sue

Which human manufactured the Black Death in the 14th century. Or the plague in the 17th? Or the so-called Spanish flu in the 20th. Stop making fools of yourselves.

and the relevance to this thread is?

The Chinese govt has shut wet markets (stated as permanently, but we shall see). What about the wet markets in much of the rest of Asia? Or is your hatred only confined to things Chinese? Even the link to wet markets is not clearly established yet, but off you go casting China into eternal darkness. There are plenty of things to keep us amused these days when socially isolated - as far as I can see the average table in a restaurant is already socially isolated with everyone's nose in their mobile phones watching youtube, netflix, social media and even reading books (whatever they are). Seems to me it's never been a better time to be socially isolated (though doubtless any change will affect some people badly). In your carefully considered view, how potentially bad does a pandemic have to be to outrank the mental illness caused by isolation to slow its spread? Wuhan? Italy?

Pity the AFL thought up this way of generating click-bait just when we have a new captain. Max must have been tempted to say "Ask me again when I've been captain for more than a millisecond".

There's no point in pointing this out to DMMA. He was in charge of dealing with the Black Death in 1381 and saved 2/3 of the population. (don't ask about the other third.)

Yes, I guess that is the sort of thing the marketing department of Kayo might like as a way of encouraging new subscribers. (Trouble with Kayo and Fox is I have to pay for stuff in which I have no interest whatsoever. I really wish there was an AFL only service even if it was run by those nincompoops at AFL HQ.)

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.