Chris

I can’t stand Robbo but to give him credit he was right on this one and was strong on it from the start. Well done Robbo

And the too high a minute earlier. The two blokes umpiring were appalling.

Gee, I am glad this opinion is slowly being weeded out. Just let them all off as they are poor little boys. BS.

Have said from day 1 that the AFL is inept, especially with drugs in their sport. It seems they like to continually prove me right!

Was a bit of an audible boo on the telly. Not huge but to many people celebrating the win and the AFL didn't pump him up at all in the announcement. It was kind of ' AND THE NORM SMITH IS BEING PRESENTED BY james hird AND THE WINNER IS DUSTY' and then Hird was ussered away. On the ETC in general. It annoys me they are still in the league, it frustrates me they think the AFL did wrong by them when the AFL has bent over to protect them and continues to do so. I refused to watch them this year and saw one quarter of their game against us and that was it for the year. I will continue to not watch or go to games that they are involved in.

It wasn't so much Max going down that exposed us, it was Spencer! No idea how King is going but we also have Filipovic who is a few years off yet. If we can keep Spencer around until Filipovic is ready then we should be fine. The chances of loosing two ruckmen is pretty low, for it to happen twice would be astonishing.

Depends who asks for the meeting. It may well only apply to free agents but if the player asks to meet with the club then there is no issue at any time. The rule bans the clubs from contacting the players (as in making first contact), it doesn't ban the player from talking to clubs.

Agreed. You can mount a very strong case that we were out marked on the weekend due more to the delivery coming in than the act of the defender. In reality both were at play but the defenders life gets so much harder when the delivery is coming in with little no no pressure, which is down the mids who had a very off day pressure wise. Clearances are a useless stat when looking at pressure as it is only the clearance, it doesn't show if the ball was then turned over and run down the other end with little or no pressure, and pressure is what makes the delivery bad and makes the back men be able to do their job better. Using the number of times a team scores per 50 entry is also useless unless you add the number of entries into 50. In reality the back 6 press up to around our half forward line, if they are working well with the mids and putting the pressure on the number of inside 50 for the opposition drop, but the may score easily if they actually get there.

Just watched the final two minutes of the game again as I wanted to see a few of the mistakes mentioned in here. Four things stood out. 1: The free to Brown for in the back on the wing was soft, may not have made a huge difference though as they had the ball anyway. 2: Hunts sort pass was high risk high reward, it didn't come off as the pass itself was off line, had it been on line then who knows. 3: Who ever posted that OMac was too close to Jetta in the zone right at the end when they took the mark is spot on. 4: OMac (99% sure it was but apologies if it wasn't) did what I see many players do when taking a kick from an out on the full, but this one may have had dire consequences. Players seem not to realise that once they set foot inside the boundary again then it is play on. OMac never actually got to the outside of the boundary, took the ball that was thrown to him, and as soon as he wasn't moving to get to the outside of the boundary the ump correctly called play on. That left his kick rushed and short which fell into Daw's hands with Maxy and few others trying to make up the distance he lost. I really can't believe how many AFL players I see that miss this basic understanding of the rules. If it is out on the full boys, get yourself over the boundary and don't step back in until you are ready to kick. I have similar rant about players being called to play on while over the boundary taking a kick and it not being deemed out of bounds, but I will leave the full version of that for another day.

I don't really agree that our defense is a huge issue, although I do readily concede that it can be improved. Overall our defense has been fairly solid, where we are weak is against the big forwards, that is obvious, and is also for a few reasons. 1: TMac has barely been back all year, he has been in the ruck and forward due to injuries. Put TMac back with OMac and Frost (or even one in the VFL at times) ad things against the big boys would be different. Not completely solved but far better. 2: The games in which our big backs have struggled have been the games where our mids have boon off, which means the delivery int eh forward line is fast and generally pretty good. That is very hard to defend. In the games where our mids are pressuring the ball carrier our backs do a good enough job. Both Frost and OMac are young and will improve, unfortunately they have ad to this on the big stage, although that could stand them in good stead in future. The answer to our issue with big backs is to get another big back in there so we have some sort of depth. That could be TMac going back again or bringing in someone else. Currently we simply don't have the depth and if one of them was to go down we are stuffed. The other answer is the make sure the whole team is defending, when we do that we are fine, if the mids and forwards have an off day the backs are screwed. I actually thought all our backline did a pretty good job on the weekend. Sideshow only got 4 (yes I said only, if we had been bad down there he would have had 10), teh other talls were basically unsighted, and our small backs did a good job (with the exception of Lewis' disposal)

Obviously Norwood (redleg connection), and the other wood one might get when we play well.

I bet they would blame someone else for putting the shredder in the wrong place too! Pick one of Dank, WADA, ASADA, the AFL, or simply that all the other clubs were doing it too.

Etihad is probably narrower that the G due to the preexisting infrastructure around (the road and train), although both of those could have been worked around.

Geography would play a big part. Given the age of many of the grounds it would have been determined by how much flat ground there was (or near enough to flat to be easily shaped).

Nicholls was the ump and I am not sure he has given us a free since!