RalphiusMaximus

We won't beat North. Not going to happen.

I think he takes a random sampling of the posts each week. This would give a balance of fairness and not requiring too much maths and effort to make work. It would probably be better to average the scores across all votes posted, but that's going to wind up being a massive pain to do every week.

We have a perfectly good CHF. The problem is that we're playing him at FF and ruining his games by making him sit in the square and lobbing high balls onto his head. What we need to do is let Hogan play at CHF where he belongs and put the resting/spare ruck in at FF, whether that's Pedersen, Frost, Watts or King I know not. Hogan's strength is his mobility, not his power marking. We need to give him the freedom to run his man into the ground. Weideman is a long-term prospect, not a quick fix for this season.

Hell, at least a kitten is going to get a new home.

Kennedy is the only one who really deserves a nod.

Today we saw two massive failures, one from the team and one from the coaches. Team: our kicking was putrid. At half time, EVERY ONE of the bomber's goals had come from turnovers. Think about that. If we had been able to hit our targets, they wouldn't have had a goal for the half. It's been years since I've seen such a poor display of basic skills, and the pressure is no excuse. They are supposed to be a team of competitive beasts but the moment they were put under pressure they crumbled. Coaches: What the hell were they thinking dropping everyone behind the ball like that? Where was the forward pressure? We would take the ball to HF, turn it over and immediately the entire team turned and ran back to our defensive 50. Was this supposed to ensure that they wouldn't take any marks in range of the goals? It certainly didn't achieve that goal. All it did was give the Bombers the freedom to chip the ball down the field under no pressure and rack up extra uncontested stats. On a side note, what the hell does Hogan think he's doing? He's supposed to be an endurance athlete. His game is built around mobility. The last thing he should be doing is standing in the goalsquare surrounded by opponents and calling for the ball to be dropped on his head. He needs to get on his bike and start working his man over, long runs up to the wing, back to the square, back out to CHF, etc. He's no use to anyone just wasting away down there.

So, anyone know when the game is actually starting tomorrow? I've seen suggestions of 1, 2 and 3pm so far.

Wouldn't want to go to the dogs. He'd have to fight for his spot with them.

If you're on footytips then you can still join and bring your score across.

Now THAT was a pass! Shocking finish though, there's no excuse for missing from there.

Scully doesn't rush his kicks, he just has poor technique and floats them.

Cotchin should be far better than he is. All the skill in the world can't make up for being soft, lazy and careless. Jack seems to be doing what he can though which is nice. . I'm amazed that Collingwood aren't throwing bodies in and smashing into the contest. After last week surely they have something to prove? They're still looking for cheap outside ball. If they play like this against us they'll get smashed.

I like the notion, but I don't know how well the "blokes" on the show will cope. Will they give her enough space and airtime to be a serious part of the show or will she be relegated to the token female who gets talked over and largely ignored? As for the show as a whole, I can't believe I'm saying this but it's gone to hell since Eddie left. I just can't be bothered with them anymore except to flip the channel and try to catch the Melbourne teams and predictions. There's only so much you can take of toilet humour and juvenile pranks. Which brings me back to the thing about introducing a woman into the Bloke's club...

EVERY Home side won! How often does that happen?

No, they paid an end of first round pick for the best mid in the draft who would have otherwise gone top two. Heeney, like Ablett before him, has the distinction of having forced a rule change due to the manner in which he was acquired by his club.

They also got well on top when Gawn was off the ground. Pedersen and Frost aren't good enough back-up.

Talking footy was actually quite good tonight. Lots of discussion of the drug tests, of course. They really rate Oliver and his Rising Star Nom. Also talked up the overall quality of the top 5 draftees who all got games this week and all looked AFL-ready. Wietering and Oliver were singled out from the bunch for their awesome games. Watts got a big wrap as well for his game. Said he had set a new bar for himself and now he needs to play like that every week. They also rate the direction Melbourne has taken with their gameplan.

With those numbers, how could they not give it to him?

I was at the Doggies game (they were giving away free tickets to boost their numbers), and I have to say that as impressive as they were, their skills were terrible. While we expect the pressure and run that they used to smash Freo in the first quarter, we would normally expect good kicking as well and they just didn't deliver. Far too many passes fell short and wound up being contested balls again. It's a sad reflection on the state of Fremantle's play that they let the Doggies get away with it. I don't see the better sides letting them off the hook if they keep kicking like that. Watching the Hawks/Geelong game, I don't understand the raving about Dangerfield. He was explosive and won heaps of the ball, but his disposal was Moloney-like. His handpassing was mostly to the feet rather than the hands and he constantly launched blind long bombs out of traffic. I don't think his teammates will be quite as happy with his game as the media are. Zac Smith started really well but vanished from the game after quarter time. That being said, this game shows us clearly how far we still have to go. Two of the best in the league, with seven of the last nine flags between them and they set the standard again. I didn't see the WC game, but I would think that at this stage they are the only other side at this level.

I actually felt a little sorry for Bucks tonight. He looked so shocked in the coaching box, and then having to front the media after that week and such a shocking performance.

GC were my bet for the intestate team that did really badly. Now I'm really puzzled. West Coast seem a bit obvious.

Sydney have a couple of candidates for Rising Star this week. They just absolutely smashed the Pies. Much as I love the thought of Collingwood getting thrashed, that was painful to watch.

You know who the chief butchers were today for us? Watts and Viney. 5 Clangers each.

That was a sensational feeling in the crowd today when we started stringing goals together in the fourth. Then right at the end when the whisper went around that there was only 10 seconds left and we're two points up... This time we made sure we had numbers back and held the lead. 28,500-odd in the crowd today, and if there were 50 GWS supporters I'd be shocked. Awesome effort from the fans to come out in numbers and get behind the team. For those saying we stole the game and GWS should have had it by 10 goals, how is their missing shots on goal any different from us missing passes to our forwards? If you apply the same standard then we would have had more scoring shots and wound up ahead anyway. On that topic, our delivery to the forwards was disgraceful for most of the match. Too many of our mids still can't hit a leading target and it killed poor Jesse for three quarters. In the second and third the majority of our F50 entries were to the advantage of the defenders. One horrid example in Q3, Harmes was free in the 50. A pass of no more than 30m or so from HF missed him by a good 20m and landed in the middle of three unmarked defenders. To Harmes' credit, he hurled himself into the pack and managed to prevent a mark, but could do nothing to stop them taking it away. Following on from THAT topic, it's no mistake that our success in the fourth came off the back of getting some good ball-users into the middle. Jones to HB, Oliver as the extractor and Garlett and Watts delivering forward made a huge difference and you could see how happy Hogan was when he finally got a decent pass from Watts and clunked the mark. Re next week, aside from OMac hurting his ankle, I'm pretty sure I saw Kent limping off the ground in the fourth. I would think if he's hurt they'd bring in Petracca as a straight swap. It would be a great game for him to debut. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this game. 3 goals between both sides for the whole of Q2 and 3 is a poor effort, but we fought it out, we kept in touch and we saw some really good play in the final quarter to take it away from them. Bring on next week.

Was that the one on the wing where he wrestled and tossed his opponent aside?