Nasher

There seems to be something wrong with the "quick reply" box at the bottom of threads too, in the main skin, not the mobile one. Others have mentioned it to me and I have the same issue - pressing the "post" button causes nothing to happen, and you have to post using the "More Reply Options" (to bring up the full editor). The "Quote" buttons also don't work.

Those who have given Howe a 1 are generous. The mark was a 10/10 no doubt (how about the hang time!?), but the rest of his game was complete garbage other than that, including the 5 seconds after the mark.

Now that I've had a bath, a stiff drink and a wind down: 6 - Watts. Don't care if people think he had an easy role; he took marks and used the ball well. 34 touches is a good effort no matter what. How about a midfield role? 5 - Jones. Has stepped it up a level this year. Grateful that we've got him at the moment. 4 - Blease. Showed everything we'd hoped. Got plenty of the ball, used it well, used his pace to good effect and seemed to last the match out. He was one of the very few true positives to take away from the game. 3 - Rivers. Thought he was the best of the talls in the back line. 71 inside 50s to our 35 - holy moly. I don't think we appreciate enough how under the pump these guys are. I reckon all of our defenders are being made to look much worse than they are because they are under the pump all the time. 2 - Magner. Tackling machine. Would like to see him get more of the ball ala his first few games; don't know what role he's being asked to play though. 1 - Garland. I struggled immensely with this last one - just thought he looked okay where many didn't. Might've also gone McKenzie for nothing else other than effort.

Currently in my mind he's a player who takes hangers, kicks behinds and makes shit decisions when he gets it in the middle of the ground. Probably doesn't deserved to be picked on but he's frustrating me.

Not funny.

6. Sylvia 5. Moloney 4. Davey 3. Jamar 2. Howe 1. Morton

Well done Watts and Blease.

I feel violently ill.

Sydney form: L L Melbourne form: L L We're equals! We should win!

The difference there was that some of Lovett's team mates were indirectly affected and believed him to be guilty. His position there was untenable after that. That's why Milne wasn't even the boot even though the circumstances were similar.

I didn't call him a turd, I made an analogy regarding the poor options we have at the moment. You might not think there's a difference, but there is. FWIW I'd delete posts if anyone did directly refer to a player in that away.

Denial for the sake of maintaining sanity. A loss not being a foregone conclusion morphs in to (possibly misplaced) optimism. I'm all for it - when a loss is a foregone conclusion (the West Coast game this year is one where I felt that it was) is when it stops being interesting.

I completely disagree. If there's so much doubt over his fitness that we don't believe he can play for more than a quarter and a bit then he should not be in the side. He's picked and named on the field - that's an indication to me that the coach wants him to play, not to warm the bench for 3/4. Also, I already asked this but it went ignored - doesn't the sub have to come off the named bench i.e. Blease, Bennell, Watts, Green?

I don't think it makes sense to make Jurrah the sub. If he's fit enough to play at all then he must be fit enough to play more than one quarter. It makes more sense to plan to sub him _off_, if he's blowing too hard come 3/4 time. He's a potential match winner, so I want to maximise the amount of time he spends on the ground. Playing a single quarter and a bit won't do much to speed up his return to full fitness either. Besides, doesn't the sub have to come out of the bench - Blease, Bennell, Green, Watts? I'd be happy with any of those four being the sub for varying reasons.

There's no way in the known universe Jamar will ruck all game. Neeld has signalled with this side that he intends on playing Clark in the ruck for 5-10 minutes a quarter. I don't like it either, but there's no viable alternative at the moment when all the other choices have flunked this year.

Uh, I don't think having a spear go through his leg sounds like the best thing for his footy career.

Your use of absolutes ("absolutely nothing", "no brave acts" etc) tells me you're looking through biassed eyes and you'll probably never give credit where it's due. No doubt Bennell has had some embarrassingly soft moments - especially early in his career, but I struggle to believe that he's never, ever gone hard at the ball or the man.

Thanks for pointing out that this was a forum - I hadn't noticed after 7 years of running it. One great thing about forums is that you're able to air your opinions, as you've kindly pointed out to me. The other great thing is that others are able to challenge your views, discuss the data and hopefully both parties can learn something. The alternative is to get narky and defensive, and we can both take sarcastic shots at each other and we'll both just walk away grumpy and none the wiser.

He might have dropped a lot of marks, but he's also held a bloody lot of them, especially in the last few weeks: 8 marks against Geelong and 9 against Hawthorn in sides where the delivery was poor and infrequent. In the same time Cloke took 8 and 8 against shite sides where his team won comfortably and the most he's taken all year is 9, so I'd say it's hard to argue that he's a materially better mark than Clark. (Unfortunately there's no stat for dropped marks) I'd like to see stats (or something other than "I think you'll find"s) to back your assertions that 1) "lots of his goals come from ground work" and that 2) "[Cloke's accuracy] is much better than Clark's from a set shot" because both sound false to me without looking too closely.

He's not going to impact our winning or not, but I think he'll be a good player and pressure on the players in the side is a good thing. I'm seething about Gysberts because I think he'll be an important player in our side so I'm impatient about his development, and he got injured in his first game back so it's yet another setback. I know these things happen and so forth, but that one just annoyed me.

Keen for Strauss to get back on the park and firing. He's one - probably the only one - on that list that should really be pushing for a spot in the seniors. Other than Sellar who is difficult to get too enthused about. Even though it has no impact at all on our footy fortunes, I'm really glad to see Williams is back on the radar after his virus of the brain. Can only imagine how horrifically scary that must have been. Still seething about Gysberts' injury.

I can't speak for MikeyJ, but I haven't missed the point, I just think it's invalid. I think imposing a requirement that players who are not playing in the match mould their mood around what's happening in the game is completely ridiculous. I don't care how much they're paid or if they're wearing an MFC tie at the time; if they're not playing they're off the clock and they can act and do as they see fit. You're saying "you're not allowed to tell jokes or play pranks or laugh at anything while we're losing" - come on, can't you see how silly that is? Do you require that they jump around and high five and hug each other if we're going well? What about if someone in the coaches box said something funny and got a chuckle from one of the assistant coaches? Dismissible offence?

Which lot is that?

Yeah, sounds like homework to me.

The what?