sue

Why would they do it? Surely they are licking their lips at the prospect of gaining new subscribers. We are already concerned about the viability of some clubs - surely the club's wouldn't be able to pass some of our membership fees to Kayo (as much as I'd like that, having 3 memberships in the family and only able to get to a match every couple of years at most).

Depressing direction of thread re guilt-trips etc. Perhaps the OP's intention was to state fence-sitters should now come to the aid of the club - all other things being equal. That is, if you are not in immediate financial straits, have relatives in distress etc. then pony up. Where is the guilt tripping in that? (Being out of toilet paper does not qualify as being in distress.)

You'd doubtless want no doctor to try to play god when you are seriously ill. The dairy must have been on strike when your issue of the milk of human kindness was due.

Sorry, the problem is too many young people. Us oldies will die pretty soon one way or the other. Young people keep having babies. The world's population isn't rising because of old people. A nanny state reminds me of Churchill's remark about democracy. Not perfect but better ....

Can't see it working. Surely once a player is confirmed with the virus, at the very least some of his teammates/coaches will have to self-isolate. Unless that number is very low a good proportion of the team will be off for 2 weeks. And maybe opponents from a recent match, or your team's players who encountered an infected opponent previously). I expect such a mini-draft would quickly end up a maxi draft to provide enough players.

So the PM announces events with more than 500 people shouldn't go ahead and then says he plans to go to an NRL game. A bet each way. Or maybe he chose the number 500 because he knows the average size of an NRL crowd is fewer.

Yeah, sorry didn't mean to include you. Now here's another 'open-minded' possibility - the Martians are preparing to invade Earth. My guess is the AFL will play without crowds until the first player goes down. Delaying the start of the season has the difficulty of guessing how long to delay it for. It could end up the entire year. So I'd expect the AFL to lean heavily on clubs to isolate their players & coaches etc and cross their fingers that we can get through as much of the season as possible. And then probably cancel the rest of the season - no premiers this year.

Good grief, idiotic conspiracy theories are ruining Demonland (as well as the reputation of those posting them IMO). Can we stick to discussing the effect on footy.

I'd certainly second this suggestion of Demonox: -Pay holding the man against the 3rd player in who locks a contest up by "tackling a tackler". No interpretation required there. Almost always it is clear the tackler does not have the ball, so he can't be tackled without giving away a free kick. Enforce that for starters and see how much it helps. I expect quite a bit. (This thread has morphed into discussing the congestion issue rather than concentrating on supposed lack of scoring of the title. Shows the wisdom of Demonlanders.)

I don't think that is right. It seems to me obvious that at some level there will be no congestion. It's just not clear what that level is. Clearly 2 players per team means no congestion. What about 4, 8, 12, 14, 16. But it is also clear that with too few players the game will be nothing like the sport we know. We've seen 16 work in the past as maintaining the look of the game, though that was in a time and league of less fit players so I'm not sure that is much evidence in support of 16 now. What about no interchanges, just 2 reserves. As well as tiring players, that would force players to pace themselves at least until latish in the game for fear of losing a player to injury earlier on.

I agree. While I don't think the scoring needs to increase (there is a limit to how many ad breaks I can stand!), I totally agree that the congestion needs fixing. I'm not sure how best to achieve that. Obviously reducing the number of players would work - it would be very open with 12 per side (not serious, just indicating it is a certain solution at some level. Maybe 1 less would work as well and introduce interesting tactics). But maybe other things should be tried first.

May be so but doesn't change my view that we don't need more scoring now.

That says a lot about how bad the commentary is. Too much about viewers can see for themselves interlaced with mutual ego building and irrelevant stuff.

Who knows. But there may be an advantage to being called the Hermit Kingdom.

Scoring like soccer? We are so far off that that any talk of having to increase scoring is stupid IMO. Personally I find basketball boring because it is too high scoring. AFL has the balance about right.

One thing is for sure - there won't be anyone throwing toilet rolls to celebrate a goal. Though if things don't turn out too bad later in the season some people may have an embarrassing number of rolls they wish to get rid of quickly.

more likely that Fox etc will just be rubbing their hands with glee. (Does glee kill viruses?)

I'm not able to get to all but one match a year, so my views on game plans are based on ignorance. But was it not the case that we were the highest scoring team in 2018? We still managed to lose a lot of games, so presumably the defense wasn't up to it. With a new solid backline and wings in 2020 maybe whatever forward game plan worked in 2018 might look a lot better this year? I don't buy the line that it was easy to beat the aging cats and hawks in the finals and met reality against WCE (who we did beat a few weeks earlier, albeit not in a final.) While we may not have beaten them in any case, I suspect we were buggered physically and after a few minutes, mentally.

Consolation? Watch out. There are posters who would prefer him to be at the peak of his ability and doubly fired by having been injured.

Sadly bad interviewing is not confined to sports journos. Very often they just read through the list of questions they or a producer has already prepared. It becomes blatanly obvious when the interviewee says 'the sky was blue' and the very next question is 'what colour was the sky?'.

jest it was. And I expect supporters of any team would make the same weak jokes

If his desktop is any indication thank God he doesn't organise the interchanges.

You don't need to convince me that the MRP is wickedly inconsistent and effectively corrupt. But clearly there are some tackles very likely to cause concussion or worse and these should be banned. But the AFL needs to clearly define them and then enforce them as impartially and consistetly as it can. Not easy because there is a grey area somewhere between picking someone up and dumping them vertically on their head and a tough tackle. With Viney I don't think there was a clear secondary action to dump the player, so I think Viney should be OK. Since I think the action is more important than the result I'd have said that even if the opponent was injured. Would anyone argue there was a clear secondary action? Maybe.

Without commenting on the specific case, I disagree that lack of injury should get a player off. If I push someone off a cliff and they happen to land in a bush which breaks their fall and they suffer no injury, surely I should pay a penalty for performing a dangerous (possibly murderous) act. The degree of injury may be relevant in determining factors relating to the level of 'badness' / intention and of punishment. It is unlikely to throw much light on whether the act itself was 'bad,' though I suppose it could in some cases, so it should be considered. But not as blindly as saying 'no injury, no problem'. By letting players off when the victim is not injured (which is usually a matter of luck) the AFL has been sending the wrong message for years. Need to discourage bad acts even if the transgressor is lucky enough not to have hurt the opponent. (Of course the MRP has been so corrupt that this has been the least of their problems.) In the current Viney case, I don't see much evidence of a bad act though I'm open to argument and need a clear definition of what is 'bad' by the AFL.

I agree. But it does seem odd that you didn't object to the political posts that I was calling out.