DeeSpencer

Book a table in your own home.

Unless the Tigers relocated to Sydney at some stage last September I think last years GF would've still been played at MCG. Otherwise I agree.

They might try, but it's utter nonsense. If we stop after 1,2, 4 or 6 games and have a 8-16 week lay off what does it matter? Stop when it's safe to stop and if we have to play September to December then do that. If we can't get restarted at all then so be it.

Goody repeatedly said he was one of his closest mates. A terrible Principal and a paedophilia isn't something to be glad about and the covid 19 sure isn't either. So I doubt he's smiling given there's a high chance he's out of a job now with the VAFA season on hold.

The AFL have 120M dollar future fund and own Etihad stadium. They also have a broadcast deal that pays them 450M a year when the seasons get back to normal. Players share in about 12M for 40 people. My point is the AFL can guarantee the short to medium term survival of clubs. Lets have a debt demolishion campaign at the end of all this when we can survey the damage and the interest payments kick in. In the mean time spend your money on family, friends and support local businesses.

I think Gill has indicated that he'll take a cut, he has to do. No issues with the players holding out at this stage. Why volunteer to get less? Agreeing to 20% less for 20% games on it's own is fair enough but when you could lose 50, 80 or 100% of the season it's a dangerous precedent to agree to.

We won’t be smart enough or spend the money on the legal measures that China have implemented. And we sure won’t start introducing the very questionable methods they use in China. Plus the issues of what happens when China re opens for business. The other thing that really concerns me is China is warming up. Northern hemisphere countries have the chance to keep it under control when people are healthier in summer. Vitamin d, vitamin c, less colds and flu etc. Even with a lot less flu this year we will go the other way in May/June

The test has a high false negative rate. No one knows how high just yet because there’s lots of tests and lots of labs scaling up without established standards. But it’s possible a swab of the mouth and nose is poorly conducted and doesn’t get any virus. To constantly test and retest all 800 AFL players when those tests are needed for other people would be a waste of resources. Until we go in to full lockdown I’d be fine with players training in small groups (say 5-10) with non contact and lots of precautions. The NRL bleaching balls because of a crowd was peak stupidity but they were kind of right.

They can get the test back by tomorrow. It's still far more likely to be any other illness than covid-19, particularly when Pendles has similar symptoms.

There's 3 priorities in all of this. Ranked from the most vital immediately to the important but less so in the short term. 1. Stop the spread of disease daylight more daylight 2. Look after each other - act as a community, in physical and mental well-being 3. Do what we can for the economy - money has to keep flowing wherever possible AFL Players playing are risking point 1. Both for the individual participants but also for that the community doesn't heed the message that we still need to social distance far more. Oh the footy is on - everything is normal, I don't have to listen to the experts. But games of footy would be such a great distraction and excitement. Just to escape from the overwhelming crush of the disease would mean so much. And footy is that thing for so many of us. And point 3 matters. Even if it's just a pizza and a 6 pack of beers delivered whilst you watch the footy on a Friday night that supports the local pizza shop. But it really comes back to point 1 and stopping the spread of the disease. If the players do play they are risking spread within their team and the opponents. But right now they've been isolated for a week, they are healthy, they are keen to play. So maybe the bigger issue is the community 'look' of having them play. And that's where the messaging has to come in that they aren't playing because they don't think this is serious. Government Health ads have to run during the games. Pubs have to make it clear that more than about 50 people and any kind of crowding is incredibly foolish. Players have to put out a message that they aren't playing because the risks are minimal, in fact it's the opposite. They are playing because it's real and they want to spread that message.

I don't think our trade with North had a coronavirus get out clause.

My baseline is that if everyone else is allowed to work then the players should too. But the travel is problematic. Even in chartered flights and sealed off hotel rooms that's a minimum of 40 (cut down assistant coaches and support staff) spending a lot of time together. And then the games as at least 47 (including umps) to breath on each other for 2 hours, plus the coaches and staff. It ends up mixing about 80 people together and that's if you keep commentators, media, ground staff well clear. Now in many ways that's less dangerous than just catching the train! But people need to catch trains. Do footballers need to work at all?

Yep, that was my point. I don’t mean to be insensitive to players but the vast majority should be concerned about health more than wealth. Small businesses and casual employees are in much tougher position.

The minimum wage is 110k this year. If you're 19-21 I think you can survive pretty well on 110k a year. If you're 22-24 that means apart from a limited number of mature age draftees you've already had 2 years of around 100k and another 2 years of more (probably 150+ pa) under your belt. If you're manager and financial adviser have overextended your debt buying too much property based on match payments then get better advice. Some AFL players have kids pretty early, but are they really forking out big bucks for private primary school fees? If so, that means they've had at least 5 years of AFL wages. The guys who have school aged kids on the Melbourne list are Nath Jones, Jetta and who else? They might have match payments and performance bonuses in their contracts given their age but they have been on a list for over a decade. I'm sorry but the only players who I can imagine are truly 'desperate' for the match payments are those who have made poor financial decisions and in particular those who have gambling problems.

Italy started locking down regions in late Feb after the first deaths, then banned crowds on March 4th, then lockdown on March 9. They still took a huge leap in cases and deaths every step of the way. They were chasing their tails. Of course there's thousands of people who catch it and don't have symptoms so don't get tested but 21,157 cases and 1,441 deaths. That's 6.8% right there. Whether it's 5 or 10 it's a huge number of people. Do you know how many ICU beds we have here? And with negative pressure ventilation to keep other safe from catching it? Ventilators and ECMO machines? There's really only about 4 public hospitals in Melbourne I'd want to be in if I needed that level of care. If 5,000 people in Melbourne get it quickly and 5% of them need extensive treatment because they are at risk of dying then that's 250 ventilators and that's probably about us done. Full. Finished. Next person in means someone has to chosen to die. If 10,000 people in Melbourne get it we'd be lucky to do better than 100 dead, probably more. All the issues you bring up are serious but you're pretty much advocating that we choose the Black Saturday bushfires over the recent Gippsland fires. You're saying lets have a couple of hundred people die instead of widespread economic damage. It's a terrible argument, because there's still going to be widespread economic damage. Once 200 people die everyone will know someone who knows someone and will want tougher measures and be afraid to go outside. 200 dead and no one wants to go the funerals, 1000 sick so can't go anyway, 3000 living with the sick people, 10,000 who have had contact with a sick person or a close contact to that sick person. It's better to prevent the spread and prevent as many deaths now whilst we can than wait until after the deaths.

Smoking and the elderly population are the two absolute worst ones. If you're a smoker here you should go get patches, gum, hypnotism whatever you can do to give your lungs a break ASAP. No real way to test it but I also think kissing as a greeting can't be dismissed as a joke. That level of close contact will spread it at a huge speed.

The AFL has a 60 million dollar future fund and own a stadium in the Dockland's worth probably about a billion dollars. Clubs might have anywhere up to a 30 million dollar black hole for this year and the AFL have to pay their own expense bill which is something crazy like 130 million a year to run the comp. Players on match payments will earn less. Players on huge fixed contracts should consider a donation back to the clubs I believe. Making 800k without games doesn't seem fair to me. But how much that donation is has to be left up to the individual if the have guaranteed contracts. The point is the AFL and clubs should be able to fund their way out of this. If clubs ask for donations to pay down debt it should be in a years time when games are back on and revenue is coming in. There's a whole bunch of industries where the businesses and employees will be in long term trouble that need government support so everyone pulls through and keeps the economy turning once we are through the worst of it.

Read almost anything about what's happening in Italy and tell me that people dying is better than people losing money. Plenty of young or middle aged people will long lives ahead of them will die, either from chronic health conditions making it worse or just bad luck. There's not an opportunity to just limit it to nursing home bound 85 year olds. The AFL can make back the money pretty easily. And if every player got docked 30% of their pay for the year that wouldn't be the end of the world either.

Reasonable to assume you can't go the pub to watch it, but otherwise if you weren't going to pay to go you don't really deserve something for free now. Members should all be given special access to codes to watch the streams. That would be the fairest result.

AFL players can go between club and family with little to no contact with anyone else in between. VFL players have day jobs mingling with the community. But if there's enough community spread to endanger the average VFL player in regular day to day jobs and life then by that stage I can't see how the AFL players won't be impacted. The AFL are trying to thread the needle here and there's so little margin for error.

Unless we charter a plane and stay in a professionally cleaned and double checked hotel I wouldn't send a team to Perth. Airports, planes, hotels - that's too much movement.

Happy to write off the very elderly stuck in nursing homes with poor quality of life, they've had a good run. But would rather my parents be around for a while yet. And the sick includes a whole bunch of people who have long and productive lives in front of them. We should all do what we can to stop the spread. A casey practice match isn't much to give up.

The rumours are circulating that the Eagles are leaning towards Bailey Williams as the 2nd ruck. Big forward/ruck who has a huge leap but probably isn't very refined in the position. So the ruck minutes might not be the biggest concern. Even at less that peak fitness Gawn should do close to 80% in there. If we look to send Melksham in a tagging role to McGovern as we have done to interceptors before will it work? Does that mean Fritsch to Sheppard? T Mc on Barrass? So then we've got Hurn or Nelson on the other tall. Do we need the hope of Weid's marking or do we want Jackson on the hope he can provide something in the air and on the ground?

I think good coaching is always aggressive, proactive and looking to use skills to dictate to opponents. But at the same time you have to play the percentages, reckless risk doesn't usually work out. One of the clearest positives in the move to 16 from 18 would be getting rid of 2 bad players a week. I'd go to 3 and a sub so it would be more like 2.5 from the team. Looking at projected round 1 teams today there's a fair bit of talent spread across the league but it's clear from recent seasons (none more so than ours last year) that the depth falls away really quickly with injuries.

Teams like Richmond and Hawthorn have bought in great offensive systems. The Hawthorn kicking game. The Richmond run and gun handballing. But they've also been built on the back of really strong defensive systems. The Hawks pioneered the full ground press and then added a zone system. Richmond's pressure is stronger than any side and they always get defenders free behind the ball waiting for the dump kicks. Their success in 2017 started with reshaping their forwards to be far more defensive and their mids applying pressure rather than chasing kicks. The greatest similarity is that both sides aren't about directly attacking by winning stoppages and contests and forcing the game that way. They are happy to concede clearances and force bad turnovers and take the game on from there. Adelaide might be the closest we've come to a primarily attacking team in the last decade or so and they were stomped by the Tigers pressure in the grand final. I just can't see it switching to favour a team that uses skill and attacking flair without a great defensive system.