DeeSpencer

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.

3 and a sub is probably right bench number. I think the current rotation level is about right. Too many becomes a track meet, too few and coaches will create an on ground rotation system that will have players out of positions to keep running

Happy to start with 16 as the game will still require some positions. If the game gets to 14 it will be all elite runners. One good tall at each end maybe. I think those against 16 are failing to realise how messy and impossible stoppages are now. They are the games predominant defensive measure. We need to thin the game out to an extent that stoppages don’t occur. Which means more space and more incentives to get the ball running in to space. Richmond have worked it out with 18, but even they are often hemmed in for a half until there relentless running opens games up.

Max needs to find a balance between being himself and dialing back the sarcasm and jokes. The Fritsch stuff is fun, but pumping up Jacko is a bit dangerous and he shouldn’t be talking up potential structures.

Is centre or ruck part of the spine? Is Petracca destined to be more of the classic centremen when he’s in the midfield? Is Lever our CHB or is it May and Oscar at full back? Is Fritsch our FF? Why do I care about these ratings?

Teams will try. But The alternative is they swap opponents in play. We keep our defenders in place and they’ve got forwards in the wrong positions.

The Eagles are likely to have Kennedy, Darling and a second ruck in round 1. Oscar will take the resting ruck, which means Lever will get Darling for a decent chunk of the game and is going to have to win or halve a number of contests. He doesn’t have to be an imposing stopper and the zone system should provide help to him inside 50 but he has to be stronger and more confident when one on one.

There’s an updated list on the AFL website. Weid is a test so should be right to go. Vanders was always going to be TBC. Any injury to his bad foot - even stubbing his toe - is going to be treated very conservatively. 6-8 weeks is the suggestion. Salem - well at least corona virus fears should make sure our players aren’t stupid enough to share water bottles. I swear I’ve seen some put their lips around the spray bottle openings. Not sure he makes it to Perth but hopefully not too long after. The biggest disappointments right now are Hannan and Petty not making any progress up from TBC with groin injuries. And the Joel Smith mystery.

I wouldn't put him on TV and I just about refuse to watch him on tv these days, but ranking the player the coaches had as the best in the game last year as the best in the game is not at all radical. In fact the most radical part of his list is Buddy Franklin at 33 give his injury history and decline. Pretty much every other player is reasonable.

‘Up on his toes’ interests me. Did Freo limit him to jogging and landing on his heels to prevent injury and somehow that didn’t help him? Sprinting on the front of his feet might just be less risky for his body than Freo thought. We certainly can’t do the same thing Freo did and hope it works. I’m a believer that there has to be some biometric changes

Explain how