Nasher

That only looks unfair because the Adelaide side happens to be hot garbage this year. Most years that would be an extremely tough assignment. I really doubt the AFL has room to consider the strengths of the teams playing each other for individual matches, where they have to somehow have to orchestrate a season where everyone plays everyone with only 3 cities available. We’ll see if we’re still saying how lucky Essendon are when they end up playing a home game in Perth against West Coast. Anyone know why Tasmania isn’t being used? I assume it is border policy related.

Good point, Jordan Lewis’ 319 included 26 finals. Jones 287 includes 5. If Lewis had played his whole career at MFC, assuming he didn’t actually cause us to play more finals and all other things being equal, he’d have finished on 298. Degree of difficulty has been made higher for Jones by spending so much time in crap teams. Shaun Burgoyne has played 346 home and away games alone. Freak.

According to Max Gawn it’s the other way around. Ref: radio interview with Harford and Bartel posted on MFC website. Basic claim is that Oscar is the best reader of play in the team, that he sets up the entire backline and that Lever and May both directly benefited from this directly on the weekend. Said the challenge for Oscar is to make sure he also plays well himself. Hopefully I have interpreted and paraphrased that correctly I was surprised when I heard it, but I doubt the skipper is lying. He’s often quite insightful in these interviews.

I was thinking about this recently too. Two years ago I’d have thought making it to 300 would be a given, but it looks tough now with having been displaced from the side. Just goes to show how hard it is to get to 300 really, when a player like Jones, who has been both extremely consistent and virtually indestructible for most of his career, could fall short.

I can’t post a video but if you can get the AFL vid working it’s around the 11 minute mark of the 2nd quarter. Score result at the end of the play is a behind to vandenBerg.

How could he know for sure he was over his concussion issues? He might just be over it until he gets a rough tackle that makes his brain bounce around his skull again and suddenly he’s spending another month in a dark room, unable to string two words together with his girlfriend looking after him while wondering if this is the time he doesn’t get better? We got told the MFC were all over Kolodjashnij’s concussion issues too. More neck related, they said. Then he gets an innocuous knock early in the season and he’s missing in action with not much explanation from the club for a season and a half. I take “it’s all fixed” with chronic concussion issues with a grain of salt when there’s no way anyone can be sure until the next event. I’d have said the same about Brayshaw if his issues had continued on. His seemed to be more about repeat direct hits though, which were addressed with technical changes to the way he approaches contests (ie not head first) which seem to have ironed out the problem. It’s when the player seems to get concussed from innocuous contact that you really have to worry. It’s different with Bennell because it’s his calves, not his brain. If he wants to risk shredding his calves by stringing out an AFL career then yay for him. I wouldn’t extend the same autonomy of decision making to McCartin because the quality of life impact of a damaged brain is so much more severe than that of a calf. To me it’s not about footy. Others have raised stuff about KK clogging the list and whatever, but I don’t give a toss about that. If I was a decision maker at the MFC I’d be worried about making a decision that has a higher than normal risk of destroying a young man’s future entirely. There’s no way I can see past that.

I think that’s a lot easier said than done when you’re a young man trying to live out his dream. That’s why I think the clubs should take the choice out of his hands.

What am saying is that nobody, of any skin colour, gender or heritage can fully understand life-long difficulties that they haven’t personally lived. Furthermore, claiming that they can actually diminishes the experience of those that have. I’m a compassionate person and I can validate the experiences of others and sympathise with it, but I can’t speak for it. If you think that’s racist and sexist then you’ve interpreted my post in a way I can’t really comprehend, so I am going to leave it there.

Absolutely! None more than this one, which still makes the hair on my neck stand up:

A white bloke claiming to understand the lifelong impact of systemic racism is like blokes saying they understand child birth. They don’t. We don’t. We can’t possibly. Be an ally, be compassionate, and call out racism, sexism, and all the other isms, but don’t say you understand it. You don’t.

On the topic of TOG, Gawn had 98% TOG yesterday. It’s normal for him to be in the low 90s but that’s nuts since he is essentially a midfielder. That says to me they weren’t prepared to break our forward structure to put Weid in the ruck to relieve Max - it makes Brown a must next week if TMac is unavailable. In the context of Hannan and AVB’s low TOG, Melksham had 91%. For those who want Melksham dropped, it has to be taken in to account that he is putting in the hard yards to cover for the less fit/managed players in the side that is enabling them to play as they did last night. Even though Melksham isn’t playing that well, I can’t see Hunt or any junior players taking on this workload; the only really viable alternative is Jones, who is not as dynamic as Melksham when he is going; that’s why he’s not already in the side.

Great article. I fully agree on the camera angles. I’m mostly a TV watcher of AFL (having grown up watching TFL footy live in Tasmania) and it is so difficult to fully comprehend what’s going on. I get a bit envious when I see posts from some of Demonland’s finest analysts; I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of developing that level of understanding, as much as I would love to. A few years ago - maybe 10? - FOX trialled this thing where they let you select what camera angle you wanted, which included the ability to have a wide view that could see half the ground. You could also turn the commentary off without impacting the sounds of the game, which I would definitely do with the current mob. I don’t know why in the era of smart TVs and interactive viewing, why the broadcasters don’t do more things like this. And also, the commentators. For the love of god, hire professional commentators, not just any footy jock who feels like earning another few hundred k in a jobs for the boys industry. Have one commentator who calls the action and never adds their 2c when they don’t know what they’re on about (looking at Hudson’s effort last night) and one analyst who really understands the tactical side of the game and can give some genuine insight. In other words, not Jonathan Brown. Ross Lyon’s voice might put you to sleep, but I doubt there’s anyone available more qualified to complete the picture for us. There is so much work that could be done to breathe a bit of life in to the TV experience.

I reckon Hannan is interesting. Since coming in he’s played very low possession games - 7, 10, and 8 disposals, but it in each game he gets involved in one or two crucial score involvements. I can’t help but feel there will come a game where he doesn’t manage those couple of critical involvements and he will seem like a complete passenger. I think he still needs to get more of the ball before I’m comfortable with fully relying on him as a flanker.

Because KK showed promise as a wingman with a bit of dash, with a few unknowns around his physical health. Clearly not going to be there beyond this year. Bit of a different case - Brown was a mature aged KPF recruited *this year*. As I said if it’s not for this case, I can’t see what other case it could be.

If Brown coming in to support Weideman as the otherwise sole tall forward isn’t the reason he exists on our list, then I’ll be buggered if I know what he was recruited for.

I guess if the hypothetical question isn’t bound by realism, I suppose I’d begrudgingly give up Brayshaw for Tom Lynch of the Tiges, so long as they threw in Dusty as a sweetener. Obviously I’m being smart with that answer, but I think it’s an irrelevant because it’s never going to come up as a possibility. The only time an actually good KPF is ever going to come up is if they want to leave their current club, in which case we won’t have to give up a first choice midfielder to get him.

I don’t mind Hudson normally - he is an actual commentator in a world of dopey meathead ex-footballers. Lyon and Brown were far more insufferable than Hudson. That said, his comment around the celebration with Bennell in what was clearly an emotional moment was a dreadful call that demonstrated he clearly wasn’t reading the play. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume Jonno Brown’s constant grunting Neanderthal attitude had worn him down and created a judgment lapse.

You’ve got to love it when both sets of supporters think they got the rough end of the pineapple with the umpiring. It’s why I don’t bother - I know I’m too one-eyed to judge objectively. Everyone who is invested in a team is. Our game is hard to umpire, made harder by ever-changing rules and interpretations, and weird and wonderful calls will get made sometimes. I reckon the culture of moaning about all the time is one of the uglier aspects of our game.

FTFY

6. Gawn - used everything in his bag of tricks other than a grab 30 out. Ruck work and marking all over the ground immense. 5. Viney - bull, with much improved ball use this week. 4. Petracca - poor ball use lowers his ranking but his contested efforts were big again and as far as I was concerned, all was forgiven with the mark and goal in the last quarter. The Petracca of old, after a day of poor ball use wouldn’t have had the mental fortitude to calm down and nail that goal, which sucked the energy out of our opposition and in to ourselves. Coming of age. 3. Oliver - lessons learned from last week. Just awesome. 2. Salem - ball use really important, especially in the first half. 1. Langdon - I just love the way this guy runs, haven’t seen anything like it in MFC colours in ages. He is untackleable. Also enjoyed the games of Hibberd, Hannan, Vanders, Weid and OMac.

I’d feel like we would be both taking on a risk and personally doing him a disservice by picking him up and prolonging his career. Sure that might be unfair - it could be seen as taking away a choice that is his to make, but I just don’t see why anyone would just keep on rolling the dice on a living person’s brain. All the potential footy related benefits just feel meh to me in comparison to that. Just find another player who isn’t another hit away from having his life erased.

I’m nowhere near ready to say Jetta is done yet. Even senior players can have slow starts to a season and even entire poor seasons. Look at Hibberd for example, who had an awful year last year and has been on the outer parts of this season. Suddenly since returning to the side he has gotten going and looking similar to how he did when he first arrived. He’s been excellent three games in a row. Jetta does definitely need to raise the bar this year though or the opportunity to show he can still play will dry up.

Moment in the first quarter where I seriously considered turning the sound off: TMac is on haunches on the turf with his eyeball on the ground in front of him. Jonathan Brown, while watching the slo-mo: bit of a delayed reaction there. One day they’ll raise the standards in the commentary box beyond intellectually deficient oafs who were good at footy when they were young, but it clearly hasn’t happened yet.

Out: TMac In: Brown Rivers, Lockhart and Jetta are competing for two spots and neither of the incumbents staked an overwhelming claim, but it was a decent win so benefit of the doubt is given at this point.

I enjoyed that. Not going to put an asterisk on it like others, I just enjoyed it. Tough contested game that despite the scoreline, I never felt like we were going to lose.