titan_uranus

Tippett's 1 week is probably fine. Franklin's 1 week is the latest instalment in the MRP getting it horribly wrong. The changes made this year make things worse - there is now just 'careless' and 'intentional' and you can't be 'intentional' unless you intend to commit the offence. That's a pretty high bar to pass when it's rough conduct, which means almost every rough conduct charge is going to be 'careless', and that makes the penalties all smaller. Then, of course, there's the over-reliance on the actual impact that the act has. This is the exact kind of dangerous act the AFL continually talks about trying to get rid of, but focusing on the outcome means the worst acts which, by coincidence, don't cause injury, don't get punished, whilst innocent acts which cause freak injuries get massive punishments. Another example of the system being just way, way off.

Gee, you'd want to win this if you're Carlton. Their run home is brutal - Bulldogs, Richmond, Fremantle (away), Hawthorn, North, Collingwood, Brisbane (away), Melbourne, GWS (away), Hawthorn.

Worst recruit of the year, by the length of the Flemington Straight. Not sure why - maybe not having the Swans team around him has exposed his weaknesses, or maybe he just doesn't care up on the Gold Coast anymore.

A 60 point loss will have the 'Priority Pick 2015' thread at the top of the board on Sunday.

Me too, although I have no substance to back that feeling up. But telling a player to get more consistent off the field suggests, to me at least, he has some issues with his training and commitment to improvement.

I haven't read this thread in months (I have no idea why I'm here now), so I'm not proposing to jump into the debate (or whatever is taking place here). However, what you've said here appears to me to be misguided. The concept of 'comfortable satisfaction' has nothing to do with the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'. The latter says that the person bringing the charge/complaint is the one who has the onus of proof (i.e. ASADA/WADA have to make their case). The former dictates the extent to which that person (i.e. ASADA/WADA) have to prove it - either on the balance of probabilities, or to a comfortable satisfaction, or beyond reasonable doubt. The two are not mutually exclusive and you seem to be saying here that the Tribunal's use of innocent until proven guilty was an error (at least that's how I read your post).

Whoops, sorry mate, was meaning to quote the post you quoted, not yours.

Yeah I noticed that - the Jones goal is in most highlights packages so hasn't disappeared altogether though.

I've PM'd you the links I found Sue.

No, that stat doesn't tell you anything. For one, it's disposal efficiency, not kicking efficiency. So theoretically the low value could be because his handpassing is appalling. However, as has been done to death on this site, the DE statistic is a waste of space and says very little about a player's ability to dispose of the ball.

Having watched the videos on the AFL website, Franklin deserves at least 4 weeks (that is the classic kind of bump we are trying to get rid of. He makes a conscious decision not to go get the ball, runs past it, sizes up a player he knows he's bigger than, elects to bump, and hits him in the head. It should not matter one bit that Edwards didn't suffer catastrophic injuries. He could have, and that was wholly preventable from Franklin. That is why he deserves lots of weeks). As for Tippett, that wasn't nearly as bad IMO but it was a bad spoiling attempt and hit the head. Maybe one week.

Guthrie is right up there as one of my new hated players. Has a giant mouth on him but doesn't always back it up.

Richmond's last three weeks have involved wins over Fremantle and Sydney, both on the road. I don't like them but they have to be considered more than 'pretenders' if they can get those sorts of wins. It's also good for the game to see middle-of-the-road sides beating Sydney in Sydney. The last thing we need is a Hawthorn-Sydney GF. IMO has to be top 5, if not number 1, in the AFL's most overrated players. Absolutely useless player who cannot mark, can hardly move, and has not an iota of a football brain. He's just strong and fit (in a stamina sense). He's continually required to wrestle his defender because he can't get on any sort of lead. If he didn't have Franklin next to him and Kennedy/Hannebery/Jack/McVeigh/etc. kicking it to him he would hardly be playing seniors.

Gawn's 8 marks (6 contested) vs Naitanui's 0 is also important. Sinclair also took 0 (for us, Spencer took 3). How can two ruckmen together not take a mark in an entire game?! You're right though, whatever ruck set up we go in with it's going to be a pivotal battle.

Fair chance the last time he was playing 'regularly' was with an injury. There's no doubt it's an uphill battle from here. But forgive some people for being positive and hopeful rather than writing him off. I have no doubt he has what it takes mentally to get himself back to where he needs to be. Whether his body allows him remains to be seen, but if he gets that right I have faith.

If it works the same way as mine, start the second quarter video by selecting a goal/behind/anything anywhere in the quarter. Then the URL comes up, and you just need to change the number at the end of the URL to '0' to make it go back to the start.

If you have Firefox, download the 'Video DownloadHelper' addon, which you can use to take the URL of the videos out of the Smart Replay website and play them full screen on your TV (avoiding that pathetic small box thing they give you on the Smart Replay website).

Part of me just wants to bring Hogan in for one of Riley or Bail - West Coast's key defensive stocks are thin due to the injuries to McKenzie and Brown, so maybe having a forward line of Hogan, Dawes, Howe and the resting ruckman could work for us (especially if Dawes is able to get on his bike like he did on Sunday and Howe makes a contest of everything that goes near him). I'm worried about being too tall in that situation though, which requires one of the talls to be dropped. I don't see an easy solution to that conundrum though. Dawes provided important structure and a presence at CHF which makes us a much better side. We also can't rely on Gawn and Spencer to be clunking marks and kicking goals when forward against better opposition in West Coast. But, if we drop Spencer we take Gawn's relief out and simultaneously force Dawes into the ruck, which against West Coast is a recipe for disaster. Leaving the talls in and ensuring they run as hard as they can might be the best option, though I'm not convinced at all. As for other changes, unlike Jaded I'm not sold on Garland as an automatic inclusion, but I think he matches up well on someone like LeCras and I think we'll see him. Could be included in place of Riley/Bail, or the other one if one is dropped for Hogan. But if we do that (i.e. drop Riley and Bail for Hogan and Garland), Garland's going to have to play small and be prepared to run off his opponent. Edit: the other interesting thing to keep in mind is that we go from playing West Coast, big on ruckmen and tall forwards, to playing Essendon, who at the moment are the opposite, with Bellchambers dropped, Carlisle out of form, and generally a smaller side.

Loved ANB's interview after the game, spoke really well for a kid. He said after last week he was focusing on his running patterns which I thought was quite evident - the goal he kicked where Watts played on then stopped was a great example.

Yes, we could win 9 of the last 10. We also could lose 9 of the last 10. I agree that if we beat the Eagles and face that three-game stretch of Essendon, Brisbane and St Kilda with unbridled confidence and form on our side, we could well be 8-8 at Round 17. But as quickly as our thinking becomes overly-pessimistic after a loss (as you well know, some of the crap that people were saying about our chances in Geelong was ridiculous), it becomes overly-optimistic after a win. You know as well as I do that a sizeable loss to West Coast (or really, just any loss) will change the bulk of the posting on here from 'how many can we win?' to 'we need a priority pick'.

I don't mean to kill the optimism (this site is infinitely more enjoyable in times like this than, say, this time last week. Or even Sunday at 3.19pm), but really, all it's going to take is one loss to West Coast for the talk to turn to finishing bottom 4. I think we are capable of beating every side in the run home except Fremantle in Perth (assuming they don't tank that game). I don't think we'll win them all of course, I'm not even sure we'll win half of them (we definitely could have won the Port and Collingwood games and we should have won the Saints game and finished that run 0-3). But when we play our best football we can beat West Coast, North, GWS, the Dogs, and then the lower-ranked sides in Essendon, Carlton, Brisbane and St Kilda. Cohesion, fewer injuries, confidence (the Geelong game must surely give us a nice dose of that), and, possibly most of all, not getting ahead of ourselves, are key, as is the desire from the players to make the second half of the year a turning point for the club.

That moment summed up everything I hate about Geelong. Their smugness and arrogance knew (and for some, still knows) no bounds, and unfortunately they kept winning and kept winning premierships which made it impossible to criticise them for it. Now that they're just mediocre, and we've finally stuck one up them, I have a platform for calling out flogs like Selwood, Hawkins, Johnson and Kelly.

Vince's last month has been insanely good. I love how he (and Viney too, it seems) can negate an opponent and get huge possession counts themselves. Last week Vince held Armitage to his lowest possession count for the year and had a bunch of it himself, then Viney did the same thing to Selwood (equal lowest for him this year). It's a great asset to have in our midfield. I'm also hugely excited about how Vince, Viney, Jones, Tyson, Brayshaw and Toumpas are now going to get to play games together as a unit, learn from one another and how to gel as a clique. Yesterday showed what happens when you dominate through the middle.

He's tolerable, unlike Dwayne Russell, but I agree, he's also hopeless (he makes so many mistakes with player names, or he doesn't know who it is so doesn't give the player a name).

I think the win was immense for this club and deserves a proper celebration and recognition for the effort that it was - we played finals football and scored 113 points against an in-form side with the mental demons of the last 10 years, at that ground, in Enright's 300th, they were in form and we were coming off a demoralising loss, and they also had a 9 day break to our 7. However, in general I think we do need to make sure we don't get carried away. One of the hallmarks of our recent wins is our infamous inability to back them up the following week. That surely comes in part from over-celebrating each win (they're so few and far between). In that regard, I think having the bye at this point is great timing. We get to enjoy the win, then rest, then come back and focus the next week, hopefully with this win a bit behind us.