Whispering_Jack

Not even BBL Smithy?

Traditionally, the New Year's Honours were bestowed by royalty to worthy recipients who usually worked selflessly and tirelessly sucking up to those responsible for assessing the candidates for nomination. My awards aren't like that at all - I look for people who are really special so my NY nomination goes to one of that rare breed of human who is humble and willing to make enormous sacrifices for the betterment of mankind; to a man who has given up the opportunity to play for the most popular football club in the world to join the long suffering, downtrodden and oppressed Melbourne Demons. Listen to Heritier Lumumba as he describes his love for his former coach and captain and his personal development from his early days as plain old Harry O'Brien to the his present glory as royalty personified. Along the way, Heritier has seen much doom, gloom and a fair measure of tragedy which makes him such a perfect fit as the Melbourne Football Club's recruit of 2015 ~

Nah, just arxing a question. BTW, I just read one of those SuperCoach write ups about Petracca on Facebook and it says he averaged 129 points during his two TAC Cup years kicking 63 goals from 29 games. As a bottom age player he scored an astonishing 210 SuperCoach points in the 2013 Preliminary Final collecting 9 contested marks, collecting 23 disposals and kicking 5 goals, 5 behinds. The boy can play just a little bit.

So you're excluding Nathan but there were other Abletts if I recall correctly including Garry Ablett Senior and Junior as well as a few others being brothers and/or cousins of Senior as well as the Tucks and that's not to mention the products of inbreeding that isn't confined only to the Romsey area but apparently also occurs out Drouin way.So which Ablett is our boy being compared to: * Senior who ended up playing mainly as a forward who was 185cm, 97kg. * Junior who is a champion in the midfield who is said to be 182cm, 87kg. * Other (name) Petracca is 186cm, 92kg.

Fine but please don't tell the Frog about this thread.

Yes ... you can tell it's the off season ... but take a closer look (and I don't mean at the model) ~ Is this the world's hottest bikini? Despite the penury of those days in Honkers, I'm sure he was more comfortable there than he was in New York on 9/11. I could barely recognise him from the photo but it's nice to see that he's found some good company.

No worries. It did ale me a bit to read the direction in which the discussion was brewing.

I think the emphasis should be on the person honored by the brewery and not on beer in general, so here goes:- Runner-up Cheel Medal 1923, 1924 Latrobe premiership captain-coach 1922, 1924 Melbourne premiership player 1926 Brownlow Medal 1926, 1928 Runner-up Brownlow Medal 1929 (equal) Melbourne Team of the Century Tasmanian Team of the Century

I trust that's not a reference to Nathan Ablett.

Who's ripping it up? Which players are 'training the house down'?

Follow on imposed against Sri Lanka on day 2 at Christchurch. Could be over early tomorrow. Perhaps we could exchange opponents and play the last test against NZ?

There's been a lot of talk over the years about the need for an uncompromised draft but not so much about the AFL fixture which is comprised on a number of levels - ■ the stronger teams get the better draws from a commercial perspective: blockbusters, Friday night and special games whilst avoiding the poorer drawing times and venues; ■ the fixture is drawn so that the top teams from the year before play each other more often and similarly with the weaker sides. This often results in teams having a more favourable draw from the point of view of them being competitive in the finals fight but it also gives the stronger teams a further commercial advantage. ■ AFL teams play all of the other teams once and five teams twice during a season, leaving more room for compromised fixtures. My question is whether it's better for us at our stage of development to have a better fixture to help us be more competitive or whether we need a fixture to improve our financial outcome at the end of the year?

A beer that honours the great Ivor Warne-Smith who won two Brownlow Medals for Melbourne must be worth drinking.Pity they don't serve it in the Little Collins in Manhattan. By the way, I didn't know this at the time but I live next door to the proprietor's grandmother. Not only that, but I had lunch with his mother-in-law on the day we met for coffee. And not only that, but his sister-in-law used to go out with one of our mods. Small world. Cheers

Not enamoured with the BBL but congratulations to Klinger (105no) - and he got his ton with a 6 off the last ball of the innings AND he's a big Demon fan!!!

We do the same thing with our players.

Compliments of the season to all.

At least we've always known that when Joe Cocker leaves this mortal coil, it would be straight out of the bathroom window. [cue: picture of a bathroom window from the frog]

You can mourn his loss but leave your hat on.

And the reasons why privacy won out at the Tribunal - AFL Tribunal Ruling on Private Hearing - warning VERY LONG

Fair enough too because lawyers work very hard and provide an important service to the community. Now, while I'm sunning myself on the beach over the break, I can catch up with some homework ~ AFL Competition Anti Doping Code

No, just a little bit of poetic licence

The first week of the AFL Tribunal hearing into the anti-doping charges laid by ADRVP against the "Essendon 34" was rather uneventful in terms of the lack of information that came out of the three days of sitting during which time ASADA's counsel laid out most of its case (there's more to come when the case resumes in the new year). That there was very little news to come out of it all might have something to do with the fact that the Bombers were refused permission to be involved in the hearing. We knew that ASADA wasn't going to leak and would imagine the players have been warned not to pass on any information so there was very little for the Essendon propaganda machine to hang its hat on. Chip Le Grand was so starved of material that he went with this sensationalist piece of tripe ~ New drug and two more clubs in AFL doping saga Carlton hit back with this retort that seems to have shut Le Grand Bouefe up for the time being ~ Carlton FC statement We also had Peter Jess' outpouring on behalf of his client and former Bomber Nathan Lovett-Murray where he suggested legal action against the AFL was in the pipeline for its failure to adequately take steps to prevent the programme that nobody at Bomberland knows much about. I don't know about anyone else but Jess' comments left me thinking that the case so far isn't going well for the players despite the fact that the likes of Rohan Connolly were convinced last week that it was falling apart because Charter and Alavi weren't prepared to testify and the Supreme Court wasn't prepared to compel them to do so. Meanwhile, Essendon supporters the world around continue to believe in their players' innocence ("at worst they'll get a couple of weeks") and are embracing the hashtag #Illinjectwithyou

We were the ones who introduced the idea of importing young promising athletes from Ireland to play our game and had great success with Sean Wight and Jim Stynes. At some point in time the process was no longer cost effective and we gave it up allowing other clubs to benefit from the success stories. There have been a few good ones and a few failures but some clubs believe that the Emerald Isle remains a fertile field for recruiting players to the game. And now there's another young kid from Ireland creating interest and guess which clubs are the leading contenders to recruit him? Next big Irish import has AFL clubs on the prowl

Apparently, there are more of these than we could ever imagine. I read a report about more than 100 disaffected ISIS members who were killed because they wanted to leave the organisation. Which goes to show that you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave!

We don't really need a detailed thesis on how we're travelling. Short and sweet is what you get from Peter Ryan on afl.com.au ~ Where's your club at? Pre-season training so far and what's coming up in 2015