sue

Jones said he was told and surprised, not consulted first. Making Viney co-captain didn't seem a good idea to me at all, especially when the title of vice-captain is available. But I think we'll have to wait more than a few games to know if it has been a bad mistake. And even then and if he continues in poor form, we may never know for sure if it was the burden of captaincy or some other reason.

Put me down in the glass-half full group despite all the mistakes, poor play, bad selections and coaching errors posters have bemoaned in this long thread. Someone posted we could have been a disaterous 0-4. Equally we could have been 4-0 with people booking their GF tickets. In fact everything points to 4-0 being the more likely given the winning position we should have been in both losses. And this without 2*Hogan, 2*Lewis and1.5*Gawn, some of our better players putting in poor games and a couple of headless chooks being selected, plus a long injury list. Sorry, I haven't felt less upset about a loss for a long time. Disappointed, but not upset.

For substantial periods it was like watching the match through a metre of water. I don't know if it's the AFL or Telstra's fault, but the AFL is doing itself no favours by selling such a shoddy product.

Are you saying this happened in the latest update which appeared just a couple of days ago? ( If so, I'll have to ensure I keep using the older version.)

not surprising, your avatar looks like she's wearing a blindfold. Take it off and you'll find there is a bit of excitement about.

Perhaps the idea of independent doctors evalutating players is not so far out: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/nrl-competition-committee-to-consider-independent-doctors-for-concussion-20170411-gvixoz.html

Since the MRP's decisions suggest signs of concussion suffered earlier in life by its members, one way to fix the MRP would be to remove anyone from the MRP who has ever played a contact sport. Actually, sarcasm aside, there might be an argument for the MRP to be made up of people who have no involvment, emotional or otherwise in AFL.

Not if you know it was all a beat-up in the first place.

How has Carlton got permission to use the outline style numbers on their backs? Very hard to read.

If we had kicked straight, yes we would have won comfortably. But I think you can successfuly argue that even with the bad kicking, if we had those 2 players we would have been more likely to win.

Interesting to see whose still managing to play for Carlton today. Anyone surprised?

Fair enough. I agree contested marking is not his strong point. Finding himself in space and no one kicking it to him is also not the strong point of others in the team. Let's hope both weaknesses become history.

You must have quite a few people on ignore or a short memory. There's been a lot of criticism of various players in this thread but if we had kicked straight we would be overlooking all that. Sometimes a team just racks up misses from very gettable goals. There were at least 7 early on - normally on a bad day you'd expect to get 3 of them. We got a deflating 0. Just happens. Cheer up.

He took one in the game. Arms well out in front. I assume you were distracted and didn't see it, rather thn suffering from bias.

well at least you guys aren't using the royal 'we'.

Yes he was. I'm not suggesting sympathy for him, quite the contrary. I think there should not be a 50m for grabbing a bloke doing that even if the umpire hasn't got around to calling play on. There seems to be little sympathy for the man on the mark when a 50m penalty is applied in those cases. Just let the players make the decision about whether play on has occured. And ping them if they get it wrong.

It was a bit hard to tell from the TV coverage when the umpire called play on. But it is true that no matter how blatant the play-on is, the umps will usually pay 50m if they haven't called play-on before the man on the mark moves. That irks me. I think the rule needs reversing. Let the man on the mark take the initiative and if the umpire subsequently judges he infringed before the player with the ball moved off line, then award the 50m penalty. Why wait until the umpire notices? On the other hand this may lead to the umps needing to make a lot of such decisions, since when well back from the man on the mark, players very often go off-line well before the umpire calls play-on. So they'd be many more times when the man on the mark may move earlier than they can now. As for throwing, I feel like I'm watchimg rugby these days.

Nah - he's just indulging in the opposite of MFCSS. Maybe MFCOO - MFC OverOptimistic

But there may be many other causes of the weeks missed by the victim, starting with a common cold.

That is a foolish argument. So if the penalty was to have their hands chopped off, they'd still lose any claim to be treated unfairly according your statement. Clearly there are limits to what is unfair punishment and that is what is being discussed. Many here argue that the MRP exceeded them this time or at least are inconsistent. Feel free to disagree.

No need to discuss it further. Scott on the AFL site says: "With Bernie Vince likely to replace Lewis, Scott said Demons ruckman Jake Spencer would likely fill the forward-line hole left by Hogan."

Well it was refreshing in that he didn't roll out the usual guff which you might expect. Doesn't mean I liked it. But I'm not sure you can assume that implication. It could be that he accepts the views of Mahoney etc, but he doesn't give two hoots about what outsiders think as a general policy which he holds. And ignoring supporters is not such a bad idea - imagine what a mixed-up schizoid a player would be if he didn't ignore much of what we say here.

Quite a job for 18 teams and many players, so sorry, despite the fact that I read and post on Demonland, I have a life. hmmm, maybe not.

It would be good if there was a histogram showing these age and experience distributions rather than relying on averages or medians.

umm, how many times is it necessary to point out that almost no one on here thinks the players did not go too far etc. and need to cop a penalty. The issue is what is an appropriate penalty and the inconsistency and proceses of the MRP.