sue

Populated by bots created somewhere in Moscow.

The AFL stuffed up the opportunity in Canberra. Most of the city was originally from Melbourne and therefore footy-mad. But they let the Raiders capture the market and by the time they got around to creating GWS, AFL was a minority interest in the ACT. I think it may be too late to relocate GWS to Canberra even though they have more enthusiastic supporters there. The population is too small. Edit to add: ACT population is ~400,00. Although Melbourne with a 4M population and 10 teams has a similar number of potential supporters per club, almost everyone in Melb has to at least pretend to have an interest in AFL. Whereas in Canberra most will 'support' the Raiders or Brumbies, so the effective AFL population is more like 100,000.

If you watched on TV you would have heard a loud roar whenever they kicked a goal. Directional mike pointed at their 15 person cheer squad works wonders.

Damn we would have had a better percentage than Geelong if only we had not squibbed that pre-season camp. I blame the players.?

I doubt we'll hear much about that in the media. Just the sound of air being pumped into C'wood tyres,

Seems to me his action accelerates at the last moment before striking the ball. Whether that is good for penetration and bad for accuracy, I have no idea.

We would have won that game and now be in the finals if the players hadn't wimped out on that pre-season camp.

While I don't care 1.5 hoots if this thread is quoted as proof on the WCE forums that they were done in, I can see that some might find that embarrassing. Maybe embarrassing is the wrong word. Perhaps counter-productive is the real worry. If it seeps out into the AFL media/community it may well have an effect on umpiring in the near future. The umps are human (though I'm not sure about their AFL bosses who may influence them.) Anyway, surely we don't have to resort to click-bait titles to 'create discussion'.

Of course he is.

Rigging of the Sunday game is absolute nonsense. But it does seem possible that the AFL and maybe individual umpires have woken up to the historical pro-WCE bias which the stats show is a fact. And so maybe there was an instruction from the AFL (or self-realization by umps) to consciously resist crowd influence. In which case, good, about bloody time. Furthermore there is no evidence that they over-reacted and leant too far the other way because for every mistake made someone can point to a mistake the other way.

Yeah, I know what you were saying. In a similar vein I could say how could people defend Watts when someone says boo about him but are so quick to rip into the Queen for being a monarchist when I'm a republican. My point: no need to bring Watts into this discussion whatsoever.

WTF has this to do with Watts!? I think we need a file where we can record the most irrelevant mentions of Watts made in a thread. This one will be hard to beat.

Following the grumbling by several posters including me in one of the threads about the replays at the end of ad breaks on free to air forcing the ball-up into a small sub-window, I thought it would be useful to have a seperate thread to discuss the TV broadcasts and suggestions on how to improve them. I'm referring to the visual spectacle, not the commentators which are incurable. A few of my pet suggestions for improvement below. Just watching the replay and noticed that they had most of the screen devoted to CP5 having his feet re-taped while the hit out and an ensuing scramble was confined to the small sub-window. Absolutely stupid and fortunately rare. The usual replay problem at centre bounces is due to the limited time they have to show a short replay after the end of the ad break. Since the length of the ads can't be changed, surely the solution is for the umpires to wait an extra 5 seconds before bouncing the ball. After all, the current delay before bounces was introduced to allow time for ads, so what's another 5 seconds to make room for a short replay. I doubt if it would upset spectators at the game. Another thing I would like to see is a wide shot before they zoom in on the centre bounce so we can see the set up around the centre square. And FCS stop with so many close ups. We often see a player with the ball surrounded by grass (or worse, just a ball surrounded by green!) or see the ball shooting out of the field of view with no idea what player of which team the ball might be heading towards and what sort of pressure they may be under. And stop showing a close up on the player about to kick the ball - I want to see what is happening up ahead of him, not whether he shaved that morning.

Mindless attention seeking by OP. Best ignored.

From this article he must be aged around 13 https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/reformed-gambling-addict-and-former-afl-player-david-schwarz-marks-10-years-since-last-bet/news-story/4c00e78060ac11febea4133a1e0bfcee

Wrong. But even if I did want him back, to stick the boot into him for missing the finals is not nice. To blame him (or probably any one individual) for the last 12 years is ridiculous. We had plenty of other half-arsed players but he gets stick because he was the #1 pick messiah. Nothing more likely to make people bitter than a failed messiah.

Come on, it wasn't his choice.

I don't understand your point. To put my point more starkly: Any moaning about umpiring here before, during or after a match is completely different than the shameless mindless booing of every decision that WCE supporters did on Sunday. And also ridiculous given the actual free count.

No team's supporters are unbiased about umpiring, not specific to us. But moaning after a match about the umpiring influencing games is completely different from 50000 people booing umpires continually during a match where they were getting almost twice as many frees after Q1 as their opponent.

WCE supporters reaction to the umpiring is entirely reasonable. If you are used to getting twice as many frees as the opponents, then on the rare occasion when it doesn't happen it is clear that brown paper bags have been exchanged.

OK, they have too show ads and they have limited time to show a replay and are increasingly squeezing the ball up into a small panel with a confusing last second switch. Solution - add another 5 seconds to the break between goal and ball-up. The current time gap was introduced for TV so what if it is made a tiny bit longer. Won't distress too many at the game. What I'd really like to see is a wider shot before the bounce so we can see how teams have set up around the square.

Party pooper.

We've either beaten or come close to beating the majority of teams in the top 8. Should provide a lot of confidence in the finals. What a difference a win makes.

No, but worth the risk 100% IMO.

I'm prepared to take that risk. A decent showing in a final even in a loss may have the opposite effect. And a win..... Get into the finals and all will be forgotten. The narrative internally and externally will turn to a team on the way up rather than one endlessly floundering.