Webber

Beautiful work by Flanners again. I had a catch-up with him last week at a footy art exhibition in which I’ve got a couple of pieces. He doesn’t support any one club, but Flanners love for the Dees is entirely one with his love of football. He, more than anyone, knows there is no football without the Melbourne Football Club, and as the game’s essential truth-teller, he feels duty bound to romanticise on the reasons why. This is why so many of us love him, because he gives a voice to our emotional investment in the game and the club like no other in the media today. Believe it, he wants us to go all the way, because football needs that story. If anyone’s interested, the exhibition is at Glen Eira Council Gallery, until 7 October. Called Aussie Rules: Passion and Pain. Lots of good stuff there, excluding my own ?. The only footballers to turn up were Alex Neal Bullen (his sponsor had a piece) and Billy Stretch. Very classy boys both, remarkably engaged for 22 year olds. Impressive. Had a good chat with Billy, particularly as he’s studying physio. He was fresh from his surgery, and is itching to get back out there. They too are fully invested in the Club’s legacy. Go Dees.

How can big Max not make you smile?! Heart and soul footballer to his bones.

He didn’t worry all of us. Some of us always saw the longer term plan, and that he had the essential qualities. Oscar has got where he is faster and younger than most were/are prepared to admit. The whipping boy treatment he got before probably the last half of this season has always been misplaced and ignorant.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

You’re right rjay, the landscape for return to playing after internal fixation (of non weight bearing bones) has become progressively more ambitious, and the sole determinant is now pretty much comfort, which in respect to Dom’s ulna, will relate mostly to handballing and marking. If he can do both with no loss of efficiency, he’ll be available.

To be fair Mazer, you created the punt upon which the pole wielder stands when you delivered the 3 standard deviations bombshell. ?

Brilliant. Maybe WC could be known as the “3SD’s” from now on. Kudos to Mazer Rackham for the stats work.

Fascinating. I remember going to Vic park to watch Dees as a kid in the 70’s, and feeling scared cos I had my jumper on, so didn’t clap, cheer or otherwise make a sound. Did the feral crowd change your supporting habits? Does it feel threatening?

Apparently we should just accept it, jnrmac.

They do under certain conditions, as do other teams. Not an outlier, never suggested it was, just part of the variability for a team finding their confidence. Nice try though. ??

Great advice Macca, and thanks for it, yet you’ve completely missed my point. Like you seem to have done, accepting unfair but correctible anomalies is to allow the people’s game, our remarkably egalitarian national sport, to fail in that very ethos. Nobody should or will ever get perfection in adjudication, in fact the imperfection is part of its unique colour. But when there’s a rank outlier, it should be called out and addressed, much like salary cap rorts. Obviously The WC free kick bias is not their fault, it is the AFL’s problem, but as an objective outlier, it diminishes the game unnecessarily. Sunday was promising.

WC don’t SEEM to get a better ride, it’s an objective truth that they DO get a better ride. In this case, stats don’t lie. It’s a problem that the AFL has singularly failed to address, and for all its excellent equalisation measures, still unbalances the competition, week to week. I guess it’s why he made the OP, but for joeboy to suggest a 4 free kick deficit represents a ‘rigging’ in our favour, it’s not just ridiculous attention-seeking, it’s illogical.

From a statistical standpoint, West Coast’s free kick advantage over the last 15 years falls waaaay outside the standard bell curve. The simple, uncomfortable truth for the AFL (which Sunday’s game proved as the exception to the rule) is that WC get and are expected to get, a free ride. Though they were still advantaged on Sunday 18-14, we can only hope it’s the start of something.

I watched the entire last quarter and a half with the sound down because the booing influence on the umpires was making me so angry, and still got angry at the free kicks we weren’t given. There might be a bit of attention-seeking in this thread.

Garlett is the definition of a front runner, which is very frustrating, because he has all the instinct and talent, but NOT what we want in finals. Watch Charlie Spargo rise to the occasion after a week off into finals.

You mean like the one given to them when whoever ran into a completely stationary Sam Weideman with his head and got a free kick for head high? Incompetent stuff. The umpiring was better than usual, but still heavily favoured West Coast.

You’re joking I presume?

And............breathe.

We’re just so easily opened up when we lose possession in general play. It’s like watching a car crash, again and again and again and again. And no solutions!

Umpiring gives West Coast a 4 to 5 goal head start in Perth, and we finally proved on Sunday (if proof was needed) that we are pi**weak when it really matters, and the joke club of the AFL. Umpires feed on perceived weakness, just like good clubs do. Not that it makes a difference, but I think Sunday might get ugly. Free kicks will ratio 5:3 to them.

Practice will NOT give him faith when the pressure is high and consequences significant. It all goes out the window. It’s MENTAL, and won’t be fixed by MORE practice. Experience, situational exposure and maturity maybe, but not practice.

EXTRA Goal kicking practice will do zero. It’s the mental fragility exposed by the expectation, not the lack of practice.

Nicholls has a career passion for biasing against us. He’s an incompetent umpire.

It’s over, we aren’t up to it.

Yep. There was no adjudication of kick distance today, and the swans exploited it beautifully. Might as well not have the rule.