Vipercrunch

The question no one from the media who have been critisicising us for picking up Grundy have tried to answer is who would have rucked for us when Gawn was injured earleir this season? If Grundy leaves, the club will need to answer that question. Will Verrell or Farris-White be able to fill in at AFL for a short period (or longer) if Gawn is injured again next year? It doesnt look like it to me, so I think we need another experineced ruckman on the list next season. As unpopular he is around here, in hindsight, perhaps we should have chased Rory Lobb instead of Grundy.

I'm not taking any significance at all from the KB game. At 11-1 at the time, Collingwood would have been in a very demanding training phase, potentially even training harder than us who were 3 wins behind them (8-4). This is now the real deal and it's got every chance of being an epic final.

5 goals for the team in the 2.5 quarters before his injury is hardly evidence of that.

Umpiring is embarrassing. I’ve watched more footy this weekend than I have for a while and I had actually begun to hope the umpiring had turned the corner. That was an illusion obviously.

It is so hard to believe, but each week the quality of umpiring just gets worse. I can barely watch games involving my team; there’s no chance I’m going to watch much games as a neutral. It’s quite depressing.

Can someone please, please tell these umpires to BLOW THE [censored] WHISTLE!!!

This game.

Can’t help think that the result would have been very different if the umpiring hadn’t got Brisbane back into the game in the second quarter. Sydney was well on top at stage then the momentum swung 180.

Swans are getting absolutely rogered here by the umps. OMG

Hope so. Extremely silly thing to do.

The one that didn’t get tackled but still got a HTB paid against him? Terrible umpiring decision.

History shows Dangerfield would call a ambulance for a paper cut. There has been several times he has taken himself off the ground and out of the game because he felt the slightest twinge. Unlike our man Clarry who played out a game with a torn hammy.

Apologies if there is a thread for this already, but is anyone else really concerned where the game is going after the 3 week suspensions dished out tonight for Sicily and Mansell? I don’t like Mansell and am pretty ambivalent about Sicily, but I think both are incredibly stiff to get any punishment at all for those incidents. Mansell made a self preservation action at the very last moment to protect himself, and there is no way Sicily should be held responsible for that tackle. Accidents happen and the game seems to be getting itself lost trying to eliminate them.

It looked like Trac was pointing to the area of the ground that Cox stood over McVee giving him a mouthful after taking a mark in the 2nd quarter, so maybe Trac was reminding him of that ordinary moment.

Not sure why, perhaps it’s the last time we had a 10 day break and really needed a statement win, but I’m hoping for a similar performance to that of round 15 last season when we smashed the Lions at the G. It was one of our best performances of the year (up there with round 20 against Freo and round 23 again against the Lions) but unfortunately it was far better than the form we showed in the finals. Now, as we are passed the half way mark of the season, things really gets interesting and we get to see if we truly have learned the lessons from last season and can correctly get everything peaking when it matters. So I hope tomorrow is a statement game, but only a hint of what’s to come.

Expected scores currently is 72.5 to 61.6. Interesting.

The last 10 minutes has been appalling. It’s almost crisis time for the AFL.

Horrible quarter of footy this. Very poor skills.

If the headband didn’t come off it wouldn’t have been a free.

Another team playing poorly after a bye. Defies logic really but the numbers are really stacking up now.

Was it just my son and I that thought the Freo player threw himself at the ground to win the sling tackle free?

The good thing about stats is that they are unbiased. So many supporters make up their mind about a player very quickly and nothing will change their mind after that. They will forever view that player through the lens of that early prognosis.

I once new a Collingwood supporter who told me he refused to go to games against Richmond because their supporters were feral. I laughed and laughed. This guys had the perfect description for the Collingwood Football Club. A cancerous polyp on the anus of humanity.

This sort of loading perhaps?

It will only apply to some other teams we play. There is no way Carlton is in a loading phase right now. Very slight chance Freo was when we played them. Collingwood will be definitely loading, perhaps even harder than we are right now given our respective records. I will be hoping for a win this week, but will take very little away from the result as far as a form line for what may occur later in the year.