sue

When Gawn kicks for goal from 30m out he kicks it high and hard and almost always hooks. Why he does that rather than trying to pass it to a bloke behind the umpire is beyond me.

Re Spargo play-on. I thought he looked confused rather than trying to play on.

True. And WCE players would be thinking they had nothing to lose. the commentators had oodles of time plus 30 extra minutes to get some info on Hunt and tell us. but nothing Why?

Not beyond the AFL to arrange that

The umpires tried but failed

How does the team having 'set themselves' change the bookies odds? Are you implying WCE team is corrupt? 😀

good luck with that. Sadly

I suspect the reason the 'victim' is not called is because they can't be relied upon to give honest testimony for fear of being a rat. So they are likely to help get the offender off which would embarrass the AFL.

I hear Melbourne have cancelled their Perth hotel and are hiring a Boeing 737 instead.

the game is supposed to start at 12:10 isn't it?

Doubtless with Casey tiered out after playing today?. For those who are unaware only footy fix today is Casey on freebie on Kayo today 1pm EST. Probably a very depleted team since big squad is presumably somewhere in the air over somewhere.

Saw a fleeting banner on ABC saying No professional sport. Can't confirm so far Update: from 4pm. "There will be no football matches. So, no community sport, no professional sport, nothing for the next three days. Starting as of 4:00pm today. But I would hope that anyone who's out there concludes whatever they're doing and goes home." Short game coming up...

As I think someone may have alreaady said, it's a freebie on Kayo.

Double sorry jnrmac, it seems very odd that you call my post rubbish, when I said nothing that contradicted what you said. Surely my mention of hoping for a 'return to form' more than implies I thought we had lost form. I was commenting on supporters' emotions now, not the players performance. As for whether the coaches haven't done anything, I'm in no position to tell. And while the personal hasn't changed in name, they may have changed in other ways that challenges the coaches.

good work. Not totally implausible, but I think enough to cause you to investigate other possiblities. Likewise for chance of dying.

True, the count in any individual game does not need to be even. But when you look at those tables of net frees for the bulldogs (good team most of the year) it looks statistically a definite outlier (miles beyond the next most 'favoured' team), whereas the demons (good team most of the year) are close to the mean along with most other clubs. It seems to me that it is very hard to explain away the dogs situation solely along the lines you suggest. I expect there are other factors (without resorting to conspiracies).

Consistency? A million miles away as things currently stand. I posted elsewhere about in another match (can't recall which one it was) the SAME umpire called a 20m+ kick 'play on' and when the player kicked it, he paid a mark for a 10m kick backwards.

Could be, but how many of us expected a flag at the start of the season? Seems to me that expectations rose high due to being unexpectedly near the top of the ladder for so long and that has unreasonably increased the negativity some feel now. Let's hope that whatever happens from now is either a surprise return to form and a flag, or failing that, that we have something solid to build on for next year.

Maybe not, but you hardy expect him to say we have to do a major overhaul at this point in the season. In any case, that would be a stupid policy. We have to tweak some things and hope for some things to click and we get back to the form that saw us beat every good team. Currently that seems unlikely, but I can't see much point in doing anything else right now.

yes, you are a mug these days to try and dispose of the ball. Odds are you may fail and get pinged. Far better to fall to the ground hugging the ball while pretending you are suffering an epileptic fit. (Even that is not consistently required - most of the time you need do nothing, but occasionally you will get pinged if you don't jerk about even if it is clearly futile to do so). If the AFL wants a free flowing game, then favour disposal attempts rather than incentivising a ball-up.

Not an anomaly if the dogs played Richmond every week ?

Armed with my deep expertise in all matters, I can't wait to vote for who is an expert. I hate unelected football pundits, but at least I am expert enough to know most of them have no special expertise.

Yep. Good to see someone looking for the positives

Umpiring up to 2021 standard I see

Umpiring plumbing new depths