sue

Quite right. The AFL has the resources to lean on the VFL etc to do a lot of trialing for it. If 666 doesn't work (and I think its objectives are wrong so I hope it doesn't) it will take a few season before the AFL admits it was a mistake and then they will introduce a replacement which is also not tested.

Why do we need more scoring? Compared to most games, AFL is a goal-fest already. 666 just means more rules and delays. Congestion is not much changed but interesting tactics are probably more constrained. The congestion that occurs nowadays is largely because of the the fitness of players and the big bench. That's where the solution is. Here's a basket ball analogy where there is absolutely too much scoring IMO. Players have gotten taller so it's easier to score. So you raise the hoops if you want to keep the game the same. You don't introduce netball rules about who can stand where.

Last year I searched for the rules and had a similar experience to Mazer R. It's an absolute disgrace. Normally people say in a choice between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, choose the latter. But hiding the rules of a game is so mind-boggingly unlikely as a stuff up, you have to wonder. About time one of our so-called sporting journos at least drew attention to this.

true, but there will be supporters of 16 other teams who will be happy as long as they defeat a team they hate in the GF.

I hated GWS when they first came in as an artificial entity. But now with Scully gone I just look at them as a team which I can barrack for when they play Geelong, Essendon and C'wood (and anyone else if it suits MFC position on ladder etc.) . I'd rather seem GWS win a flag than any of the above teams (and probably some others like Hawthorn).

True. I don't watch horse racing so perhaps someone can tell me if the commentators there ex-champion horses? Employ good commentators rather than ex-stars. The odds of finding an ex-star who is also a good commentator are low.

Of course the bolded bit is right for the actual team, But as the weeks go by (4 is maybe the minimum) it is of increasing interest to supporters to worry (or rather speculate/hope) about the others. If the other teams initially favoured to be top 8 were all at 4-0 and we were at 1-3 then probably it's not worth hoping for results in other matches (so let your personal hatreds rip), but it certainly helps us recover our position relative to them if the other supposedly top teams are also losing games.

Me too. And most of it is name dropping or showing off in some other way.

No.

Ditto for me. Best solution is to turn the volume down low so you can easily ignore the actual words the commentators say. Just use them as augmenting the crowd noise (which they already fake at matches were there are few supporters of one side).

I reckon I'd give myself a tick on almost all those boxes, but you'd be a fool to put me in front of a microphone. And 'no ego'? You must be joking, even if the commentators are always looking for affirmation from each other like pathetic puppies.

You are definitely not in a minority. I'd love to hear the umpires all the time with commentators just fitting in with that and saying only essential info, but I guess that can't happen because a player may say a naughty word.

true, sorry.

On the other hand, if we had won against Essendrug (which could have happened if a few things went our way), the degree of doom and gloom here about other poor aspects of that performance would have been far less.

They beat carlton the ice-rink, not the SCG

Leaving aside how corrupt that attitude is, I suspect the premise is wrong anyway. I think the vast bulk of spectators don't go especially to see the stars. They go to support their team with which they have an emotional attachment (generally for no good reason).

Well combined with the issues around lack of fitness due to pre-season factors, it sounds like it would be a quite justifiable one.

I wouldn't get too worked up about what the coach says to the media. He said injury and fitness is not an issue before the match to bolster some confidence with supporters though he knew what he said afterwards was the truth (or at least part of it). I'm hoping players have enough sense to only listen to what they are told within the club. What is said publicly is all fugazi and trite nonsense just to keep the AFL in the public eye.

The AFL has enough problems with consistency without changing who is on the Tribunal week to week.

Dieter - I don't recall saying Wagner was single-handedly responsible for the rise of the Nazi party and antisemitism. But if the Wagner Bros don't perform well tonight, there will be an outburst of anti-Wagnerism in this house tonight.

And as most of those people know the Nazi party sprang from absolutely nowhere and had no interest in the themes of a lot of his music or his political and antisemitic writings on music. Not total lunacy I'm afraid.

Re Eddie saga: I'm sorry that I didn't pay close attention to his initial apology, and so may have missed a few words. Surely if he didn't mean it deliberately or wasn't an idiot he should have simply said, sorry, I wasn't paying much attention, just looked up at the coin toss and didn't notice who tossed it. And then express regret etc etc. If he did say that, I apologise for thinking him an idiot. (Like Redleg I can't believe he is stupid enough to have done it deliberately though he is an insensitive clod.)

umpiring pretty woeful. Wrong frees or missed frees too often

Well if all you did last week BB was look at the scoreboard, you therefore wouldn't be taking into account expectations of how poor Port is compared to us etc etc. Then you'd have to say we ran them pretty close. But no one here feels that, do they. The scoreboard does not lie, but it doesn't tell the whole truth.

sure, no issue making negative comments about the dropped mark. It was a bad thing to do anytime and especially at that time. But what annoyed me was some posters implied it was more than that. A dropped mark is a mistake. What else is it? To say otherwise is to say it was dropped for some reason other than a moment of incompetence and such reasons usually imply failure of courage etc on the part of the player. Clearly it was not that.