sue

Where is the evidence that CC repeated his remarks, joking or not, many times? Even so, just because he repeated it doesn't necessarily add any weight to proving he was serious. I'm sure we all know someone who doesn't tire of making the same weak joke repeatedly. BTW, even if everyone in the 'Vault' testified they felt he was being serious, he could still mount a defence that he was joking, particularly if he has people prepared to testify he often makes weak jokes which people take seriously. I know of a couple of sh!t-stirrers like that. (I leave aside the excellent argument, that if he says it in private and no one acts on it, it doesn't bring the game into disrepute. Since as Billy says apparently the AFL can't prove tanking, then they can't claim anyone acted on his non-jokes either.)

While I agree 'disrepute' is a lot easier to argue since it is so hard to defend and is so subjective, I'm not so sure that a pile of stat decs saying CC said it seriously would make it impossible for MFC to argue they were tongue-in-cheek comments. What if there is also a pile saying he was just kidding? Then the legal argument comes down to who has a sense of humour and who hasn't. So the AFL has to argue CC brought footy into disrepute by making jokes liable to misinterpretation. God help us if we can't have a laugh without looking over our shoulder.

I agree that gamblers should be expected to take into factors other than general form of the team v opponent. I have (somewhat tongue in cheek) suggested before that they can take into account a team's motives, including getting better draft positioning for the future good. So from the gambling viewpoint, why should the AFL worry about any form of tanking other than outright bribery. Yes it does come down to motives. But other than the fact that there may be an explicit rule against draft tampering, why is the motive of team building for the future more reprehensible than positioning to win a GF? I can see why some may think so, but I'm not sure it is logical rather than emotional.

True, it isn't 'draft tampering', it is some other sort of tampering which should also cause bookies grief and thus worry the AFL. But for some reason, the most recent blatant example of that was ignored by the AFL. It also means that 'tanking' is never the appropriate word to mean throwing a game if in one case throwing a game is draft tampering, in another good policy to win a GF. Though as GTG says, it depends which GF

Well obviously he couldn't know that unless he was within the AFL. But If the only evidence that exists is that which has been made public to date and after 6 months of investigation, it is not beyond belief that the AFL will now have to 'fix' the investigation in some sense.

A refreshing change. (There is a typo where you say 'why was Frawley in defense'. Presumably you mean "wasn't".)

Jay Clarke should be careful about his tweets. DB etc al may have grounds to sue the fool. I take that back. I hope he gets even more careless.

1. As I said in my post. I felt JB was just expressing his anger. I wasn't commenting on motivations and vendettas. It feels like you do not read what people write but just assume from the name of the poster that you must oppose (and often ridicule) the post. 2. Did I say we hadn't tanked? No, I did not. I agree with what you wrote above on that. Maybe you should change your position then. 3. My reference to Stynes was to point out he was selectively quoted to make the case against the MFC look worse. Do you support journalists doing that? I'm sure you do not. 4. What's the basis of you saying I have a persecution complex given I did not state I agreed with the motivation the OP attributed to the journalist? I just suggested you should nit-pick what the journos write rather than what angry dee supporters write. If anything that would imply I did not agree with the OP. You have just pigeon-holed me as a conspiracy theorist with a persecution complex just because I've had the audacity to disagree with some of your posts. Gosh, I've just realised that you may see that as evidence of me having a persecution (by you) complex. ha ha.

I expect anyone with a video library of many close matches could come up with examples of glum-faced coaches boxes quite easily. Wouldn't it be nice if some independent-minded journo actually wrote an article debunking the biased crud being shoved down the throats of the public. I'd think a debunking article would be of greater public interest at this stage than more of the same anti-MFC stuff trotted out. Anyone out there......???? You don't have to do much research - just fact-check the examples people have posted here.

Not a big problem. If we are talking about doing it for bottom x teams, then the drawing from the hat could done early in the year - maybe done on the basis of team's position after 10 rounds. If we are talking about random picks for all teams (not that makes much sense), then it could be done at the start of the year or even 3 years ahead of time.

You've explored the sorts of odd charges they might get away with us agreeing to accept. But they are pretty ropey really. When I said "I have no idea' what they could be, I really meant it is hard to think of anything plausible. But if such a charge/penalty can be found, it's the next best thing to total exoneration. I agree with what you wrote, except with the last sentence. It might be that it's not worth going to court if findings under these headings are worded very weakly and the penalties are small or suspended.

I agree except they may feel forced to do something because of all the sticky-mud that the media have thrown. If they can think of a penalty that doesn't tempt us to go to court, I fear they will impose it. Though what specific charge it could apply to or what it could be I have no idea.

How about nit-picking these so-called journalists rather than nit-piking supporter's posts. Clearly JB was rightly [censored] off by the quality of the 'report' and just expressed his anger in that way. Any journo who ends a story with that quote from Jim about the agony the AFL's policy was causing, yet neglects to include the quote saying Bailey was not told to tank deserves no defence from MFC supporters. Edit: grammar to avoid being nit-picked.

BH, if 4 players were injured in the first 30 seconds of a game, what would the rotation rate be? If they were all injured in the last 30 seconds, the rate would be 'normal' or even high. Somewhere in between will be the rate if players were injured at other stages. I suspect we don't need to sarcastically 'rush this to the club'. I expect they would have done the analysis, and if it looked useful will highlight it, otherwise they will bin it.

GM11, do you know when in the match they went off? If it was early on, a very low rate of rotations is to be expected. Less so if they went off in Q4.

Yes you could. Give away a 50m penalty by 'accident'. Strangely that didn't happen. Fumbling or anything else the players themselves are alleged to have done is clearly rubbish.

I see we are still talking at cross-purposes to some extent. I'm sorry I have not read your numerous posts over the years on this topic, and therefore did not realise it was futile to ask you to suggest non-tanking rationales for a low rate of rotations. Once again, my reference to throwing in the towel was solely to your dismissive response to a rationale proffered on that particular issue. I was asking if you could suggest possible rationales for low rotations rate since people tell me you have a deep knowledge of football. I was not asking you to change your view. Nor to imply you were prone to throwing in the towel generally. Getting back to the rationale I did proffer (which you did not address - yes, I know it is not compulsory for you to do so): I think an analysis of rotation rates by many clubs in matches where there are injuries or notoriously ill-conditioned players (like Jurrah) might be interesting in the defence of our low rate in that match. It may turn out 40 is not outrageously low, Even if we did it in order to 'tank' as you believe, a low rate in itself may not then be evidence that we did. Then again, maybe 40 is off any scale.

You'll have to improve your output too because you as usual miss my point. I wasn't referring to whether your supported tanking. Nor was I saying you don't want the club to go to court if need be. My reference to throwing in the towel was referring to your recent post where you knocked on the head any defense of the rotations rather than think of some points in our defense. Now you may think there are none. Fair enough. Being so sure I am an idiot, you misinterpret what I wrote so you can get on your high horse. Please dismount.

BH, how about playing defense lawyer yourself rather than throwing in the towel. What about the lack of players on the bench. If you only have 1 player on the bench for the entire game, you'd expect your rotations to be down by a factor of 4 to say 25 for the game and so on. Of course 3 didn't get injured in the first minute of the game, so the reasonable (not-experimenting or tanking) number of rotations to have had will be a time weighted average of the number available on the bench through the game. I personally have no idea of the numbers. It would be interesting to see the calculation done.

A cunning ploy. They raise deliberate fumbling (by what was clearly the best team in the league) to take our attention away from defending any serious accusations. (No, I'm not serious).

And lack of rotations? You can argue that we were trying to see what sort of tank the players really had. Jurrah confirmed he didn't have much of a tank at all, so he was taken off stuffed. If all that is all the AFL has, it sounds like they just want MFC to make a list of responses which isn't entirely farcical and then put it all to bed. Let's hope so.

yes indeed, so I'm a bit concerned about what this supposed press conference is about. I only read these forums so I can worry .... Anyone got any ideas to stop me worrying. (Either on the press conference or humorous.)

hmm, that seemed the most reasonable thing at first, but now I'm wondering why, with all the bad publicity we have had, the MFC wouldn't just issue a terse press release on penalties and avoid a press conference. Making a bold statement in a conference about how that sort of behaviour is not part of the new MFC might be the plan, but seems a bit unnecessary, especially as it seems there was not much to it.

If the club has it mind to drag these other clubs into the fray, I hope they first talk to those clubs. Maybe then those clubs will be motivated to tell the AFL to back off.