Akum

It's simple - Watts fits Port's game style better than ours. Classic win-win - he'll play better with Port (and they'll play better with him); we'll play better without him. Should be an interesting GF!

8 to Duckwood

Clearly the AFL doesn't want the Dees in the GF. No such free as in the back any more.

One of the really annoying things about the game is that teams who play defensive and even bend the rules seem to get more friendly umpiring. Something I can never understand.

Couldn't agree with you more. You get the feeling that Dees vs Dogs GF would not be the AFL's preferred outcome. I reckon a lot of the gripes this year about AFLW are because of all the hype about the Blues vs Pies season opener. The worst game of AFLW between the worst two teams, whose AFL clubs both give the impression of being ho-hum about it.

... and getting a highly-skilled intercept-marking defender seems to have really added so much to the team structure and performance.

They're playing as if they really have a point to prove, having just missed out on finals last year.

Was good to see Alyssa MIfsud back as well, and giving away a few goals to teammates.

16 scoring shots to 4.

We'll beat Geelong without Viney.

Good "thoughts" Poita. GWS prepared for this well. They picked their two toughest players to wear Daisy and O'Dea like a glove for much of the game, (though if Paxman hadn't gone down they probably wouldn't have been able to cover the three of them), so our two best ball users were under the pump most of the time; when they did get clear, they were really damaging. GWS defended in numbers and stopped us spreading from stoppages pretty well; they tried to score on fast breaks, and did move the ball well at times. As others have said, defensive skills are easier to teach to "average" players than attacking skills - the tackling, for example, has gone up a notch from last year, as has teams playing a defensive strategy. It will take some time for the attacking skills to catch up. And there are a number of players from other sports who have definite athletic ability but are still learning the skills. The problem about expansion is that now everybody else wants a piece of the pie, including the clubs that were indifferent at the beginning, though other clubs might feel justified in believing they were gazumped at the original allocation. The AFL will probably engineer it so that the big Melbourne clubs, Sydney and Brisbane (GCS) will be at the head of the queue.

I've only seen the highlights, but most of our goalscoring moves seemed to be initiated by Elise O'Dea.

The last time AFL looked like becoming a rolling maul (Swans defensive "flood"; Hawks "rolling zone") it got picked apart first by the Cats and to a lesser extent the Dogs by rapid ball movement and precision foot skills. So much so that Clarko saw that this was a far more effective way to play and changed the Hawks style accordingly. These things can change within the course of a season, and if you get caught out with last year's game style, which other teams have worked hard to counter, you can end up holding a ticket for a bus that left long ago. The trick, as Clarko realised when he had the cattle, is to develop next year's game style.

Part of me can't help but wonder whether you're on to something here. But we probably won't find out until the 30-year rule is up. Or until one of them writes a book.

Again, for the umpteenth time: Watts is gone. He's now someone else's problem, probably Port's. Goody stays and continues to be a vital factor for us and our future success. And because it's Goody who's the ongoing concern as far as we (MFC) are concerned, some of us feel that Goody could have handled his share of this thing better. That's it.