sue

Completely agree. Where will it end? Recall the C'wood goal where the C'wood player was paid a mark and picked up the ball and played on and scored a goal, should we have a review of whether he played on forward of the mark. (I will certainly be reviewing that when I watch the replay!)

dangerous stuff that Bex - it was banned eventually. Clearly an ump stepping back cannot keep out of the players' way. It has to be the players responsibility. The stupid thing about the umpires telling the players at every ball up that they are going straight back is that it is completely unnecessary since they always go straight back. The players can easily work out where straight back is, and telling them doens't ad any extra information, so what is the point of telling them?

I wish the mods would rename this thread "Hogan - stay or go" so those of us looking for other info about him (eg injured?) don't have to wade through all this speculation.

Any chance we could have a separate thread on 'will he/won't he stay' and one on anything else relevant to Hogan? Just for my sanity.

Agree. That for a change they didn't suspend first and announce policy later is one small positive in this.

Nutbean, seems to me that that new tackling technique is more likely to cause injuries (when the not bringing to ground fails) than a sling where the player's arms are free.

$1000 fine for the "sling" tackle.

I don't see why they are tedious - it is a significant issue and one hopefully where we have dodged any bad outcome. I'm also glad we have him as things stand.

BB as an Essendon hater myself, I'm happy to say that if Goodwin was involved with drugging his team, then I will happily see him go regardless of the effect on our club. I expect most of the anti-Hird/EFC people you attempt to criticise have the same view, but it irks you that they don't call for Goodwin's head on a daily basis. And why should they - the issues that they comment on are the events as they (endlessly) unfold - all to deal with legal actions etc involving people whose name is not Goodwin. Unlike you, I think EFC were as guilty as hell and compounded that by their subsequent actions bringing disgrace on our game. They should have put their hands up like the rugby club did and this would all have been over years ago. No Essendon-lovers can ever again shake their head and tut-tut when the Russian water polo team or the Chinese hockey team etc is called out for drug cheating.

I too don't want to prolong this, but do you consider Chinese/Russian altheletes etc when found to have been taking drugs to be 'convicted'? But only if the drugs have been found in their body perhaps? And not if there is a strong chain/rope of evidence that they did? There is always doubt, even if their urine is full of drugs. Perhaps the detection chemistry was wrong, a mix-up in the lab etc.

But do you have a problem with the word 'convicted' as in 'convicted substance abusers'.

Sorry LDvC, when a murderer is found guilty of breaking the law beyond reasonable doubt he is convicted. In this case the level required to be found to have been breaking the law was 'comfortably satisfied'. So they are convicted of the offence. I won't quibble whether a peptide is a drug or not - the point is that they were found guilty of <insert drug/peptide>. ie. convicted drug/peptide takers.

It does say this: Also interesting:

I'm not assuming it either. Just on my relentless crusade to turn up improbable excuses for the players.

I've tried and failed to think up plausible excuses for the players not reporting the injections. Here's a new attempt (boy am I leaning over backwards for these cheats): I wonder if they didn't report it to ASADA partly (if not wholly) simply because of embarrassment caused by not knowing what they were being injected with. What would you do if faced with a form which stated "please list any supplements you have had in the last x months' and you had no idea what they were?

I agree with much of what you wrote, but not with the sentence above. It was more than not asking questions. Why did they not mention the perfectly 'legal' injections when ASADA made its regular inquiries if they had nothing to hide? There is no innocent answer to that as several posters have demonstrated,

If by completely cold you mean doing all the usual pre-season training, then yes. And do you really think that any serious player will not spend between now and Sept 2016 doing private training. I'm sure that could be programmed without breaking any WADA rules if sensibly and carefully organised. Well I would be sure except the brain-dead responses from the AFLPA people makes me wonder if there is anyone with the necessary intelligence to organise it. Of course it is a long time and some of the 34 still currently intending to play will fall through the cracks for various reasons.

I'd guess that a number of banned players will get together to train and even hire a few support staff (with money coming from unidentifiable sources). I'm sure that will happen for the blokes at EFC and maybe they'll welcome an old mate Melksam to join them. Those at Port may have to form a smaller group.

On the contrary, if a player is on another team he risks meeting Viney maybe twice a year. Watts has to face the prospect of being tackled at training several times a week.

Before the draft many posters were saying the club must have had a player in mind when manoeuvering to get the #3. Has the club said that CO was part of the plan, or did we just #3 regardless?

I've now watched most of the Vic metro v country and I still didn't see that Parish was much good. Didn't seem to get into the game. If we do pick him someone please tell me that that match was unusual.

I've no idea if Parish is the bee's knees and am happy to assume he is from the enthusiasm displayed here. But after viewing some of that match I'm convinced of one thing - take no notice of highlight reels. I watched most of the last quarter and got the impression Parish was nothing special. While he got the ball a bit, almost every time he got the ball he kicked it forward wildly and some of his handpasses were B-grade. Did I miss something? Fortunately the recruiters, and I presume even posters here, do more than look at the odd quarter.

Ture, sensible postings were difficult to find amongs the volume of complaints that the club wasn't being tough enough. But they were there - they just didn't use jargon labels (copyrighted by Harvard) to attach to the concepts.

O good grief. Just the pedantry I was referring to. BTW, it you buy 100 tickets in a lottery, is it not a lottery to you because your odds are better than the bloke who has only bought one ticket.

Can't even say that. After all, we all know the draft is a lottery (even if we pedantically argue about the obvious point that the probabilities in the lottery are weighted in favour of early picks.)