BoBo

I personally don’t put much blame on umpires at all. They are instructed to umpire in a particular way. And it’s inarguable that the way they umpire is allowed to drift away from initial set standards. Umpires change the way they call things as soon as the AFL tells them to do it. The question is: why does the AFL allow umpires to slowly divert away from rules that are clear as day written down?

Yes absolutely they don’t care. This is like, THE basic facet of sport: Apply the written rules of the game consistently. And yet, here we are.

IMO this isn’t hard to fix up. If the AFL advised the umpires to: Enforce rules that are ALREADY IN THE BOOKS and monitored that interpretations of the rule were kept consistent, so they don’t drift away into places like the recent holding the ball fiasco. That would take care of a lot of issues and the AFL are the only ones able to enforce it. Evidenced by the very fact, that in the space of a week, they addressed the holding the ball interpretation. If it starts drifting away from what they initially told umpires in how to call it, bring it back to the initial advice. The gap is that the AFL is reactive and not proactive. They allow interpretations to drift for months or even seasons until they everyone gets so annoyed that the AFL has to do something about it. This is all avoidable. Secondly: You can set up thresholds for objectively incorrect calls round by round or in groups of rounds. If a round sees too many incorrect calls and it crosses a threshold of a particular rule: Advise the umpires to look out for it before we again spend months/years asking why said rule isn’t applied correctly. Will there still be incorrect calls? Yes. Will there be subjective 50/50 calls? Yes. But the aim is to minimise the amount of objectively incorrect calls AND re-implementing rules that for some ludicrous reasons just aren’t called any more. Apply the rules of the game. Monitor and get on top of when this doesn’t happen in the interpretations that the AFL wants and be proactive about it. Pretty simple.

There has been a crazy amount of games that have been decided by bad calls or bad non-calls of free kicks over the last couple seasons. Not 50/50 calls, just flat out wrong. The AFL fixed up the holding the ball fiasco in 1 week so there’s no reason they can’t fix up the rest. There’s been two goals (can’t remember which games) this season that have been paid, the replay has shown it was touched after going back to the middle and the commentary team just… didn’t really say anything? The off field umpire just missed the footage that everyone else saw? Doesn’t get spoken about again? It’s all amateurish at best or the AFL just likes the results so it’s ‘meh’, sooo I guess they literally aren’t interested in games being umpired properly. So that’s nice. I won’t even mention how you basically don’t even have to try and get rid of the ball anymore if you get tackled which is a rule called ‘insufficient attempt’. [censored] crazy

Ahh ok, thank you 🙏

Any mention of how long?

Darcy Byrne Jones looks like a ginger that is trying to hide that he’s a ginger by dying all his hair black.

Yeah they have that belief that they’ll just grind any team down and win

Sydney look so quick. Both with the ball and closing speed applying pressure.

Thanks for the study @bing181, I would argue that the purview of this study is only applicable if we are expecting a dramatic turn around in up to (like the conclusion states) 20 matches before or after. This is only my opinion but I’m not expecting a massive turn around in 20 matches *IF* we changed coach now (to which I don’t think is a good idea, mid season). I would agree changing coaches now is way more destabilising for the club than at seasons end (even if the review I put forward meant Goodwin kept coaching). My concern is beyond this year (I mention we’re the 3rd oldest list) and I fear that option of us sticking with the current set up of the club in the scope of us bottoming out just when Tassie comes into the comp means we see ourselves in Norths position.

I would let Goodwin see out the season, employ an impartial party (which ideally includes Paul Roos, Jordan Lewis considering the set us up in the first place and Brendan Gale whilst he has a gap between Richmond and Tassy) to do a review and essentially make him, the assistant coaches and the board re-interview for their jobs to said party to justify their positions and what they can add for our future. Gawn is 1 bad injury away from retiring and then we are screwed. We’re the 3rd oldest list and Tassie is what, 3 years away from taking all the best draft picks? Do we bottom out with Goodwin the year before Tassie takes up a generations worth of draft picks? We have next year which is our last (unless we recruit in the off season unbelievably) chance at a flag. All the while other clubs are clearly surpassing us. We can think ahead for a second and weigh up where we sit and act now or just continue in the hope that everything just works out with the current set up. Just to reiterate - (not to you specifically Beelzebub) but our forward 50 connection has been criticised since at least 2018 and it’s STILL NOT FIXED. I’ve been listening to Gary Lion talk about this for years and years and it hasn’t been addressed. As Schwartz said, that is a systemic failure of coaching.

John Worsfold if he’s keen.

Jesus, forget about footy, just hope he is ok

Yep. I truly believe that we wouldn’t have won the 21 grand final without Gus’ heroics. He turned the game on his own. Will forever be in my heart. The most jarring part of the Pies Loss for me was how chummy we were with Maynard. I’m not a one eyed supporter, I call things as they are even when it goes against us. But, it’s discouraging and deflating to have the team show us that it’s just no big deal? For contrast: Langdon says words. ‘No duck no dinner’. They flatten him and drive his face into the dirt. Maynard (no matter what anyone thinks) finishes Gus’ career. And what’s our response? We let him bully the [censored] out of us, shake his hand, pat him in the bum and have a good laugh afterwards. Does anyone reckon 90’s North, 90’s Adelaide, 2000’s Essendon, 2000’s Brisbane, 2000/2010’s Geelong, Collingwood EVER, Luke hodge Hawthorn, 2010’s Richmond would allow that let alone: The huge impact it had on its supporters? Zero chance. Along with a litany of other issues… there is a MASSIVE disconnect between this team and fans. For those that argue that we just wanted to concentrate on winning, fine, then recognise when we got [censored] on the field that the last thing we want to see, after Tracc went down, again by a pies player, was to see Oliver and May being super friendly with that [censored]. The fans are the MFC. This club is nothing without us. And I can’t recall a bigger spit in the face than this game. I’ve never been this angry and disheartened.

I immediately thought it was a kidney. Looked like a boxer that copped a heavy kidney shot from how long it took he to ‘recover’ and the level of pain. Watching him walk off, I was expecting him to go to Hospital and get checked out. I think it’s worth saying that players will always want to go back out on the ground and the pain threshold goes through the roof when you’ve got adrenaline pumping through you. Just from my own experience (and I’m 100% positive other people on here have experienced the same thing) I’ve broken fingers whilst playing footy and just kept going because I wanted to keep playing. Which isn’t a ‘toughness’ thing, it’s physiological. If I did the same thing at home, I wouldn’t be just going about my day, it’d [censored] hurt. Things hurt less on the footy field. My point being (and this isn’t a defence, it’s just true) it must be hard to assess a situation like that in the heat of the moment for a doctor. Having a player continuously say they’re right to go, doing sprints on the sidelines etc. Still the wrong call to let him back on but as others have said, the AFL should really be supplying equipment to deal with these situations. Could’ve ended very, very badly. P.S. I can’t remember the exact examples, but there’s been a couple times this year that I thought a player was unable to continue playing, only to be perfectly fine 10 minutes later. So when he was going back on I thought it was one of those scenarios.

Ahhhh the images. Tracc emerging from the race full pace, knocking over all the doctors in his way trying to stop him, they’re all crying ‘Christian, please NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’

I’d agree if the criticism was incorrect, premature or over the top but I think he’s pointing out things that everyone already knows and has been spoken about for more than 3 years (like Schwartz said). I’m happy that someone associated with the club is talking with some passion and representing the frustrations of the supporter base. I agree with you as a general rule though. I think in this instance it’s necessary.

If you’re going to include Brayshaw then add Nathan Murphy to Collingwoods outs too and that loss is even worse.

‘They locked them out of the half time meeting?’ Could you clarify this? Who got locked out of the half time meeting?

I reckon our forward problems have been spoken about since 2019 at least. Unless I’m misremembering

JVR?

4 finals in a row we’ve lost because we can’t convert. Today, 21 scoring shots to 19 with the easiest conditions to score. The week after ‘enough is enough’ with top 4 and top 8 on the line. Lose by 38. Kicking to player disadvantage all over the ground. Players mindset is obviously screwed. Commentators referencing that we look ‘scared/afraid/timid’ and we’re the 3rd most experienced list. Where is our resolve? See if Roos wants to coach again and I’m not even joking. Goodwin and the current coaches are unable to fix our problem between the ears. There is something seriously wrong. Weed out the problem players and get a god damn proper forward coach. This current set up is not going to get it done obviously.

It looks so weird when we actually kick to to the advantage of a leading player. It stands out when it should be the norm.

He only needs to kick 15 goals and we’ve got Collingwood right where we want em’

Better Dees! Just move the ball with intent. C’mon boys, you can do this