Little Goffy

Wrong thread Garbo.

I think you'll find that reacting to all critiques of contemporary political economy as if they are an endorsement of socialism is, quite precisely, a straw man argument.

It's a bit like the South Asian farmer. One failed monsoon, you just barely get barely. Two failed monsoons, you go into debt just to eat and have to borrow for seed stock for the next season. Three failed monsoons, your children die. Personally I'm an optimist about vaccines by 2021, and so long as a reasonable effort is made to not balls everything up until then, first-tranche vaccine targeting can do a lot to contain risk by innoculating major vulnerable and vector populations like transport, retail, crowded facility/factory workers, educators and the all-important health and personal service sectors. For what it is worth, I monitor vaccine news very closely and the progress is legitimate. Don't know what the borsch is going on in Russia though.

Sadly, even without such scammers, pets are one of those areas you really need to investigate before you buy. But never mind, if you can hold out a little longer, just a couple of months from now the rescue shelters will have a great supply. Ugh, this whole subject area riles me.

The comparison to Hipwood is laughable. Wallace is doing the Wallace thing and just reacting to whatever happens to be hot that week. Hipwood just played one of his regulation two outstanding games for the season. Look back, it's like clockwork - two huge games a year and then maybe two more 'pretty good' games and a bunch of flashy meh. It will be interesting to see if he gets a second big one in the 2020 shortened fixture. 1/3rd of Hipwood's goals in 2020 were on Saturday and Weideman still has him beaten for goals per game, among a host of other stats. If we made the comparison on Friday Hipwood would look like nothing worth mentioning. I'm perfectly comfortable with the club's decision to focus on priming Weideman to be consistently outstanding as a true key forward, rather than letting him amble along without responsibility and ending up a perpetual third tall or some kind of utility - which is where Watts becomes relevant to the discussion. I think it very much relates to Petracca in the sense that the club has really pushed them to be the very best version of himself and not become complacent with just being very good.

I think Tomc playing as a ruck/forward 'tagger' is an interesting experiment with positive results in the one attempt so far. I'd cheerfully let him go at it a second time and definitely wouldn't risk Gawn if there's any doubt. Plus, Gawn has shown in the past that he can use time 'out' to think through his game and target improvements. If he comes back better at targeting his taps then he will actually be close to ruckman perfection. Personally I think the team let Gawn down a little by not putting away Adelaide early so he could be rested in the second half. But such is life when it's all on the line.

Elaborating on his point, Wallace goes on to argue that gifting games to kids who aren't quite ready is definitely the way to develop their confidence. He contrasted Melbourne's past successes of 2009-2014 exemplified by getting a quick first 50 games into Jack Watts, against their other failures such as the way they constantly held back Max Gawn instead of letting him play regularly while unfit and unprofessional. "Those Schwab era Demons really knew what they were doing, just like me at Richmond."

I think I'd be satisfied if this game was a draw. A true 'nobody wins' situation where both teams go home miserable. Wow, the apocalypse is making me mean.

Have Saints actually played Geelong yet? Meanwhile, How about that Hawthorn. Mm-mmm, fried potato, dropped in a muddy puddle.

Setting aside any hyperbole, it is great to have a respectable quality player offering something we were deficient in. Strange to think that our recruiting has actually been bang on for filling our list holes in the last few years, and really the only remaining structural gap is the Hogan-sized hole up forward, which we can at least now move to 'fingers crossed' condition on.

@Elegt I nominate a 'Rivers is soft and will never make it' thread.

Just for balance, I've been in the ranty wing of Team Fritta for some time. You'll find far too many posts of me insisting that Fritsch is in the top five of his draft and I stand by that. At the time this thread was started Fritsch was kicking his couple of goals but doing little else and that was definitely below his best, but the flat period for him of course was his inconsistency while neing tossed around the ground last year. 100% Fritsch output is a lock for All Australian. Anyway, the sack Taylor wailing was, like, three whole weeks ago and since then our season has been turned around largely by the resurgence of players who were 'trade disasters' and 'not up to it' and 'failed experiments' as recently as July.

Our consistent weakpoint all season has been tackling and especially tackling inside forward 50. This game, six players laid one tackle inside 50 each, and Tom McDonald laid three, on the way to also being our leading tackler for the day with seven. He stays for at least another week to see how this evolves. He may have found a new role. New, and possibly unique, the game's only 196cm pressure forward. And if he is capable of being the humble hard worker he was tonight then he becomes a great support for the confidence-driven Weideman and the kid Jackson. I also can't agree with dropping Jones as I felt he was an effective contributor and he just looked so damn happy. Plus, I'm still on the fantasy ride to him playing his 300th in a winning grand final! For me, the outs for Gawn (if played) and Viney are - Melksham - consistently underwhelming. VanDenBerg - currently not enough upside to justify the brain farts. Sure, it looks like a tall team, but that's okay if one of your tall forwards is running around laying tackles and the other is just whatever exactly it is that Luke Jackson is!

Injury fecalised their season. Won't know where they really are until next year. but I expect us to be playing them in finals in 2021.

They could realistcially have experimented with putting him at full forward. A bit less of a bashing for him, and Carlton are bereft, bereft I tells ya, due to injured to forwards.

Westhoff retires, Port decide they need an additional mature forward to partner with Dixon. McDonald to Port for Watts and change. Good times.

Not sure if this is the same as others have shared, but AFL Website has included some footage of Crows targeting Gawn. https://www.afl.com.au/video/482945/exclusive-vision-crows-disgraceful-attack-on-sore-gawn?videoId=482945&modal=true&type=video&publishFrom=1596928380001 I'm actually now at the point of hoping they lose every game for the season. I might have had sympathy for Matthew Nicks up to a point but for a zero-win coach to be putting his time into getting talented players to focus on dog acts behind the ball is just miserable. Jake Lever must be immensely confident of his decision, there. Hmm, I wonder, Laird's form has dipped a bit and he is being played a bit away from his defensive rebound role where we would love to have him... RFA 2021, but Crows might want to clear him before he just walks. Lol, I just had a look across their list for fun and they are just in so much trouble. Winless with a mature playing group - average of best 22 has been over 25yrs and they've had the older team in a majority of their games. A team with zero wins that knows things are going to get worse? Good times.

You must really rate North - we only played one good quarter last week and won by 51!

What I've learned is that Malthouse maintains an archive of 'points to say' about other clubs, presumably coaches, players, and anyone he might ever bother to use for content for boosting his online presence. He is, basically, a well-organised blogger.

Of Freo's draftees I would have taken either Young or Henry before Serong. I think they did very well out of that draft but I also don't think Serong offers much of anything we are short of. I also happen to have a gut feeling that the Demons have ended up with the best career-span player available at all three of their selections, so I'm not hurting and wish Freo all the best.

We really need an eyeroll 'like' button. Or a broken record. ?

Seems like Port are determine to get things out of the Tiger's reach as soon as possible.

Seems odd that the AFL would protect the stars from being held to account for breaking the rules, but then NOT protect the stars from being negated on field by opponents breaking the rules. Where is the win here? D-U-O-A. My acronym of the week. Starts with 'Disappeared Up...'.

There's the three I think could drop out of the eight. Our main rival to climb into the eight is of course the Bulldogs. (Because Essendon will implode at some point and Gold Coast will inevitably finish a respectable, promising 10th-ish ready to pick up their folllow-up set of priority picks). We need to pick up two wins, or, one win plus the 'game in hand' win, in comparison to just one of those three teams. We directly play against the two most vulnerable teams currently in the eight. Strangely, the only remaining 'scalp' we can aim to take is St Kilda. Other than that we are playing low-ladder teams and a string of proverbial 8-point games. Heh, even stranger, it is realistic to expect to make the eight based on only a minor improvement to our current form.

Except for Gawn, none of the mooted 'outs' are a structural problem. Viney out just lets Brayshaw and Harmes spend more time on the ball. VanDenBerg and Nibbler are not hard to find alternatives for. Lockhart is more specialised but also coverable, especially given Jetta should be fresh. One of the structural things our game has been missing this year is tackles and pressure inside forward 50. I'd presume that was the reason for including Nibbler on Wednesday, but he didn't show a whole lot and obviously is now unavailable while he serves Shaun Burgoyne's suspension. So I'm definitely a fan of getting Pickett in and maybe even Jordan to add a bit of ground-level pressure to create some goals and just make it that little bit harder for opponents to pick and choose how they counterattack.