two sheds jackson

Why? Sure, he was always going to play a game or two in the VFL for fitness reasons, but we've seen enough of him to know that even in the immediate short term, he offers more to the side than someone like Dunn. If we already know this, then why make him "prove" it with an extended run at Casey?

I don’t like the thread because it highlights some very serious allegations, with the tacit implication that they are true. So far, all we have is one person publicly accusing another person, but the OP gives absolutely no mention whatsoever to the fact that Buckley might be innocent of the much more serious charges directed towards him. If the OP had said “if true, we don’t want behaviour like this at the club” or “even if only the part about the car is true, we don’t want this at the club”, there'd be no real issue. But the stuff you choose to leave out, can often have just as much bearing on the way a text is read as the stuff you include: case in point, all the OP did was link to an article containing accusations of domestic abuse against an ex player, with the line “we don’t want behaviour like this at our club”, which makes it pretty easy to read the OP as saying “Simon Buckley is guilty of domestic abuse, and we don’t want that at our club”. I won't even dignify this. You're smart enough to know what I meant, and it had nothing to do with defending vandalism.

Ugh. I hate these kinds of threads. The only thing we know categorically is that he damaged his girlfriends car. The rest of it is reprehensible if true, but you've only heard one side of the story and arent privy to what's really going on. You can reply with a trite cliche like "there's no smoke without fire", but that's crap: sometimes people completely makes things up. I'm not trying to suggest in any way that that's whats going on here. My point is that we have no idea whatsoever, and shouldn't pretend to. Not with a subject this serious.

It's very dissapointing, but the fact is, we just outplayed a side (and make no mistake, we outplayed them) who are heavily fancied to reach the top 4 at the end of the season. If it wasn't for a few strange umpiring decisions and a couple of mistakes in front of goal, we would have won. If this is what we can do now, just imagine what we'll be doing in 4 years time.

Is this something you want to happen, think will happen, or know will happen?

Hannabal; I'd keep arguing with you but I'm not sure we even disagree on anything more than the semantics of the word "sexist". You're saying it only covers active discrimination against someone based on sex, I'm saying it can also cover gender-based prejudice. I could scour the net for such a dictionary definition of sexism, but I don't think it would achieve much if I found one, other than proving my petty distinction more valid than yours. As I said, I don't think having a natural preference for male over female commentators is anything to be particularly ashamed of, I just think in the classic sense of the word, the position could technically be called "sexist". Hoopla; I think the biggest issue with Underwood -moreso than her voice and timing, and even her lack of football nous- is that she doesn't really pay attention to what's going on. It's not just that she get's the players names wrong, or that she says things like "out on the full, the umpires throwing it in". You could put that stuff down to a slip of the toungue due to nerves and inexperience; she probably (hopefully) studied the replay of that game and heard herself do that, and was embarassed by it. What's more worrying is that she provides "insights" which fly in the face of reality. The example I made about Jamar sums her up nicely; she'd been watching and commenting on the ruck contests all day, and claimed in the final quarter that Melbourne had gone in without a back-up ruckman when we clearly hadn't. I get the impression that prior to the game, she probably made note of the fact that we havnt normally used a backup ruck this year, figured we'd do the same against North, and resolved to "point it out" as a special comment at some point during the game, and then somehow didnt even pick up on the fact that we were using Steph Martin in ruck contests. Even Andy Maher -who is easily my least favourite commentator in any sport- at least pays enough attention to the games he's calling that he doesn't say much that can be described as objectively and indisputibly wrong. It's par for the course with Underwood.

This alone made the thread worth reading.

By the way; being given a "choice" between Kelly Underwood and Sam Lane in the commentary booth would be sort of like getting a "choice" between having a bowling ball dropped on your head, or having your fingersnails removed with hot pincers.

I'm not sure how the fact that it's a "matter of preference" negates the fact that it's sexist. I could say that I would rather listen to white commentators than black commentators, and that would be my personal preference, but it's still a preference based purely on ethnicity and therefor a racist position to take. Same thing here; preferring a male commentator over a woman -if it's based purely on gender- is a sexist position. I'm not even being emotive or trying to insult anybody- by definition, in strictest sense of the word, it is sexist. As Jackattack said, it's a benign form of sexism the likes of which we're all guilty of, and I'm not trying to argue that anyone who'd rather listen to male commentators is a chauvanist pig. It's the sort of thing we all do, but let's not pretend it's not a kind of prejudice, because it obviously is. Having said that, theres a fair difference between saying "I don't warm to woman commentators" (Hannabal), and saying "women shouldn't commentate" (P_Man). The former statement doesn't discount the idea that there are women out there who would be good at the job, it just states a predisposition to prefer male commentators. The latter statement suggests that women are inherenty unable to perform the task well. Um, yeah. Kelli Underwood is crap.

I can see the merit in it, but I'm not so keen. I posted in another thread that with Garland, Warnock and Frawley as our 3 core defenders for the next however many years, we have a chance to really make our backline the feature of our game. I would hate to see us screw around with this just to fix our short-term structural problems up forward; we'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul. Let's keep in mind that Morton is a good prospect to take up a key position; in a few years we might end up with Watts/Morton/Jurrah as our tall forwards. Problem solved, with Garland/Warnock/Frawley still causing the opposition headaches down back. That's a pipe dream right now, to be sure, but even if it never happens, I would still rather we try to develop one of the many tall fringe players on our list, and if this fails, try to trade for a tall forward. Unless Garland is going to be a significantly better forward than a defender, then I say leave him where he is. As for this week, I really don't think it's winnable, so in light of what I was saying before, I'd give fringe players like Martin, Rivers etc extended periods up forward and see what they can do.

The difference is, you hate womens tennis because you find that the top womens tennis players are loud, obnoxius, and annoying to watch. Your issue has nothing to do with gender. It all depends on your reasoning. If somebody says "I don't like women as commentators, because I think that to really understand the game, you need to have played football at the elite level against men", then there's nothing sexist about that. But to seriously argue that "commentary just doesn't sit right" for women (P_Man), or that only butch lesbians should be allowed to commentate (jungle dee; in fairness, probably a bit toungue in cheek) is to take up an idiotic and sexist position.

Watts is coming along according to plan but I won't debate that point with you here, theres plenty of other threads about it. The thing is, even if Watts was to magically come in next week and average five goals for the rest of the year, we'd still ideally like another bonafide tall. I dont really know if using anyone from our backline is the answer, though. Breaking it down: Rivers: A worthwhile venture, but irrelavent to this debate IMO. Even if we put Rivers forward and he turns out to be a success, then that just means we've found another good medium-sized half forward flanker for the next few years. That would be nice, but would do nothing to solve our present structural problem. Warnock: Is vital to our defensive structure and I doubt he'd even be a good forward. Frawley: See Warnock. Garland: This is the one that gets talked about the most. A future Watts/Garland/Jurrah combination is a tantilising prospect. On the other hand, he's completely untried up forward and a definite proven commodity down back, and we need to be able to rotate defensive match-ups when things arent working out, which the Garland/Frawley/Warnock combo allows for. We'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul. I think our best bet is to try to uncover a second tall in the next year or two from the talls on our list, guys like Martin, PJ, Gawn, Fitzpatrick etc. If we can't, we'll have to try to trade for one. We're on a very good wicket with a future backline combo of Frawley/Warnock/Garland, and we shouldn't screw around with it just to fix our tall forward problem.

I agree that things are getting overly politically correct, but sometimes people go too far the other way: someone will call out something that genuinely is racist or sexist, and others will shout that person down for being a PC fascist. Case in point: you'll get some people who'll defend Kelli Underwood, saying that it's great to see a female commentator. They don't mention or care that she's crap at the job, as they hope that her position signals the start of the major networks "correcting" the gender imbalance "issue" and putting more women into the role, so that the male-to-female commentator ratio is more even. THESE people are a good example of political correctness gone mad. Replying to a thread which is essentially arguing that Kelli Underwood is proof that no woman should ever commentate, and pointing out the idioicy of this, is not. I don't take issue with the fact that P-Man's argument is politically incorrect. I take issue with the fact that it is flatout stupid. He is saying "women can't commentate" and he's backing up that assertion with precisely bugger-all. I'm not sure if either of you can fairly be labelled "sexist", because neither of you have bothered to elaborate on your positions or try to justify them in any way. All you've done is said "I prefer male commentators, and I don't care if you think that's sexist", while his position isn't even that developed; his line of argument basically equates to "NO!!".

I doubt many subscribe to Yze Magic/Trengove is God's "OMGz, get rid of teh Bruce NOW dis iz srsly!!!~1" line of reasoning. In fact I doubt even he genuinely believes it, but it gets a reaction from people and this, of course, is important to a guy who measures human achievement based on how many people you can get to reply angrily to your slagging of an AFL footballer over the internet. Everyones gotta have a hobby, I guess, so more power to him. Having said that, Bruce has gotten away with some patches of pretty average form in the last few years, partly due to being one of the few half-decent senior players in a very inexperienced club and partly because no one has really been knocking the door down to take over his role anyway. I have a feeling this is going to change shortly, as a handful of kids come through who can do the excact same things Bruce can do, only better. As I said in the gameday thread, his times as a walk-up start in our best 22 are numbered, in fact I expect he'll be pushed out of the regular side by mid-2011 at the very latest. EDIT: Apologies to QueenC, who -while I was writing this post- made the exact same point as me but articulated it heaps more gooderer.

Kelly Underwood's continued employment at Channel 10 can only be put down to pure tokenism on the stations part. She is grossly unqualified to commentate football on network television. No matter what criteria you use to appraise the worth of a commentator, Underwood is found desperately wanting: - She tends to only be familiar with the top 12 or so players on any given list. Sometimes she outright fails to recognise a player and attempts to name them, with embarassing results (I remeber a Melbourne/Geelong game last year when "Mortram" gave an errant handpass; this kind of thing is not an abberation for her). - She actively barracks for Geelong when calling their games. - Her voice is nasal, grating and downright annoying to listen to. - She says things that outright fly in the face of the reality of what's going on. I got back from todays game in time to re-watch the last quarter on Ten's delayed telecast, and towards the end of the game she said that Jamar had done a great job rucking with no backup, "all by himself against the three North ruckmen". Again, you could forgive it as a once-off, but this is par for the course with her. So she's unpleasant to listen to, doesn't know what she's talking about and "observes" things that arent even happening. And they reward this by giving her 12 games. If she had a penis, she wouldn't have a job. I can't say I agree with the title of the thread, though, or with alot of the comments posted here. Equating all women who apsire to commentate football with Kelly Underwood is unfair, and claiming that women shouldn't commentate football is flatout moronic. Obviously there have been good woman commentators in other sports, and we've seen from journalists like Emma Quayle (an extremely insightful observer of underage talent in particular) and Caroline Wilson (prone to sensationalism at times, but in all a pretty astute commentator on the administrative side of football) that there are women who really, really know their stuff when it comes to football. There would be plenty of women out there who are eloquent enough speakers and possess enough football nous to justify a job as a commentator, Kelly Underwood just isn't one of them.

Not an altogether surprising result. Sometime this year we were always going to go down to an ordinary side. It'll happen again from time to time. We'll also get two or three absolute hidings from quality sides. We are steadily improving, but still have a long way to go. Our first half was terrible. North applied some pretty good pressure and we shat ourselves and made countless errors, forced and unforced, and started cocking around with it on the HB and HF lines circa 2008. If we'd played a side with better finishing skills than North (read: nearly any other team), the game would have been over at halftime. I thought we outplayed them in the second half. Not that we were fantastic, but our ball movement out of the middle was alot cleaner and we stopped the indecision and over-possession of the ball that cost us badly in the first half (and has plagued us for the last few years). A few odd umpiring decisions in Norths forward 50 made the result look worse than it actually was; we didn't deserve to win, but if we'd played like we did in the second half for the entire game, we probably would have scraped through. Bruce racked up possessions, but few of them seemed to go to advantage. His days as a definite walk-up start in our best 22 are numbered. Davey has a poor track record when it comes to these sorts of games and needs to start consistently standing up to physical pressure from the opposition if he wants to be anything more than just a handy finishing player. We badly missed Jordie today, and the intensity from our other defensive tackling types (especially McDonald, and to some extent Bartram) was well down on previous weeks. On a side note: Etihad Stadium is an even bigger shithole than I remember it being; sterile atmosphere, $4.50 for water, and you face a choice between paying $30 concession for ground level seats or going up to level 3, in which case you cant see the fricking boundary line and you have to shield your eyes for the entire game if it's a sunny day. Should be burnt to the ground, and the ashes placed in a cannister and flung over a rainbow.

I've never had the urge to boo at a game, and agree that the people booing Travis were being a bit ridiculous. But saying "don't boo Travis, boo McLean instead!" is probably worse, if anything. Part of the reason we got rid of Travis was that even after the best part of a decade, he still had a totally unproffessional approach to his footy; he was uncommitted on the field and (allegedly) a disruptive influence off the field. McLean strove to get the absolute best out of himself during his time at the club, with his output probably exceeding his natural ability at times. He left because -due to a new gameplan that doesn't prominently feature his style of play, and an influx of younger, better midfielders- he realised he was going to have a very limited role in any future Melbourne side. His handling of the situation (during trade negotiations and in the media) seems to have been beyond reproach. Booing either player is stupid, but I can understand booing Travis better than I can understand booing McLean.

Good question. Given where Melbourne are at, I think I would lean toward Trengove. While I expect that Naitanui on his best day will be more influential than Trengove on his best day, I also have a feeling that Trengove will produce consistently great performances whereas Naitanui will produce the occasional remarkable performance, but also sometimes go insighted, particularly as clubs begin to figure out ways to minimize his influence as Trident pointed out. He has an advantage right now -a bit like Davey when he first came in, but to an even greater extent- in that opposition coaches don't know how to counter him because they've simply never come across anything like him before. That'll change. Going into a Grand Final, I would hope for a great performance from NickNat, but I would know I was getting one from Trengove.

Its hard to even rationally respond to the article, because his line of argument is logically inconsistent and sometimes completely incoherent. I mean, he SEEMS to be saying the following: - Melbourne and Richmond have been poor on the field in the last few seasons and will merge. Even though both clubs recorded a modest profit last year, and while true that Melbourne are set to beat their membership record for the third year in a row while Richmond are already close to 40,000 members in what looks like being a terrible year for them. These numbers will decrease when both teams improve on the field, gate attendances will drop, and sponsorship revenue will dry up. - Neither Richmond or Melbourne have a young player who the majority of football journalists are happy enough to go out on a limb for by publicly proclaiming said young player to be the next Ablett, Carey or Hird. No team in the AFL has such a player, because journalists normally aren’t stupid enough to put their reputation on the line by making such a bold call. But the fact that NO team has one isn’t my point, the point is that Richmond and Melbourne don’t have one. This is an indictment on both clubs recruiting teams and they will merge. - Dean Bailey is building a club in the same way that Hawthorn had to after the failed merger in the mid-90s; i.e. he is not focusing on building a premiership winning list, but is instead looking at things like community initiatives, brand awareness and just every single facet of building a club, because as coach of the senior playing list, that is his job. He beat me for the position on his own merit and he is doing the right thing. Melbourne will merge with Richmond soon. Is that pretty much the gist of it, or am I being unfair?

Thanks so much for all the support guys. This is a cheap, shameless plug and I'm a bastard for doing it, but heres the footage of me at the state finals of RAW Comedy:

I also don't really understand some of the vitriol directed at McLean after he left; I thought all parties handled the situation pretty well. When the McLean trade was just a rumour, I was against it. My opinion was that even though he's never going to be the superstar we'd initially hoped him to be, he would still be a solid 200 gamer, and make a great supporting act to the likes of Scully, Trengove and Grimes. It is still early days; we've seen nothing of Gysberts yet and McLean has only played 3 games. But given that his pace doesn't seem to have improved, nor his propensity to break down, I'm starting to second-guess myself. This could still turn out to be a big win for Carlton and loss for the MFC, but I'm starting to doubt it.

I hear ya, but I think the major difference is that the others came down to basic skill errors or poor decision making in a high pressure environment; they didn't get spooked and shirk a contest like Bennell did. Dropping the other guys wouldn't really send any message at all, except "it's never okay to make a mistake", whereas dropping Bennell would send the message that while it's fine to make the odd mistake, it's never okay to squib contests. I'd give him a reprieve because of his age and because -apart from that one aberration- he was pretty handy today. He wouldn't want to do it again, though. I'd keep Bate. They're obviously trying to play him into form, and with our chronic shortage of talls I'd keep doing what we're doing and hope he comes good, even if he does it by degrees. IN: Sylvia OUT: Bartam

Quick update; - Finished treatment. - The chemo worked brilliantly. By the fourth cycle (I had six all up) there was no cancer showing in the scans at all. Pretty much everyone was shocked about that. They're not saying I'm cured, because they can't once it's spread through the bloodstream, but they can't put a limit on how long it could stay dormant for, and obviously I can try the same treatment again if and when it comes back. - Back at uni, doing comedy again (entered RAW Comedy this year and made the State finals), so I'm basically back to normal. - Now it's a matter of getting scans every month or so, but if it stays stable for a while, they'll make it every few months. Basically the longer it stays stable, the less regularly I'll have to have scans. So yeah, it's a bit touch and go for now. Pretty bloody stoked with how it's gone, actually. With the obvious exception of being diagnosed with the [censored] thing in the first place, I've been pretty lucky; things have gone way, way better than anyone would have expected when I wrote the OP. Bring on the footy!

Pretty much everything WYL has listed. Most of my favourites have been mentioned already somewhere in this thread, actually, but I'll add a few: - Spaced (one of the best all-around shows I've ever seen) - The Mighty Boosh (surprised this hasnt been mentioned yet) - Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (brilliant pisstake of cheesy, 80s sci-fi and detective shows, has Richard Ayoade in it for any IT Crowd fans) - The Goodies (no explanation needed) Nostradeemus; I both agree and disagree with you about Little Britain. I actually really liked the first season, but it completely went downhill after that. They got rid of all the surreal and absurd kind of stuff like this: and replaced it with puerile dreck like this:

You made this point earlier, and I think Deevoted addressed it pretty well. When you look at our recruiting record in the last three years, we have almost exclusively drafted players who have (or at least are touted as having) very clean disposal skills. Much more so than Danniher/CAC, Bailey/Prendergast seem loathe to draft kids with question marks over their disposal. Problem is, no matter how skilled a rookie is, they are bound to make some shocking disposal errors as they adjust to the tempo of AFL; this may make them look poorly skilled, but can be a due to a host of other factors; i.e. you can be a very good kick but panic and rush your disposal, and absolutely shank the kick as a result. This kind of thing happens often to first/second year players, with very few exceptions, and since we've got a team full of them, it's neither surprising nor alarming. It isn't a matter of "knowing how to kick"; most of these kids have had the basics of kicking drilled into them since Auskick, and if by this stage they need Robbie Flower to come in and teach them how to kick, our entire recruiting department should be sacked and we should begin our rebuild again from scratch. It's more a matter of becomming familiar enough and comfortable enough with the physical and mental pressure of AFL football to make sound, confident decisions, and for that to happen, we're going to have to sit through a few more games like the last two.