Nasher

No Tassie either. We’ve just ticked over 60 days with no cases. Perplexing.

Agree LH. We could have won by 100 points had we only kicked about 15 more goals. You can't make a sliding doors projection based on what-ifs. If the first behind of the game had been a goal, everything that happened after that will be different to what happened in the real game, because the ball will be back in the middle rather than being kicked out. The outcome becomes undefined and unknown. The only valid scenario to ponder is the one that actually happened.

I reckon that’s rough. It’s true that he didn’t want to leave Essendon (evidence by the fact that he went back) but he had his moments at Melbourne. I don’t agree with the implication that he didn’t put in. The problem was that Heffernan was overrated to begin with. He’d played well in an extremely strong Essendon team and that created expectation, but there was a reason he, Blumfield and Caracella were selected as the sacrificial lambs when they had salary cap issues. The perception was made worse by the fact that we were crap in 2003 when he came on, and we all know how rationally fans view things when they’re not going well, and once the minds have been made up, there’s no changing them. When he went back to Essendon he didn’t magically become elite again even though he should have been in his prime; by then they had descended back to mediocrity and he looked the same journeyman than he was at MFC. He was finished by 28. Moorcroft on the other hand was clearly out of his depth. Not quite sure what the MFC were thinking with that one.

Same. Very unpleasant injury. I was surprised at how long it took them to patch it up for him, he was sitting on the bench for ages with nothing but his jacket hood covering up the eye. Taping the bugger shut is the only way to get any relief.

How about Jordie McKenzie’s handball in that passage? MFC were definitely taking the .... when they gave Oliver no. 13, they look exactly the same.

This type of discrepancy would be because the opposing coach will be assessing on different criteria to the coach assessing his own players. The player's coach knows the role the player was supposed to play, how well the player performed it vs prescribed, and how that exact role impacted on the result of the game. The opposition coach doesn't know any of that and will just be determining how much hurt factor the player delivered. Of course, we still don't know which coach is which.

Great post binman. This type of play is interesting - I think someone else earlier in this thread (I've forgotten who now, sorry) mentioned this particular shot as a calculated risk rather than a selfish play that the oafs in the box made it out to be, and I agree with that conclusion. Petracca is more than capable of that type of shot and would have been lauded as a genius if he had pulled it off. In the same way that I was stoked when he took responsibility for his kick in the last quarter and drilled it, I'm more than happy for him to try and take these opportunities when they present. If they don't come off, so be it. By the way, you may think you overdid the criticism of Brown and Lyon, but I don't think there's such thing as over-criticism of the current state of commentary in our footy. I've been harsh on Lyon and Brown too, but they're really just this week's symptoms of the problem. The commentators have plumbed to such low depths that they're ruining the experience watching football for me.

To me the prospect of manipulating selection to get Jones across the 300 line is out of the question. He’s too far away - the gap is every H&A game remaining this year and a couple of finals. If he was on 299 I might give it a thought, but you can’t carry a non-best 22 for that long just on sentiment. Unless he happens to go around again in 2021 AND can get his place in the side AND can hold it for that long, he’s not getting to 300. Sad reality I think.

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.