titan_uranus

Jones, Watts, Hogan, Garlett, Salem and Viney are all top 10 players. No team carries depth which replaces that.

6 - Hibberd 5 - OMac 4 - Jetta 3 - Tyson 2 - TMac 1 - Frost

WTF are you on about? Even if Mills was annoying him, Bugg does that to every player he goes near on a field. If he can't deal with whatever Mills was doing without resorting to punching him in the head, he shouldn't play AFL again. That was a dog act and he deserves 4+ weeks.

Viney and Bugg certain outs, Tyson possibly. White ought to be dropped, Wagner too. Hopefully Garlett and Hogan are ready, so there's two. I doubt we have three more who are good enough so I suspect Wagner will stay at least. Big week for Casey.

I heard a comment from someone at the ground tonight which aligns with this. Can't verify it at all, only passing on what I heard.

This was the most excited I have been for a game since, I think, the 2006 elimination final. As a consequence, this might be the flattest I've felt after a game in years. The six-day breaks cannot be underestimated. It's also not just the breaks - each of our opponents came off a longer break (the Dogs had 10 days, the Eagles had 9 days, the Swans had 7 days) and we were coming home from Perth from the last one. We were listless early tonight, the players were just cooked after the last month and after having to pull a major effort out last week to get over the line with two players down. Losing Viney just rubs salt into the wound. We're now missing Viney, Jones, Watts, Garlett, Hogan and Salem - that's easily six of our best 10 players, possibly with Tyson to add to that. That is an injury list that rivals anything GWS has had all year. We only had about 6 players play well - OMac, TMac, Jetta, Hibberd, Tyson and Viney whilst he was out there. Gawn was destroyed by Naismith (I never thought I'd write that sentence), Oliver was down, Vince and Lewis gave us nothing (I have real concerns over Vince), and then we had the cavalcade of NQRs who all stunk (Bugg, ANB, Stretch, Harmes, White, Wagner). White was appalling and clearly a bad selection. Someone at the ground said that Kent, Kennedy and JKH were all overlooked for selection because they went out drinking at a time they weren't supposed to have been - not sure if true but might explain why we played someone as terrible as White. Wagner was also awful and if we didn't have so many injures both ought to be dropped next week. And finally on Bugg - deserves 4 weeks, if not more. Precisely why I advocated strongly for Schofield to be suspended. This is what happens when payers make contact to the head or to the jaw. There is no defence for Bugg and if he ever gets back into the seniors I hope he learns a lesson and pulls his head in. Disgraceful and tarnishes the other 21.

Viney limped off just now...

Frost just ran out onto the ground

Three consecutive 6 day breaks is not "standard". Hiow many soft tissue injuries did we have before the Dogs game?

Given what Bugg did to Mills, we can't complain about that tonight.

Whole team is down, could be the 6 day breaks but Sydney is massacring us at every contest. In saying that, White is clearly not up to this level and Wagner is playing one of the worst games of football I have ever seen. Chuck in Melksham's fumbles and we have a tripe bottom few. We have fought back a lot this season but something tells me it's not happening tonight. And Bugg deserves 4 weeks minimum for his pathetic hit. Maybe he'll learn something from it. Who knows.

I'm surprised that we've gone with White and Wagner and haven't picked any of JKH, Kennedy and Kent, but I've learnt over the last 8 weeks that the FD is making more good calls at selection than bad. We need both White and Wagner to provide as much run off half-back as we can get, especially if we are going to throw Hunt forward (which I don't agree with but may be necessary for some speed and pressure when Sydney has the ball).

I'm expecting two changes, just the replacements for Salem and Garlett. I'd pick Wagner and then the best of Kent, JKH or Kennedy for Garlett's role. I don't think we should be picking Weideman on the back of one game. I don't think that's the right signal to send to Casey, especially when players such as JKH, Wagner, Trengove and White have strung together three or four games of solid performances. I also wouldn't be dropping OMac on the back of one poorer performance after two much improved ones. I think he is capable of playing on Reid and with Frost on Franklin I'm comfortable with those match ups (though if we lose the midfield battle it will hardly matter who plays on Franklin).

I don't think that every time an action leads to an injury that the person who engaged in the action should be suspended. Take Viney, for example. He knocked Hurn out but what he did was not an action which ought be reportable, it was simply playing the game. What Schofield did was not part of the game and so I have no problem focusing on the action and taking out consequence. The worse the consequence, the longer the suspension, but that doesn't mean minor contact ought to avoid being found guilty altogether, it just means a light penalty (and a week here would have satisfied me).

I don't accept that what Schofield did is "the same stuff you see all year". I'm more than happy to argue he intended to elbow Oliver, and I don't care if he intended to hit him in the jaw, the temple, the chest or the leg. If he stuffed up, that's his problem, not Oliver's. Also, if he'd been fined at least the result would have been he was found guilty of an offence. He got off, which means there was no offence in the first place.

I'm not sure it matters. He deliberately elbowed him. That elbow made contact to his chin. That action is not something the sport should tolerate. If you choose to bump someone and you make contact to the head, you almost certainly have no intention to make contact to the head but because you did, the AFL deems that to be a reportable offence (and correctly, IMO). It's the same principle here.

Schofield had the opportunity to challenge the intentional aspect of the charge tonight. He didn't. He argued the force was too low, not that it wasn't intentional. Houli wasn't looking directly at Lamb when he knocked him out. The Tribunal (correctly, IMO) found that to be intentional. And, again, players do not, every week, en masse, throw their elbows into players jaws. Yes, they routinely shove players, but shoving someone in the chest and throwing your jaw into their elbow are different. I'm focusing on what Schofield did, which is different to what most players do en masse each week.

If Oliver had stayed upright, we'd be having a similar debate. However, absent a fractured jaw no one would be arguing the force was "severe", or even "high". The question would be whether throwing your elbow into a player's jaw at half time, and connecting, is a reportable offence or not. And no matter what the outcome of that elbow is, the risk that you knock someone out, break their jaw, or otherwise injure them is more than sufficient for that player to be suspended as punishment for doing something dangerous and disgusting. The fact Oliver fell over doesn't change what Schofield did. It just changes what the consequence of that action was. Agree. Schofield threw his elbow into Oliver's jaw, and connected. I'm not advocating for every piece of contact, however minor, to warrant suspension. I am advocating for certain actions, of which striking is one, to be analysed with a focus on the action, not on the consequence.

No they won't. This is a dog act at half-time totally divorced from football and the game. Let's not confuse the action (a dog act) with the incidental contact that regularly happens during games. Even jumper punches have a closer connection to the game than Schofield's dog act. Players don't routinely throw their elbow at an opponent's jaw. But when they do, they deserve to be suspended.

I'm not Nasher, but I absolutely do. I am sick of the AFL focusing on outcome rather than action. Schofield threw an elbow at a player's jaw and connected. He's lucky it was only a glancing blow and didn't shatter his jaw (which we all know is bad because Jordan Lewis was suspended for fracturing Cripps' jaw). If you're going to be a weak dog and throw your elbow at someone's face because you can't take a harmless verbal jibe (and there's no evidence anything other than a harmless verbal jibe was put to Schofield), then you absolutely deserve to be suspended. That action is disgusting and should not be a part of our game.

Here we go. Media will now call Oliver a faker and our doctor a liar.

I feel like things are getting a tad out of hand. We haven't even qualified for the finals yet.

I think we're close to that point but IMO not yet. It might be a dose of MFCSS but I don't yet feel comfortable simply banking wins against Carlton, North, St Kilda, Brisbane or Collingwood - we've struggled against Carlton for years, we're on an 11-year losing streak to North and only snapped that same streak against St Kilda this year, we only just beat Collingwood on QB and we never seem to play our best against Brisbane. Very pessimistic, I know, but after the past 11 years I won't be convinced we're going to play finals until it's mathematically impossible for us to miss. Right now I still think we're more likely to miss the finals than make the top 4 (that might change if we beat Sydney this week, though).

I had the same query when watching. On the one hand I suppose it makes sense that the mark is where you land but then what happens if you mark it on one side of the boundary line but then fall over (without juggling the ball in the process)? That latter situation couldn't have the mark set outside the field of play so then maybe it's supposed to be where the mark is originally held.

This week, of all weeks, we get a thread about Mark Neeld. WTF.