sue

Yes the AFL missed a great opportunity. Most of Canberra's early growth was public servants being trasnferred from Melbourne who of course had an aussie rules background. At worst the city was 50:50 between rugby and footy. But the NRL got in first with the Raiders and provided a team for Canberra and so it took off. Canberra now supports both a league and union team, but a shadow of an AFL team. The AFL missed the bus badly.

An interesting article in the Canberra Times today about the ACT govt's support of GWS and why GWS needs Canberra more than Canberra needs it. On these crowd figures, GWS should just rename themselves and move (or dissolve): Manuka Oval: average 9804 (39,216 total) Sydney Showground: average 6103 (36,617 total) Manuka Oval highest crowd: 11,661 Sydney Showground highest crowd: 8754

Did anyone in the media focus on Cox's knee jab? No discussion/video clip?

Sorry a bit off topic but arises out of the dogs hawks match. An example of the AFL not thinking clearly about the rules they come up with. A player is on the ground and an opponent pushes the ball under him hoping to get a holding the ball free for pulling it in. The umpire tells them he is not paying the free. Quite right. But why not penalise the player who pushed it under? The “pulled the ball” in rule was instituted to stop players holding up play. Whether you pull or push the effect is to do just that. So it should be a free against whoever did the action to hold up play. Why not?

As LilRedFE said, the umpires have enough difficulty umpiring the game without having to keep track of who the best and fairest player is. And they naturally focus on the players they see most - midfielders. Coaches votes are much better, but I wonder to what extent they are affected by internal management of players by the coach, eg. coach gives a player a vote as an encouragement award. My guess is that wouldn't have much affect on the outcome for the top players.

Yes, but if you want to know 'what happens if the Saints kick the next 2 goals', the live ladder won't help you.

If you want to fill in the gaps in Grapeviney's nice table regarding % and the Saints' score, just copy and paste the following into Google search to see the score Sydney has to get to beat our percentage: For example, if the Saints have scored 80 points, then paste into the search field: =1.30546190155091*(1542+80)-1979 that gives 138.459204316, so they need to score 139 points. Replace 80 with whatever the Saints have scored as the match progresses.

Agree. Very odd choice of words.

The commentator keeps tellinbg us the score (which we can see on the screen) but has he told us which way the wind is blowing?

I can't stand most of the commentators, but I like the crowd noise. Umpire mike and crowd noise would be best. But since that's not provided, I find I can tune out of most of the commentary. Occasionally something they say registers which just confirms why I don't listen to the commentators.

Some in the media won't be happy until they can make public whatever upset Petty without having any concern that that may be more upsetting to Petty than what happened on Friday night.

Does he say anything in private? If so, it's having little effect.

Still confused - excuse my aging brain. If we lose we stay on 60 points. If Freo win and Bris win the ladder is: Geelong 68+ Bris. 64 Fre. 62 If C'wood win they are 64 and we are not in top 4. If Syd win they are 64 and we are not in top 4. So we need both of those 2 to lose if we lose regardless of percentage. No?

Aren't you forgetting Freo? If they win they are on 62 so we'd need both of those things to happen if we lose. Or am I confused?

umm, if the RAT images uploaded were essentially fake (ie. previous images from old tests), how can you be so sure that failed tests weren't covered up?

I'm glad to hear we planned for what to do near the end of a close match when behind. And possibly putting Frisch as far back as allowed at the centre bounce when ahead. But why has Gawn not planned what to do at the centre bounce with 10 seconds to go?

Still not sure who I want to win out of Syd & C'wood to increase the chances we finish in the top 4 IF we lose to Brisbane (yes, sorry, I'm looking at the pessimistic case). I think in that case we want C'wood to thrash Sydney and Sydney to not get their percentage up in the last round? Views?

It's not the first time he has done that. I can't recall when he last did it in a close game, but the memory was clear enough in my mind so that I said as the ball was bounced "I hope he remembers to just put the ball at his feet so that everyone can jump on it". I hate to criticise him, but that is a major brainfade. A quick kick forward and a mark and we lose especially with 6 6 6.

In any case I thought he had stopped and then played on beyond the mark. SHould have been called back.

Agree. But why if 3 opponents are taking on Brown can't we get more out of our crumbers. (It's a seperate and more complicated question as to why we don't kick to our 2 free players whose opponents are heading to Brown.)

Cameron goes to ground with ball, taps his face to try to get the umpire to pay a free rather than punch the ball away and then eventually punches it. Presumably it wasn’t paid holding the ball out of sympathy.

Should have been charged with assault then.

If the AFL is not worried that "some concussions, like this one, will go unpunished" they may find themselves in legal hot water in 15 years. But by then those currently with the snouts in the troughs will be retired to their beachside havens so worried, but not too worried.

Nor do I. But fundamentally I expect sport to be conducted in a fair manner. It should be possible to do so and be commercial at the same time. When commercial interests override fair play, then I call it corruption. Not neccessarily brown envelope corruption, but corrupton of the sport nevertherless.

When you see a pattern of behaviour indicating the AFL is more concerned with commercialization (and the accompanying fat salaries for execs) than running a fair competition, then corruption does not seem too strong a word to me.