Chris

May well be, but his first question may well be for Essendon to show what they actually gave him, the answer to that would be interesting, especially if a few key people end up under oath!

We have one of those in Spencer. Maybe what you mean is a mature back up to our back up ruck!

That may well be the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place. Knowing how to win is certainly a skill and one we don't possess, with the exception of Lewis. That is probably the biggest skill he can bring but it is an incredibly hard thing to teach as it is so intangible.

I think it is our zone. it seems to push too high and be easy to get around on the wider ground, and if we close the room wide enough teams go down the middle. We can't get out of defense because of two things, we can never take a make on the back flanks (unless Gawn is there) and other teams have a zone that works on a wider ground and run harder to the right spots to make it work. This is the one area I think we have gone backwards under Goodwin. Under Roos our zone worked pretty well and we were good defensively on the big grounds but got found out on the smaller grounds, Goodwin seems to have shifted the balance the other way while being more aggressive offensively. DemonAndrew just made my last point, one of the things we are missing is height. When we are on we spoil marks on our forward flank and take marks on our back flank. We struggle to do either at the minute and that is due to height, we simply have too many big men out at the minute. On a smaller or narrower ground this doesn't seem to be as big an issue I think due to more people being around the contest to spoil the ball.

What I would love to see is a bloody big sign outside the G (or even better, inside the G) stating 'Never forget the dons and Dank'. Would be a nice touch as a tribute to our diggers as it plays on the sign in the primary school in Villers-Bretonneux which reads 'Never forget Australia'. This sign is in place as thanks to not only our diggers who took the town 99 years ago tomorrow, but also as thanks to the Victorian School children who raised money after the war to help rebuild their school in France. On an aside and sorry for the history lessen, the school children of Villers-Bretonneux in return raised money for the rebuilding of the schools lost in the Black Saturday bush fires, a truly special relationship forged in blood and tears that far too few know anything about.

As a kid of the 80's I hate Hawthorn, always have and always will. They are my main rival, with the drug cheats not far behind. I am just hoping they drop off the face of the planet and we smash them for the next decade.

I actually couldn't give a toss about illicit drug use and playing. The illicit drugs that are performance enhancing are banned by WADA, and the other do nothing for your performance. The issue here is that the AFL spend a whole lot of money testing for illicit drugs, many of which are banned by WADA, but they don't share the results with ASADA. Basically the AFL could very well be hiding the use of illicit drugs which are performance enhancing under the guise that it is a 'societal issue'. It is about time the AFl grew the hell up and expected from their athletes the same standard we expect from teenagers in every Olympic sport.

Can't wait to see opposition teams thinking about having 2 players in tagging roles against us, as long as they aren't as good as Bernie was a couple of years ago!

He ended up tagged against WC in the second half, not AFL proper but as close as he has been. He was no where near as effective with the tag, but it probably freed Viney and Co a bit, although I thought Viney and a few other mids were pretty disappointing against WC.

As I said, maybe I was just being stupid, and idealistic, and naive. Although it didn't surprise me that that is what they did at all, just reading any paper now days will tell you that, what surprised me was that he openly admitted it!

Damon Johnson, associate editor at the sun was on MMM this morning and made a very telling comment. I think it was Eddie who made a comment along the lines of 'you guys have been behind the players throughout this' and Damon responded with ' I don't think we have been biased in our reporting, it was simply a case that Essendon had a story to tell and we told it, The AFL also had a story to tell and through Caro at The Age and they told that one'. Of course they all went on to bad Caro, about the only Journo who has seen this for what it is form day one. Excuse if I am being stupid but I always thought the job of a journo was to report on news, and in doing so present all aspects of the news and then let the reader decide, yet here is a senior editor of the Herald Sun openly saying they did not do that and they consciously chose to report one side a story!

One thing I have noticed is that he seems to handball the ball from anywhere, as in it isn't always from his hand. If you watch in teh clearances he will sort of gather but int he same motion hit the ball forward. There was one I watched the other day (can't remember which game, may have been a replay of the Hawks game last year) where he tucked the ball under his arm to run, was about to be tackled so handballed the ball from tucked under his arm. Of course it went straight to the player intended and off we went. This isn't a skill I have noticed before. His usually has a pretty soft touch on the ball to and just puts it to clear advantage of a team mate. Must be nice being on the end of them.

But but but this will only make him look a martyr and the innocent party, surely that is what the public will think. If I put more mumbles and drunken slurs I can really heard Robbo saying that.

As long as there is a record of what it was, and they have cleared it with ASADA then we don't need to know what it was Saty.

I read it very much as an attack/investigation on ASADA. Good luck with that one. The AFL on the other hand, bunch of incompetent fools.

And then the idiot goes on to claim he is doing everything for the well being of the players! Wouldn't knowing what actually happened be number 1 of the list of things you would do if you were interested int eh well being of the players. Not to mention that this is 6 months after the story broke and they still haven't started to work out what is going on. Just confirms again that they really don't care for the players and were in it for themselves from day 1.

Don't forget the players as well Abe. Their lack of responsibility and adherence to the code is why we are here, no matter what their motives were.

Problem with that rjay is that the AFL didn't know they were doing anything wrong, they only suspected it might be. It is a massive hole you dig yourself when you ban someone from doing something you think might be banned without actually knowing, imagine the law suits that would have come out of that! All the AFl could do was tell the EFC to be very careful and refer the matter to ASADA to investigate. I think they did do this. It is one of the very few things they seem to have got right int eh whole affair.

I have not read the UN's agenda 2030 but understand the point behind what you have highlighted. Just for context, I sit somewhere in the middle on this, the climate is changing and is getting hotter, that is fact and claiming 18 years as a reference point is laughable. Humans are having some affect on the climate be it through emissions or clearing of forest, or a mixture of both, who really knows. I am unsure of how much of an affect we are having and really laugh at people who think we can control the climate and make it just right for us, all we can do is limit of affect on a natural process and go along for the ride. I am all for taking action purely because it will actually clean up our air and have lasting benefits for the health of the worlds population. On the wealth redistribution issues. The carbon tax as introduced by our Julia was a wealth redistribution tax, if you removed all the carbon talk around it and looked at who was paying it was basically a funnel for money to go from the top earners to the bottom earners on basically a means tested basis. That is what it did and that also meets the long held views around wealth redistribution of the then treasurer Swanny. Of that policy I was no fan. In terms of what is written above (at least the bits about the economic development model) it is a bit of a chicken and egg discussion. As it stand the economic development model is based on poor countries building capacity through providing cheap power and building industry and wealth form there. Currently cheap power is coal, coal is dirty and highly polluting (just look at the cancer rates in the Latrobe Valley to see the impact). Under the current economic development model there is no way for poor nations to provide power in any way without going down the dirty polluting route. What the above is talking about is changing this model to allow the poor countries to provide the power required to develop their nations while using clean power, which at the minute is more expensive but given another decade or two of development may well end up the cheap option. That is the changes the are talking about, allowing the poor countries to develop without being required to follow the same polluting route we have walked and to do this they will need the help of the rich nations, which is only fair considering we have had all the benefit of polluting everything and are now asking them not to make use of that same technology. One thing that has puzzled me in articles from the likes of McCrann and Bolt is there talk around Coal being this panacea that can never be bettered. Human kind have always strived for new and better ways of doing things, why is coal seen as some sort of end point when there are better cleaner options that can be developed that will have all sorts of impact on society, not just the weather. Do we really want to accept the status quo and just accept that this is as good and things can be?

Hird Snr clearly doesn't get the WADA code, what it is, how it works, and where precedent lies. pretty much straight from the handbook of the jibbering mule.

It is funny reading in the comments that even after Patrick points out the difference between the governance penalties and the banned substance penalties, there is still an individual called Ruth who is completely confused about the goings on what which hearing was for what. No surprise she is a Hird fan.

There still is online. Good old Bomber Thompson having a swipe at the AFL again saying how badly treated they all were.

Hi Wrecker. The bolded bit is of great importance. Hird was the head coach, the first responsibility of any head coach is to the welfare of his players. If Hird had any doubts he had to make sure everything was fine, he didn't, in fact when Ried raised concerns about the program Hird went over his head to Robson to complain that the program was being held up. Not the move of a smart manager concerned for the welfare of his players. As head coach Hird is also responsibly for the conduct of all coaches, any failure by them is a failure for him too, that is why the managers earn the big bucks and get the bigger penalties. He failed here to. The other area he failed was his rhetoric about doing all the court appeals for the players, [censored], the players would not really have benefitted in any way from any of the court action taken by the club, it was all backside saving shenanigans by all involved. He could not have handled that worse. I wont go into his intent to cheat as it isn't clear enough either way. Although I do hold a view, it isn't strong enough to put on public record. All in all his experience as head coach is irrelevant, he was the head coach and from day one takes on certain responsibilities, he failed at those and failed miserably and should have taken the slap when it was offered.

As much as I can't stand this man, his club, and what has happened I wish him all the best and hope he finds a way out of the mire he appears to be in.

Wasn't panadol, it was apparently Nurofen and her coach gave it to her. Many pain killers and cold meds used to, and many still do, contain psuedoephedrine which is a banned substance. Just goes to show why it is so important for athletes to check everything they take and don't trust anyone but ASADA with what is banned and what is not. Just goes to show the whole defense the players went with of 'but the people we trusted said it was fine'. Does not cut it by a mile, even though very few, if any, in AFL land actually get this yet!