Uncle Fester

Me! Boyhood dream and all. I can see myself getting chaired off the ground as thousands cheer in adulation, and cringing Collingwood players are forced to bow and scrape, as fair maidens cast rose petals in front of my path. Sigh. OK. Back to reality. Inside 45 Watts. No question. If he has it there I have already mentally counted the goal, and am surprised when he (very occasionally) misses. Outside 45... Hmmm. Probably Vince or Milkshake. Hunt would be pretty hard to go past if it came to 55+, but whether it was a fluke or class needs to be tested again.

Was my first thought too

Hi. I'm Uncle Fester, and I'm an alcoholic. Whoops... Sorry. Wrong support group Hi. I'm Uncle Fester and I drink like a fish because of my football team.

Who gives a @#$%. Keep him, sack him, marry him. Not our coach, not our problem.

There wouldn't be many on the list I'd consider untouchable if it meant getting Kelly and Lever... happy to burn picks too, but the $ tag... I dunno. A price war in the club among the young 'uns wouldn't be good. I don't know if this story is true or not, but I'd like to think it is - back in the 80's one of the guns at Hawthorn went to the club asking for a hefty pay rise. The answer from the club was to show them Leigh Matthews contract and ask them if they thought they were worth more than him. That's a bit hard to do when you have a player on $1.5 a year or so.

Relax. We've got this.

Poor guy.

Yep. And then beat whoever we meet. Can't whine and say 'but only if we didn't play them a X ground, or that team in that final. If you want to be the best, then you have to beat the best. No ifs, no buts. Do it or watch another team hold the cup.

The old adage: a champion team will always beat a team of champions. In recent history Geelong and Hawthorn lost their A grade star and just shrugged. Adelaide may well do the same this year.

Steven King, in his book 'It' described darts players as 'hypertensive sumo wrestlers'.

I like that darts facilities are 'great for the whole family'. Yeah, I can't wait for my 9yo to put one into the back of my hand as I'm removing mine from the board. But I do like the place, like to drop in when I'm in town and have a feed and a beer.

The full back

I can think of at least one...

If by different you mean 'annoyingly self righteous pain in the arse' then yeah. I'm happy for that to be frowned upon and laughed at.

Agreed. I don't think that the club should do anything more. If he is fit and deserves a spot them pick him. However, if he is on 300K a year that is nearly 80K of talent sitting the stands the last 6 weeks. The club does have a right to be grumpy about that though, so if he is put in the naughty corner, I'd understand.

Maybe it's a delayed evener from the freebie flag where they spent all last year playing throwball.

Myself, I don't hold footballers to any moral standard. I care about the 30 touches and 5 goals they might bring, not if they do hospital visits to cancer kids, or anything like that. That is for the pope not a footballer. That said, he let down the club. If you want to be a football hardman be Jack Viney. Make the other side worry that if they pick up the ball it's going to cost them, not punch someone 50 feet off the ball. The acts of Bugg, Hogan, Lewis, Salem etc didn't help the MFC. It hurts us.

Goes alright. With a couple of pre-seasons under his belt he might become a first 22 type.

Don't you hate it when auto correct changes comedians to custodians...

I should clarify - when I said touched I mean that it was knocked away during the bounce. It is bloody grey though. Never had to decide on something as your example, and would try to apply common sense and call play on - to be fair to both. If he was still trying to get it back then, yeah, ball. The current rules would be interesting to look at though, even if they will be as vague af.

Always has been, Beelz. You must have played with trigger finger umps lol

We need Maxxy Gawn to chime in. He should be across all this by now. 1st para: yes. As long as no other player has touched the ball, he is in possession and therefore has not disposed of it properly. 2nd para: play on. He didn't make a choice to bounce, kick or handball. But, in a grey area, if he'd taken half a dozen steps and done it then I'd ping him. It always comes back to prior opportunity - if you have it and have time to do something with it, then the onus is on you to get rid of it the right way.

He used to scare me as a kid. I think it was the eyebrows.

It is. He had prior opportunity to dispose of the ball properly and chose something else. I am almost 100% certain* that you are deemed in possession of the ball when you bounce it - whether or not it comes back. *at least it was when I played and then umpired, but god knows what they have done to the rules since then