Chook

Posters who pretend to be Scottish when they're probably not.

"From all reports, Tom Scully is as fine a young man as you could wish to meet and a picture of honesty to boot." Whatever. A picture of honesty painted by a blind dog with no legs, perhaps.

That's one way of looking at it. I'm fine with suspending players because of poor off-field behaviour. I just wonder if the length of time until he has to serve his one-match ban might make the penalty less effective. I would prefer some sort of modified training schedule (away from the rest of his team-mates) or something which has a more immediate effect. If he had done the same thing on the Monday morning after Round 1, for example, banning him for Round 2 (and perhaps longer) would be the obvious punishment. But the fact that we can't do that now means that I think a different penalty would have been more effective. But you raise a good point. Maybe he will think about it every day until then, making the punishment more effective. However, I doubt Sylvia will think of it that way. He strikes me as a more "immediate" kind of guy. Jordie-Tackles' point about the fact that it affects the team making it a more severe punishment is also quite true, and something I didn't think about until he brought it up.

Somebody probably said that the day that Norm Smith got the sack. It's almost 50 years later and that trust must be starting to run out.

"Blah blah blah bananas. Blah blah blah antique rock band / pop heart-throb."

I'm all for some more immediate and severe social punishment like Johnson had to endure. Something that isn't four months away and affects Sylvia's social interaction now would do nicely for me. The standard "ban him for X number of games" solution is so played out and frankly just stinks of a lack of creativity or understanding of what makes a person tick. Punishing someone by taking away something they won't even have experienced in the next 120 days anyway is pointless. Colin won't learn anything because the negative punishment is too delayed to achieve any meaningful subconscious association of Colin's wrong-doing with his punishment. Not to mention it hurts the team at the same time.

I don't think such a belated punishment is actually very effective at all. Imagine he had stuffed up in round 1 instead. Would it make sense to suspend him for the round 16 game? It's the same sort of thing. Punishment only works if it can be immediately associated with the wrongdoing. Not to mention the fact that all the pre-season work he has to do until round 1 has just a little less meaning. You work and you work and you work up until round one, but you can't play because of something you did four months ago? Doesn't seem very motivating to me.

He can get as many haircuts as he wants as long as he stays off the C2H6O and engages in a lot of high-velocity bipedal locomotion.

Do you watch Breaking Bad?

Brilliant!

What is up with this desk joke? I don't get it.

Highly overrated. One tackle and one goalsquare mark is all I've seen from him. Is not "destined" to be a star, as many posters on this site seem to believe. This is not to say he sucks, by any stretch.

Jaded, although this year has often pushed her level of "jadedness" too far over the edge for my taste.

For me, it's a match between two clubs who are more than happy to work together towards a common goal. Hardly a grudge match at all. The AFL is so dum (yes, that's right - D U M) sometimes.

Forgotten how to tackle, lost a yard of pace, can't kick a goal, kicks when he should handpass, demands the footy when he shouldn't, doesn't take a mark, shouldn't play an AFL game until he demonstrates some of the qualities he showed before he caught the soft Melbourne bug.

"No-Lips" Tapscott goes all right. But like a lot of Melbourne players, I have no idea which position he'll end up playing.

"How tall are you, Morton?" "6 foot 3, sir." "6 foot 3? I didn't know they stacked [censored] that high."

Physical fitness gains are made not while exercising, but while resting. What a player does when he's resting is his own concern.

I've gone back and George Lucas'd my post. I hope it is now devoid of any and all overstated opinions (although I'm sure someone will find something wrong with the first sentence). He is not a gun footballer in the sense that Judd or Ablett are, but he is quite a good back-up ruckman and footballer in his own right. Where the word "gun" ranks on that nebulus "champion-star-spud" list is probably beyond the scope of this thread and not something I really care to mess with.

You know you're old when you think of Mission: Impossible as a TV show and not a movie. The Melbourne Football Club is like an old man with creaky joints finally getting out into the sun after too many years on the couch. But when it comes to getting off the couch, the hardest part is getting started. At least it seems we're past that now.

Newton? What a hack. He should stop making Laws and start kicking footballs, because his time is running out - if it hasn't already.

He's not on his Pat Maloney with that mistake.

Guns are bad. Jamar/Martin/Clark has to be the best ruck division in the league. Stef will probably be immensely benefited by the addition of Leigh Brown to the coaching group, Brown was probably one of the trailblazers for the type of player a backup ruckman now needs be. OPINION MODERATED. EDITED TO REMOVE DIVISIVE COMMENT. SORRY FOR INCONVENIENCE.

Yeah. It's an absolute ripper of a show. I've been keeping up with the American airings, which just finished season 4 last week. It's . . . explosive.

What are the chances we could surprise everyone next year and really push up into the eight? One team always seems to do it every year. Is it a "no chance" proposition?