sue

Good win. One thing that did worry me was Gawn’s centre square hit out when Port had a run on near the end. He easily won the hit out but hit it straight onto the chest of a port player on their defensive side who was completely on his own allowing an easy clearance into ports 50. Why. Seems like a silly error for such a good player who should have been practicing what he’d do if an opponent was in danger of winning the match

Redleg you have just outed yourself as an optimist according to Diamond_Jim. I'm bewildered, so I am just going to hope they all beat the living daylights out of each other.

I hope they can visualise success in July and August. This week would be a good start.

Makes you wonder if the AFL really are concentrating of TV rights (though I'm sure they are). While they can't have known weeks ago that these games would be so significant, they sure as hell could have re-scheduled the game in Perth to start a few hours earlier, say 2pm local time.

Doesn't that give us 2 extra years to look for a Max replacement?

Some have implied Petty being out with Covid protocols means he has Covid. But does he? or do the current protocols include being a close contact of a case? Anyone know?

Swans may be a better team without him, but we might be better. (Walker has resigned with Crows)

Presumably the purpose of the rule way back when was to protect people from coat hanger tackles. But we panalise players for just touching someone on the shoulder and lots of other tackles which present no danger. What if they didn't pay frees for those minor above the shoulder incidents? Then perhaps they'd be no incentive to do a Selwood because what he and his imitators do does not result in any danger to their health and so would not draw a free.

Correct. But was Chandler trying to knock out the player he concussed?

No idea what you guys are arguing about but I’d say Rigged implies the outcome is 100% determined. Manipulated just pushes things in that direction.

I'd love to believe that. But unfortunately to finish in the top 4, let alone top 2, we can't afford to lose any games and even if Port and the Dogs throw in the towel, we have a tough draw.

I don't buy the argument that says Geelong will fail in finals because they don't have the advantage of their narrow ground. Sure it is a big advantage in getting them to the finals (ridiculous for a professional sport to allow such a variation in playing area), but they do get to 'practice' every second week on normal grounds. Surely that is enough.

Of course he didn’t deliberately kick the hand (or impossible to prove otherwise) but surely it is graded as careless etc.

Someone commented that it was in play and not deliberate so there should be no penalty beyond the free kick. But the offence was kicking in DANGER. Why does this escape further penalty when Chandlers did not? In play dangerous tackle vs in play dangerous kick. The only difference is the focus on concussion. But I bet if Chandler had broken the blokes arm he would have still been rubbed out.

We played very poorly last night and maybe cats could have made more of their chances but surely we can take some comfort from the fact we were only centimetres from drawing level during Q4 despite being outplayed.

We can stop complaining about certain teams never playing at Tax Stadium. Now that the AFL is increasingly focussing on TV viewership and is happy to generate artifical crowd noises, in a few years they won't give a damn about making C'wood play at Kardinia Park.

I have a Guide to Reading the Match Day posts. It bears a striking similarity to Demonstone's Guide on Posting to the Luke Jackson thread. ie. Don't.

Wasn't one of those goals a result of a short pass onto his chest by Weid? If so, I'd say they sahred that one.

Yes, he did what he had to - and could do. But in the longer term he needs to be able to do more in some role. Presumably/hopefully somewhere there is a big bodied back-up ruck available in 2023 (Daw Mark II) who could ruck better?

and you're posting on a footy fan site?

I wish someone would invent a machine that can reproduce such blows accurately and wheneever a commentator says a player dropped too easily they would have to take the same blow from the machine. They'd shut up quick smart.

To those that say "we won, get over the umpiring", I say there is nothing wrong with discussing any and all aspects of a game. When the umpiring is egregious, it is likely to figure prominently in people's comments on the game. Why not? We don't have to prove how morally superior we are by chosing to overlook it. Furthermore when you can only see a match on TV, there is a lot you cannot see and therefore can't reasonably discuss, but the umpiring usuallly stands out. It has been pretty bad so far this weekend. So it will be commented on. To quote those who say "get over it", I say, get over people commenting on it.

Classic case of player looking at opponent rather than ball. Worst free I’ve seen for a long time

I feel dirty

These commentators would be annoying if you didn’t want to know the scores in the AFL match. Don’t they realise that anyone watching the match is capable of looking up the AFL score whenever they want.