La Dee-vina Comedia

An important point. You should only move someone on if you think there's a better option available.

Doesn't always work that way. My best guess is that assistant coaches take over the top job when their boss gets the chop fewer than half the time. More often, they get moved on, too, as part of a failed group.

The club's announcement states that Yze has completed the level 4 coaching course. Is that the highest level?

Add Preuss to the list. (Not sure if he was 'asked to slim down'; but he obviously has done so.)

You ain't seen nothing yet.

I'm not sure Collingwood is such a powerhouse any more. It used to have the most members and now it doesn't. It has won a single Premiership in the last 30 years (OK, two if you want to count 1990...in which case you could argue it's only won two in 62 years). And I sense it is no longer the club most "hated" by opposition suporters, which was a badge of honour it wore with pride. I'm not having a go at Pert. I have no idea whether he's a good CEO or not. But I don't think he Made Collingwood Great Again.

Interesting to compare my view (above) with suggestions elsewhere (see Bombers Implode thread) that Zac Merrett wants out of Essendon because he lost the vice-captaincy.

Nice work

I know one Bomber member (I know, I'm ashamed to admit it) who is disgusted enough that she has emailed to cancel her membership today. She also told me that Merrett wants out, although I don't know how reliable her source is. Maybe it's just media speculation.

I'm generally not a fan of five year contracts. However, in this instance I could see that the longer contract term is compensation for losing the captaincy. It would have been ego-deflating for someone so (relatively) young to have the captaincy taken away. Many players in his situation may have considered leaving to go somewhere where they felt more wanted. The five year offer might have been offered as a sweetener way back when the removal of the captaincy was "negotiated".

Interesting. I have always thought it would be other way around.

Maybe the club can give you the vaccine. Seriously. If a vaccine is available, the club might be able to organise for health care professionals to administer the vaccine as you enter the ground. I'd take that over a new scarf any day.

On Twitter...

Agreed. You've made some good points here. Especially the one about being in the AFL bubble. I hope he has a successful post-AFL career and life, whether it requires any growing up or not.

He's 29. Does anyone "grow up" any further once they've reached this age?

Spare a thought for Jack Watts. If he hadn't broken his leg last year he may have well played in his first final last night. I suspect he's not the type of person to brood about missing out, but it would have been nice to see him rewarded for having to put up with all the criticism he received over the journey purely because he was selected number one in his year and in so doing went to a club which was incompetent at managing and developing him properly.

Perhaps WA police don't want to be seen to be "soft" on a figure in the public eye. It's much easier for them to handball the matter to the Court to decide and let the Magistrate wear any negative PR consequences. It's not dissimilar to the MRO transferring a matter to the AFL Tribunal to avoid having to make a potentially controversial decision.

You've got your characters confused. We've got Mitch Brown, not Charlie Brown. Unless you meant we trade Mitch Brown and Charlie Spargo.

Rather than start a new thread, I'm interested in whether people like the idea of a bye between the final home and away round and the first week of finals. My view is that it kills momentum. I have found that since this particular bye was introduced a few years ago that I have fundamentally lost interest in the whole competition every year due to the bye when we're not in the finals. I know it was introduced to overcome the problems associated with some teams resting players in the final round. I think there needs to be a more creative solution to that problem, such as suspending the senior coach of teams that do that for four rounds. I'm pretty sure that would work. Having said that, I think the AFL had no choice this year to have the bye. Because of the way the season panned out, they couldn't go into the finals without giving Essendon and Melbourne a break at this time of year. When setting the schedule they couldn't ignore the possibility that either or both these teams could be finalists. In summary, I'm all in favour of getting rid of the pre-finals bye. Any thoughts?

Including USA, Spain, UK, India and France doesn't really help the argument when you compare their infection numbers with Australia's. The real issue, which I suspect we will both agree with, is whether there is cause and effect. That is, has closing State borders actually made any difference?

Keep in mind that not every other country has "internal states". Nevertheless, ever since these cross-border lockdowns were introduced I've been waiting for Denis Denuto to take the case to the High Court to test the constitutionality of the matter. I guess in a way that's what Clive Palmer was doing...and he does seem like a character straight out of 'The Castle'.

I'm only interested if we can get Didak out of retirement to join him. Seriously, who's in the need of a 35 year old? Has to be someone contending for a flag in 2021 and needs a slow, but smart, running defender. And can't find someone better.

It's a WA law breach, not a specific AFL Covid rule breach (although the AFL procedures may include an obligation to follow State rules and laws).

While I agree 100% with your logic, I think the optics of this approach could reflect badly on the club. It may make us look more concerned about the fine than Bennell. I think we have to cop it on the chin and move on.

Perhaps we need to open a thread in the Trades sections suggesting we swap Hardwick's wife for Goodwin's partner. I'm not sure if we would have to include an assistant coach's partner as well to get the deal done.