La Dee-vina Comedia

It bugs me that Melbourne supporters anguish so much over interstate travel. The non-Victorian teams all do far more than we do every year (apart from Covid-affected seasons). I'm pleased to see the club doesn't complain and just gets on with it.

Wait. 19 degrees in Melbourne this Saturday? Surely not.

Not sure you can say Hardtack necessarily shares this view. What he is doing is sharing his age by referencing this Monty Python gem.

Is Bowey a confirmed 'in' or are we just relying on the prognostications of Jay Clark? That's not to say Clark is wrong, but before getting too excited I'd like confirmation first. I think it's a good idea to get some games into the "next best" after the starting 22. We may need them in September and I would rather have them with some experience of the senior team game rather than coming in cold.

Post of the year. Not so much for its content (as entertaining as it is) but for the dedication you showed in attending in the first place. Edit: For those not in Melbourne, Picket's description of the weather today is accurate. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd bumped into Macbeth and some witches while he was there.

Why on earth would you choose to bring proper mathematical analysis into this debate?

I hope those numbers are temperatures and not cases of Covid in the community in northern NSW

This the sort of thinking which suggests you'd be a good coach. Please apply for the Collingwood job. I'd be happy for them to have you as their coach.

Given the number of times I refer to the Western Bulldogs as Footscray, I'm somewhat amused that the one time it is correct to refer to our opponents as Footscray, the title of this thread goes with Western Bulldogs.

Games played in the southern states in late March and April are often played in temperatures of 32 degrees or more. I hope we don't have to go to Darwin to play during the night or day, but I'm not sure a 32 degree temperature in the dry season will be sufficient reason to stop it from happening.

I think Frankston is back in along with another 2,327 teams from the rest of Australia.

What we have here is a Don Bradman problem. In theory, no-one should have a batting average so far from the normal range. But because Bradman did so, it's now not possible to say that the Bulldogs excessive free kick count is somehow not theoretically possible without some form of improper bias. Nevertheless, there is clearly an issue here. Whether the problem is (1) with the umpires, (2) the rules or (3) the understanding of how best to play the game to take advantage of the rules is less clear. (For what it's worth I think the least likely option - and by a long way - is that it's somehow the umpires' fault.)

Haven't seen the footage and am not in any way trying to defend the removalists. The bigger picture is the problem here as very well explained by Jaded a few posts back. What we need is one of those fantastic retrospectoscopes. You know, the tool that would allow law enforcement to look back in time at the behaviour of idiots alleged law breakers well after the threat of Covid has passed. In that way, law breakers may be willing now to be cooperative.

A billion? Really? Also, there's some suggestion the removalists did not break the mask-wearing rule which may have an exemption for professionals (for want of a better term) while they are moving furniture.

Unless he did and the player(s) with that responsibility failed in that task

I generally find that a player described as having "X factor" is a player that looks the goods but has no particular skills. It's the equivalent of calling comedians "zany" because they are not actually funny.

I'm not. I thought Daniel was BOG. (But then I thought Macrae was better than the Bont, too, so what would I know.) What does surprise me is that in a game which was as close as it was, there was only room for one Melbourne player compared with five Bulldogs. Means the coaches are just as biased as the umpires!

Not only has Richmond become irrelevant to the season, but Hardwick has lost his title as the whingiest coach to Scott.

Perhaps the AFL is dangling a carrot (the possibility of hosting the Grand Final) in front of the WA Government for other reasons, such as confirmation by the government that there'll be no disruption to the playing the remaining home and away games in Perth.

I think about the only thing I'm certain about is that we can't finish 9th on percentage.

Are you able to expand on this graph more? For example, what does "volume" refer to? Also, there's no "technique" on the graph (and what does that mean anyway?) and where do the Easy, Medium and Hard come into it? Also, is the y-axis a percentage and if so, of what? I find this stuff interesting but need to understand exactly what it purports to be saying.

I keep seeing the term "sterile corridor". What does it mean (no jokes, please) and how does it differ from what we've been seeing up until now?

Thanks. I try not to allow myself to be persuaded by statistical parameters - good or bad - when deciding on votes. Especially as I think disposal efficiency is a very crude measure. But I appreciate that ANB undoes a lot of his good work with poor disposals. However, I thought in thisn game he also had many good possessions which resulted in positive results. Perhaps a second viewing of the game (which I won't do!) might persuade me otherwise.

I have no idea what changes should be made. For example, I thought Hibberd really struggled with a serious case of the fumbles. But if he was playing primarily on Ugle-Hagan (and I don't know if he was), then job done. Conversely, and contrary to most others, I thought ANB had an excellent game. But if his job was to stop Caleb Daniel (and I don't know if it was), then he failed in that responsibilty. What does seem apparent to me, though, is that for the last few weeks Jackson has dropped right off. Perhaps it's time to give hima break and either bring in Weideman (if we want him as second ruckman to enable T Mac to stay forward) or Melksham, if we want a bit more class forward, while accepting T Mac as second ruck.

6. Oliver 5. Hunt 4. Neal-Bullen (I'm amazed there are more people wanting to drop him than give him votes!) 3. Lever 2. Gawn (I don't understand the kicking wildly at every opportunity...but I'll assume it was coaches' instructions) 1. Petracca