titan_uranus

Correct call from the club to appeal. It seems the only things in the AFL's favour are: The vision which suggests JVR took his eyes off the ball; and The need for a stretcher and what I assume will be a minor injury from which Ballard has recovered (as opposed to no injury at all). There is not, and cannot be, a blanket rule that taking your eyes off the ball means your actions become a reportable offence. The onus on every player is to exercise a duty of care to other players. In some instances, the duty of care requires you to look at the player before you contact them. We cannot say that players must lock eyes on the ball in all instances. Here, in attempting to spoil, JVR checks the ball's flight, then looks at Ballard to try to spoil his marking attempt. As others have already argued, it is eminently arguable that he was trying his best to look out for Ballard, rather than the opposite. So, taking your eyes off the ball might be evidence of a reportable offence in circumstances where, for example, you're at a stoppage and you strike your opponent (the player might defend themselves by saying they were trying to get separation but if you're not looking at the ball it's more likely you're trying to strike your opponent). But in this instance I can't accept that makes JVR guilty of an offence. The stretcher showing up we can hopefully deal with to say that either the contact ended up being minor enough to fall below a reportable offence or, as a back-up argument, was only "low" (which would be a fine), or even more alternative was only "medium" (one week). But I'd like to not get to that point.

The OP is misguided IMO. We have lost the clearance count three times this year - to the Dogs, Brisbane and Gold Coast. Those sides are ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd for average clearance differential this year. If we are less dominant at clearances this year, it is IMO for three key reasons: We are rotating a lot more players through the middle and are resting Gawn, Oliver, Petracca and Viney far more than we did in 2021-22 We are trying to be a more varied and diverse side that doesn't rely exclusively on clearance/CP dominance to score (it's working so far) We've played half this season so far without Gawn

My thought on reading @CHF's post exactly. I would agree that our forward line is not quite right at the moment (mainly because I steadfastly do not support Petty as a forward), but "dire situation" is a ridiculous thing to say given we're the 2nd highest scoring side, and only 3 points behind Geelong who have Hawkins and Cameron.

I maintain my view that this wasn't a reportable offence. I want us to appeal. There are a number of things I'd argue in this order: It's not a reportable offence. It's an attempt to spoil gone wrong. Fogarty did the exact same thing on Murphy last week and (correctly) wasn't penalised. It's not a strike. Wrong charge laid. If those two fail, then at the absolute least we need to look at downgrading the impact grading from "high" to at least "medium", if not "low". The reports are Ballard's injury was minor. That's not "high" impact. It's not the sort of action which, like a bump or a sling tackle, can obviously lead to catastrophic injury. This is an outstretched arm trying to spoil a ball and contacting the head. It's "medium" or "low" and should stay that way.

I read your post. It’s based on what strikes me as flawed logic. So I said as much. It’s not good reasoning to argue that our kick ins being the same means we’ve made no changes to how we play. And funnily enough, you may need to re-read my post to see I agree that our set shot kicking has improved this year. But we are also taking easier shots. So it’s multi-faceted.

This Twitter thread shows examples of how some spoils can cause high contact but are not reportable offences:

Fox's coverage of interstate games isn't great because they're not at the game. David King's attempted defence of that a few weeks back was limp AF. They don't have full coverage of the ground. They can't see and therefore can't comment on things that aren't caught by the camera in front of them, hence they missed King's shove of Petty to give us the Gawn goal. They also are at the mercy of cameras to go look at things off the ball. So it's no surprise they don't give good or accurate reflections of what is going on. I've already posted in the post-game thread that there were some bad umpiring decisions against us in the fourth quarter alone, let alone earlier, that have been overshadowed by the Chol non-call. Anderson not being called for HTB when he tried stepping around JVR, got caught and failed to handball was IMO as egregious as the Chol non-call, but anyway.

Because merely saying "that's careless, high contact with high impact" isn't how the analysis works. The first step is whether it's a reportable offence. Last year Junior Rioli cleaned up Matt Rowell. No suspension because it wasn't a reportable offence. This year Brayshaw got Libba high in a bump-style move. No suspension because it wasn't a reportable offence. Both of those involved careless conduct with high contact.

Come on, @djr gave you a whole host of areas in which we've changed on last year and you picked one he/she didn't even mention, kick ins? Your logic that we got beaten by Brisbane and Essendon, ergo our game plan hasn't changed, is so incredibly flawed I don't even know where to begin. What are you trying to argue here, that if our game plan had changed we'd be undefeated? Your middle paragraph is only partly correct. Our set shots are better, no doubt, but we are taking more shots from the centre and fewer from the pockets because we're not always prioritising long kicks to Brown/McDonald/Gawn in the pocket.

I think what I'm trying to say is that we're moving away from this, to our benefit. Contest is key to any good side. But it was too much the key to us in 2022. This year, we're more resilient structurally, both in offence and defence, if we aren't on top in CPs, and that is a good thing.

On the umpiring, I get it, that was a free against Gawn to Chol, but all the rage online about us being gifted the win from the umpires seems a touch rich to me given that in the final two minutes alone and before that Chol marking contest: Viney gets shirtfronted after disposing of the ball with no free/50; and Anderson gets caught stone cold holding the ball on our forward 50 after trying to side step JVR then throwing it out of the tackle

This is not how the system works, at least not in 2023 when action has finally trumped outcome. We don't start with "Ballard was concussed", we start with asking whether this is a reportable offence. It cannot be. It's a clumsy attempt to spoil the mark. It's not a sling tackle or a bump, in which we are very clear to say we want those out of the game. This is a spoil. He's trying to do something legitimate in the game but has stuffed it up. I'm all for the AFL doing everything it can to minimise concussion incidents in games but when we suspend someone it has to be for a reportable offence, not simply because someone got concussed.

On the CP point, I'm not sure losing it is as big a deal as you're making it out to be. Firstly, we are 6-2 despite being currently 7th for CP average differential this season (at +2). Gold Coast are 3rd on that ranking, so they are a strong CP side. It's no surprise that a midfield of Witts, Rowell and Anderson (normally also Miller) will be strong in that area. We don't need to be better than everyone at it. Of the sides you've mentioned, Geelong's only marginally better than us (6th at +2.4), GWS are 16th and Port's 14th. Carlton's 2nd, at +10.1, but if you think Carlton winning CPs = Carlton winning games, you're not watching Carlton in season 2023. Finally, the line "fast ball movement thru the corridor and extreme pressure in the contest is the way to beat us" is silly - that's the way to beat every side. We're no different to anyone else. Gold Coast brought extreme pressure today. We handled it well enough to never let them take the lead.

I think this is slightly contradictory. Yes, I think we can do better in certain parts of the game. But the fact I'm not seeing it right now doesn't make me think our chances of winning the flag are over, because I don't need to see it now. Of course, I do need to see us improve. I need to see us stabilise our selection, work out our best forward mix (it's not Petty), and see May get back to proper form. But if you care about winning flags, then you care about winning games. It's in many respects a great thing that we've banked this win tonight despite not being in top form.

Yes, Fritsch out would be a huge call. And an unbelievably terrible one. You have no ability to park your bias. I don't care how much you can't stand aspects of Fritsch's game. He's just ended a 35-game goal-kicking streak and is regularly our leading goal scorer despite being asked to play taller, quicker and stronger than he actually is. Dropping him off one poor game sends all the wrong messages to the side. There's striving to get better, and then there's being significantly, stupidly, overly ruthless. And never mind then replacing him with J Smith, who isn't fit and has as many flaws in his game as Fritsch does.

As for the game itself, I haven't been able to watch it all so I can't comment as well as others, but my random thoughts are: It's time to end the Petty forward experiment. It's not working. He's not as good as a forward as some people think. He's a much better defender and our overall team structure needs a third tall. We can't rely on super accurate goal-kicking every week, so we have to expect to regress to the mean a bit. In that respect, holding on despite going 2.6 in the fourth quarter is important I reckon. We're missing Salem more than I thought we would. We're missing Hibberd more than I thought we would. The media beat-up over the JVR incident is pathetic. That's not a reportable offence. If he gets weeks for that, the game is cooked.

What a ridiculous thing to say. We won't be winning the flag if we don't win enough H&A games. Stop thinking like our form in Round 8 is necessarily going to be our form in September. It clearly wasn't last year.

This is the problem with the majority of Demonland, IMO. Too many want to see 2021 again. We should all know by now that the H&A season is all about two things: Winning enough games to put yourself in a position to win the flag (technically that means making top 8 but realistically means making top 4); and Being in form at the right time of the year. It's not about dominating from go to whoa. 2021 was a freakish year. We were brilliant. It was one of the best full seasons produced by any side in recent memory. I don't think we get enough credit for it, given how many people say stuff like "we hit a September purple patch". No, 2021 was out of this world. We cannot use that as the standard. We're 6-2 and have the league's best percentage. In those 8 games we've played four 2022 finalists (3-1 record) and have played half our games interstate. We clearly have challenges to come with our fixture but right now we are ticking the boxes for the first point above - we're winning games to ensure we're in a position to win the flag. We won't know if we're in form at the right time of the year until we get there but we have seen time and again that premiership sides aren't always in form in Round 8.

Confirmed Turner in for Hibberd.

Sneaky watch on Turner a late in for Hibberd, which would make sense given their height in their forward line.

Like the general consensus, I love this design. I think the away jumper is incredible. The Narrm article on the club's website explains that the Port game is Sir Doug Nicholls Round, and then the following week we are playing Fremantle who are following our lead and re-naming as Walyalup, so the game will be Narrm v Walyalup and we'll be wearing the indigenous jumper then too. Then we'll wear it in Alice Springs as we've done in the past. Presumably that game will be on Sunday 2 July which is the first day of NAIDOC week, too.

Suns have King, Chol, Lukosius and now Casboult. They won't play all four at once of course, and they need ruck depth to combat Gawn/Grundy, but even if they line up with three in the forward line we're asking a lot of Hibberd aren't we? If GC is going strategically tall to try to stretch us, I wonder whether we see Schache (releasing Petty to the backline) or Turner a late in?

That logic doesn't quite hold up, old dee. Have you heard about the circle of parity? You can run through all 18 clubs by saying "A beat B, but B beat C, but C beat D" and so on until you get back to where you started. The fact we didn't put Richmond away until late, whereas Gold Coast jumped them early, does not mean we're worse than Gold Coast.

This makes literally no sense.

What’s that I hear? Someone prematurely writing off Collingwood? Come back to me at the end of the game.