Vipercrunch

I'm with you Bystander. Depending on team balance, I think at least 3 of those Casey listed players would get in ahead of some MFC listed players.

I think the number of talls we play in our backline for any given game depends on the style of forward entries we suspect our opponents will use. Most teams have been preferring to prioritizse getting the ball to ground to negate our intercept marking, so more often than not this year we have only played 2 tall backs (typically May and Lever when both available). Carlton, with Curnow and McKay, were always going to try the aerial route which is why we went with 3 talls. I suspect Collingwood will be more inclined to be happy with messy entries and getting them to ground, so I think it will be back to just May and Lever. So for mine it will Tomlinson going out, replaced by Hibberd and with Gus and Rivers playing more minutes back than they have been recently to cover for Bowey. Our backline will contain 7 (May, Lever, Hibbo, Gus, Rivers, Salem and McVee) which is back to our premiership backline size. In: Oliver, Hibbo Out: Bowey, Tomlinson

You're kidding right? Sparrow has been fantastic since returning from his week suspension. No way he misses. Chandler, Spargo or Tomlinson are names off the top of my head that will miss before Sparrow does.

I would love to know why any useful analysis of chances of sucsess would make those assumptions. We spend an entire season to put the teams in order, so why do this sort of analysis with them as equal? 1st playing 4th at home clearly has a better than 50:50 chance of winning, as does 5th playing 8th. AFL.com only have records going back to 2012, but in 7 of those 11 seasons (64%), at least one team outside the top 4 has made the PF, so ladder position after the H&A is clearly not the be all and end all. Last year we finsihed 2nd but our fitness and form was way off and we went out in straight sets.

I see this as a reason to invest more heavily into the support structures around umpires and the pathways, not in making the umpires themselves full-time. Perhaps having more full time umpire coaches/mentors and analysts is the way to go.

I'm almost certainly alone with this, but I think a team with a talented list like ours can win the flag from outside the top 4 if they get their preparation right. I actually think with the current finals structure, there is very little difference finishing 4th to finishing 5th and 6th. Nailing the preparation fitness wise, being in form and having the right players available is more important than ladder position. I certainly won't be giving up hope of a flag if we don't make top 4.

Another way to improving umpiring standards would be to rip off the band-aid and finally get rid of the centre bounce. It really won’t be missed, I promise. It will no longer be a reason some umpires can’t umpire at the highest level. It will no longer cause anxiety for umpires who mess a few up. It will allow them to keep their heads up to see what’s going on. Reduce the radius of the centre circle by a metre or two and just throw the thing up.

The umpires themsleves have said plenty of times that they don't want to go professional and they don't see how full time hours could be filled and can't see how it would actually improve things. The best thing to imrpove the quality of umpiring is make rule changes to reduce the ambiguity of decisions. The pushing in the back in marking contests is currently a mess and is incredibly hard to umpire. It wasn't that way when the hand in the back rule was in existience. When the rules commitee come to look at possible rule changes, one of the main things they should consider is whether it would make the game easier or harder to umpire. And also, start properly punishing players who stage for frees!!!

Ugly win, but we were by far the better side. I have been increasingly worried that some of our wins earlier in the season came more from moments of individual brilliance rather than our system, so I was particular pleased to see a system based win. We now have to work on our polish otherwise we won't get past Collingwood on Monday. Good chance it's been posted already, but expected scores had us winning very easily.

You'd reckon Hardwick would be absolutely filthy this got out. He didn't want his players to find out this way and to have someone close to him run to Tom Morris of all people, must be particularly galling.

What Port did required a response, but "flying the flag" is a notion from a bygone era. All it does if give away feekicks, possible reports and definetely distracts us from what actually counts, which is winning the contested ball or applying immense pressure on them if they have it. Leave the umpires to sort out these [censored] tactics (which they did to a certain extent), play harder within the rules and win the game. Then those nonsense tactics will stop.

Best guess to where Petty will be playing @kev martin?

Carlton footy club is the very definition of meh. I feel absolutely nothing for them.

That was a horrible non call by the umps in the Magpie goalsquare. Gonna get some airtime this week.

Millera having a mare today. Been much better in the other Adelaide games I’ve seen this year.

Rankine…. omg 🤦‍♂️

Zerk-Thatcher on Hawkins was a disaster.

Dwayne Russell said this week he won’t rule out Richmond until they need to win 10 of the remaining 9 games to make the finals. He can be quite nauseating at times.

Couldn’t agree more. Big step up from VFL to AFL these days and I actually liked quite a bit of his work. He was also on the wrong end of some eyebrow raising decisions against him in the last quarter. Definitely think he deserves another go to get up to speed. Where that leaves Petty I’m not sure.

They both fitted in the team fine before Spargo injury. Why can’t that continue?

Need a big last quarter by JVR and Schache

JVR 5, Schache and Kozzy 3 each. Not sure who kicks the other 15 goals. North were witches hats the last two weeks and whatever resistance they muster won’t last long. And as I’m a supporter, it doesn’t matter if I’m taking them lightly. MFC by 60+ 😁😁

I think you’re right. Good chance it would have already faded if not for the continued focus by the media and club. People hate being told what to do. The animosity towards him is because there are thousands and thousands of young people out there that would do anything to play AFL. They would play anywhere and for anyone, so to see this kid blessed with all this talent, walk out on the club that drafted him number 1 after just 12 months really angers them. JHF had everything all these young people have dreamt about all their lives and he still demanded more.

Yes the forward line hasn’t been settled and is a work in progress, BUT it has been effective. Second most points scored at an average of 105 points per game. So my suggestion is don’t panic and enjoy the journey as we continue to discover our best forward mix while still putting points on the board.

Yeah, just cramp. Was stretching it out for a while before he totally missed that kick and was subbed immediately after.