Adam The God

If you look at the rules, he has to go. High impact and careless, and he left the ground to make contact. Players have a duty of care. He has to go. On top of this, Gus' father in law took his own life with CTE (from acquired brain injury in sport), Gus may never player again and the AFL is currently engaged in a law suit with a group of ex players who have suffered similar repeated concussions. We've just had another player retire as a result of this in McCartin. Having said all this, the AFL couldn't give a stuff about anything but revenue. Maynard will get off when he absolutely shouldn't.

So my big fear came to fruition. We kicked ourselves out of it. TMac and Fritta miss montys they'd normally convert and that's the game. 'Win the big moments' and we didn't. I think we've cost us ourselves a shot at the 14th flag.

Sportsbet odds have come in even further this morning. Collingwood paying $1.88 and Melbourne paying $1.92. It's very likely they're even come the bounce of the ball. I've been a little nervous over the past week or so, but can't figure out whether it's more excitement or dread. I think my nerves will start to ramp up between 5-7pm, and my stomach will churn for probably the entire game. If we get our game right, we should win, but if we allow them to move the ball from half back and we're not on the entire night, I think they'll get us.

He did play for Hawthorn though.

Don't you mean "YEP BETTER THAN CHARLIE SPARGO"? Just for clarity...

Mate, you spent 3 days saying he was finished, he wouldn't be back in, he was a terrible human and should be sent to Azkaban. And now you don't have a problem with him returning? lol you funny guy.

"To me... to me... to me..." He was insightful, but he's less inventive than me with his vocabulary.

Because it's gonna rain mate. That completely takes away our intercept ability in the air and also helps nullify their talls in the air.

Here he goes again, shouting away. Pretty much every one of your posts these days, mate, I think of Abe Simpson shouting at the clouds...

It's ironic that we've gone back to this after Goody said they liked the three talls and wouldn't be reverting from this again. FWIW, I actually think it's the right call on this particular occasion. May and Lever rarely do well intercepting in the wet, just like Max, so having to worry about another tall around them potentially fumbling, is not something we need. Instead, we have smalls and mediums to mop up at ground level and hopefully keep their smalls at bay. I think this is a complete horses for courses move. If we were playing Brisbane this week, I suspect we'd have three defensive talls. What's unusual is we didn't try two talls on KB, we went with three. And it worked very well, but they were minus McStay. I presume we're banking on winning CP and territory, and on slow plays defending inside 50s, we'll drop Max behind the ball. While on fast plays, we'll be better with quicker smalls, rather than cumbersome talls, and the Collingwood talls are unlikely to clunk a lot in the rain/greasy conditions.

Yep, as I said in the Trades thread, I'm happy about this. More pressure on Chandler's spot and those other high half forward roles is a good thing.

Reckon he has x factor and pace. We need more pressure for spots there. We genuinely had no competition for Chandler for weeks when he was just nowhere near getting the job done. The game is going this way and I'd say he'd be on small dollar for more years (takes him to 31). Seems like a classic MFC move. For needs and they've targeted their man and got him.

McAdam is a gun. I'm stoked.

I wonder if this is why we cooled on Kozzy's mate...

Love it. Perfect fit for us I reckon. Thanks for the goss mate and since you're SA based, I'm gonna say you've nailed it haha. 🤞

That's all lovely, except Grundy is an AA and isn't going to hang around in the magoos until Max gets injured. We will not keep him unless something happens to Max during this finals series. We've told him to look around. Listen to Goody's presser today. He was asked what he thought of Brodie exploring his options with a competitor of ours and Goody said our list management team were across it.

I was joking haha. Not a very good joke. Meatloaf's voice was shot.

Nah, Meatloaf also mimed his. Was just a poor mix. Wasn't Meaty's fault.

The Carlton game was the perfect dress rehearsal for this game. Wet and we were up against two rucks. We played Gawn and Grundy and the FD didn't like what they saw. He won't be selected.

FWLIW, Alison O'Connor on AFL.com.au is tipping us to win this by 7 points. Interesting... https://www.afl.com.au/news/1024726/mega-preview-magpies-v-demons-the-stats-that-matter-who-wins-and-why Yet the odds are still slightly favouring Collingwood. I suspect they might come in again (as they have today) with the announcement of the teams tomorrow night.

Fascinating. I wonder if that would be unusual. The tail wagging the dog, but in a good way. Player empowerment. @Engorged Onion, from a psychological perspective, would this be a risky paradigm to set up?

That's fascinating if only to show that Whatley knows full well about player load management and even saw it with his own team last year. I no longer watch AFL media, but has he at all referenced this on 360 this year?

I reckon we'll go TMac for Melksham and Hibbo for Laurie. Not sure who plays sub out of Smith or Hibbo. They may go with Smith as sub.

Deadset ridiculous call.

IMV, it was always the plan to give him CBAs again later in the season. I've written about this multiple times now, but for the first 9 rounds, he had high CBAs for his standards, and when people were calling for him to go back in there during clearly a heavy loading phase, I was saying he'd go back in there once he started to taper. Sure enough, the last 5-6 weeks of the H&A season, he has gone back to having strategic CBAs. Small forwards don't tend to dominate finals series' but that's why it's great to have an outlet to get him involved if needed. There's been a bit of talk on Demonland about playing Kozzy deep out of the square in this QF. Will be fascinating if we try that. Pretty hard if you're winning territory and it's always in there though. 😉