sue

I am confused. Surely while 'potential to cause serious injury' and 'level of impact' are not unrelated, I do not see why his action has to be judged as 'medium impact' in order to invoke 'potential to cause'. Surely if an action has potential to cause injury, it doesn't need any particular level of impact to be applied. The action is the sin. So why this fake bar of 'medium' gets you into trouble, but 'low' doesn't? It looks like they had to absurdly say that an action which was clearly low impact was in fact medium just to punish the sin. Ridiculous. How could they revise the rules and not come up with coherent sensible rule that doesn't require such patent nonsense? No wonder so many of us are cynical as to their motives. The AFL lives in a corporate fantasy land where they make up the rules and interpretations as they go along to suit.

Yes you argued that overall it didn’t affect things. I pointed out that it can even if the stats you presented appeared to say things even out. As I said using metaphors and analogies is a dangerous way to argue but I can’t help thinking of all the things that could be used to destroy your doggie analogy.

All true. But are you arguing the club shouldn’t appeal on level of impact to punish him? Surely not.

But what you call noise can affect an outcome. For example, team A misses out on the finals because of a bad decision in round 2 costing them 4 points. Sure, over the year they may have benefitted from bad decisions, but they don't necessarily balance out. Maybe they won a game by 10 goals rather than 9 as a result of a bad decision in their favour. That's unlikely to effect their being in the finals (though not impossible), but to say 'on-average' they did neither well nor badly misses the point. Some bad decisions have bigger effects than others. Elsewhere you argued that Richmond, when in multiple premiership winning form, did poorly on frees. But that doesn't prove your point, there are other factors. Maybe that just demonstrates how bloody good they were (or that they employed a successful tactic to give away frees to slow things or whatever). I leave aside the so-called butterfly effect, thought there may be relevance here too. Of course passionate supporters exaggerate the effect of bad decisions and whinge and carry on (part of the fun). That obviously annoys some who see that as irrational. But we shouldn't go to the other extreme and suggest that bad decisions can't effect things. (I suggest you stay clear of dodgey (or doggy) metaphors. Never a good way to make an argument because it leads down all sorts of rabbit holes as I have learnt to my cost over many years.)

This may interest those who like stats. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-05/cody-and-sean-heights-across-the-history-of-the-afl/103668180

Yes, I too felt that their players were treating May fairly. Unlike those bloody comentators who complained that they weren't 'testing him out'. Those blokes really believe in sportsmanship - not.

agree, at least once.

The 'accumulation of hits' line was disputed in what Angus said when he retired. If it was Maynard I'd definitely be asking for mroe than 4, say 8, as back-payment for what he did last year which was so many orders of magnitude than anything I've seen in recent times. But yes, Kozzie should be in trouble. Sadly, I can imagine if he was in a 'top' club (as defined by AFL corporate) he'd be much more likely to get a fine than a suspension.

If it takes as much as 20 years to get something done privately, perhaps a bit of public whinging would not go amiss.

I agree. However your last sentence doesn't add weight to that position. When do you ever hear Goodwin or anyone else complain publically liek soem clubs do? (I just hope they do it behind closed doors when appropriate.)

Some might find this ligtening map interesting https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=1;o=0;b=;ts=0;y=-37.9388;x=145.0072;z=10;d=5;dl=5;dc=0;tsc=1;src=6;

Serious answer. Probably

Is what Grundy is doing at centre bounces legal? He runs across the line as soon as the ump goes into his bounce routine and before the ump hits the ball on the ground. ???

I thought it is not the 'natural arc' rubbish, but now you can start off your line, but must be on the line when you kick it. So Dixon's would be hard to judge, especially from the TV. But the VFL case I mentioned...blatant 😝

Now you might say the bounday ump's view may have been obscured at the critical moment, but I recall a field ump was just a few metres away on the boundary on the other side facing the ball. I can understand umps making mistakes in difficult situations, but amazed they can't get the simple things right. For example, in the Casey match a player kicked a goal after the siren after going 2m off his line.

After the siren he moves a metre or so to right as he kicks for goal. No play on call, goal stands. Do umpires go into a trance when they hold their arm out

So in a critical period in an important match just put a couple of Ks on the table and belt an important star and double him up in pain. And don’t worry you won’t even give away a free downfield. Plenty of time to organise your defence. The AFL stinks

To be frank, he looks pretty happy after most goals by any team, but I always enjoy him with ours. Given the ARC nonsense these days, an umpire would be happy with any decision which is clear enough that they don't have to ask for a review to increase cryto's advertising time. You know, at least a metre or two from the post or a metre over the line.

Sure no fist, but it looked to me like he didn't hit him with his palm or fingers, but with the hard bone next to the wrist. Can be as damaging as a fist if you get the swing right.

I'm trying to keep the mods happy by being opaque.

The umps are getting worse and worse at that. The stand rule was introduced to stop the man on the. mark moving sideways to cover any inside movement of the player with the ball. (Not something I like but I can see the reasons). But now we have the player with the ball starting well inside where he should be making the man on the mark almost irrelevant - too easy to run around. In fact that's why many run back so they can be 'outside 5'. I never know if the ump is telling the player to go outside 5 or if he already is. And as to where 5m is from an ill-defined mark position, it's a complete lottery.

But the 4th umpire tends to look at the play and pay frees they think other umps didn't notice in the play. How about an umpire in the stands told to not focus on the play and not able to give free kicks for anything but well off the ball infractions?

That seems to be the case. But doesn't that mean that balls touched at a height higher than the padding would not be deemed 'touched' till they were some (padding) distance beyond the goal post - which would be impossible to judge. So I think there must be one rule for balls going through below the top of the padding and another for higher balls????

I wish we'd complain a bit too. I like to think we'd do it behind closed doors, but I doubt we do.

I know any exposure is supposed to be good publicity, but would you want your product associated with such a [censored] system as the AFL score review?