Gawndy the Great

He has clearly been the most improved. I expect him to be top 5 in the BNF.

But there is already a break after round 24. Unless you have someone with minor injuries you have to play them to get better form.

I call BS because like everyone other normal human, he is watching his left arm given thats what a normal human is drawn to look at. There is absolutely no way his eyes can follow the footy from that proximity to his right wrist. This IMO is the goal umpire trying to defend his guess.

And it should be said, that failure to convert in a period of domination is actually contrary to the definition of domination. The fact that we basically defended staunchly was a massive failure of their forward line. Or in leymans terms for Q1: Their mids better than ours Our defence better than their forwards.

The touch rule should be changed in the rulebook to be better aligned to the available technology. For example a touched behind is where there is an observable deviation in ball flight (by goal umpire or ARC) or observable movement of the player's fingers who is making contact with the ball. So that way a micro touch is still counted as a goal and we are not left here wondering how to better adjudicate. Ultimately you work within the available limitations of our game.

Also to add, we win on expected score. So if Carlton were generally playing better all over the ground for longer, then it would most likely come through the stats and expected score convincingly i.e. > 10 pts. Its not an exact science but it does tell you the story. In this case it was +2 pts to Melbourne, but that alone doesnt mean we should have won, it just means that Carlton were not as dominant as some have proposed. The other factor is games decided < 2 goals either way are almost always very very even contests and its 1 or 2 moments in the entire game that decides the final score. This game was even statistically on all fronts. Its just unfortunate that the moment that decided this game was in the hands of umpires, which is what infuriates everyone, because it looks more like a goal than it does a point. If Trac had been tackled before he kicked or kicked Out-of-Bounds, then you take the loss and move on. But to have a goal taken away from us, which from every perspective and process should have been granted and to hear the Blues talk about luck and gloat like they had stolen the win and for the impact of the result to cost the Dees a likely 2nd spot is salt in the wound. I applauded the way the Demons played (considering it was wet) and that's coming from a devout pessimist. Look at my previous posts and you will see that i shredded the Dees mid-year given the games we were dropping and the way we were playing. But the Blues were a respectable opposition and could not have played any better with the players they had out. On paper we are probably the better side, but we are not too far off our best as well. As others have said, Carlton would have beaten any of the other 16 sides by 4+ goals with that performance.

And this is why Norf shouldnt be afforded a priority pick. Hawthorn have been [censored] for 5 minutes and already are showing signs of progress in their rebuild. It is not just about the players. You need to breed the right environment with club admin and footy dept and Norf were rotten to the core. Get the investment and assistance here otherwise you'll just burn through plenty of good players. GCS is another example of a team that should be making a PF with the talent they have in the that club. They have already been at the lower rungs for multiple years cleaning up the top end of the draft pool.

WCW is saying he is a possibility for the Swans game. He needs the run in his legs to get match fitness. Trac has to stay in the forward line 70/30. Now that Oliver is back we can revert back to the previous midfield setup with Oliver, Viney and Sparrow/Kozzy/Trac. He is not defensively accountable in the middle and is exploited byopposition coaches.

If these stats are right, what are we worried about? Nobody is dropping 800K on this bloke. It would be different if he showed signs that would warrant 800K, but he hasn't. They would be extremely negligent in their duties to do so. Instead why wouldn't you make a play for Nick Haynes an AA KPD for a 2 or 3 year deal? Yes its a 1.2M pay packet, but you'd ask for GWS 1st pick to take on the salary dump and you'd get a quality defender and a top 10ish draft pick. Or there is a play for Tomlinson probably for a early 3rd round draft pick. Better player than McKay and significantly cheaper too.

It’s actually news to me a just how bad they are. I have my theories but I’ll get banned for sharing them. Let them lap it up for now, I know what I’ll be doing the moment they are knocked out of finals. It is now my sole purpose in life. Spoke to an ex Blues player and he thinks it was a goal. When I asked him what the chatter was in the rooms he just looked at me and smiled.

Exactly. I think what you'll find is that the goal umpire must use some standard verbiage prepared by the AFL when making a soft call, which makes the goal umpire sound more convincing when they really don't know and are just guessing.

Both of the suggest process improvements here would go a long way to providing more consistent outcomes. Pity its too little too late and knowing our luck, will be in place when we find ourselves in Carltons position in a future grand final 5 points up with 10 seconds to go.... uggh anxiety meltdown.

I expect Pies to win on Friday night and keep our chances of 2nd spot alive. I have a feeling that Freo will beat Port as well. Amazingly #3 is more statistically likely to a win a GF that #4. Although i dont think we have really had this much of an even top 4 in the time that those stats were taken.

I agree with this in theory. We know there are two Suns sides, it depends on which ones turns up. With Carlton now becoming some crazy people's flag favorites, i hope the spooky Stephen King gets them going to try and knock off a contender on an 8 game winning streak. But there is also an equal chance that the boys are already in post season break / holiday planning mode and will roll over. Hopefully Dimma is confirmed during the week and word circles back to the playing group, that some will be playing for the careers or risk being traded to WC or North Melbourne.

I think first things first, you need to get the goal line covered. You probably don't need even need 1000fps as ElDiablo14 has suggested, but 24 fps is grossly insufficient. Get multiple angles of the goal line and goal square, probably 4 camera's in total. For the nerdy folk out there, check out these clips that show you 200/400/800 FPS. You'll notice that with the higher frame rate, the footage gets darker, so there will be a limit to actually how much frame rate you can get depending on the light conditions (night / day / overcast) etc. Obviously more expensive cameras will handle low light conditions better, but if you are going for a minimum of 4 cameras on each end and 8 playing grounds that is 64 additional cameras minimum. Edit, you can adjust the playback settings from youtube. The video above is already playing at a slower speed (not sure how much), id probably guess at 1/2 the normal speed. So if you goto the youtube's slowest playback setting of 0.25, you are close to 1/10 of normal speed. At this playback speed, the ARC is getting roughly 2 frames for every second we see of the footage. Compare that to even 200FPS and its night and day. Even the camera's within the latest smartphones will give 240 FPS...

Ummm, I think you’ll find that they actually were very much the reason we lost.

I get that it’s not fair, but he needs to own it and get to work. He needs to out muscle them and compete and go again. His team mates also need to help him out from time to time. You need to earn your keep.

Unless they can detect deviations in the order of millimetres, it will only be marginally better than the ARC as we can pick up finger flicks where there is no real ball deviation. I think they should partner with a university to develop something that is able to detect the faintest of touches. Perhaps it’s not possible. The easiest thing is to allow a goal and then overrule if there is sufficient evidence and not the other way around. Give the attacking the the benefit of doubt.

Im holding my opinion until the Hawks result. Another in form team that is high on confidence. Anything above a 5 goal win will reinforce form anything less I’ll defer another week. A loss, well, I don’t even want to consider atm.

Maybe it won’t change the result gone by, but it will add pressure to the AFL to make a serious investment in improving technology so outcomes like these are avoided in future games. It is simply archaic.

100% they will allow players with niggles to rest up.

And it’s going to cost us a home final by the looks of things.

For anyone that has doubt about the goal umpires call last night listen to the ABC audio interview with Marchbank - it is clear as day that he did not touch it.

It beggars belief - the speed of the non-call is also suspect. The indecisive ones always take longer. In cases of any uncertainty It should be an automatic goal and overruled as point if sufficient evidence exists. You are in effect deciding critical outcomes with a coin toss.

100% block followed by holding and possibly a high. Take your pick. Im glad a few journos bought up a few unpaid frees and the umpires call on the goal line in the presser - it’ll put the AFL in the spotlight particularly when FIFA have VAR working so well.