titan_uranus

You'd have to think it's close to 0% of a chance we play this game in Darwin. Presumably will end up at Metricon.

We need Fremantle to give.a yelp here. Geelong are only 11 points away from passing us on percentage.

Let's hope the decision to lockdown early works and we're back up and running again in a week or two. But it's hard/impossible to be confident about what will happen with the rest of the season. Oh yeah that makes sense. While we're at it, given we have truckies here, when we need a delivery of food or other essential supplies from NSW I suppose we should stop the truck and spend an hour moving all the food over into our truck? Honestly, think about how ridiculous what you're suggesting here is. There are other issues with this though. Some teams (rumours suggest we might be one) planned for a 22-game season by way of our training loads. Degrees of unfairness start to arise if you suddenly chop the season down to, say, 19 games. Otherwise it then gets a bit complicated. The Dogs, for example, after this week will have three games left to complete (Adelaide, Essendon, Hawthorn). Adelaide, by contrast, will have just one (Bulldogs). Some sides are going to have too many games whilst others will have too many byes. The AFL's come this far, I expect it will do everything it can to finish the 22 rounds as intended.

Removalists are generally considered essential workers as people need to move house for a whole host of completely valid reasons, including to escape domestic violence or because they'll otherwise be turfed out by a landlord. There is only so much governments can do. In this instance the individuals who were allowed in failed to follow the rules.

Bit harsh on Trengove, surely.

Good riddance. I hate Thursday night games.

If need be I'm sure the AFL could have re-structured Round 19 to get the Dogs v Adelaide game into the Saturday (e.g. swapping it with Sydney v Fremantle, as Sydney would no longer need a six-day break into the following Friday if Melbourne v Dogs was the subsequent Friday night game).

My recollection was that our record days of usage were days in trade weeks in the 2008-2013 era, when we had nothing else going for us. But maybe that was just my own excitement.

As predicted, the Darwin fiasco has led to us losing the Friday night against the Dogs in Round 20, with a Saturday night game given instead. So Essendon v Sydney gets the Friday night slot. Should at least be on Channel 7. Round 19 Friday, July 23 Port Adelaide v Collingwood at Adelaide Oval, 6.45pm ACST Saturday, July 24 Hawthorn v Brisbane at the MCG, 1.45pm AEST Sydney v Fremantle at GMHBA Stadium, 1.45pm AEST Essendon v GWS Giants at Marvel Stadium, 4.35pm AEST Gold Coast v Melbourne at TIO Stadium, 6.55pm ACST West Coast v St Kilda at Optus Stadium, 5.40pm AWST Sunday, July 25 Western Bulldogs v Adelaide at Mars Stadium, 12.40pm AEST Geelong v Richmond at the MCG, 1.45pm AEST Carlton v North Melbourne at Marvel Stadium, 4.40pm AEST Round 20 Friday, July 30 Essendon v Sydney at Marvel Stadium, 7.50pm AEST Saturday, July 31 North Melbourne v Geelong at Blundstone Arena, 1.45pm AEST Brisbane v Gold Coast at the Gabba, 3.20pm AEST St Kilda v Carlton at Marvel Stadium, 4.35pm AEST Melbourne v Western Bulldogs at the MCG, 7.25pm AEST Adelaide v Hawthorn at Adelaide Oval, 7.10pm ACST Sunday, August 1 GWS Giants v Port Adelaide at TBC, 1.10pm AEST Collingwood v West Coast at the MCG, 2.10pm AEST Fremantle v Richmond at Optus Stadium, 3.10pm AWST

Max Laughton on FoxFooty does a good weekly analysis: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2021-the-run-home-after-round-17-analysis-predicted-ladder-top-eight-afl-fixture-finals-ladder-predictor/news-story/b0e8b05d42b89694ea8d57bad33be1b2 It's all obviously speculation and this week just gone shows how futile that can be, but that analysis also shows you that 11-11 is a genuine chance of being enough for finals this year.

North's 22 last night was on average ever so slightly older and more experienced than ours was on Thursday night. 25 years and 2 months, and 99.3 games, compared to 25 years and 1 month, and 98.0 games. Mind you, West Coast's was 27 years 5 months and 138.1 games. Super old. Indeed, it looks to me as though we were in the top 5 for youngest sides - Essendon, Adelaide, Gold Coast and Fremantle were the only sides younger than ours this weekend.

90% chance of showers, 2-5mm total, with "possible small hail". Not ideal. However, I think there was a similar forecast early in the week prior to the GWS game, which didn't eventuate.

This round shows a few things. First, "good sides don't lose to bad sides" is rubbish. Second, West Coast and Richmond are, hopefully, fingers crossed, pretty please, cooked. Third, upsets are going to happen. Fourth, our best is as good as anyone's. Fifth, everyone down to Gold Coast in 14th can still make the finals.

West Coast are pathetic. They can only produce AFL-level football when they're at home and it's not wet. Anything other than perfect conditions and they fall apart. They're slow, unfit, lazy, old, disinterested and [censored]. And don't you just love to see it.

You said we'd lose to Essendon. Wrong. You said we'd beat GWS. Wrong. You said we'd lose to Port. Wrong. Now you're saying we're 50/50% for 4th. That can only be correct at this point if you think we are going to go 2-4 from here. If that s indeed what you think, maybe stop and reflect on the first three sentences above and take some solace in your unerring ability to be wrong.

16 players per side cannot and should not ever happen. It should not happen because the AFL did not spend all that money expanding into GC and GWS only to shrink the number of list spots available. The purpose of expansion is to grow AFL in those markets. We want there to be more opportunities to play AFL, not fewer. It won't happen because the AFLPA won't let it happen. But none of it needs to be even discussed.

Put scoring figures to one side. I'd argue, and I think many would agree, that the football produced this year has been the best in years. We're approaching Round 18 and there are at the moment only 2-3 sides who aren't playing good football and there are arguably 14 sides in contention for finals (definitely 12, and Carlton/GC would be in there at a real stretch). I've argued for a while that more goals does not necessarily equal better football. The football right now is actually very good. There is nothing wrong with the "state of the game". I'd much rather see the AFL focus its time and resources on fixing things that are far more broken, such as the MRP/tribunal and the 2022 fixture process.

Did anyone else watch The Round So Far on the AFL website over the weekend? Kane Cornes (yes, I know, but hear me out) highlighted something Gawn did against Port using behind the goals vision: we had a forward 50 stoppage but Gawn left it to sprint out of our forward line to go stand on Dixon, freeing up May to play the last line of defence. Apparently that's something Gawn did that more than once. Just a shout out to our superstar captain who should comfortably collect his fifth AA jacket this year, and deservedly so for doing selfless team stuff like this (alternatively/jointly a shout out to our coaches for getting this sort of stuff to happen).

There's no reason to assume Naughton will miss any more than one week. Dunkley's 1-2 weeks away, so will be back by finals. Treloar's going to struggle but is in contention to be back by finals. Stefan Martin's likely to be back by finals. I forgot Easton Wood's also out, so there's a sixth best 22 player who didn't play yesterday. They went into yesterday missing their FF, FB, first ruck, intercept defender and two top 50 midfielders. Sydney played well so it's no wonder the Dogs lost. But it's premature to write them off altogether on the back of that one game.

Based on our form to date, you would be justified in being more concerned about Hawthorn, GC and Adelaide than about the Dogs, West Coast and Geelong.

The NT miner had Delta, as did I think the Sandringham dry cleaner, so it escaped twice into the NT and Victoria, but in neither instance did an outbreak occur. Part luck, but part better management by the Victorian, Queensland, SA and NT governments IMO. I think there's little doubt now that all States and Territories will, if they get an outbreak of Delta in the second half of 2021, proceed to lock down very quickly to attempt to get out of lockdown very quickly. The WA/Qld/NT models of locking down almost straight away have resulted in days, not weeks, in lockdown, and I suspect they will rinse and repeat until their populations are sufficiently vaccinated. Victoria I suspect will be similar.

This is very true. The only sides right now who look genuinely bad right now are Hawthorn and Adelaide. Guess who we have in our run home, by the way... But everyone down to Richmond in 12th will consider themselves a chance for finals, Carlton in 13th doesn't have a single game left vs any of the top 8, and Gold Coast in 14th is in season-best form and has the competition's most in-form midfielder. So many people ran ladder predictors and assumed the Dogs, Brisbane and Geelong would all coast through with either 0 or 1 more loss for the season. the last round or two make it clear, I think, that there are going to be more upsets. Let's just hope we're not the victim of any more of them.

They'll need an exception, surely, as I can't imagine they had plans to fly down today. I think the AFL's hope before today's numbers was to play the Sydney derby this coming weekend in Canberra, so they probably weren't thinking about keeping them in Victoria. Gill's comment on three weeks was at the time in response to the Victorian outbreak. IIRC he said that after Victoria had already been put into lockdown. Our situation on the day we went into lockdown was very different to how long Gladys left it in NSW before she implemented lockdown. The point being, at the time Gill said what he said, governments were reacting quickly to lockdowns: each of Queensland, WA and Victoria had, multiple times in 2021, locked down at the sight of barely 10 cases, each time stopping outbreaks in their tracks. Here, NSW has gone against that grain, and as a result have a multi-week/month lockdown ahead.

Ok, updating this to swap Fremantle in for Richmond (West Coast can't drop out of the 8 unless they lose to North and shed 13%, so I feel pretty safe this time...): Melbourne - 6-0 Bulldogs - 5-3 Sydney - 4-3 Geelong - 4-3 Brisbane - 3-4 West Coast - 2-4 Port - 2-5 Fremantle - 1-5

Jack Riewoldt this week: “But good luck if you’re playing against us in the last seven weeks, wherever we sit on the ladder. We believe we’re a bloody good football side. We’ve played really poorly the last two weeks ... but good luck if you’re playing us in the last seven weeks.” Lol I suppose this is all good luck to Collingwood?