Little Goffy

I mean, rebounds happen and all that, but there's only so far you can stretch the elastic.

I think early in the game, especially the second quarter, there were too many moments where we thought too much about how cool we'd look while doing the fancy stuff. Really good mental reset to get our focus back. Aside from a collection of excellent performances, that's the big thing I'm taking from the game. Jake Bowey still make me so very happy. Every time he gets it, our situation improves a little.

I had a nightmare just the other night where my son and I were barricading ourselves into our two-storey house to keep out wandering zombies. I don't have a son and I live in an apartment, but the zombies have me worried. This game can't start soon enough.

Hmm, I do wonder how many of those scenarios are actually 'a long term coach left the club in a mess because they kept making decisions to keep their position tenable each year and eventually it all caught up with the club and left them in the [censored zone], causing multiple coaches to be burned through before any restoration began. Kevin Sheedy and Leigh Matthews at least had a collection of premierships, but then at North you've got Brad Scott clinging on for almost a decade and being unmistakably responsible for wrecking the list and the culture. Fun fact - Brad Scott's first season at North was an exact 50% win rate. He currently has exactly 50% in his first season at Essendon. He also has an exact 50% win-loss rate in finals(4 -4), and if Essendon lose next week he'll have an exact 111-111 win-loss count from his 222 home-away games as coach!

Tasmania will just get a ferry.

Might be true now that he's pinged a hamstring, but his previous three games netted seven goals and four goal assists. Very handy spent force!

Good round of football, this. Such a wild set of results that nobody can really make a clear claim to understand what it all means. Fun that the biggest upsets - Gold Coast vs Brisbane and Adelaide vs Port - are also the only two games with any margin to speak of. Hey, if 13th and 14th can beat 2nd and 3rd, maybe even West Coast are a chance to miraculously bridge the gap between them and second last? But seriously, there could not have been a better time to be reminded to never take any team lightly. Plus, 2nd is now in the mix so it is time to get serious.

Meanwhile, Franklin subbed off with a hamstring. Didn't look like much, but there's not much left in the season either.

Which just makes all the more impressive and reassuring that he's finally learned to do it well in his 30s!

Checks list... COME OOOOOON YOU CROWS!

Basically the Gold Coast club motto. Except this time... they might yet hold on! Is there a way to slip them a note to convince them that percentage matters?

She did say she was concussed. Or did you forget that!? Oh no, it's contagious!

Yep, Blues are now our only remaining proverbial 8-point game. Win that one and it becomes near-impossible for us to miss top-4. All teams chasing for our top-4 spot now need to pick up at least two wins compared to us, thanks to our percentage. That stays true even if the Saints win tomorrow. Beat Richmond on Sunday and obviously that makes the gap three wins, with just four more rounds to go. Aaaand as I type this Gold Coast are ahead of Brisbane... which would very much bring 3rd into play... and with Port now hitting a solid bollard even 2nd isn't out of possibility if they can fluff it against the Crows tonight, too!

I'm getting a strange premonition that the Blues' run will be a bit like our 2018 - break into finals with a bit of form, win an elimination final over a roughly-equal team due for a letdown, have a special night out in a semi-final beating a vulnerable top-4 team, and then get absolutely splattered in a prelim. Coming up against any of Saints, Cats or Giants, the Blues would certainly feel they had the upper hand at the moment. Given that they've now beaten Collingwood as well as giving Port a thorough whack, anything is possible. Collingwood out in straight sets to Melbourne then Carlton... oh, the humanity!

What's going on in the Geelong - Freo game? Not free-to-air where I am, and I just flicked through stats and noticed 15 hit-outs already - on target for about 150 for the game! Is that that much of a slog down there?

Pick 4 is, objectively, the best draft pick this century. In fact, the unsuccessful pick 4s are almost entirely limited to Barry Prendergast selections! Actually, on further investigation pick 5 may actually have pick 4 just slightly beaten thanks to the incredibly early run of McVeigh, Franklin and Pendlebury, and overall consistency with almost no 'misses', and those misses are GWS anyway. So I'll be able to remain calm if Freo put in a little bit of a late season spark and somehow climb to 5th-last! We should try to trade up to get both 4 and 5 because I don't think there's ever been a draft without at least one of them going on to be absolute pinnacle-level champions.

If there's non-alcoholic whiskey, why aren't there alcoholic bananas yet? Come on, Science, we're relying on you!

McKay is a gun but we don't need the super premium option. We need a job done and it can be done by someone on less than half the salary McKay claims and about a quarter of the trade value. Our draft hand this year (which I suspect will once again be partially played into next year) is the key to turning a peak into a dynasty and it would take a truly exceptional opportunity to convince me that tossing it in would be worth it.

That scene with the crowd of boofheads at the race (10:30) enrages me every time. A bunch of them where smiling and enjoying themselves - genuinely just revelling in the chance to form a pack to be abusive to a stranger. In contrast, it is interesting and a little bit beautiful to see genuine hard-nut Viney at this level of also being a genuine clear thinker about the importance of managing your emotional balance.

So, can I be first to declare the opening of Colliwobble season? Bit early this year, but climate change is messing up all of these natural cycles.

Personally I'd like to congratulate Carlton for finidng a way to make BT go quiet for a while. Barely a peep out of him. You can feel the other commentators being made uncomfortable, too.

Fremantle's part in this trade is starting to look like a Russian 'goodwill gesture' rout.

You'd have James Bartel and 'a zippier Simon Black', as per the original product labels! I think Scully was limited a bit in ways nobody picked up pre-drafting, but Trengove was the real tragedy of both development failure and career-crippling injury. But this thread keeps making me anxious because I simply cannot see the basis for burning multiple good draft picks just to turn pick ~4 into pick 1. I'm just going to repeat over and over - I'd much rather a second bite at the cherry, such as pushing our pick 15 a bit higher by packaging it with later picks or pick swaps.

For the first time, I'm getting a feeling like the women's team might get on a roll this coming season and really hand out some thumpings. No idea why I didn't feel it before - it is the rational assessment of how awesome we are - but maybe it is just the realisation that our new captain is my favourite kind of high-impact high-entertainment player with loads of initiative. But only because AFL doesn't have goalies. I'll always be loyal to goalies!

Google search results for 'feeling well loose': Looks like Richmond are in for a rough day.