hardtack

Nice one... that’s a 3rd hypothesis! Here are the other two (which you’ve ignored as they probably don’t suit your China bashing agenda): “For many years, medical historians and epidemiologists hypothesized that the outbreak could have started at: 1. A British army base in Étaples, France or 2. At Fort Riley in Kansas, where the first American cases of this new strain of flu were recorded in March of 1918.

With no crowds, I think a lot of the “where you play” aspect is taken out of the equation. They are inside a stadium that could be anywhere, but without the crowd influencing umpiring decisions.

Yes, but I don’t subscribe to the idea that we are the AFL’s “whipping boy”; we get what we get courtesy of poor performances. However, I do think that the other considerations I mentioned will come into play, making it a very unpredictable season (much more so than usual).

Hey, it’s the off season ?

I can’t read the article (paywall), so I don’t know how they come to their conclusions, but I would have thought that early rounds being played to empty stadiums could have a big bearing on results, particularly in SA and WA where the crowds have typically had a big impact on umpiring decisions. Another consideration is the fact that there will be no VFL competition (is that right?), meaning that the clubs who can keep their best 22 on the field deepest into the competition may have an edge, due to replacement players, despite training, possibly not being at full match fitness.

A two week lockdown? Can’t see that achieving too much.

Well, going on your logic, most Demonlanders must be right leaning, based on the similar victim mentality they display in the belief that the MFC is hated by the AFL and umpires ?

Which is essentially what I’ve been saying.

It’s pretty hard to avoid politics when the sporting bans etc are to some degree, politically driven. They are a part of the move to slow down the spread of the virus, and the discussion of issues relating to possible failures in addressing said spread should be expected.

Your response has nothing to do with my post...it seems to be just an opportunistic attempt to bash what you perceive as a left wing attack. It was an attack on poor leadership and relates to their position in the US two weeks ago. I think Demonstone has given a pretty good summary of where the POTUS has gone wrong. Hopefully he has since learned to take the whole thing a bit more seriously. Albo not being PM is not responsible for how we approach this issue in Australia, so enough of your red herrings please. It’s rather ironic that you claim this is just a right wing bashing exercise, when all your post does is blindly attack the left.

Haha... thanks! Yes, I did mean Sparrow (I failed the Biddle's Bird Watchers entry exam... now I know why). Fixed.

I agree on the 5 they have suggested, but I'm also interested to see how Sparrow (thanks YB) performs this season. He's looking a very likely type.

I'd like to see them play the first couple of rounds (at least) to empty stadiums, and then take a 7 week break (the 5 dropped rounds and 2 weeks of the "bye" no longer required) and then, if the situation has settled enough, play the remaining rounds. The AFL has said they could extend the season if necessary, so there might be room to make that break 9 or 10 weeks.

It took you two weeks to get to my comment... have you checked the figures since my original comment at which time I think there were less than 100 cases? The US as of today, has 4,657 recorded cases and in just the past day recorded 977 new cases. This has nothing to do with the Democrats; Trump is the current POTUS and he has been failing miserably. My comments were made at a time when he was signalling that people should just go about their business as usual (including going to work), and telling us how he had it all under control, despite the warnings from health experts. You're so rusted on to right wing politics that you cannot see what is patently obvious; he has failed and is now scrambling to do something meaningful. Kiss the ground knowing Trump is in charge??? Hah! Kiss my [censored]!

Can I request that you please change your monicker to Mr Empathy.

I suggest you go back and re-read Dazzle’s response to you where he outlined certain issues he is dealing with closer to both home and his heart. You are starting to look embarrassingly silly.

Mine was obviously tongue in cheek... I think it was the work of the NRL in an effort to win back their dwindling supporter base (I see that their games are going ahead) ?

If we are going to go down the conspiracy path, then who's to say it's not the work of a doomsday cult such as the one in S. Korea where the infections went through the roof. Apparently a number of their members returned to S Korea from Hubei Province in January at about the time the rest of the world became aware of the virus' existence. And yeah, those other big threats such as Italy.

What makes you think it's not? Let's put it this way, it's likely to be as much a natural occurrence as was SARS.

I would argue that it's good hygiene and a sensible approach to prevention more so than purely population density. As I have mentioned already on more than one occassion, Taiwan has an almost identical population to us, but is the 4th most densely populated country on the planet, yet they have "officially" 49 cases, whereas we have 156. All customer facing workers wear masks, all restaurants, department stores, cafes, cinemas etc provide hand sanitiser on entry and most also take your temperature before you can enter. I think the numbers speak for themselves. We need to start taking all of the precautions that we can.

The wet markets need to be either abolished completely, or at the very least very heavily policed with regards to the conditions and hygiene. Unfortunately, there is so much corruption at local government level that it would probably never work.

I’m not averse to the games being played in empty stadiums. I was simply responding to the ridiculous supposition in the previous post.

Actually, with the way things are heading due to the virus, I think all clubs are going to need memberships to keep the clubs solvent. Being a member is not just about going to games and the club’s week by week performance, it is also about supporting the club through the bad times as well as the good. Yes, we’ve been bad for decades, but what’s been thrown at us this year is something that we’ve not had to deal with before, and is something that the club has no control over. I’m happy to continue my son’s and my own membership during this time.

I’m one who tends to jump on posts that have racist undertones, but why anyone would jump at LG’s post is beyond me. It deals in facts and targets the govt, not the people.