mauriesy

Barrett is just the football equivalent of a celebrity chaser who pumps themselves up a 'newsbreaker'. I don't know why everyone here feels such angst about him. The Viney ruling was important in helping to set a precedent and a new agenda for deliberate bumps vis-a-vis unavoidable collisions. So I don't have an issue with him talking about 'pre- and post-Viney'. The fact that Viney plays for Melbourne is irrelevant to that agenda. (I think it would be good if Melbourne supporters could buy out of the victimisation mentality and leave that to Collingwood supporters, who are the masters of it). The major problem with Barrett's position is that he thinks the Viney ruling was incorrect purely because it involved severe injury, and that it subsequently created uncertainty in the minds of players. But what has really created that uncertainty is not the Viney outcome, but previous rulings by the MRP that too harshly dealt with unavoidable collisions resulting in injury. If anything, the Viney decision has helped clear it up, not further confuse it. The Viney decision was correct though, because it ruled that unavoidable incidents on the field, made in the heat and intensity of the game, ought not be punished. Barrett's position is like suggesting there's no difference between an accident, manslaughter and murder, when we all know that the issue is intent.

Sack the unnamed recruiter Although I reckon the 'un-named recruiter' is just made up.

Prestia signs with the Suns for two more years. Dion Prestia makes Gold Coast his home

Can someone find a huge sock and shove it in BT's ever-more irritating mouth?

It's OK. It's not the No T$ No B$ thread.

Watching football on TV from the GWS home ground is painful. The person who thought up the idea of all that orange seating should be marched out of the country. Without crowds to fill the seats, you can't track an orange football in the air against the sea of orange. And the orange they chose is the most hideous, bright orange. Then there's that huge screen, relatively low down, right behind the goals on one end. Another distraction from watching the ball fly through the air. There's a reason the screens at all the other grounds are in the pockets.

Didn't really like some of the faking that Port players used (Monfries and Wingard especially). I'd have Wingard in my team any day though.

Frawley for Dawes if he's fit, but I think Jetta will come in. He's good on small forwards, missed last week only through illness, it's indigenous round, plus he features on the website wearing the jumper.

Some serious education needed. Nine in 10 kids don't know where bananas come from

I see a "unique Melbourne Football Club jumper, worn in the 1900 grand final by Austin ''Goosey’' Lewis" (MFC Heritage No. 7), is in today’s auction of sporting memorabilia by Mossgreen Auctions in Armadale, Melbourne. Mossgreen specialist Max Williamson says he knows of only one Australian football jumper that is older. The jumper is the second item in this afternoon’s session, starting at 2.30pm. Likely price is more than $10,000. Anyone bidding?

If you bothered to see how the ratings are calculated, you'd find out that they are a rolling aggregate of the player's last two seasons. The most recent 40 matches are used in the calculation and matches 21 through 40 are progressively reduced in weighting, from 100 per cent down to five per cent for the earliest game. It's not a ranking just for 2014, or just for last week. For example, Allan Christensen has nearly the same ranking points (370) as Jones (382), but he hasn't played a game this year. As Melbourne's poor seasons in 2012 and 2013 recede, Jones will only go one way and that is up. As Christensen's games from 2012 and 2013 recede, he'll go down, because he's not playing to replace them. That's the ranking system, and it needs to be considered in that light, not just for the 2014 season. Don't get your knickers in a twist. FWIW, all sport rankings, such as the Tennis and Golf World Rankings, work on the same rolling (and diminishing) two-year formula. If they only worked over a few weeks, a top player like Tiger Woods, who got injured for a period of time, would immediately drop right out of the rankings and unfairly lose his eligibility for major tournaments.

This thread should just be re-titled 'Every Trade Option Imaginable'.

One thing we are missing is the fact that players are never 100% efficient (even 70% is good) and that even the best players make a few clanger type mistakes sometimes. The calls to drop a player, who wins his position and nullifies an opponent, because he makes a couple of clangers a game, are missing the point.

Love to see the team selection list with just 'X'. That'd confuse the opposition.

Agreed. But made less sad by the idea that he might be able to write more good stuff.

After last night, I'd still prefer Dangerfield (or Sloane or Fyfe) over an expensive forward instead of Frawley.

I'd much rather spend money on building the midfield with a player like Fyfe or Dangerfield, or another Tyson. I don't think keeping Frawley will cost anything like the figures that are being bandied about. Even Frawley says they're rubbish.

Maybe Frawley and Roos see a need and a future for him as a forward. Particularly since Clark retired. Maybe Frawley actually likes the idea of playing there and sees a future in it. We were going to play Clark, Hogan and Dawes together. Maybe, just maybe, he won't be quite as attracted by another club (e.g. Hawthorn) whose need would be for a defender and who would want him to go back there.

The two most reasoned comments I've seen come from Bob Murphy and Jude Bolton, both tough, hard but fair players who have a combined 581 games between them (Bolton retired 2013), so you can hardly query their credentials. Murphy says that the Tribunal ruling creates a horrible dilemma for players, because it makes them have to choose between avoiding collisions in order not to get suspended, while at the same time earning the wrath of their coach and risking getting dropped. No one likes a 'squib' and it's a black mark against a player's name. Bolton in The Age continues this theme by saying the decision "goes against everything every recruiting staff looks at in potential draftees. Comments would be made in the stands or upon reviewing a player's shortcomings, such as 'he ducks out of the way', or 'goes with one hand'. Basically the judgment is swiftly passed and it inks a black line well and truly through the potential draftee". Far better that Barrett's "that's just the way it is". For the information of Barrett, I don't want to go back to or yearn for 'the good old days' of blood and punch-ups. I just want the good recent ones where good players could go hard at the ball but the thugs still got caught.

Maybe some hope. From Jesse Hogan at the Age: MRP member Joel Bowden said that when he and his fellow panellists ... attempted to grade the offence of rough conduct by Viney against Adelaide's Tom Lynch, they struggled to make any progress. The decision to refer the incident to the tribunal ... was very different to Adelaide's Richard Douglas ... when it queried the severity of the formulaic penalty that Douglas would have attracted. "We decided very quickly, unlike the Callan Ward and Richard Douglas case. In that we took a long, long time to try and grade and then sent it to the tribunal. That example probably helped us, in that we were very quick to say, 'Well, this is really, really difficult'. And we only get to look at the vision, and we don't get an account from the player and can't understand what he was thinking," Bowden said. "There is a lot of debate, and in sending it straight to the tribunal the MRP is not necessarily judging guilt or innocence in this. What we want is a thorough examination of the evidence to be heard by a jury." ... Bowden said he hoped the tribunal jury (Henwood, Schimmelbusch and Dunne) would come to a verdict "that is transparent, that the public can understand".

It's interesting that the force of the collision actually moved Viney back a couple of metres towards where he came from. It shows he was bracing for collision and not going on with a bump. If he'd hit Lynch at speed, you'd think he'd have kept going forward. Who came up with the ball? Viney. He was aware of where it was immediately after he got hit. That's all he had eyes for.

Unfortunately Dermott Brereton is not likely to be an advocate the AFL will listen to very seriously.

As soon as I see absolute statements like "he should never be selected again", or "leave him at Casey for six weeks to find form", or "young players should find their feet for a year in the seconds", I immediately discount them. The only absolute statement I'll accept is that there are no absolutes.

Not when he's averaging 17 possessions, four marks and four tackles as a defender.

Quite a few sliding into players and up-ending them in the Geelong-Richmond game today, without penalty.