binman

But surely if you agree full time professional umpires would improve things then you would support them being introduced. And if the answer is yes then that is an achnowledment umpiring needs to be improved. You are right that it is a devilishy difficult game to umpire. Made more difficult by the fact that unlike your examples of other sports it is 360 degrees. All the more reason to have pros, given the complexity of the rules and the difficulty of the decisions that have to make in spit seconds And for writing the rules more clearly for tbat matter. We are talking about a multi billion dollar industry. Near enough is simply not good enough when it comes to the umpiring of the sport. The AFL needs elite decision makers who are incredibly fit and can make split second interpretations of rules that always have shades of grey. And you need teams of them who have synergy and apply rules and interpretations consistently within games. Of course thst won't elimante mistakes. They still occur in those sports like the NBA that have fully professional referees not part timers who have other jobs. But they happen less, more is reasonably expected of tbem and those refs can be held more accountable. By the by I would argue basketball is equally difficult to umpire. Far less rules and a much smaller space but fast and congested. And in the NBA huge stakes.

It beggars belief. And it is a really bad look for the AFL that it was a WA umpire who obviously should have paid the free to Smith, but failing that applied the common sense approach the AFL were so happy with in the rampe non free call and occurs in 90% of situations where a player doesn't hear the play on call. Did he cheat? No of course not. But he made a blatant wrong call that changed the game and may have had a bearing on the result of the match. Leaving aside the discussion as to whether we can blame the umpires for our loss (of course it is our fault, we should have not missed so many easy chances) it simply is not acceptable for a supposedly elite, fully professional sport not to have elite umpires who, under pressure, make a high percentage of correct calls. The answer is simple. Expensive, but simple. Fully professional, full time umpires who are paid extremely well, have clear kpis and have incentives built in to their contracts to exceed those kpis. People love to compare AFL to other professional competitions like the NBA, NFL, EPL etc. It goes without saying that those competitions have full time referees. It is beyond a joke we don't. Would doing so eliminate errors such as the Smith one? No, of course not. But umpiring standards would absolutely improve, which they need to do if the sport is serious. And it would go along way with addressing the issue of difficulty attracting umpires to the sport. Pay AFL umpires 250k a year plus bonuses and you create a legitimate career option and pathway. And something they can do straight away is ensure all games in Adelaide and Perth don't have local umpires. Absolutel no brainer.

Are you serious? What on earth does that have do with kennedy making an unrealistic attempt at marking.

That drove me insane. And it perfectly captured the benefit wc get at home in terms of umpiring. If that was a dees player the crowd would have gone nuts after 15 metres and the ump would have responded with a free. Hurn? Crickets

And to add to that list a non 50 when a wc player ran within a foot of one of our players. So frustrating after harmed getting pinged twice and being further away and not causing a my interference against the hawks. Umpiring was appaling. We should write to the AFL for an explanation of the Smith free.

Fritsh should be droppoed for that alone. Add in his missed targets and really poor decisions then he is outski

Elegt- please stop posting

Not wet but likely to be very dewy, particularly in the second half. Overnight temp predicted to go down to 3 degrees.

Definitely hurt his ankle in that last tackle and was hobbling pretty badly. But why would they not make petty emergency in that scenario? I hope they don't play preuss. Conditions won't suit.

Agree. And on a slippery night he would struggle to mark and offer little once the ball hit the deck. No doubt this was factor in why WC did not go with a second ruck.

Sounds a bit on the buses

Loss is the most likely outcome od. And no shame in that. We have close to half of our best 22 out playing the reigning premier, who have most of their best available, at their home ground interstate. But hope springs eternal and whilst a loss would hurt (but not sting, assuming we give total effort) a win could change the trajectory of our season and be one for the ages. Beware the motivated underdog, coming off an inspirational last gasp win, who have nothing to lose. Go dees.

The dewy, slippery conditions will negate their biggest weapon- the marking power of Kennedy and Darling (as well as making it harder to maintain possession through kick mark possession chains). Tmac on the other hand is well practiced in not taking clean marks and taking juggled marks (joke btw). Dare I say it but the ground ball battle will be critical. Rioli a good in for them but let's hope he is a bit under done.

I have been a fan but I'm going a bit luke warm on him to be honest. I wonder however if the threat of being dropped curtails his game as he is incredibly risk averse with his kicking and in terms of when to play on after a mark 9often choosing to hold it at half back instead of a quick kick to a free player). Which is a shame because he is an accurate, if not long, kick and good by hand. Maybe with stretch of games he might be confident to take the game on a bit more. We need good kicks in the side, he is fit, works hard (so important at the moment in terms of getting across to disrupt or man the mark from the chip kicks to free player so many teams are using - which by the by is one reason I'm glad Baker has come in, he will chase and harry all game) and he has his chance to lock in a best 22 spot. JKH will take his spot if he can't do so.

I would be now that WC has elected not to go with two rucks and have selected Rioli. Preuss makes us too slow i reckon

Really? This is the BoM forecast: Friday 17 May Summary Min 3 Max 17 Mostly sunny. Chance of any rain: 0% Perth area Mostly sunny. Areas of light frost about the northern suburbs in the early morning. Winds southeasterly 15 to 25 km/h becoming light in the late afternoon.Fire Danger

100% efficiency though

That's great. Our two biggest deficiencies kicking skills and speed, in that order. Petty helps with kicking and Baker with speed.

Me too dazzler. Always love seeing new players and i didn't like Petty getting only the one game last year. Exciting. How do you see them playing Petty? I suspect they may play him as the lose man, goal keeper role Frosty has been playing allowing him to take Darling or Kennedy Kennedy. Good hands and reads the ball well by all accounts. Not sure how good his kicking is but has to be better than Frosty. Gig challenge for Frosty and OMac. If Petty plays well and keeps his spot, one of those players will come out for Lever.

I have always wondered why players don't propel teammates in the air as they do in rugby line outs, though instead of lifting them lock their hands together and hoist them up like they do in the circus.. Imagine how high a big fella could fling a little fella. Would make stopping goals a lot easier. Is that against the rules?

Yes, is the short answer. For context I tipped us to beat the Hawks, but i will be tipping WC in this game (no surprise there). That said I think we are good chance to get within a couple of goals (on my ESPN footytips I will picking a margin 0f 14 points - it is the first game so a margin is required) and I have a feeling we are a sneaky chance of causing a boilover. Easy to argue why we will lose. So I won't bother. But here are the reasons why we can win: I've got a feeling in my bones (but that could be gout I suppose) Despite playing poorly last week, the last gasp heroics would have built team belief and synergy, with the dees getting lots of kudos for how well drilled were at the end (which reflected comments from a number of players that we had done a lot of work on end of game scenarios) Even in our losses we have been getting the ball inside 50 enough. If we suddenly 'clicked', the much discussed connection came good and we took more of our chances we might get a jump on them and kick a winning score WC are not going great We travel well and leaving aside the prelim horror show have the memory of last years home and away win and the TMac heroics in the one point win to give us positive vibes Hibbo and Melk are big losses but ANB and Smith are both fit and raring to go, and their fitness will be important Playing at night helps us a bit as it will be a bit dewy as it will gte down to 3 degrees overnight. Won't help our fumbling but will make it a bit easier to stop WC chipping it around it around and as any pressure will make marks harder to snaffle. That factor definitely helped us against the hawks (ie a slippery ball), who play a similar game to WC A cold night is also nowhere near as taxing or slippery as the GC game or as taxing as the prelim last year Lycett really hurt us last year and they won't be able to smash maxy (who was cooked) as they did last year even if they bring in their underdone second ruck man (whose name escapes me) Omac will do his job and get 10 plus spoils TMac is getting closer to some good form We will definitely use Frost , Fritter or Hore in a deep sweeper role, keeping the scoring down and us in the game (on that point the bookies have the Total Match Point line at a crazy low 154.5. Even in a wet game that is low but no rain is forecast - though as I said I expect it will get dewy, but it does start at 6:10 over there so perhaps not really bad to the second half) We are not expected to win and in some ways that can sometimes help teams to play with freedom, which is exactly what we need to do Surely we can't miss as many targets as we did last week. Surely Did I say I just have a feeling

I played cricket at brens with parkville cc for a number of years. The local residents (all 100 od them) made putting nets up difficult. Super militant. And rich. Pains in tbe backside.

Luxury, sheer luxury

And an easy instruction to carry out: Goody: i really liked the way port denied wc tgw easy intercept msrks with scungy, crappy, scrappy kicks inside 50 and i want you to adopt the same method. Boys, to achieve that, with our inside kicks the only change I'm looking for is that you don't try and kick in high and long. Otherwise just stick to how you normally deliver the ball inside 50. Ya got it?

Could not agree more. I love going to the footy with mates who support the dees and teams we are playing. Great space to chat about the game, catch your breath and also catch up prior to the game game and quarter and half time breaks. Well it used to be.