titan_uranus

Not sure I agree with those lauding Essendon's game today. They were the inferior side for significant portions of that game and had Hawthorn kicked straight at key moments, and/or had something better to aim for than Koschitzke, a resting ruck and Tim O'Brien, they would have won that game. Essendon was -24 in disposals, -3 inside 50s, -46 in uncontested possessions, +7 in turnovers, -22 in marks, -4 in marks inside 50, -2 in scoring shots and -16 in tackles. To me, they were outworked by Hawthorn but Hawthorn is a weak side and didn't make it pay. To be behind in disposals (and significantly so in UPs) and marks, and to still lose the tackles, that's not good or sustainable football.

I don't know but doubt it. North Melbourne in 2016 nearly missed the finals from 10-1 though. They finished 12-10 and only scraped into 8th on percentage.

The MFC media department has copped a fair bit of flak on here over recent years (fairly enough too), but I wanted to give some credit for the mid-season update material the club's posted over the last week. We've now had mid-season update videos from Pert, Petracca and now Goodwin. There was also a small insight into the post-match review process from Lever's perspective. Might be more before the next game but even if not, I've appreciated the club's attempts to get some communication out to the members about where we sit both on and off the field.

Agreed. Screw that old dee. I want to go to the game. I want to see my team play. I don't care if that means Essendon makes money. I've spent too long with my side being rubbish: we're half-decent this year and I want to see them as much as I can.

Where's Steve Hocking? Jumps out of his chair to send Mackay to the Tribunal for contesting the ball. Nowhere to be seen when Joel Selwood deliberately drops an arm into a player's head.

Thanks for the pick up - makes the argument 100 times stronger.

Micro moments that the Dogs will hate re-watching, like our game too. They had the ball in their forward 50 with a minute to go but couldn’t force it over the line. Didn’t get to the ball on the clearance, allowing Selwood to knock if forward. Not sure if Cordy had options for his clearing kick but if he did, his kick didn’t help. And too far up the ground given they needed to defend the lead in the last minute, leaving too much room for the Cats. Also Bontempelli missing from directly in front early in the last hurts.

Not at all. I am in fact terrible with injections/needles (but have no reservation about being vaccinated when I am eligible). My take on the vaccination rollout is that complacency set in with the government, just like it did with the population. A perverse side-effect of how well we did to re-open and get back to "normal" lives meant people tended to let themselves believe COVID was over, and we therefore didn't need vaccines. It's not unreasonable for the government to have placed orders for multiple vaccine options last year at a time when no one knew precisely which vaccines would be "best" or how we'd obtain sufficient does of them. And it's not unreasonable for the government to have had to change the rules around AZ given the drug didn't exist this time last year. But the messaging/advertising/education on the vaccines has been sub-par, I'm sure the investment in the logistics needed to roll it out has been sub-par (I don't actually know that though), and the laxness to let most of Australia take their time getting vaccinated prior to Victoria's recent lockdown was sub-par.

Isn't the logic that the government did not want to put all its eggs into one basket? Why do you think it's a conspiracy theory? In relation to vaccine rollout? Almost all of them! In relation to minimising COVID deaths, possibly none of them. But we have been paying a certain price for that: four lockdowns in Melbourne, closed international borders, regularly closed State borders, continued damage to the economy, mental health etc. of being unvaccinated and therefore at the mercy of outbreaks. As to a waiting list, that's only manifested in the last three weeks due to the outbreak and lockdown. Prior to the lockdown, Victorians were not getting vaccinated: we've all heard the stories of mass vaccination clinics being open for 8 hours a day and vaccinating one person. True, but context is important: Canada has far, far more Pfizer available to it than we do. So for us to do the same will delay our vaccine rollout even further. See here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-06-09/covid-19-vaccines-mix-match-pfizer-astrazeneca-australia/100188824 Different circumstances. And, in addition, Canada has noted that there might be a benefit to having a dose of AZ and a dose of mRNA, albeit the clotting risk is also a factor.

@Kent - you appear to have bolded the part of my previous post citing the death rate from COVID in Australia as 0.03%. Yes, that's low. But it is 20 times higher than the AZ death rate. The bolded part is the problem. As we keep waiting, we keep exposing Australians to: Closed borders Lockdowns An impacted economy COVID itself And you never know what will happen with supply chains, production, or further variants of COVID that may impact that timeframe (all of the government's stated timeframes on the rollout have been blown out so far). If you are over 60 and you are choosing not to be vaccinated in the face of medical advice and evidence which suggests it is the best thing both for you and for the population generally, in my view that is unreasonable.

I don't agree. My view is that everyone should go to Geelong. It's their home ground. I have no issue with playing their home games there, but it's manifestly unfair that Collingwood, Carlton, Richmond, Hawthorn and Essendon don't get sent there. If Geelong want to "sell" two home games per year to the MCG, that should be fine, but that shouldn't stop those big clubs playing down in Geelong semi-regularly (e.g. in the years in which Easter Monday is a Hawthorn home game, Hawthorn should be sent down to Geelong). If Geelong decides that it wants to host us at the MCG to make more money (on the same logic that leads it to host those five big clubs at the MCG rather than Geelong), that's fine with me, but it shouldn't be necessary.

OK, here are a couple to keep us interested: Win more than 14 games in a H&A season - last time was 1990 (31 year drought). Win 17 or more games in a H&A season - we have never done this in our 121 previous completed seasons. (If you're wondering about the 17+ game stat, Hawthorn have done it five times in the last 10 years).

Agree. It's almost certainly not going to happen, and that's fine. Pert mentioned how important it was for the club to get its Melbourne-based fans back into stadiums to see us play. I think the club sees the benefit to membership and fan engagement that our good year is having and is going to try to pump that as much as possible rather than trying to muck around, assuming crowds are back in Melbourne at least, in shifting a game up to the NT. I'd love to see that map if anyone knows where I can find it!

The odd thing about Optus is that recently we've only been sent over there to play West Coast. This year will be our fourth H&A game at Optus Stadium, but all of them have been against West Coast (and it's happened each of the last four years consecutively). We haven't travelled to Perth to play Fremantle since 2015. 7 of our last 8 trips to Perth in the H&A season have been to play West Coast. 9 of our last 10 games vs Fremantle have been our home games. It's the reverse of the situation we face with Carlton and Essendon.

My point is that arguing that people can/should avoid the AZ vaccine if they otherwise are eligible for it on the basis that no one has died from COVID in Australia in 2021 is a bad argument. it's a bad argument because COVID cases have been low in 2021 by keeping borders closed and locking down areas when cases do suddenly manifest. That's not a way to live, but it's the only way to live unless either we let COVID run rampant, in which cases deaths will skyrocket, or we vaccinate the population. It's also a bad argument because there have been 3.8M doses of AZ given in Australia, for 60 clotting cases and two deaths. That's a clotting rate of 0.0015%, and a death rate of 0.00005%. There have been no deaths from COVID in part because the number of cases is so low. Remember that overall Australia has had 30,302 cases of COVID in total, for 910 deaths. That's a death rate of 0.03%. So there have been 0 COVID deaths in 2021, but that's because there have been relatively few COVID cases (which improves our chances of treating the ones we do get). That does not mean it's OK to sit around and take ages to vaccinate.

A few other facts: 1.9M people globally have died from COVID in 2021 (more than in all of 2020) Australia's borders are closed Each of Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and the entire state of Victoria have seen at least one lockdown in 2021.

Is it even feasible for Goschs's Paddock to be "expanded" to become MCG-sized? Is there the space to do that?

I'm glad the Tribunal reached that decision. Taking concussion and head knocks important, but it cannot mean that every concussion or head knock must result in a player being suspended. This was, writ large, the AFL once again prioritising the outcome of an action over the action itself. I am quite confident that if Clark had suffered no injury at all, not a single person would have batted their eyelids at Mackay's actions. The test cannot be "could Mackay have done something differently". The test should only be "were his actions unreasonable given all of the circumstances". The former question starts asking about hypotheticals that bear no reality: sure, Mackay could have decided to let Clark pick the ball up, but in the heat of an actual match on an actual field, is that really what we are saying AFL players should decide?

This year means we have played at GMHBA 16 of the last 20 seasons. Since 2002, the only seasons we haven't gone there were 2007, 2014, 2017 and 2020). And in 2017 we were still drawn to be away to Geelong, but GMHBA was being renovated so the game was at Marvel. We were scheduled to play at GMHBA in 2020 originally too, so if COVID hadn't happened it would be 17 of the last 20 seasons. Which means, since 2002, only twice has the AFL drawn up a fixture and not had us away to Geelong (2007 and 2014).

The club has mentioned the importance, to us, of being unassisted before. For example, in December when we announced our 2020 financial result, the club said "“There is no doubt that we are disappointed to be announcing a loss. However, as a Club, we have made some significant steps in eliminating our debt, and our strong balance sheet enabled us to remain an AFL ‘unassisted Club’. This was important, as it allows us to continue to make independent decisions regarding football and administration strategies"

I'm a fan of the club doing this for us. I think it's great. The home base issue he split into two, the training ground (announcement in the next few weeks) and then the home base (still a while away it seems). The $1.8M loss from the NT and QB games really hurts.

We beat the Dogs six days after losing to Adelaide. Remind me, in your recent post categorising our performances this year, how did you describe those two games?

We play at Marvel roughly the same amount of times per year we play at the Adelaide Oval these days. We beat Richmond at the G, a ground they supposedly dominate at. Our home ground, sure, but theirs too. West Coast has already lost to Essendon at home. Port's lost twice at home too. Geelong would likely have lost at home to Brisbane in Round 2 had the umpire paid the free kick the rest of the world saw. The point remains, though, that we've produced our best football this year against good sides, not bad sides. The 11-2 start does not suggest we're unlikely to win those four games, but because of the loss to Collingwood that's now what everyone seems to think will happen.

Our game doesn't lend itself to reviews of anything other than scores. We have to accept bad decisions are going to be made in the running of a game and we can't expect that for every umpiring mistake the game can stop to review it. Instead, we need to lift the standard of umpiring, and the starting point has to be investment from the AFL into the umpiring division.

I'm not sure why everyone's so quick to say Port, West Coast, the Dogs and Geelong are going to be likely losses whilst GWS, Hawthorn, GC and Adelaide are likely wins. We're 5-0 against the top 8 and our best games this year have all been against the best sides in it. Meanwhile I think it's beyond argument that our worst performances this year have been against poor sides. I think it's just as likely we drop one of the GWS, Hawthorn, GC and Adelaide games as it is that we sweep them. Similarly, I think we're going to be good chances of winning at least one, and likely more, of Port, West Coast, the Dogs and Geelong.