titan_uranus

I think St Kilda leave King deep and push Membrey up the ground more. So presumably we've brought OMac back to stay with King as the deeper defender and let May follow Membrey up the ground. Lever then peels off the resting ruckman. Tomlinson pushes up to the wing and has to make Hill/Jones accountable on transition by opening up as much space as he can. I'm still not convinced by any of the arguments I've read here about why Lockhart was dropped. I don't even think he's been average/poor, I think he's been solid, and against a side with small forwards, and having had a seven day break, I just don't see the logic here. Can we say all three? Predominantly I say he shouldn't be in the backline. Goodwin's got form for getting this wrong (Fritsch last year). But Harmes is talented enough to be able to influence games more than he has been.

Dogs were two down on the bench for the second half, which I'm sure hurt. However it happened, that result helps us. Dogs have to win out to get to 10. They have West Coast, Hawthorn and Fremantle. If they lose once more this year, they can't do better than 9 wins and we currently have 11% on them. The fact that we're only a game behind them but we have two extra games to play really helps us. If we can somehow win tomorrow, we'll be so much closer to ensuring we finish the season above the Dogs. Will then only need to make sure we outpace Essendon and Carlton from there. If the Dogs had won tonight, our path would have been significantly harder.

Rivers is an upgrade on Harmes. Not necessarily Lockhart.

I just cannot fathom why Lockhart has been dropped. Is there something more to that? Absolutely flabbergasted, and that’s got nothing to do with my views on OMac and Wagner either.

On the face of it... I don’t like it. Lockhart dropped?! Horrendously harsh IMO, the more so given he was surely a good match up for Butler.

Add Fritsch and that's five changes (unless we keep Preuss - but I don't like our chances if we do that).

Well with Fritsch suspended, Sparrow injured and TMac and Harmes allegedly dropped, we're not necessarily fielding our best 22 this week.

I think there's a major cultural difference between being late to training and a mistake (albeit a big one) in the middle of a game. i'm not excusing vandenBerg, btw - indeed, I am not sure he should be playing right now given his output and the clangers/turnovers outweighing the positives he brings. As to Harmes, I agree. I am firmly of the view he shouldn't have been moved to the backline and I think he probably should have been tried as a forward/mid before being dropped.

I know, but I had considered Harmes to fall into the favourites category (along with Melksham and vandenBerg). We've seen Goodwin drop Hibberd, Jetta, Jones and now Harmes this year. It's a trend towards ditching favourites and dropping players who are truly out of form. It's just a shame that trend never extended to Melksham.

I'd like to know more about what happened to Fritsch before we all get stuck in. But if he did something stupid I hope he learns his lesson. Could well cost us a finals spot. If TMac is out, and we drop Preuss, then you'd imagine we must bring in Brown. If not, we'll likely be rucking Weideman when Gawn rests, and we can't afford to do that. If Harmes is out, I will agree with that call, but I will question how Melksham survived being dropped all season.

Yep. 6.3 to 1.1 at quarter time in front of 50,000+ people on a Sunday arvo. Remember it well. Didn't go on with it from there (8.9 to 9.11 from then on). Was also the game we made fun of them by talking about us making finals and them missing. Then we missed the finals. Brought serious bad karma.

What?!

Not sure they're tanking. They're three games and percentage behind 17th with 4 games to play. Which means they'd have to win them all to get off the bottom. Which wouldn't happen even if they tried, so they should really be going all out to beat Hawthorn next week or, better for us, GWS or Carlton their following two games.

Essendon will pass us tonight if they go on to win, but before this board goes berserk at that fact, bear in mind that they're struggling against Hawthorn, a bottom 4 side, and their next three games are against West Coast, Geelong and Port.

Hold on @Skuit, that's hardly fair. I'm not justifying the act of drink-driving. The distinction between what's happened here and your example is that Dahlhaus and ANB are both guilty of the same offence, but ANB's offence did greater damage than Dahlhaus'. Your example involves ANB committing a second, separate, offence on top of the first one. That's not what happened. As I said though, I agree with the principle that it's fine for ANB to have received a harsher penalty than Dahlhaus. The issue I have is that Dahlhaus' penalty is borderline non-existent (is there any evidence to suggest $1,500 fines deter players, or are considered punishment to players?) and is too far away from ANB's penalty. That indicates to me another example of the AFL over-weighting the importance of the outcome on the penalty, when the action should be what is the key factor. When you add to that the repeated instances of the AFL saying that sling tackles are bad, the head needs to be protected, and the possibility of head damage is enough to make sling tackles bad, IMO it all points to a sign that the AFL's system on this issue is not working.

That's two different offences though. ANB didn't commit a second offence of "dangerous tackling while drunk". He and Dahlhaus did the exact same thing, but ANB got punished more than four times more heavily than Dahlhaus for the consequences. The concept of a worse outcome leading to a more significant punishment is nothing new nor is it wrong. The issue is when, as is the case with the AFL, the outcome is overly important in the matrix. The difference between what ANB did and what Dahlhaus did is not terribly great, yet ANB got 4 weeks and Dahlhaus no weeks at all. IMO, if ANB was a 4 week suspension (and that's arguably justifiable), Dahlhaus was 1 week at a minimum.

All hell should now break loose.

That's a ridiculous comment. The current proposal isn't to extend the State of Emergency for 12 months, but to provide the government with ability to do so. And regardless, the existence of a State of Emergency doesn't mean life can't get back to "normal". Indeed, the government's argument is that it needs the State of Emergency to allow life to get back to a safe normal by providing the ongoing power to require masks to be worn or density limits in places like stadiums.

Yes there is - 17 games and 1 bye means 18 rounds.

I believe we're talking about the one in the clip in this article: https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/afl-2020-melbourne-western-bulldogs-loss-christian-petracca-fox-footy-garry-lyon-afl-ladder/news-story/38ccaf7a995af7ffe59d01d770fc8ca3 Looks to me like the tap was probably always going to go to Petracca and he wasn't going to be tackled by Liberatore quickly enough to prevent him running forward and kicking it. It's always tough dissecting individual plays like this, but IMO it was a poor choice from Petracca.

Most of the time it's not in the tackler's control. The player getting tackled will sometimes get their hand up to take the brunt, or sometimes their shoulder will take it, or their head will take it but not on the temple, etc. All of which can be matters of centimetres' difference. The issue we should all have is with the action. If you pin an arm and sling a player into the ground you should be suspended. If we're trying to eradicate that tackle, then we shouldn't care about the outcome of it. I can see why ANB should get more weeks than Dahlhaus: both get suspended for committing the same offence, but ANB's penalty is greater because he created a more severe injury than Dahlhaus did. Makes sense (we can query whether 1 week vs 4 weeks is the right difference but the mere fact ANB got more weeks is easy to justify). Where all hell will break loose is if Dahlhaus, who is challenging at the Tribunal, gets off altogether (or reduced down to a fine).

Not sure about Collingwood yet. If they lose to Carlton this week, their final three games are against Brisbane, Port and Gold Coast. Without their injured stars, they'll be hard-pressed to beat Brisbane (in Brisbane) or Port and that just gets them to 9.5. Makes their game vs Carlton this weekend an absolutely critical match for both sides. If Carlton lose, and assuming they also lose to Brisbane in the final round, they'll need to win their other three games just to get to 9 wins. That requires a win over the Giants: hard to read them but on current form, given that game is next week, you'd back Carlton in. As you've mentioned though, Carlton still have their Adelaide game to come which will help them with percentage. If GWS loses to Fremantle this week, then their final round game vs St Kilda becomes huge, but assuming they lose to St Kilda too, like Carlton they'll need to win all three remaining games to get to . The Carlton-Collingwood game is critical. If Carlton win, Collingwood's path to 9.5 becomes really tough, and puts us in a good spot to finish the year ahead of them even with only 9 wins. But it will then give Carlton a good chance to get to 10. That's a very long way of saying that if we beat St Kilda this weekend we'll be in with a good chance, but if we lose it's almost curtains for us.

You see the irony/hypocrisy here, don't you?

Lends support to the argument in favour of getting Viney into the forward half. I would argue Harmes also would be an improvement on our forward line.