Tony Tea

She wasn't anywhere near as bad as Blight. What is that peanut on? Is there even the remotest chance of him stringing together a paragraph worth of sensible, gibberish-free commentary? The main reason Ten are prepared to gamble with Underwood is the numbingly shallow talent-pool from which to draw talent capable of describing footy in succinct, accurate and logical English.

I hate loopers.

If you think the wind was favouring one end you've been taking too much notice of the commentators, or that blue balloon that slowly drifted down the ground.

To paraphrase Dermot: "We can't not make the top four. But we won't."

The best part was Bails' amused/bemused smile when Gaz & Caro were arguing about goalposts at the Junction.

I was wondering whether it is the greatest ever jump on a ladder without winning a match.

I put my hand up. I said we should pick him. Unless he gets a lot better this year I'll be glad I was wrong.

Didn't want to come to Melbourne, didn't even want to talk to Melbourne... Good!

The shorter Gary Lyon: "Go man-on-man."

.Fair enough.

Does that matter? Travis wasn't out of contract when he went to Brisbane. We paid a chunk of his contract through 2008.

Just because Gary Ablett is hogging the headlines vis-a-vis Gold Coast targets, doesn't mean the current 15 other clubs are suddenly immune from losing players. Melbourne are one of those 15 clubs. Melbourne will lose a player. No doubt, you, like me, have been wondering who. The whisper is GC are heavily into Chip Frawley.

Jon Ralph has got this wrong.

Patrick Smith said something similar to KB on Monday morning when he mentioned the weight of expectation Melbourne seemed to be putting on Jurrah. He suggested we crank it down a notch.

We beat them at the MCG in a final in 1998... then the Crows went on to win the flag.

"Are we over-reacting?" "Are we over-reacting?" "ARE WE OVER-REACTING?"

Vlad's bullish. He predicts positive outcomes for the playing group, the AFL stakeholders and the broadcast partners.

The scheme was initially introduced to accommodate players' sponsorship deals, newspaper & media work, and sundry payments. It didn't really amount to much. Of the 114 players, roughly 100 were on several thousand each. Along comes Judd. He is now on at least 200k per year (I've heard $1 million over three years) courtesy of a business run by then president Dick Pratt, who, according to the assorted shills, had no input into Judd working as a green ambassador for Visi. Ablett will get roughly the same. That's if he's not already on it at Frank Costa's business courtesy of a deal struck, once again, without any input from a club president. Lets say Judd & Ablett are on a combined 300K. That winds the average down for everyone else. The extra payments scheme was not intended to allow clubs to inflate their salary cap.

We hear "Ken Wood, the meanest bastard going around" far less than we hear "Ken Wood ticked it off."

Nothing wrong with a five day break in the pre-season.

Simple* solution: bring the extra payments into the salary cap. * Simplistic?

Employing Danny Frawley as a tactical consultant.

Better off complaining about how TWO Freo players found themselves miles in the clear when Melbourne were supposedly closing the game down.

The most aggravating thing about the Freo goal just before half-time was not that they scored a goal via a contentious non-call after the siren. Focus instead on the things Melbourne can control. Freo, despite Melbourne's alleged defensive redeployment, were able to find TWO loose players to set up the goal with virtually no Melbourne players in sight. It we had gone defensive (as mentioned in the commentary at the time*) we did a pathetic job of it. * Use of the word "commentary" in no way implies that Glen Jakovich is a commentator.

You obviously didn't see last night's game against Sydney.