Chook

He's either plying while not 100%, or he's out. Either result is good for us.

Yeah. Let's just forget about that little blunder, shall we. Terrible, terrible call.

I have to say I picked it. IN: Sylvia, OUT: Strauss is a good decision. Strauss wasn't too productive on the week-end. He didn't do anything bad, but he didn't do enough good to warrant selection again. He'll be a good player though.

A few of Cam's kick-outs from points weren't too bad, he gave a few good handpasses to running players in the back-line, was involved in four of our goals, but did cost us one with that handpass to Strauss that was mentioned by the OP. All in all, he helped us more than hindered us. Far from our worst player on the week-end.

Obviously you mean "get out of the bottom 4," right? You're not secretly a masochist are you?

If they still have enough time to dispose of it the way they would like to, then yes. But officially, even if you hospital handpass someone, it's still "hitting a target" as long as they take possession, despite the fact that the "target" you hit subsequently got creamed.

Yeah. That was hilarious. An absolute game-changer too, if I recall.

My 25 word statement: "At age eight, I moved down from Brisbane. Jimmy Stynes fuelled my passion for the Dees and my fire started then. "Watts" not to like?"

For those of us who are free of the beast that is Microsoft, what does this video say?

Do you think he'll regret not making the most of his opportunity in the AFL when he's older? It's a shame to hear he's like that. I liked Chopper when he was playing for us. Except I'd always be screaming at him to play in front of Gehrig and he never did, and was always led to the ball. Not to fast, was Chopper Carroll, to be beaten in a footrace by Fraser Gehrig

That's actually the example I was thinking of when I wrote that. We won by three points after a poor start to the year, and you can pretty much guarantee we would have lost if he had've stayed on.

Man, watching your avatar is like watching a horror movie. I don't know what's going to happen next, and I'm real scared.

Stats are boring. Ask Baseball.

Probably. Thanks for that. It was a tough year for Roo. Given the Captaincy and expected to lead them to a Premiership at the ripe old age of 8, can you blame him for tearing up? I can still remember Eddie McChins' commentary, along the lines of "Riewold's down. He's hurt. WHOA this is massive!" as if Germany had just invaded Poland again.

Thank God. I'm so glad there are people who watch games open to changing their minds. Here, you recognised people didn't like Bruce's game, so you watched it to see if they might be right. Props to you for that, as well as for stating examples of reasons why he was not crap. Why do we need a weekly Bruce, Bate, Watts, Dunn thread? Bruce's "terrible disposal," Bate's "ungainliness," and so on, too often cloud people's judgement of the good things they did. Watch the game, take in players' positives and see if they outweigh the negatives. If they do, then there's a good chance they helped their team win. If they helped their team win, you then need to ask, is there someone not in the team who could bring even more positives than negatives to the table? If so, then by all means talk about dropping them. /Rant

Can we ban these "wat R U Smoking?" jokes. Totally counterproductive and not at all enlightening. If they're followed by "you must be on crack because . . ." then at least there might be some valid information or opinion in the post, but otherwise it's nothing but a waste of space. Stop feeling so good about yourselves for calling someone out on something so "ridiculous."

So does Aaron Davey.

Do you remember Mal Michael and (I think) Darrell White smashing Nick Riewoldt in Round 1 up at the Gabba some years ago? It made poor little Nikky cry, it did.

Früt.

Second quarter, just before a bounce. It was like a little kid pushing over a tortoise. Very funny.

Hence the "he will continue to do it because it's effective" part of my post. I don't like that players can do what Guerra does, and I don't like him for doing it, but I don't blame him. I blame the AFL for not changing this rule as have done others which can cause injury (running past the ball, sliding into someone's head, head-high bumps/tackles, the White Rule, and so on).

I was interstate for much of last year, so didn;t see any of Melbourne play in '09, but if I had seen that, I wouldn't have liked it I'm sure. But the other issue apart from whose team Guerra and Bartram play for (and the bias that might go on because of that) is the fact that Guerra is a serial offender. He knows he's doing it, but he has and will continue to do so because it is extraordinarily effective.

I reckon all of these things happen. There's certainly some sort of coach-directed schedule that's written up before the game, but it would be used more as general guideline than actual rule. All of the above circumstances would probably mess this roster up if there is one, though, as I would think they take precedence over anything drawn-up pre-game.

We would need every Collingwood-level team to play a little below themselves when they play us, because that's one of the reasons we got as close as we did. You need 14 wins to make top 4, 15 to be safe. Would you mind looking through the draw and naming the games we could win?

The reasons I can see are messing up other teams' match-ups, reducing injuries, using different players' strengths at different times, and so on. Another thing they mentioned on one of those footy programs on Monday night was the fact that often the head coach doesn't micro-manage the bench to that extent. Sometimes it is the doctors or the other guys on the boundary. Sometimes - rare as it is - a player even wants to come off the ground, for whatever reason.