sue

Is his real name Saxe-Coburg?

And that makes it less ridiculous? Not to me.

One day someone will be able to explain to me the point of the "gather" round. Till then I'll continue to wonder why (surely it's not to make money?). There is enought difficulty in arranging something even approaching a fair draw given all the constraints that exist already.

A club can try to fix current deficiencies and build for the future simultaneously.

But I as a supporter would love to know what he said. Can anyone produce a rough transcript of what he said?

Calls to lock this thread are misguided. As time goes on, people will post less to it and it will start to fade away no matter how angry most of us remain. And then Maynard will again do something nasty and it will fire up again for a while. As it should.

A good excuse for thumping someone I guess.

How exactly does throwing (well deserved) rocks at Maynard improve his chances of anything? Not by enough to stop me venting. Sorry.

On reflection, I'm not sure you can argue Oliver's act was sporting. If you believe the rules are there to be obeyed and the AFL has instituted the blood rule to ensure player safety, then you should point it out to the umpires as a sporting matter. Not to do so is endangering all other players according to the AFL's rules. Although many of us believe the current blood rule is unnecessary for player safety and totally over the top, it doesn't change that. Rules are the rules and the AFL in its infinite wisdom has deemed it necessary for player safety. Whereas confessing that you touched an apparent goal for your team is a sporting act (however misguided).

Of the 20-odd C'wood players about whom they might choose to write a puff piece this week, they choose a thug. Says it all.

4 umpires now. Surely it would be better if they should each give 3 2 1 votes without conferring with each other. Better still to not use the umps at all.

I wonder if I'll watch any VFL games next year now sans Moose.

There is a middle way. Point it out neither to Cripps nor to the umpire.

Unless we make the sport completely no contact there will always be concussions even with perfectly legitimate tackles, random collisions of 2 players going for the ball. If you don't want 'no contact' then you have to rank actions which can cause concussion vs the degree you are prepared to change the game. My guess is that speccies would be low on the 'cause concussion' index and high on the 'not changing the game' index.

That's the usual choice, but with the AFL I suspect it's the other way around or at least an equal mixture of the two.

I'd have thought the risk of concussion from a knee in the head from a speccie is far less than that from bumps, slings and whateever it was that didn't happen last Thursday. Wrong? (See Roostit I didn't menion him.)

Courage doesn't come into it. They have a short-term commercial agenda and don't care much about the long term. They figure someone else will take over handling the lawsuits and the lack of kids taking up the sport.

If a player is going to do it it looks like they will have to do it in this final series. Next year you'll probably get suspended for touching a player while smothering. If they think the rule need changing next year, then they were effectively letting him off on a legal technicality. If a MFC player did that during the match they would have hanged him for not taking care or something. AFL has a new role to make Qantas look good.

A few commentators have been mentioned in this thread who saw clearly what really happened and weren't part of the disgraceful AFL PR machine. But I've lost track of all the names. As someone who doesn't watch all those footy shows or listen to SEN etc or read the HUN etc. though I do watch on TV etc, I'd be grateful if someone could list the names of commentators who I might want to respect in future. Thanks in advance.

Unique! Yes, it was. But how is it that it doesn't happen regularly (with or without concussion)? Because the rest of the time in smothers the players don't intentionally or recklessly do what Maynard did. Legalism when it suits them and crack-downs when that suits. The AFL will destroy Aussie footy in time.

Given the tribunal's 'reasoning' it will be interesting how they can even make a rule to do what they want short of 'regardless how it happened, knock someone out and you are in trouble'. Either that or they will effectively be saying last night's decision was wrong but next time we'll actually mount a case instead of waving a wet lettuce.

It might work for me thank you very much. If it doesn't work for you, just follow my advice in the earlier post. Stop reading this thread.

I don't see why we supporters have to move on. The players do, but our venting has no effect on anything (especially the bloody AFL). If anyone wants to move on by not reading this thread, they know how it's done.

There have been a couple of contrarian posters who 'guarantee' that if Gus had done this to Maynard we'd all have a different view. I suggest they look at the posts before and following Pickett's ban early in the season. Most posts were along the lines of 'how could he be so stupid', not 'our golden boy can do no wrong.'

Leaving aside the arguments about what he did, what Gus did etc etc, the one thing that really stands out for me is Gleeson making some remark about the importance of the matches coming up for Maynard. Remarks like that are toally inappropriate before the matter is decided by the jury. They may be barely acceptable in pleas about the sentence, but not before the jury deliberates. What a ****ty organization has taken over Aussie rules.