Chris

The club have been open with the fact his thyroid was playing up and probably had been for a while before he was diagnosed. They knew something was wrong but didn't know what for a while.

So you think yesterday we played worse than 186 or the belting the dons gave us a few years back? The effort was really bad as you say but the footy was still better than we used to serve up.

Salem also played 7 of those while under the cloud of an undiagnosed condition that turned out to be one that saps you of energy, and he was serviceable without being great in those games. I won't say he had a great year but I certainly wouldn't be anywhere near as harsh as you are on him.

Harsh on both Salem and H. You give a pass to other players due to not being able to get on the park but not these two? Salem especially was pretty good when he could play but he couldn't play for most of the season due to illness.

Yep, that was near the very worst we now get today. I still put that as better than our worst used to be. We used to get spanked like that against average sides, not just those at the top of the ladder.

Our worst is better and we see far less of it and our better is far better and we see more of it. Our average is also far better than it was and we see a lot of it. The gap between the best and worst is still as wide, or maybe even wider as our best is so much better than it was.

The one thing is the gap hasn't shank but the best is better and the worst is also better. If anything the gap has widened as our better is much better while our worst is only a fair bit better. Where we have improved is we see the good far more often and the really bad far less often.

Apologies. There seem to be so many who actually have no clue it is hard to tell sometimes.

The banana isn't about him being Aboriginal, if you do a little research on that you will see the banana is about him being a monkey, as in not as evolved as white fellas. This stems from eugenics which stated that black people were less evolved than white people. This was considered scientific fact 100 or so years ago. That is why the banana is wrong, it is also why called him an ape or monkey is wrong, it is also why it is very very different from calling a white fella an ape or monkey.

Exactly

Oh, forgot, thanks Roos for turning this club around. You have us on the right track and it now up to others to keep us on the right track.

A few things. F the effort put in by the players. Right now you can get [censored]. F Geelong F the umpires (as usual) F Tim Watson the drug taker apologist disrespectful maggot Anyone who doesn't think we have improved knows very little or can't remeber 3 years ago F the players again, we were set to finish the season for the first time in a long time without losing by more than 10 goals for a whole year and they serve up this [censored] and we lose by 100+. F I am [censored]!

The noose is very real but it looser the more experience and profile you have. A junior journo would never have got away with what Caro was publishing.

Don't forget the noose around the neck of the reporters in the form of AFL accreditation. The best, most accurate, and most consistent reporting of this has come from journos not betrothed to the AFL. Carro is the one who is betrothed who has been pretty good on this.

That explains the frees we gave away, what about the ones we didn't get?

No the umps didn't cost us the game but the number of contested possessions was very close, that indicated that we were first to the ball a fair bit as well, yet we only got 5 frees for the whole game. The number of free Carlton got is also not the argument, most of their frees were there. How do you explain that in a game where the stats were all close (except clearances) there is such a differential in the number of frees?

Yep, you will stuggle to find anyone here to argue the frees paid to Carlton weren't mainly right, what you will find is many examples of us not being paid clear frees.

Not to mention the AFL testing for 'social' drugs and then not releasing the results to ASADA. Just a thought, maybe they don't release them because many/most of the social drugs are actually banned by WADA. The AFL all by itself is actually signed up to the WDA code but then turns a blind eye and hands out warnings to players it catches that are cheating under the WADA code, all in the guise of what is good for the player and that they are tackling a societal problem. Bulltish! If you wish to be an elite athlete there are responsibilities and sacrifices that must be made, living under the WADA code is just one of those, apparently the poor little boys int eh AFL can't handle that though!

There was one against him for essentially doing the same thing to them that they had been doing to him. He just laughed directly at the ump, not much more he could do.

Yes there is (by ASADA so it should actually happen unlike if it was the AFL testing), and going to Europe wont help them at all as they have to tell ASADA where they are and ASADA can call on their counterpart in that part of the world to go and test them, as has happened in the US when Collingwood and others went over there.

Obviously. As of right this minute we are ahead though, that is the point. Having a younger more inexperienced team would indicate we have more potential for improvement than those teams below us, which is great. The key word though is potential. If we do not realise that potential then we go backwards, at the minute we have more margin for error on that than the teams below us. That can change very quickly though and by about round 15 next year (give Goodwin some time to settle in) we will see which way it is going. Lets hope it is up.

So who do we have with this wealth of experience who can take their place? Even with Harmes, Garlett and Pedo back in we are still one of if not the most inexperienced side out there each week, and we have won 10 games with that. Would you prefer we play a little more experienced side and be where Brisbane, GC, Carlton, Richmond, Collingwood, etc are? We are ahead of every one of them and with a younger less experienced side.

Sounds like a great idea. One of my biggest hates since moving on from one ump is the inconsistency from one end to the other. I also think Roos is right when he puts the blame of the umpiring at the feet of the rules committee not the umpires. He says the rules committee have made a game that was easy to umpire into one that is incredibly hard. He said yesterday that he now has no idea what the rules are, that says a lot about the rule of Dill and Andy D before him.

There is two, the ones for me were Frost being done for holding when he slipped and stood up as three Carlton players tackled him. I can live with that decision but 5 minutes later a Carlton player had the ball for longer with much more chance to dispose of it and it wasn't called, the inconsistency was incredibly frustrating. Then there was Gawn being blocked from the ruck at least twice by a non ruck Carlton player, both went un-noticed, and Hogan being pushed out in the goal square by a player not even trying to look at the ball. Hogan probably still would have missed the shot though.

By 400%? We were second to the ball for much of the day, we should have lost both the game and free kick count, but can you really say we only really had 5 frees for the game and they didn't miss at least another 5 obvious frees?