Mel Bourne

He’s been working hard at reducing his height but it’s been a struggle.

My best mate is a Roos supporter. I am getting RSI from feeling sorry for him.

I’m also keen to see what Joel can bring, and yes, much more curious to see him around our goals than the opposition’s. I do have memories of Joel flying for everything and getting in the way more than “being the way” at times, but his hunger to prove himself must be stronger than ever these days.

I’m merely advocating for adhering to the beauty. And with hand on heart, I firmly believe that some small part of that beauty is the inherent danger the game presents. Without it, it loses a degree of it’s attraction to me. Not all of it’s attraction, (hopefully) obviously. But if the AFL becomes a sport where players are expected to not risk serious injury, or to risk inflicting injury on others at all stages, I’m not sure if I’d want to watch it. Sorry.

I do. I’m really not a fan of this burgeoning mindset that people should be able to enter things without taking any risks. Aspiring AFL players should know that they’re signing up for a physically-fierce competition, and that serious injury is a potential factor. Don’t like the sound of that? Don’t play.

Targeting such a young player seems to be a very transparent move by the AFL to phase-in AFL Lite™️. Suspend a player in their late-twenties line this and they’d probably just seek out a new career That, or attempt to un-learn years of training. The AFL likely see 19 year-old as capable of re-learning their style of play It all makes depressing sense, given how Australia is sleepwalking into one of the more risk-averse societies in the developed world.

On the Reddit AFL page there are 248 comments from supporters of all clubs. After scrolling through I saw maybe four that were pro-suspension, and the rest were all completely appalled by the decision. I can’t remember the last time a suspension was so unpopular amongst fans of the game. If the AFL have any sense of this they’re obliged to make it right, not just to Jacob and the Demons supporters, but AFL supporters at large.

Completely agree. Just a dumb joke.

I’ll sheepishly put my hand up here, WCW. A flippant gag, but I didn’t actually mean any disrespect. I genuinely thought there was something bothering him mentally last night. He just seemed rattled and distant, and though I could have worded without the gallows-humour, my comment was actually intended to defend his poor performance.

And this is the other factor contributing to the clusterf$&k… Who owns the rights to the audio coming out of the microphone being passed around? The AFL? Or the Herald-Sun/Age/SEN/3AW etc etc. The reason you see all those mics in front of an interviewer with all the various news logos on them, is because once the presser is done, whatever audio that went into each of those microphones belongs to their respective companies for them to broadcast at a later stage. It’s totally boring, but every little thing that hits a microphone for broadcast, needs to have a corresponding owner of the rights to that thing. It seems the easiest way to navigate such an intellectual-property headache is to do nothing about it.

Not impossible, but again, surprisingly difficult. Any questions would obviously need to be audible to any would-be transcribers, who would more than likely need to be operating from within the broadcast control-room. So again, you’d need microphones everywhere conveying that information. Or, you put the transcriber on a laptop in the conference room, and just hope that they can hear everything well enough to transcribe to air in real-time. Again, very challenging.

I do a lot of recording with mics, and I can tell you that mic-ing up a room full of journalists who are asking questions from random areas around the room, is not as easy as you think. Long story short, if you were to open all the mics needed to uniformly-record a space this large, you’d also be opening up a buttload of very undesirable ambient noise (the ABC occasionally try this and it always produces a poor result). The only feasible way to get the kind of audio you’re hoping for, is to have an organised press gang who take turns with a couple of dedicated microphones (similar to what you see in National Press Club broadcasts). Unfortunately though, “order and courtesy” are not huge considerations amongst the press these days.

If we’re playing “badly” and still winning matches, I would suggest this sentence is highly inaccurate.

Umpiring was what it was. We got away with a few things in that last quarter.

I’d say let the adrenaline wear off a bit more, DeeSpencer. This is hyperbole.

Ugly win, but thank Jehovah for our core players. I can only assume Fritsch got dumped by his girlfriend this morning, or one of his pets died. Was Langdon tagged? Again, May not playing great, but again, posters here talking about him like he’s the worst player in the league. At least he was getting to the ball, unlike Lever, Fritsch and Ed. The dearth of centre-clearances continues to astonish. Having said that Rowell and Anderson are both extremely good midfielders. But there’s no point raving about Gawndy if there’s no connection.

This is peak “gameday thread”.

Bizarre Game. Fritsch, Langdon and Lever are nowhere to be seen. If they can enter the match we should do some damage. If they can’t, this is going to the wire.

Are Langdon and Fritsch wearing camouflage?

Fritsch was named this week, yeah?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrxgQGDO2it/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Not sure if this link (from MFC Instagram) will work, but only just saw this goal for the first time, and it is something else…

Completely understand the curiosity and it would great to hear what he’d have to say, but if he hasn’t talked about it much it might be because he doesn’t want to. My wife works closely with members of the indigenous community, and what she’s noticed over the years is that some indigenous people are genuinely uncomfortable talking about their culture/history with non-indigenous people. There are a lot of different reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that many indigenous people are not fortunate enough to have the kind of connections to their own history/mob/stories to speak with confidence about them. In our ongoing, well-meaning quest to mend our relationship with and better-understand indigenous culture, we sometimes make assumptions that all indigenous people are deeply-connected to their culture and are willing to teach others about it, but the reality is that colonisation has sought to suppress these connections for a couple of hundred years, and as a result, many indigenous individuals are on their own personal mission to learn about themselves before engaging with non-indigenous people about it (particularly in the media). It’s also true to say that some aren’t, and this needs to be respected too. Not to assume this is the case with Maysie, but it’s worth being mindful of.

When was that exactly? Edit: Haha! Yes, I guess he did kick that goal when there was only six points in it. Excellent point!

Both of these teams look average. Very little composure to be found on either side this last quarter. Saints supporters aren’t letting their unfamiliarity with the rules get in the way of their passion.

You’re forgetting young Harry Sheezel.