Tassie Devil

I still reckon watts was a line ball but a swan did it later lost control of the ball and was impeded by a demon. Not a tackle but still a free - another swans goal

In final quarter swan player tackled with ball and went to ground. The ball in his hands hit the ground. He then handballed to a player and a goal resulted from that play. That is a free to us! Umps have no idea how to position themselves or work as a team. Their costume clashed with at least 2 teams last weekend. AFL must fix this

Now sell them Jamar while he has currency and they are desperate for a ruckman - Jolly is nearing the end and they have Hudson as a back-up. Give them a double whammy and grab one of their mids in a trade in which we come out the winner.

It's a lot like our Grand Final. I was born in 1961 and missed '64. I was at '88 and 2000. Both had similarities to today's game in terms of result. We are a sad shadow of the team that I grew (was brainwashed?) to love. Again I apologise to my kids - but they know they have a choice.

Was impressive on "before the bounce" - think he was pitching for the job on a permanent basis.

Oi - I grew up in North Balwyn (as it was known before gentrification swapped it around to Balwyn North [wtf?]). I also played many years in Diamond Valley League before it became soft and changed to its current incarnation. These stereotypes do nothing to support anybodies argument. Just sayin'

If a player is reported isn't it automatically a 50m penalty? I may be wrong - but if not the umpire got it doubly wrong.

I have been one of JW's biggest apologists for some time but ..... Last game they said he was ill. This week some of his half hearted efforts made me ill. Pull your finger out son or get us a decent trade.

Early in #2's career I saw him roost a 65m+ goal from beyond the centre circle at Bellerive while paying for Sandringham vs Tassie Devils (that was some time ago!). It was a game sealing goal. Distance has never been his problem as far as I'm concerned. I have seen many kids improve their kicking - mostly through simple hard work. I believe it can be done if the player is prepared to put in the hard work. While our new #7's dad wasn't the best kick it did improve in later years as a result of his willingness to work on it. On the other hand, a few years ago I saw a former #48 (later #24) do a centimeter perfect pass to a former #7 (had a 'fit' wife and later became a Toige) - you can't teach that sort of kicking.

Two games in succession, against ordinary teams, and leading into a bye would be ok by me.

Former MFC top 10 pre-season draft pick NIck Gill (2000) has been announced as a marquee signing for the North Hobart Demons. This will be the North Hobart Demons last year in their traditional status as a club - one of the oldest in Tasmania but forced by AFL Tasmania into a merger.

Having worked at "the coalface" for many years I have seen the "cold hard face" of drug use - both licit and illicit - and I can still construct a sentence I'm also well aware of what a 'scoob' is - my reference was to a claim by a poster that their children had never used drugs - but had a 'couple of beers now and then but no drugs'. In my time in the sector I have seen many people use illicit drugs and live productive and (otherwise) law abiding lives. I have also seen young people's futures ruined by drugs - the blame is not always a result of the psychotropic effect of the drugs but the proscription of them. The point you make about medicinal cannabis is pertinent - the country that professes to be tougher than any other on drugs (apart from Singapore and Sweden perhaps) also has the most prescriptions for cannabis written by medical practitioners. Go figure! I can grow and process cannabis and opium in my backyard. They are, after all, weeds in the wild. The Tasmanian 'terroir' is perfect for their cultivation. ... but I don't have the science to produce 'measured doses' - that requires willing guinea pigs of which there is no shortage. Hardly a scientific approach but effective for some. Perhaps that's what the authorities want! I can't think of any other reason to explain the madness of continuing a failed response.

The US make no secret about their desire to control the world's drug supply - they even made Elvis a "special agent at large"

and we all know that beer is not a drug

You can hardly do that for ciggies now - let alone grog. Alarmist comments like this don't add credibility to your argument, they merely serve to underline the fact that your mind is closed to thinking about alternatives. I have always acknowledged the potential harms associated with substance use of any kind - but each individual is impacted differently. That's the science of pharmacology not the moral perspective. Far from only seeing one side of the debate. The trouble with supporters of the status quo is they can only see things in terms of an apocalyptic, misanthropic future - again emphasising their lack of faith in humanity and thinking everybody would go out and get sh!tfaced if we tried an alternative approach. Show me indisputable evidence of where the war on drugs has proven successful and upheld human rights at the same time. Milton Friedman and George Soros are hardly considered radical bleeding hearts but both agree that the war on drugs is futile. What's so scary about trying an alternative to an approach widely acknowledged as a failure?

The notion that if we regulated drugs we would see a contemporaneous rise in drug use always fascinates me. For me such a view shows very little faith in human nature. I believe most people don't want to be high all the time - many might like to have the choice to consume whatever quality controlled substance suited the moment, but would otherwise carry on living, working and (hopefully) learning as they went about their lives seeking some form of contentment and balance. Continuing to support a policy response that has failed to deliver benefits (prohibition) is a failure to apply logic to policy development, implementation and evaluation processes. From an economic rationalist perspective it makes no sense to continue to invest in such folly. Or does it? RJ - why we continue to slavishly follow the orthodoxy of abstinence in an age of hyper-consumption is a good question. Work by Nils Christie and Sam Friedman about drugs being a "suitable enemy" for those in power partly explains it for me - but what I can't figure out is how people haven't wised up to this. Perhaps we really are stupid and need strong moral leadership from government and religion after all! As for US influence on global drug policy, that would take too long to go into here. One thing I do know as fact is, when the ACT Government proposed a clinical trial of heroin maintenance for people who had failed on available treatment programs, US interests actively lobbied the Tasmanian Government and let them know that such a program would place the State's lucrative poppy industry at risk. Sadly a 17 yo Tasmanian male died from consuming an extract from this crop a week or so ago. As a parent of a child about the same age it made me wonder if a regulated dose may not have proven fatal. Unfortunately drugs can bring out the worst in people - both the users and the abstainers - moral and political factors have so far outweighed a rational approach to the issue. Many people use a variety of drugs without problems - but every weekend in any city large amounts of money pass into the hands of criminals. This makes no sense to me. People that do experience problems from using substances need to be treated as having a health problem, not a morally framed criminal one. The war on drugs is over - drugs won.

A form of regulation as we see with alcohol and tobacco makes sense - unfortunately our political leaders lack the moral fibre to even suggest such a courageous departure from the current orthodoxy and, instead, seek to be seen as tougher on drugs than their political rivals. This is an example of policy-based evidence as opposed to evidence-based policy - sadly all too common these days. My work and study has exposed me to best and worst practice responses in this field - political posturing means we see more of the latter. A new player in the field is the "new recovery" movement that is gaining political traction but is really just more of the same old abstinence model. "Recovering from what?" is the question being asked of this approach by experts who acknowledge people will always experiment with some form of psychostimulant. Ice and other amphetamine type stimulants (ATS) pose challenges that some of the leading experts in treatment and harm reduction fields admit they are struggling with. Getting clinical trials approved for ATS replacement pharmacotherapies is a challenge in itself, and there is a lot of work to be done to develop effective responses to these type of drugs. All the experts I have worked with and met over many years admit we need to change the way we deal with drugs (pun intended) but until we acknowledge that prohibition has failed we cannot begin to think of a rational, evidence-based alternative. There are some sensible alternative models developed by some very smart people - and isolated cases such as Portugal have shown there is another way. As for the cannabis gateway theory - most Australian kids who have tried cannabis have probably also tried Vegemite. Let's ban Vegemite too.

This makes methadone sound like a perfect form of social control. A pharmaceutical panopticon that keeps people who need to be 'disciplined' under constant surveillance - or at least suspect they are. We can't have people getting 'high' can we - unless it's from grog or tobacco. Going to a pharmacy for your (socially acceptable) fix every day can be a drag when you start work at 5-7am, work a 12 hour day, and live in an area with poor access to public transport and/or primary health care services.

That snippet sounds like something out of the Christian Brothers Handbook. edit [Although the Christian Bros would not let such a post get by without beating the perpetrator of such atrocious spelling and grammar]

CIP - Have you ever read reports from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)? This body drives the world's policy on (illicit) drugs and tells us year after year that the "war on drugs" is being won. Well worth a read. http://www.incb.org/ These people also manage to keep a "straight face". Even more amusing is they classify cocaine and amphetamine type stimulants as 'narcotics'. This issue has elements of both moral panic and conspiracy theory - a perfect distraction during the off season.

Reiwoldt family seem prolific breeders down here in Tassie. Have watched at least 3 over the last few years at U10-U15 level - all stood out (if only for being tall and pale skinned)

I recall one this year against the maggots where he was several seconds late to the contest - but it was still a contest. Maggots will forever hate him.

The leading candidate for Australia's first ever Pope certainly does? Or else he can't see the wood for the trees.

Wasn't Vizard one of ours? Could this be the start of further internal turmoil?

If all our games are for no points - like the sanction for Melbourne Storm - it might harden us up and build some character. Leave our current draft picks alone - history shows we haven't benefited from them. It didn't hurt Storm and is not playing to lose. Next year we get pick 9 as a default option.