Mazer Rackham

It'll be something like, Zorko said "your sister wears army boots", not knowing that during the week, Petty's sister was indeed found to be wearing army boots. For "army boots", substitute something far more intensely personal. Zorko probably didn't know that he'd touched a raw nerve, but when you're playing Mr Tough Guy, things can backfire on you.

HA HA HA If they make a movie of this game it will be called "BACKFIRE". They come out with their hard man act, against guys like Viney, May, Harmes ... none of our guys will shirk a push and shove and even big lumbering old Benny Brown doesn't take a backward step. Even the boy who's still in high school (probably) won't back down from a skirmish. What did they think was going to happen??? It was good to see in the first two minutes our pressure was on. And what was this new thing ... low hard forward entries in space to leading forwards? Since when has that been part of football? I congratulate whoever invented that. We should keep doing it. Hitting our straps at exactly the right time of year. GO DEMONS!!!

Can't we all just agree that I hate Collingwood more than any other club?

Fine, but do you know how much money his manager stands to make from this? People keep going on about camaraderie, team spirit, personal enjoyment & fulfillment and other airy-fairy things. God help us (make lots of money).

ANB may be feeling a little nervous

Can someone who knows something about football tell me how the **** we managed to win that? GO DEMONS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hear, hear. It's a sporting tribunal. Courts of law go over definitions to hair splitting detail because a guilty decision can be very very serious. Career prospects, house home & family, earning capabilities ... big bickie stuff. Here we're dealing with whether a footballer will miss a game of football or not. It's farcical that a QC is permitted to speak for an hour and a half, befuddling the tribunal -- including a beak -- as to which way is up. What is a bump? What is football even? What is "is"? And the tribunal members, bless their little cotton socks, bought into the paradigm and embraced it. It was a travesty and a farce.

Don't tell me it was you!?

Natural justice is when a player in a sporting competition does something that the controlling body says you shouldn't do, injures his opponent, and gets suspended for it. Of course, all the lawyers involved might think it's natural justice to get paid very handsome pocket money to blather on for hours splitting legal hairs when they would otherwise have been home watching The Block or MKR. Yes. How did the AFL let their sporting tribunal turn into a legal busman's holiday, where a simple incident where one bloke flattening another bloke leads to 4 and a half hours of legal minutiae hairsplitting? It's a sporting tribunal that somehow got hijacked by the legal profession. In times gone by, that would be right. Except the AFL have decreed that head high contact puts the onus on the player who initiated it. The unfortunate outcome is the point these days, not the original contest. Corrupt not in the sense of cops taking money to look the other way, or someone burning down their pub for an insurance payout. Corrupt in the sense of damaged, impure, degraded. The AFL is absolutely corrupt. Some other examples given in the last few pages of this thread.

Don't forget Magna Carta. Why not? You'll eventually get in front of some [censored]en judge who has forgotten he's on a sporting tribunal who'll take the bait.

In a fair world, sure. It should be the action, not the outcome, that's penalised. But the AFL have the policy of penalising the outcome. And scores of guys have gone out based on that. The AFL is p*ssing on their backs.

They have no shame, no probably not. I do hope Gillon fronts up to a few media shows and has strips torn off him.

I agree with this. I've been p*ssed off with the game of AFL for years and have several times stated that the only reason I continue to follow is because of my irrational attachment to the MFC. I don't even like watching a lot of game, sometimes even when we're in them, because of ll the throwing, umpires choosing which subset of rules they'll apply each week, etc etc. Of course our magnificent flag has rejuvenated my enthusiasm. But let's face it, overall, the game is [censored]ed.

I hope Gillon and his merry men are going to deliberate for 4.5 hours tonight to work out how and why they let overblown legalse hijack their tribunal system. Left the ground, head high contact, concussion. But it's complicated.

No it hasn't. No decision made by the tribunal in this Gillon era sets any precedent, no matter how ludicrous. The next similar case goes the other way. There is no such thing as precedent in the AFL tribunal system. It's a roll of the dice, every time, dressed up in judicial legalese claptrap.

They threw out the appeal and are now watching the rugby. Everyone forgot the media is still out the front waiting.

They've made their decision, they're just sorting out where they'll be living under the witness protection scheme.

"But it's Cripps" "But he flattened the guy. We can't let him off." "Yeah, I know ... but it's Cripps." "Sh*t. It *IS* complicated, isn't it!?"

Ricciuto was probably ruing that he didn't get to go on the camp too. A nice old fashioned hazing of the smaller and weaker. What's not to like?

Love-bombing alternating with denigration. Classic technique of cults and sociopaths.

Borderline psychos play-acting at being commandos. What could go wrong? And the club wilfully put their playing list at the mercy of these cowboys. Great God.

This should really get the Pies fired up for the first 5 minutes before it reverts to a normal game of AFL footy for the remaining 115. GO DEMONS!!!

There's someone on here, could be picket, who swears blind that Joel is a natural forward. I would love to see some master stroke pulled out, with Joel going forward, kicking a bag, and fixing our forward woes at just the right time of year.

Vlad mocked him publicly and Liberatore saw the writing on the wall. It said: "farewell, post-playing career in the AFL". Vlad had already whitewashed the investigations into our tanking. The last thing he wanted was an investigation into any club's tanking. Then he made the mistake of leaving the country and his sidekick Anderson heard Brock McLean spill his guts and it was game on. Ironically, for displaying this streak of integrity, Anderson was soon afterwards forced out of the AFL world. The AFL won't do anything about the Adelaide camp except whitewash it, again. Their anger and frustration will not be that players were exposed to unsavoury practices, but that people are expecting the AFL to do something about it. They only stick their heads above the parapet when there are congratulations to go around. Finally ... Caro is not a reporter. She is a gossip columnist. It just happens that her special subject is not Hollywood, Sydney high society, or reality TV stars. It's AFL football.

Scene: Heaven. (Or Hell, take your pick.) Rommel: ... so we had the entire British army hemmed in on this beach in France. They had nowhere to go. Absolutely on toast. Clausewitz: Wow. So what'd ya do? Roll 'em into the sea? Negotiate their surrender? Rommel. Nah. We took off all our clothes. Musashi: What? Rommel: Yeah. Then we got into a circle and screamed abuse at each other. Napoleon: Wow. That's different. But then you rolled them into the sea? Rommel: Kind of. Well, not really. When we got back to it after the Collective Minds weekend, they'd given us the slip. I dunno how they did it. Like a bloody miracle. Sun Tzu: That's [censored]ed, mate. Shouldn't be allowed. Rommel. Yeah. I think it must have been that some of our boys weren't right into it. It's no good unless everyone's on board, you know what I mean? Musashi: But but but. It made you a better husband and father, right? Rommel: Yeah, of course. What's the point otherwise?