Mazer Rackham

Studies have been done to find if umps are affected by crowd noise. Conclusion: they are. In one study, German soccer refs were asked to pick free kicks from TV coverage of matches. First with the sound off, then with the sound on. With the sound on, they gave more frees to the home sides.

I ran those totals into a statistics web page and the standard deviation is about 340. Only North and Sydney are more than one standard deviation away from the mean. With these numbers, 8.4% and 6.6% likely. In other words, "a bit off" but not outrageous. So you might look at them. But then Wet Toast are nearly 3 SD away. In this case 0.36% likely. A definite outlier. Even a non footy fan can tell something is up.

JV: "Shall we darnce?" AR: "Yes, but stop stepping on my toes, you brute!"

GraveyBeef was just another hot shot graduate from the marketing diploma at TAFE, with stars in his eyes, but interning at AFL house. In between swallowing AFL propaganda, he spent most of his time desperately trying to claim an open plan hotdesk so he could sneak a few minutes on Demonland, enlightening us all as to the latest big ideas coming out of head office, and instructing us on how to run a football club, based on his long years of experience what he read in his course materials. The only club he was a member of was the coffee club in the marketing department at AFL house. Taking his turn to make the expedition to Officeworks to load up on Nescafe 43 bean, and Tim Tams. Now all those years of sage wisdom are lost to us, like chicken poo being shovelled from the Punt Road car park. He never did tell us what exciting synergistic opportunities were going to come of the cartoon company's takeover of Docklands. I suppose it's because he never got to overhear his bosses talking about it in the marketing department tea room.

Thanks, GraveyBeef. None of those items have occurred to anyone before as things that might be beneficial to a footy club. It's gratifying to have knowledgeable football/business experts like yourself here to show us the way out of extinction.

Dear Ed! With only the good of the game in mind ... oh, and his poorly cousins the charity case Demons. What wouldn't have factored into his thinking in the past: another game at the G for the Pies another round where they don't have to travel another game where their social club gets their hands on the entire Ponsford stand No, it was has been noble of Ed to look after us like that. Why shouldn't he cash in now it looks like generating even more for them?

NRL crowds are generally under 15,000 except in Brisbane where they're usually between 20 and 30. Not at all unusual to have crowds under 10,000. Their fans goggle at the thought of a modest 40,000 crowd which is unexceptional in traditional Aussie Rules states.

So we've been downgraded to "you" this week. Just when I thought we'd made it as "we". Thank you for your heartfelt and not at all misplaced concern and messages of advice. Wise, experienced AFL supporters such as yourself are always welcome on opposition fan forums. If, in the future, we need any advice on how to adequately support our club, will you still be around to hold our trembling hands? Meanwhile I note that no thin skinned, fragile Demons supporter has ever spat on our coach, microwaved memberships, or dumped chicken poo at the club's offices.

He has to make generalisations as he doesn't have first hand experience

he hadn't wished for a 12-inch pianist

Mad Dogs on me makes rousing cheer (2-6)

Witness protection program?

My votes. 5 Gawn 4 London 3 Paris 2 Hogan 1 Melksham

Oh, that is good news indeed. Great to hear of other clubs having success. The competition is strongest when all the clubs are strong, not just the Demons.

Patience, grasshopper. With these things, always the winning comes first, then the recognition. Usually it takes a victory over the journo's preferred team. One that's unambiguous and can't be explained away with injuries, luck, bad voodoo, or head in the sand. Win after win after win. Eventually a critical mass builds up. Put enough victories on the board and the recognition, along with retrofitted opinions about how they always knew this was going to happen, will follow. GO DEMONS!!!

Meanwhile on the Bulldogs bigfooty "changes for round 11 v Melbourne" thread, they're steeling themselves for a fighting underdog rebound ..... We are deadset screwed next week. Melbourne should be planning for a 100pts + win They are already 48 points up on Adelaide at HT FFS. Going to get ugly. What will reduce the margin is the Dogs having two extra days break, them travelling back from NT. Etihad is not an advantage anymore against them. They beat us easily there in 2017. Melbourne will be the best team we've played this year, looking awesome today: pace, excellent field-kicking, goal-kicking - all those things we lack really. All those early draft picks and some astute recruiting have created an impressive line-up. So far this year we have kicked 97 goals, Demons have kicked 160. We're screwed. All we can do is stack the team with defenders and hope for the best. At what stage to we plead the mercy rule we have kicked 10 goals the last 2 weeks they have kicked close to 50 goals so if that average applies 25 goals to 5 goals 120 point margin. Whats the default losing margin for not turning up in football? In soccer it is 3 - nil which is pretty good when you're certain to get smacked by 20 - 0. Logically Melbourne should be winning this easily, but they’re definitely due for a down game, it will be an 8 day break versus a 6 day break in warm weather and they’re coming up against a team where they will be unbackable favourites. Here’s a fun fact. 21 quarters is the record for most quarters won in a row in AFL history. If Melbourne win all 4 quarters against us they are the new record holders.

The "when will we break these records" thread never envisaged this carnage

You're in a good mood. Did your team win too?

There's a mouldy oldie song called "Teach Your Children Well". Just came to mind for some reason ...

Some low scores this round. Dogs 58, Bris Layups 49, Boos 45. Ugly slogging football. In a game like ours, where it's not a slog, a superior player can really show off his wares. It's marvellous and a joy to see players like Gus, like Lewis, kids like Spargo, show how they know where to go and what to do with the ball when they get it. Hogan with his rapid fire hands. That's football.

Great to see Nate Jones soaking it up after the game. Hard earned but well earned NJ

Well in reverse order, it's got to do with Bruce's level of .......erm ... interest.

Gus could have been lost to the game from concussion. A "what could have been" story. Now tearing the game apart and keeping good players out of the team. Go Gus!!!!!!!

Collingwood are on a winning streak if that suits you better