sue

Whatever the case, I love the use of the lazy words "up to" which is so common these days. When you don't know, pick a number and say "up to" as in "Up to 3 starting players". It can can mean 0,1,2 or 3 so you are safe as long as there are not 4 or more.

Put me down as a skeptic. Please explain why there is any difference in the mission statements of say, all insurance companies. Or indeed all footy teams. Surely they should all be pretty identical within each industry. And if so, what is their worth?

Interesting. What's unavoidably missing from that list is some measure of the depth each club has. I expect we'd score even worse if that could be taken into account.

I dimly recall in August 2018 another team beat WCE at home and then made it to the prelim against them and got thrashed by WCE. Let's see how it plays out.

I too am #$@!# off with a game we could have won, but I seem to recall everyone here predicting a huge loss with Brown kicking a bag. I don't suppose I can expect to see any posts saying what we did right to avoid that.

It was paid for abuse

Sadly that won't work because the AFL will just increase the outrageousness of its changes till we are all screaming in pain. It's about time the clubs banded together to rein in the AFL.

I thought some might find this article interesting. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/23/has-the-afl-reached-a-point-where-it-is-just-about-impossible-to-adjudicate Having lost all interest in the season and not much caring who wins in most matches I've watched, I have been able to judge umpiring decisions with less emotional bias than usual. It's worse than ever before. I can't wait to see what new rules the AFL introduces to make umpiring even harder in 2020.

But I do see the point. Sorry, I don't put much weight in your examples.

This line from that article seems to imply many won't be back: You’ve got to make some really harsh decisions......

Once again this is something relevant to us long suffering supporters, but of only minor relevance to current players. I can imagine an excited player being interviewed after the GF siren and being asked how does it feel to break the drought. Response, "oh, yeah, that too".

I'm not denying we may be unfit to run out quarters but surely if a team is not scoring much generally then it is likely to be at the bottom of any table showing low scoring at any period in a quarter, not just the end. That data doesn't necessarily show that we are worse in those 5 minutes than in any other 5 minutes. Perhaps it should be normalised by the total a team scores? Or am I missing something?

Good to see the Geelong whingers lose.

What!?! Surely you're not saying the FD has got it right. This thread will explode.

Part of the AFL's 'more goals' strategy? Though set shots are the most boring of goals, I guess they provide ad breaks.

That may well be true, however if he got it wrong in those 3/4 years, I'd rather he does something about it now that he has realised it than just bumble along.

No, DOX, I think you extrapolated rather than interpreted what he actually said. Your extrapolation may well be right (I have no idea) but it was beyond the literal meaning of his words.

Agree. Can anyone point to the coach of any AFL team that says anything truly surprising and informative in one of these 'fill-the-media' interviews? Sure there will be the odd example, but week in and week out it's all blah blah blah...

Oh dear. I fear you have heard what you want or expect to hear. Please read it again.

There are 42 in that list if I counted right. With 18 clubs, on average there would only be 2.3 from each team. So we seem to be average with 2 and it's hard to find 0.3 of a player though some might say some on our list are worth about that. (Lots of development would be nice too).

What were the numbers in the first half when we did seem to be good enough to keep the scores almost level?

Worth a shot. Just because he gets left behind by forwards doesn't mean that he can't leave them behind. Maybe as a back he focusses too much on his oppo rather than where the ball is going and thus gets lost.

I didn't read pages 3 to 6 but the earlier negative comments are really laughable. Some posters just enjoy being miserable. Here we are 17th playing a premiership favourite team in hot form. We lacked 2 of our best defenders, and no big forwards and yet kept with them till it rained. Most expected us to lose by a huge margin. Where's the evidence Richmond were playing in second gear - it's easy to say to fit a narrative, hard to prove. In fact they had lots of motivation to thrash us but didn't. Yes, we made errors in the first half. But it is not as if Richmond missed shots to keep us in the game. Sure they may have run over us even if it had't rained, but we don't know for sure - many of the people saying that were also saying we'd be run over from the first bounce (as many of us expected), but we weren't. It is also clear that the style of play we had in the first half does not work when it is wet. So not surprising Richmond took advantage. Obviously this is something we have to fix (along with much else). But in contrast with many posters here, I just hope the players look at what they were capable of in the first half and take some confidence from that.

Yes we are at that point. Anyway, for us it counted in R22. I think you have dodged the question. At least others pointed to WCE missing players.

How to you explain our victory over the Eagles in Perth a few weeks earlier in R22? I suspect things are more complicated.