binman

I agree with this daisy and i 100% support the right to protest. Opposing the pandemic bill, or even the process by which it has been developed and communicated (which is an issue i have with it) is absolutely appropriate. But i would suggest, the issue that the lawful and peaceful demonstrators need to consider is whether by attending a protest with extremist minorities they are in effect being coopted by those extremists. Because that is exactly the strategy of the extremists - create a false sense of support for their extreme views. It is worth noting in this context who actually organized the current protests. It would appear the organizers are disparate extreme groups communicating via encrypted messaging services, as was the case with construction worker 'protests' ('wear hi vis') Perhaps the lawful and peaceful demonstrators opposing the pandemic bill could organise their own protest at a completely different site (eg the Exhibition Building - where in 1901 the first Federal Parliament was opened, and continued to sit until Canberra became the capital) so it is clear they do not support the views and actions of the extremist minorities.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-s-conspiracy-movement-is-traumatised-incoherent-and-potentially-dangerous-20211117-p599qk.html

This is what scares me, and to paraphrase Shane Crawford, this is what I was talking about - Far-right protester charged by counter-terror police amid talk of killing Premier Counter-terrorism officials have charged a Victorian man who encouraged anti-lockdown protesters to take firearms to State Parliament and execute Premier Daniel Andrews.

I respect your opinion LH, and will take it on board. Hyperbole? Too emotive? Perhaps, but I guess they are subjective concepts. I have a genuine concern for what is happening. And i admit to being emotional about. Scared mainly. We have crossed a threshold with the threats politicians (from a range of parties) have received in the last few months . This was not something that happened two years ago. But i will disagree with a couple of your points. I did not name call. In fact i consciously avoided name calling. Unhinged is perhaps the strongest word. But it is hard to argue that some in the crowd are unhinged. Not all, some. And i also disagree that i leveled any accusations of perfect strangers in a protest. I'm not painting those who are protesting the mandate laws with the same brush as those i refer to as bad actors. I merely pointed out such people are choosing to be tainted with the brush of people who bring galllows to a 'protest" and believe our politicians are part of a satanic cult of pedophiles. As you say the rent a crowd aspect is in full force. Yet that same group seem to be given a platform and with it an outsize influence. Which i of course they love and the amplification of their views distorts how much support there is for them (which is radicalization 101) I didn't mean to imply those protesting atm desecrated the shrine. Other 'protester's' did that. But i'll guarantee there is a cross over. The bad actors i'm referring to. I agree that many people are angry. My concern is that a key plank for radicalization to work is anger. Another is the normalization of violence. Both exist in this circumstance and current point in time. Is radicalization hyperbole? I don't think so. Intelligence agencies in both America and Australia have identified home grown terrorism as the greatest threat to our security. We are seeing the seeds of that on our streets and online. The odds of an event like Parliament house being stormed or a politician being killed here have never been higher. Still unlikely to happen of course, but it was unthinkable not long ago. After 9/11, Australia, like many other countries, increased surveillance and imposed any number of restrictions on our 'freedoms'. These restrictions were justified on the grounds that they were necessary tools in the war on terror. Most such restrictions remain in place. If there is home grown terrorist event here, as night follows day, the government will surely move to impose similar actions that will impact on the freedoms we currently enjoy.

A Chinese athlete accuses high ranking politician of sexual assault. And promptly 'disappears' Which is how dictatorships roll.

Indeed. An interesting element of the most recent 'protests' is that the media have, in the main, reported the protests are about the bill currently before Parliament. But are they? Sure, some people are protesting about that issue, which is totally fair enough. The right to to peaceful protest is a tenet of democracy. But you only need to read some of the placards to understand that there any number of other issues people are animated about. At the risk of generalising, i would suggest that many of the 'protesters' have not even read the proposed bill or have little sense of what is in it. So people protesting the bill are marching side by side with people with a raft of other agendas, covering concerns about mandates, through to bizarre conspiracy theories and threats of violence. And in doing so are tacitly supporting a range of unhinged, dangerous bad actors. These bad actors are the only ones that will remain soon - perhaps that has happened already. Attention seekers that are getting attention. And the attention gives them oxygen. And it is incredible to think, but it also gives them an international audience of similarly unhinged bad actors (or even more dangerously, not yet unhinged, but ripe for conversion), contributing content and angst to an increasingly dangerous echo chamber. As you suggest LDVC, these bad actors are also ripe for being manipulated by other, even more dangerous bad actors. The tragic irony is that about the only unifying idea these bad actors are rallying behind is a perversion of the concept of freedom. But no matter where we stand on the issue of mandates, vaccination or government overreach, we should all be very concerned about the very real threat to our democracy AND our freedoms these bad actors and the echo chamber they live in represent. And i have no doubt there is an orgasnising force behind that threat. One only needs to see the insidious infiltration of Qanon 'ideas' in Australia to understand that. As anyone who has been to Parliament house knows, if a mob decided to storm it, they would have no problem doing so. Two years ago it was unthinkable that such an event could occur. With people towing gallows and parking in front of parliament house (and being cheered on members of the tiny mob and bad actors around the world via live streaming and encrypted message boards), reporters being chased, mobs marauding though the streets and closing roads (not to mention desecrating the Shrine of Remembrance) and politicians being threatened with violence publicly (and of course online) is it unthinkable now? And what if it were to happen.? Or god forbid a politician came to harm. What would our society look like then? What freedoms would we all lose? Is that what we want? The answer i obviously no - or at the least it is from 99% of us. So the second question is do we really want to be manipulated by the 1% - and more to the point by the bad actors manipulating that 1%. Because that is exactly what is happening. Once example of how we are being manipulated is the coverage of these protests by the media and across social media. Sound bites, noise and fury makes for for great click bait and increased revenue. But there are nearly 7 million people who live in Victoria and even the most generous estimate have the 'protest' numbers at no more than 10, 000 people early this week (and maybe 1000 yesterday?). That's nothing. If anything, given how motivated the 'protesters' are, it is evidence of how little support there is for their issues. Compare these 'protests' to other ones that have got more widespread support. How many people came to the BLM march last year? Or the recent marches about the environment? Or say the Reconciliation marches back in 2000, when a quarter of a million people marched across the Sydney harbor bridge and nearly as many rallied in Melbourne. These are issues that there is widespread support for, hence the turn out.

Agree. I love the fact that i am lucky to live in a country where the overwhelming majority of people are prepared to honor their social contract obligations. Sure there are a very, very tiny minority of people who want to have their cake and eat it too - that's to say enjoy all the benefits of living here (eg universal health care, representative government, opportunity to vote, relatively effective public transport systems, functioning infrastructure, ok education system, etc etc) but not prepared to honour their social contract. But that's part of the price we pay - in any community there will always be such people. I'd add that a related modern phenomena is conflating the views of a very noisy minority with majority public sentiment. The white noise of social media, the targeted trolling, the publicity stunts etc etc serve a specific purpose - to create this very illusion. And i have to say those strategies are very effective at doing just that. But those of us who choose to honor the social contract - the overwhelming majority - should refuse to buy into the illusion. Don't engage. And certainly don't allow ourselves to be fooled by the illusion. The tiny mob don't speak for us. The tiny mob don't even speak for each other - there is no unifying narrative. Just a grab bag of disparate grievances. And for that reason the tiny mob will ultimately dwindle to a sad gathering in a phone box (a non 5g one). Bottom line is we are approaching 90% double vax rate for people over 12 in Victoria, and we will get to that figure nationally early next year. Let's say half of the remaining 10% have not been vaxed - but not because they are anti vax as such (eg apathy, health reasons, religious views, hesitant, cultural, cognitive issues etc etc). That leaves 5% who might genuinely be considered anti vax. So, 5 in every hundred. The very definition of a minority view. The mandate question is harder to quantify becuase we don't have the concreteness of the vax rate as reliable measure of sentiment. We do know from countries like Germany that without mandates double vax rates will plateau in the mid 60s (sadly for a country i love and have people there i love, they are in for a hellacious winter). And becuase of this most people in Australia understand the logic of mandates. And the majority of Australian support mandates. This is evidenced by a number of polls that show the MAJORITY of Australian support mandates. Australia has one of the most effective democratic system in the world. Not perfect of course, but by any measure we have opportunities to influence public policy decisions that people in most other democracies could only dream of - and people in totalitarian countries can't even dream of. The noisy minority have the freedom to take their fight to the ballot box and make their case. And the overwhelming majority can also make their call at the ballot box. And we will.

That's unfair. They are stick ons:

May is the Natural Hamstring Healing brand ambassador

'Sorry Liam, i'm not sure who natural hamstring healing is, but there is no way you can play this week with a grade three hamstring tear. And if i were you i'd be recommending you stop ingesting calf fetus. Despite what you've read, it won't help. At least it won't help your hammy - you might be protected against pagan demons

Agree with all three points. The other big difference to the 70s, 80s and 90s (and even into the 2000s) is back then key forwards rarely left the 50 metre arc. To a lesser extent the same is true for half forwards. Which meant that they rarely had to kicked whilst super fatigued or gassed. Sure the guns had good technique, but fatigue exposes suspect techniques - and even small flaws. Compare the kms brown runs in a game to say Dunstall. Chalk and cheese i suspect. The only real equivalent to the old stay at home forward these days is Hawkins, and perhaps to lesser extent Dixon. It is no coincidence he is so accurate Brown might follow the play all the way to the wing or even our defensive zone and 60 seconds later having a set shot at goal. The same is true for our small forwards. And generally we play a very aerobically taxing game so there is every chance any player kicking for goals will be sucking wind. Another difference to the 70s, 80s and 90s is back then forwards more often had open leading lanes straight up the ground, so their shots were much more likely to be on good angles than today as modern forwards have to contend with zones, blocking, tow on ones, intercept marking and players blocking leading lanes.

100% correct. And there is no doubt we can improve our accuracy from set shots. That said Fritter, after a shaky start to the season i the first 2-3 rounds, was incredibly accurate for the rest of the year. And as Growll notes a full season from Ben Brown will help the cause and Tmac is pretty reliable kick at goal too. So key will be players like Nibbler, Spargo, Kozzie (who def improved his accuracy after he dropped his prancing horse routine), Jackson, Langers and the mids improving their set shot percentages. Even an incremental improvement from those players will help over the course of a full season. As evidenced by the dogs missing out on top 4 by half a percent, or some such, even a statistically tiny improvement might be the difference between say finishing second and a home QF, or finishing 3rd and having to play interstate. As Fanatique Demon notes there will be a range of other things the club will look to improve. And no doubt Goody, without going crazy (because consistency and predictability is now a fundamental element of our model) will trial some new strategies and perhaps positional experiments. What we might look to improve is an interesting question actually. Goal kicking is one. Improving how we defending small and medium forwards might be another. And of course individual players, withy the support of the coaches, will always be looking to improve aspects of their game. On the latter point, we saw the benefit of players improving their game this year. So many examples of this. Nibbler is an obvious one, as is Tmac and Hunt. A less obvious one is Viney. Viney really improved his decision making and this improvement helped the team. He hit more targets, dumped kick into our forward line less often (the one in the 2nd q of the GF was an outlier) and stopped trying to take the tackler on all the time. If say, players like Sparrow, Jordon, Spargo all improve their game a bit (as is likely given natural improvement), as do fringe players like Laurie, Smith, Chandler etc etc then we will improve as team (assuming others don't go backwards). And then you have Kozzie, Rivers and Jacko who scarily for opposition teams still have several levels of improvement in them. And of course add our pick 17, Laurie and Rosman and Tomlinson to come back into contention for selection and things are looking pretty good on the improvement front.

No you're right, they def change the levels of the umps mics. And they could continue to so do, even if there was no feed from the commentary box

Nail on the head. It's the combination of excellent technique, spatial awareness and good decision making that marks out the best kicks (but it starts with technique). That skill is why they were so keen to get him in to the team. I watched the preseason game v the dogs a week or so back, and I'd forgotten he played. Same role and signs of that same package. They picked him with a clear plan in mind. He was a gun mid-forward as junior. The dees had other plans. The other thing I love about his game is he is aggressive in his positioning and attack on the ball. Looks to get territory.

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Pains me to say, because normally he's a [censored], but I have to agree. He was pretty good, in part because as you say he dialed things down and dropped the blokey blokey shctick. In fact I reckon he was the best caller. Including daisy, who I have to say annoys me more the more I listen to the game. She gets the third quarter so wrong in my humble. Rediscovered our dare? Please. Ironically BT was the closest to getting it right in the third when he said just before Daniel slung Max, something like the dees were just one goal away from going on a run. Though it was with no context, and we were yet to score that q, so he may have just said it as a random comment. No one responded to him.

The feed would be exactly the same as it currently is - sans commentary That's to say you currently hear the crowd and the umpire mics. All they'd need to do is not include the feed from the commentary box. Dead easy. And almost cost free. They might end up saving money when they realise lots of people might prefer the no commentary option and thst tbey are wasting money on blokes who can't string words together coherently, let alone do their job of calling games.

As a paid up member of the Dad jokes guild I give him points for trying. But if that joke was on his guild application it would be stamped DO NOT ALLOW TO JOIN - EVER. A Dad joke does not have to be funny to others (just to the teller). But it at the very least has to make some sort of sense! I mean, 'the last time Melbourne fans experienced. 5.9 was the earthquake"? Huh?

What i really want is an option to listen to a watch a game with with no commentator feed, but still have the crowd noise and umpires mics feed. That would be perfect - and i assume easy enough to do given they are just different feeds into mixer. it's not even radical idea. It would be much more like going to the footy, where i can't imagine listening to a radio call while watching live.

You couldn't write this stuff. Unless you are the herald sun. Just jumped from this thread to the Hun ans read this headline https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/top-50-afl-media-performers-see-who-made-the-2021-list/news-story/7bcc9f26b878586a94d361d21a360d4d

What about his the 'dees need two of tbe next 3 goals' WTF

In all seriousness, one of the unintended, really positive, consequences of having to play the GF at Optus is that for this group of players heading across to play the Eagles and Freo will be a complete joy and a trip they will look forward to, not far. Imagine the vibe and the buzz of playing on the ground where you had beaten West Coast late in the season, trounced the Cats in a prelim then experienced the ultimate football dream in winning a grand final. Bliss And the booing? Well for one, that may well feel juts like a curio to players now - bring it on. And two we might well have more dees fans in WA now - even if it is freo fans supporting us against the Eagles and vice versa.

That worries me. When we win the flag next year it will always have an asterix given only 16 teams played.

One million percent. I said before his first game in for Tomlinson that we would lose nothing with petty, and perhaps might even be better off. And predicted he will be a future AA defender. Nothing I saw since replacing has led me to doubt those predictions. Not sure where that leaves Tomlinson. But an advantage he has is his versatility

I have heard from a reliable source they are not reviewing the 2021 prelim either