deelete my account

I think we finished about 10th for 68 total votes too. I know its arbitrary with umpires but thoughts anyway?

Not far from the truth, a truth of which most people who think he's a knockabout top block, have either forgotten or are too young to remember: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/collingwood-star-dane-swan-accused-of-welshing-on-payment-to-bashed-cleaner/news-story/7ddafbe7a3e73289c5ba8f30eae13cfb?sv=26865072f4df86424b80172af674e3fe

And here I am, only knowing who Matt Priddis is on Brownlow night when he started polling well and i googled him.

Who were the players that didn't poll? I want their heads.

Shouldn't be a surprise. Cooney's Mad Monday Article: Hibberds and Melkshams: The animals of the group, rock up feeling the effects of the night before, nude by 12, abusing everyone by 2pm and home by 6pm. Great value.

Once per year? That's a once a decade kick.

Hope Josh Kelly pulls an upset.

Watts with 1 vote against Geelong, nice little reward for almost single handedly lifting our team over the line as the replacement ruck.

Pull the lever.

Red wine and sacramental bread?

That is a depressing list of non goalkicking forwards and Hannan & Petracca. And then there's the added caveat that a player like Melksham can out perform all of them in the last two months - He'd have to be ahead of all of them too. Cul that list down to Petracca, Hannan and Melksham and bring in one small forward and keep Watts or bring in a 3rd tall that can mark/kick a goal. Throw the rest in the VFL and have them competing for one list spot - nearer to the wing or relieving centreman

im worried about the umpires tbh. Predicting one of them plays a blinder, literally.

Considering that our most iconic victories this year were in the away strip, i can't blame a kid for wanting that one. The traditional just reminds me of floundering in many games on the G this year, with the exception of Port.

Maybe we should hire the Carlton doctor so we don't lose 2 players a year for 3 games that eventually cost us finals and of course the premiership. /s

And yet the added caveat is that he has 2 fines. It's the perfect storm.

And what's crazy is that if he doesn't commit to the impact by tucking his arm in to 'shoulder' and bracing for impact, then his only option is to dive in head first with his arms outstretched to grab the ball first and risk being done for sliding, which as i said before, runs way more of a risk of causing an ACL to Shiel, but less a risk of getting suspended. (Absurdly the sliding also gives away a free and the head high contact usually doesn't) I've watched it a few more times now and its really line ball but favoring Cotchin if FINES are taken out of it. It looks as though they are both going for the ball, but somethings still irks me about the way Cotchin dives in to Shiel with a torpedo like quality. Like hitting Shiel as hard as he could once that very very split micro-second has him knowing Shiel will get to it first. I think my earlier assessment that he should've held back is probably wrong though, the ball is definitely there to be won for both of them.

Except he chose to run into the player instead of conceding the play and going for the smother or corralling him into the boundary. The AFL is trying to curb first instincts and recklessness and put some kind of awareness into players minds about holding back on diving into or at the player and causing injury. People call it 'soft', but a line has to be drawn. If Shiel edit: had've gathered the ball, then Cotchin would have slid in and taken out his legs. Which incidentally wouldn't have got any weeks i think, even though it probably risks an ACL far more than it does a long term brain injury.

The sport would be so much easier if we hadn't discovered concussion leads to long term brain injuries. While i can get behind the 24 hour news cycle being somewhat to blame on many occasions, the only 'grey area' here is the grey matter area.

Now that you mention it, it does ring a bell. The Hardwick/Sheedy connection. GWS have probably long grown out of those Sheedy roots, but Hardwick was a career long campaigner. At the time I thought he was just a mindless thug, but now: he was obviously the main general down back and Dean Wallace was the brainless thug. No surprises then that he's assigned Cotchin the role of taking out their key players with aggressive hits. Given they've got the MCG Home ground advantage, it's not that big a deal to have a key player rubbed out from thuggery, assuming the AFL have any balls to rub him out. We really should have selected Marcus Seecamp in 2000 and thrown him forward to retaliate. We also shouldn't have traded him for Martin Pike, and instead traded someone else (Had to wiki that info). Pike and Seecamp flying the flag. Who knows what might've happened. We probably should have thrown Green, Schwartz, Farmer and Robertson into the backline to apply the Terry Wallace/Noah's Ark "FLOOD" that day. Would've been the most shocking grand final result ever. Can't blame Neal Daniher for wanting to win the premiership on his own attacking terms though. Oh what might've been.

What is your opinion on trading Watts C.B.F.?

My opinion of the hit: Cotchin bracing his shoulder upon impact, while looking premeditated, is actually an instinctive position to put the body in. It's almost fetal. It would be totally [censored] absurd and reckless to you AND the other player to go into the contest leading with your head. His intention was to have shoulder to shoulder impact. In fact, it seems like most players intention is to have should to shoulder impact, but that actually requires quite a lot of precision if you think about shoulders negating the weight of force by hitting (or bouncing) against each other in precisely the same location and without slipping up/down and hitting head, which leads to a lot of players downfall. It's more intelligent to hold back and tackle the player as they gather the ball, but Cotchin has been running on ferocious momentum this past month and he is over committing-himself to the contest with reckless abandon. On a side note; he's looked like the most courageous and ferocious player since Hodge in 2013-15 in the past month, no doubtedly he has been consciously trying to rectify the 2013-15 finals efforts. On looking back at the incident, i would think that Cotchin intends to hit shoulder to shoulder AND richochet towards the ball with the force of the hit. I guess you'd call it 'grazing' against another player and propelling yourself towards the ball and them towards the boundary. A sort of smart billiard ball type deflection. Just dealing with intention, it looks like that because of his past fines, that won't be taken into account though and he can expect a holiday. BUT NOT TO WORRY, Richmond genuinely look like they have the superstars to challenge again next year and if they win this year, it will be a silver lining to have Cotchin itchin to play in a GF the following year. Let's face it, the MCG is a bigger influence than Cotchin on whether an MCG team wins the premiership. Adelaide in 97/98, Brisbane in 01-03 and Sydney in 12 are the only anomaly.

Isn't there some sort of Hippocratic Oath though with doctors and injuries? I haven't watched the game so I can't really comment, but this just reminds me of the comment made by a Demonlander who i've forgotten, that was commenting on just how much influence the umpires do have on a match. Like last year, swaying the results of matches with momentum crushing calls in certain periods of the match or in the dying minutes, but it's not PC in the AFL world to ascribe blame to umpires especially when the result is a big margin and because most opposition fans do it in a heightened state of emotion. But surely we've all sensed that some calls just kill contests, no matter how early in the game? BTW Was it Matt Nichols who made these calls? This [censored] genuinely seems like he's trying to sway matches.

Continuing tis tangent because it does hit close to home with what happened in the 2000 GF, It's absurd that we had a substitute rule for 2 or 3 years that was basically whenever the coach felt like subbing a player in. Surely we could have a sub rule for players that are ruled out due to concussion THAT IS independently verified by an AFL Doctor (Ie not a Carlton Doctor) - so that we get 22 v 22 back happening again, and leave the MRP to dish out justice. It doesn't solve the issue of a [censored] player taking out a superstar, but i think the AFL is relatively free of that sort of thuggish behaviour nowadays. I'm guilty of cheering on Lewis for taking out Cripps in round 3 or so though, so what do i know.

And if we'd had an actual MRP that deals with 'Justice', then they could instantaneously adjudicate that it was an action worthy of week/s at the next quarter break after Shiel is ruled out of the game and GWS being unfairly compromised. The response would be that they should have an emergency player substituted in OR have Trent Cotchin sin binned. But that's a bit of a tangent, which kind of does apply, more so in next weeks grand final. And we're all too familiar with thuggish activities in grand finals over at demonland. Cough Wallace. Long. Cough.

I wonder what Richmonds record without Cotchin is, he's the kind of player that has probably played the last 3 years straight? I don't recall injuries or suspensions? Personally I don't think Cotchin > MCG for actual influence, therefore Richmond will probably win. Unfortunately we have an uneven competition because one stadium fits 100,000 people and the others don't because of some vague "spiritual home" nonsense.