whether this year's top 10 is stronger or weaker than last year's or next year's. It may be hard to to compare because this year's best 10 players are playing in a weaker competition (i.e. shallower).

We are discussing the quality of the top 10-15 players and which options are available. That is unrelated to discussing the quality of players 30-60+, which is considered to drop off. Thus the draft is "shallow" i.e. not deep.

Shallow means not deep.

I think any second forward needs to be ruck capable. Weideman may be, I don't know, but for that reason I would be trying to fill the spot with a player who is a genuine ruck forward.

An extension until 2019 is enough for me. It ends any short term speculation. If we haven't come good (and by that i mean be regulaly competitive and playing a final or two) by the end of 2017, Goodwin is going to be under serious pressure in 2018. To have Hogan locked in for 2019 will mean over less distraction that year. If we aren't challanging in 2019, Hogan may as well go and so should we. Pumped by this article!

We struggled to bring him into the game. Amazing how this week, when we actually match the opposition through the midfield and with i50's, that we struggle to convert these to shots on goal.

I wonder if these 2 and 3 years deals were significantly front ended? We didn't have anyone to pay the salary cap to, so it is easy to front end the contact, pay the cap, save the cash for bigger fish in future years and it is reasonably cheap to pay players out later if needed.

http://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/2015-05-14/dawes-aims-to-expose-frawley-fitness “He’s [Frawley's] missed about a month of footy, so he’s going to be vulnerable, in terms [of his match fitness],” Dawes said “I imagine he’ll go to Jesse Hogan, [with] him being the No.1 forward, but if he comes to me, that’s certainly what I’ll be trying and do – work him around and try to exploit his lack of match fitness.”

Jackovich kicked 71.57 in 14 games in his first season. He also kicked 50+ in the reserves.

So is he AV or AB?