sue

Disagree, and the EFC seems hell-bent on ensuring it never does. It is clearly meant to be about football, just not the on-field performance (unless artifically boosted). Since it is in effect about administration, it can stray into politics in a broad sense. But that doesn't justify some of the recent postings (which at least one poster has had the good sense to graciously remove).

How about never having to go back to the footy because you never left it in the first place. Enough of these inane political rants please.

Well if I had a clever player who knew how to make room for himself and the rest of the team didn't see him, I'd be telling the rest of the team to wake up to the opportunity the team has. I guess if the rest of the team were too incompetent to wake up, the only option left would be to tell Watts to dumb down. Be very sad if that as the case, but if you believe that, then the problem was with the quality of the rest of the team in recent years. And I suppose there is some truth in that.

Whether or not one wants to bring it up in his defence, surely some of the things you list are not purely his responsibity to fix. Surely you are not saying he should dumb himself down to the level of the rest of the team.

The interpretation may have been consistent (well, at lest as consistent as the imlementation of most of the other rules) but I don't liek it or see the need for it. On another matter, at one stage an Eagles player marked the ball while standing still and did not move. The Melb player ran straight towards him and the umpire called hold hold when he was still 5m away from him. WTF?

I'm glad you rejected my request to please keep politics out of the discussion. Keep it up - that was hilarious. Personally I view all AFL matters through Marxist dialectics even though that's not PC. Let's close the thread and open a new one when he either kicks 10 goals tonight or drops a sitter.

I don't disagree that limited truth telling is often the best policy. But I disagree that just because it is a lie and the truth may be out there, that spin doesn't often work. Either that or I've slept through about 50 years of elections.

Well I'm no spin quack, but if I couldn't dodge the question completely (unusual) how about: No truth in those rumours, Watts is in great nick and given his great form last year we reckon we can leave playing him till later in the JLT and try out some other players who are more on the fringe. Of course the best answer will depend on the exact question asked. I expect whatever I invent, you can think of a different question needing a different answer. I'd rather not spend the day pretending to be a spin doctor - it may ruin my few remaining moral fibres.

I wouldn't employ you as a spin doctor then Nutbean. I'm sure a decent PR team could come up with some more convincing BS than that. The club chose not too, which is perhaps a plus. Time will tell.

What a joke. I ask you to please keep politics out of a footy forum after your irrelevant 'left-wing putdown' comment a few posts back and that's your response . There is nothing left-wing (or right-wing for that matter) about having a different view than you about this issue. Not sure why I bothered to use the word please. As for the rest of your repetitive guff, I guess I am mindnumbingly stupid.

My point was that the club doesn't have to answer whatever a journo asks. If they ask about Watts they could have wheeled out the usual drivel avoiding commenting directly.

Surely you aren't denying that Watts was 'singled out'? There were other good performing players from last year, apparently not injured but not given a game but no comment was made about them by the club. And if you counter that if Goodwin is asked about a particular player he has to comment on him, you are not using your imagination. I think (ie. don't know) that it is quite possible the club has mishandled this in an attempt to improve Watts or impose standards. Let's hope my fear is misplaced. BTW, please keep your politics out of it.

Badly or not, it's a bit simplistic to focus on #1 since whether a player is taken at 1 or 4 can depend on the requirements of the teams with the early picks rather than how good the #1 player is/will be. I probably should have said top 5 or somesuch in which case your dismissal of the claim that Watts is better than many other top picks would be a lot harder to make. I am firmly of the view that the focus on Watts is mainly the result of the disappointed hopes for a messiah amongst MFC supporters and has little to do with Watts himself.

Wow. How many posts have I read saying that what a schoolboy is like bears little resemblance to performance at AFL level. So still leaves the question 'why Jack'. For Demon supporters during a bleak time I think it comes down to him not being the messiah. The motivations of the press are less nice. And yes ClintB, it is down to him if he gets better or worse. Doesn't change the fact that it may turn out to be a mistake on the part of the club to have put the pressure on. Let's hope not.

Don't see the relevance. Sure, he was an obvious pick 1 choice to even the dumbest recruiter. Doesn't affect what I said. He mainly gets this intense focus because of being pick 1. Just because he is worse than some other pick 1's the press (and sadly demonland) is obsessed with him. - probably they'd have been no fuss if the MFC had been a better club during his time too, rather than hanging out for saviours. He's a better pick 1 than many other pick 1's. For that we should be glad and hope that Mr Goodwin's current ploy will enhance him and not the reverse.

So we can pick on Watts because he was the only disappointment to be not so disappointing that he is still there. My point is that there is too much focus on one bloke just because the recruiters (who are so often castigated as idiots on here) chose him as #1. If those idiot recruiters had chosen him at pick 40 we'd be saying what a great pick-up he was, though he could be more 'intense'.

How about an endless thread bagging 10 ex-players who have "disappointed" over the last decade rather than focus on one who is still actually in the team, and barring an apparent 'intensity' issue, was one of our best last year.

OK, so you won't elaborate, but who/what led you to believe it whatever it is?

very odd. It works in Opera browser but not in firefox or chrome

Is anyone else not able to play replays of JLT matches today on a mac or pc today? Works on my iphone, but when I try to play it on my mac (after signing-in) I get a message saying "content not available telstra signing error". It worked yesterday. My livepass is valid.

While I hope that the current plan to 'intensify' Watts leads to him becoming an AA++ player, it would be disaster if it stuffs him up instead. He's well within our best 22 at his 2016 level of intensity. Surely the rest of the team can live with one or two good players who aren't quite as intense as they are without their morale plunging into the abyss. Will be interesting to see what happens.

To me the most obvious difference in our play is the quick sharp handballs which are not going to a player about to be tackled, or are so quick that he still isn't tackled. Perhaps that is biased by only watching the game on TV.

Mystery solved. Watts won't get a game until he stops relying on this bloke to help him jump.

Nah, he's only inspired it. His grammar was too good for the HUN.

And what would you say if the entire team reacted as wisely as Lewis and filled the goal square? Isn't it just as likely that Lewis was the man to go to the square rather than facilely conclude 'the team still has much to learn' (which of course it does or we'd be premiers).