Chook

And well done to Christian Petracca for leading the “Just wait till we get to see him next year” brigade. We needed someone to take over from Jesse Hogan.

So what? People whinge about this kind of thing so often they even created a proverb for it: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with beating GWS at Etihad in round 23 in front of a nothing crowd."

Apparently Etihad is “not Melbourne’s traditional home venue." No. Our home venue has the word Melbourne in it.

Did you congratulate him on his apparently extremely high-quality sperm? I suppose not. That would probably have been a little awkward.

Will be traded for whatever, or will be traded as part of an A++ level deal?

Didn’t lose in October November December January February A perfect year then...

He did pretty much the same thing after taking the Mark of the 21st Century against Sydney. Brilliantly called by Huddo (and Roosy), by the way.

What a stupid gif...

Is that a clue?

The greatest thing about winning in round 23 is that it’s now the longest possible time until we lose again. How good is that?

We won! I’m pumped. So who do we play next week?

Jesse Hogan just won the Rising Star with that passage of play.

Lynden Dunn wishes he had Jeremy Cameron’s pay-packet and free kick count.

This is some hot bad team on bad team action.

You want Jeremy Howe, GWS? You blokes are welcome to him.

I’m so jack of this Melbourne team right now. I feel like just switching off the tele. Should I? Thoughts?

Whew. My interest in this game is now 0.0001%

I’m really interested in this game...

25 consolation wins and you have a perfect season.

BP: “We were lucky to pick him up when we did. We thought he’d be gone by [pick x]." 15 other recruiters: “Really?!?"

You rest players during the season, but you’re trying to win that season. You delist good hardworking players who are too old to win you a premiership; but that’s okay, you’re trying to win the Premiership five years from now. Etcetera. And what if you still win despite your efforts to lose? Is that not tanking? Obviously your results-based metric doesn’t account for that. It’s all one big grey area. Your definition is no better (or, admittedly, worse) than mine. Our only trouble is that someone’s definition should be used, and that definition should have a clear reasoning behind it. Unfortunately this still has not yet happened. But that’s the AFL for you.

But where do you draw the line? Resting a midfielder for a few minutes on the Bench might make you worse off for a short time, but you'll be better off once they're back. Is that "tanking"? You have to draw a line between strategy and tanking somewhere. I think at the end of each season is a pretty good place to draw that line.

I hope he hasn't just been selected based on the colour of his name.

The difference between tanking and this kind of list management is that for what Freo and North are doing, they expect to reap their benefits this season. Tanking is a systematic distortion of this season for the benefit of next season (or even later).