george_on_the_outer

I can't find any statistics, and they may be hard to find because of the small number of ruckmen in the game and the time of survey...but here is some anecdotal reporting on the matter: http://lakehealthgroup.com.au/pcl-injury-a-ruckmans-curse/ to quote.. ."In the AFL there is now a 10 metre outer centre circle which limits the run up distance available to the ruckman. This rule change in 2004 was bought in as a result of many AFL ruckman sustaining PCL injuries by extremely high impact forces as ruckman clashed knees from a long run up. Since this rule chance the incidence of PCL injuries in ruck contests has significantly dropped." Also, many ruckmen now are using a tibia brace to lessen the impact, or rather spread it across a larger area, reducing the pressure on the knee and the PCL. I think Jeff White was probably the first to utilise this?

see the annual tally thread

This is exactly what other teams used against Max last year. It's not so much as 3rd man up, but holding down the ruckman so that another (3rd man) can get to the ball. So Max will be hugely advantaged by this, but so will Sandilands and other bean-poles.

Really love this one: R 20 1991 v North Melbourne Jackovich at his best. 11 goals, including 10 to 3/4 time, bringing his total to 50 for the season, but having kicked 60 in the reserves in the same season......Stynes dominating. Luke Beveridge on the wing with Tingay....what could have been!

Enough.....thread locked

From the Demons supporters at BF this is probably the best compiled list of Melbourne games available to be viewed on the net, including comments on the contents: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/the-melbourne-replay-archive.1144478/ This should make the off-season easier to endure....

When Telstra first got the contract for the AFL sites, each club was limited to the amount of content that they could submit for change each day....unless they wanted to pay an absolutely extortionate amount extra. So if you look at any other clubs site ( except Essendon, who were not party to the agreement, and perhaps Collingwood who have spent a bucketload to alter things) you will see the same format and the same layout. And they all have the same restrictions about content limitations.

Great photos 666! Max looks positively evil in photo 19 as he is about to tackle Neville.

To make top 4, a team has to be seriously good. To make the finals, just more than average, or with a bit of luck. Hawthorn in 2016 made finals based on winning 6 games by less than 10 points. They scraped into top 4 after beating a miserable Collingwood by a lucky kick in the dying seconds by Jack Fitzpatrick. North scraped into finals by winning just 2 more games than they lost. If a Billy Stretch kick had gone to the other side of the goal post, the Saints would have been playing in lieu of North. Now good teams win the close games, but the margin between making it or not can come down to that luck/fortune factor. We were in the race for September but for 2 appalling losses against Carlton and Essendon. We weren't lucky against North, we were against GC the second time. Without changing all that much, or improving just that fraction, we should be playing finals in 2017. We now have the talent and importantly the work ethic to win games. Like North, Hawthorn and even WB in 2016, winning just a couple of those tight games will get us there. Injuries....well that's another story. Particularly if our AA ruckman gets hurt.

And our womens team has an oval on which to play their games, at Casey.

If my hopes for the future of Petracca and Oliver in particular are well founded, I don't think we will need to chase "saviours". Keeping the talent together is more important, ala Geelong and Hawthorn in their premiership years. One player however talented, is insufficient, as Carlton (Judd) and Collingwood (Buckley) found out. They eat up salary cap and get surrounded by low priced and low capability players.,

Done and locked

Confirmed in this article by John Pierik. http://www.theage.com.au/afl/greater-western-sydney-giants/greater-western-sydney-giants-fined-100000-for-lachie-whitfield-affair-20161222-gtgp81.html " This means that if they were to finish fourth next season, as they had this year, their draft selection No.15, worth 1112 points, would slip to No.63 (112 points). " Effectively they have had their first round pick taken away.

...Or the financial payout that was negotiated was less than the financial cost of keeping him on the list for another 12 months..

I was watching the rehab group before the main session and was liking what I saw with Mitch King. He has certainly built up considerably, to the point of looking like he has a ruckmans body now. There is no doubt he has put on a couple of cm since being signed as he stood well above Filipovic when together. Can he kick, run and mark.....couldn't say as he only did rehab type work with the ball and not under pressure. One to watch in this space, and opportunities are open to him to serve a good apprenticeship under the best ruckman in the game at the moment.

This thread has been de-railed so now locked.

The Saints are still in dire straits. $17.1 M in AFL distributions ( biggest amount outside GWS and GC ) A $5M grant to relocate to Moorabbin. (Then they've had to write off $4M or so on the Seaford venture, with probably more to come.) That accounts for their $1.1M "profit" this year. With a $3.2M commercial bill due to be repaid by the end of 2017.

We probably don't want a re-valuation on the Bentleigh club....yet. While we are the beneficiary of equalisation money from the AFL, it doesn't look good to be making a sizable profit, even though it is a paper one.

Agree, and the addition of Hibberd, Melksham and Lewis extend our list of capable players to well beyond number 30. So when the inevitable injuries occur, for the first time in a long, long time we won't be struggling with NQR players to fill the gap.

...and I guess this means Jobe won't get his Brownlow back?

Agree...another simply stellar result. PJ has completely turned this club around off the field. And his influence has done much the same on-field. It is still small steps, but a similar increase in sponsorship, gate receipts, and membership next year would just about wipe out any remaining debt. With the exciting list we now have, there is every reason to believe the supporters are returning. We have 5000 more members today than at the same time last year!

another memorable draft deal done by the Tigers comes to fruition: http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-11-22/yarran-released-by-tigers-after-ongoing-mental-health-issues?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=RSS+feed%3A+AFL+Latest+News

It is important to remember that this hearing has nothing to do with the Essendon players, TB4 or anything else that Dank was supplying. It is about trafficking. To quote from the Age today: While he was cleared of three charges relating to administering the banned drug thymosin beta 4, the AFL anti-doping tribunal, under chairman David Jones, found to its comfortable satisfaction that he had sought to "traffick in [TB4], by selling, giving, transporting, sending, delivering and/or distributing to a third party or parties, namely the Essendon Football Club" between January 2012 and September 2012.

Other readers are not interested in the petty point-scoring that is occurring between posters. Stick to the subject

My bet is that Jobe will hand the Brownlow back before next week. That way 1. the AFL commission doesn't have to make a decision 2. Jobe becomes a martyr to the Essendon fans 3. Since the commission didn't make a decision to take it away, then Cotchin and Mitchell can't get the medal. ( will there be phone calls to Essendon from headquarters in the coming days?)