Mazer Rackham

Important win as we were challenged 3 times, and each time we showed them who's boss. Almost worth two wins, for the belief factor. And still room for improvement in skills and finishing. Lever & May, Lever & May, Lever & May ... I reckon Langdon is every bit as important to our team. Jackson looks ready to explode any game now. Poor Nev ... all he's good for now is grabbing the ball and going to ground to force a ball up. GO DEMONS!

You can get in some practice outside the McDonalds in Lonsdale Street. If you put out a cap or a foam cup, you can save up for the tickets. Dear Joel can look forward to more of that as he gradually gets slower and less effective. I estimate 17 other clubs will take every opportunity to point this out to him.

There is nothing in the rules about what happens if a player who didn't dispose of the ball does not try to keep the ball in bounds. More "interpretations" and enforcing rules that only exist in someone's head. 18.10 OUT OF BOUNDS 18.10.1 Spirit and Intention Players shall be encouraged to keep the football in play. 18.10.2 Free Kicks - Out of Bounds A field Umpire shall award a Free Kick against a Player who: (a) Kicks the football Out of Bounds On the Full; (b) Kicks, Handballs or forces the football over the Boundary Line and does not demonstrate sufficient intent to

This is a perfect set up for our mental demons. The Cats & especially their coach will be preying on our ability to crumble and throw it all away. They will throw the kitchen sink at us in the first quarter, and if we can withstand that, we'll win. But if we start to doubt and have to play catch-up against an experienced & ruthless team with a wily coach ...

Channel 7 obviously believe BT *is* the entertainment. The game is just "the product" at hand to fill up air time, but to lure advertisers, there has to be an "entertainment experience", and that's where BT comes in. Ridiculous considering he's the worst kind of "horse racing" style announcer, with a strong dash of Rex Hunt catchphrases and other idiosyncracies. I had always thought the game itself was the entertainment -- how else to explain weekly crowds in the multiple tens of thousands -- but in the last few years the seagulls-chasing-a-chip rugby mauls have made it quite dull. T

Radical thought ... but what if there was some kind of system of "reserve" players? You could have a bunch of players of all kinds, held in reserve ... rucks, mids, KPF/KPD, the lot ... ready to fill in at a moment's notice. You could even have entire teams of these "reserve" players. To go a step further: you could take a team of "reserve" players and affiliate them to a club. You could even have EVERY club have a "reserve" team of players -- as if they were PART of that club. These "reserve" teams could play each other every week, just like the main or "senior" teams do. As a curtain raiser

This is half right. They should practice goal kicking in the wind. They should also practice it in the calm. The learning of the technique and the refining of the skill should be done in ideal conditions. Not when under fire. They can learn more advanced skills (like kicking in the wind) when they've got the basics down reliably. If you teach a man to swim by throwing him into the deep end of a pool, he may learn to freestyle but more likely he'll learn to dog paddle, and from then on, that's his default swimming style when under pressure. Max should learn to kick

Do the Tasmanians get any say in what their team might be called? Or do they have to live with the parochial assumptions of mainlanders? Or, maybe they want to continue the latest trend of naming new AFL clubs after American "franchises". We could have the Tassie Jazz, or the Tassie Dodgers.

Yes, let's let the coaches make the rules. What could go wrong?

In an alternate universe ... Bailey misses the shot but the ump awards 50 against Howe for being in the protected zone. Oh if only.

Footy is cruel that way

FINALLY!!

How to tell if a particular league or competition is worthy of notice or attention: is there a clause in your employment contract linking bonuses to TV ratings of that competition? No = it's not worthy.

There is a correlation between games played together and overall team success. But which one is the cause? Bailey had a theory that you "just get games into them" and voila! Success after 100 games/5 years/everyone's 25yo/whatever the benchmark of the day is. Of course if you have mediocre players who aren't learning anything, a switch doesn't get magically turned on after 100 games. Brendan Bolton found that to his cost. (66 games in his case.) On the other hand, if you have players who can actually play, and coaches who can get them playing to a system, then the good players h

"Fremantle coach Ross Lyon made it clear it’s on the players to improve their goalkicking, as due to limitations regarding player work hours, the coaches simply don’t have enough time or access to make shots for goal a consistent formal part of training." Madness. It's like a snooker player saying there's not enough time to practice sinking balls, or a golfer saying there's not enough time to practice putting. Those guys would be looking for new jobs one week later. "[David] King said allocating time to goalkicking was clearly necessary — whether that came through contracted h