Mazer Rackham

Now on a lighter note! Some avatars for sad demons.

So we keep him on our list just to avoid this embarrassment. The kind of small mindedness that has held us back in the past.

Three possible outcomes. We trade Watts for a player that the coaches want We don't trade Watts, he gets the message and transforms into the complete player we always hoped he would be We don't trade Watts, he continues on as an almost-but-not-quite player Two out of three ain't bad.

that I'm still mad AF about our late season mental crumbling that no amount of game plan tweaking, trading/drafting, physical preparation, etc, will make any real difference until we can overcome our well honed ability to f*** up everything when it counts

1. you've got to be in it to win it. Then anything can happen. 2. any changes to personnel, training, game plan, etc, are completely secondary to our number one weakness. Which is our undying ability to stumble at any crucial hurdle, no matter how low. Fair dinkum, if we had to beat Dimboola thirds to make the finals, we'd find a way to balls it up. That over all else is what needs to be worked on.

Sounds like a fair deal which I would accept in a heartbeat

1. Dank probably won't show up 2. His "legal team" will be straight out The Simpsons 3. as an appeal, it won't be a re-hearing of the case. So no introduction of new evidence. It hinges on whether the AFL applied their own rules properly. 4. if the ban was quashed, the AFL drug tribunal can sit again and ban him again. No "double jeopardy" because they're a sporting tribunal, not a court. 5. either way, what sporting club wants to attract the kind of attention that Dank brings? So, a circus, but not the expose that many of us would like to see.

I wonder what the international audience of 2.5 trillion people in 1,250 countries will make of the comp putting a drug ringleader on the main stage? What a showcase for the game!

His lawyers and "legal advisors" are usually class acts. This could be very entertaining, assuming it even gets to the starting line.

That's venality. Or if you like, greed. Would a competent administrator allow that to be the primary motivator, while allowing important aspects of the game to rot? A competent administrator can't overlook the $$$, the attendances, etc. But they would seek a balance. Perhaps starting with an overhaul of the rules (get rid of "interpretation"), or a fairer draw.

I believe it's still at the incompetence stage. But it's the thin end of the wedge.

So is the AFL “corrupt”? Not in sense of bags of money changing hands. Not in the sense of Gil calling the minister for sports and "putting the frighteners on". Not in the sense of Gil and the Calabrian underworld plotting who wins next year's Brownlow. (Yes, I know clubs have done the bags of money thing in the past. This is not about the clubs, it’s about head office and the comp itself.) Corrupt? Not in criminal behaviour, not by any legalese definition. It is more in the sense of corrupted being damaged or warped. The AFL runs a damaged and warped competition. Biggest example: EFC and the drugs thing. They really didn’t care that their comp was perverted, that a flag might have been won by drug cheats. That their precious “integrity” was in tatters. They cared only about their image and associated revenue loss. They tipped them off, tried mightily to get them off, cut deals with ASADA, minimise the damage, then protect the club from on-field damage by making up rules about top-up players, etc etc, and now we’re in the rehabilitation phase. Because it’s more important to preserve the image and the money than to enforce their own rules (which were put in place after some dragging, kicking and screaming … and by sheer chance had big financial impact tied to NOT putting them in place). The rules of the game. Constantly changing, for what purpose? Apparently to make the game look better on TV. Concentrating on harsh enforcement of some minor rules (deliberate OOB), but not others fundamental to the game (throwing, holding ball). Does it “look good on TV” to see rampant throwing the ball, or to see the ball carrier being spun in a 360 only to be told “play on”? Complete disregard of other rules (10m “protected” zone). "Interpretations", the very concept a sick joke. Introducing "interpretations" pre-season that are promptly ignored (ducking), until key moments when they're plucked out of thin air. None of this seems to bother the AFL. MRP. Chooklotto. Conflicts of interest when members are also in the media. Outspoken members (Burke, Bartel) admitting that they first look to get players off. Lethlean “at arms length", but popping into MRP meetings to make sure they’re doing the right thing. None of this seems to bother the AFL. Normalising behaviour. Another example: Gil and his coin toss for alternate jumpers. He actually contemplated it! Sanity prevailed, but it shows how they don’t have policy or a manifesto to guide them. They literally make it up on the run. ... but they show rigour when it comes to some clubs. Eg the Port away strip. The MFC away strip. But then allow Carlton and EFC to play each other in traditional jumpers. Not a peep. Would a sport of integrity (I mean real integrity, not AFL corn flakes box plastic integrity) stand for this? They don't even have to be top flight comps. Would a suburban footy/cricket/netball league cop abuses and inconsistencies like this? Imagine the AGMs. These perversions get normalised. They start to seem not so outrageous. (Even while typing this I’m wondering if I’m being precious.) Then other perversions are introduced which by precedent do not seem outrageous. In athletics, swimming, cycling, etc, the rampant drug use has caused us to ask continually, can we believe what we are seeing? Every achievement, every record, has us wondering if it's natural or not. With the AFL, even without outright corruption/drugs/criminality, we are forced to ask, is this a natural outcome? You can tie in other things. 2016 GF umpiring. A fair outcome? Arguably not. The rigged draw year in year out. Does it provide fair outcomes? No effort is made to fix it. That it’s rigged is barely even acknowledged. The "greater good" (attendances and $$$) overrides all. I believe that incompetence is usually a better explanation than conspiracy. But in time, with prolonged abuse and normalisation, it can become hard to tell the difference. Can the AFL be trusted as a competition of integrity? (Sometimes it seems more like My Kitchen Rules or The Bachelor than a sporting comp. This week, Dustin Martin was given a rose ... and Joel Selwood was voted off the island!) For these reasons I have almost completely lost it with the AFL. Only my foolish but deeply ingrained allegiance to the MFC, born of many years of investment of nervous energy and hope, keeps me hanging on. Will there be a payout one day? I am like a gambler who has lost his money on the pokies and is sitting forlornly on a bar stool at 3AM hoping against hope for the jackpot that will get it all back again. Next payday (next season) I’m back doing it all over again. Strangely enough, an MFC flag might be the thing to finally drive me away. I might consider the ledger square, close the case file and leave the AFL behind. I will not be watching the game on Sat. I have no interest in it beyond hoping that RFC don't win. The AFL. A damaged and warped competition with no underlying agenda other than “show me the money”, that plays favourites and makes up policy on the run. It's almost literally unbelievable.

The entire Brownlow ceremony is 99% fluff and padding as those of us who remember the call on radio from days long since passed. (And even that was high fluff factor for the times.) They could do the whole thing in 10 minutes. Do a countdown of the top 10 scores, announce the winner. Then give a spreadsheet with all the numbers to the papers. It could be done the way they do press conferences when a player announces he's re-signed, or has retired. A short statement, a few questions, then pub. But they like to frizz it up with their ideas of entertainment ... red carpet, GOTY, roaming Fevolas, etc, etc. Who cares if they invite a few glamours and their arm candy?

It's all part of the Great Rehabilitation Process which will continue on Satdee when the would-be Lance Armstrong of the AFL, the man who dropped the comp into the greatest crisis in its history and nearly got an entire club banned by WADA, gets to hand over the Norm. They would have given a farewell Brownlow to Jobby if they thought they could get away with it.

Well, this is something new. Can we have a new thread where we can explore all the misfires in our recruiting over the last 100 years?

And get the sheilas to phone in descriptions of what they would have worn to the papers.

Drinks and horses doovers don't serve themselves.

Sadly for Clarry, just about any chick counts as punching above his weight. If it is, she scored all the "good looks" genes.

About 25,000 members

The MRP set a precedent every second week. For any given incident, there's a previous similar one to show that the player should get off. there's also a previous one to show the player should get weeks. Perfect for a conflicted body that doesn't know what the f*** it's supposed to be doing. Cotchin was always going to get off. Even if he'd eye gouged Sloane, tripped him, spat on him, jumper punched him, elbowed the back of his head, and broken his jaw, he would have gotten off. It's one of the unbreakable laws of nature: stars don't get sent down in GF week.

Round 8, 2006. A while back but who's having trouble working out who's who?

Round 20, 2017 Round 3, 2017

Get used to disappointment.

The MRP will rule that Cotchin wasn't even on the ground and that Shiel got concussed before the game when Phil Scully slapped him on the back.

You won't think that if they pull off the big one next week. A whole f***ing year of "tiger power". Spare me. At least Adelaide will be doing it in a different part of the country. The sleeping giant people talk about is actually their sense of entitlement. It's right up there with Ess's and Carl's. Enough to make you sick.