La Dee-vina Comedia

Pickett, Hannan, Jones should be dropped/rested/managed. Harmes and Brayshaw have had a few poor games now and both should be rested, but if the three abovenamed go out, perhaps they gate another chance. It would help if they played in their natural positions. I would bring in Tomlinson, because he is our best second wingman. It didn't work with any of Harmes, Jones, Brayshaw last year and, not surprisingly, not working with them this year. If he's ready, vandenBerg should return. Rivers or Hunt (even though he hasn't played as a defender for a while) should take the 7th defensive spot instead of Harmes, who should go onball with ocassional visits forward. So, Ins: Tomlinson, vandenBerg and Rivers/Hunt Outs: Pickett, Hannan, Jones.

6. Gawn (although nowhere near his best game) 5. May 4. Hibberd 3. Petracca 2. Lever 1. Salem (but what has happened to his kicking? Or, in BT speak, his ability as the "best distributor of the ball"?) It wasn't easy finding those six. The rest were shambolic, except for Sparrow who I considered for the last vote.

Seeing as I'm working from home, is there any way I can claim watching this game at home as a tax deduction?

Jaded, I hope your friend recovers.

On the contrary. The important point is that the player asked for permission rather than just tried to bring it in without permission. Nothing wrong with that. If only someone had thought to ask for permission for their children to visit a theme park with their grandparents.

If people knew they would be named and shamed, would it make a difference to their behaviour? I suspect it would, and therefore I have no problem with idiots being named. But it needs to be all idiots and not just those with the least power and influence. As to the family members who breached the AFL's Covid rules, they should be sent home. Today.

Not sure if this is referring to a football strategy or the Queensland government's Covid plan.

You could argue that because we're 3/4 and not 5/2 we need to "exepreiment away" because what's happened so far hasn't worked as we would have liked. But I understand your point.

There's a lot to like about Luke Jackson. His hairstyle is not one of those things.

This country really needs to etsablish a new indictable offence called "criminal stupidity".

Apart from ANZAC Eve, have we ever previously played a Thursday night game broadcast on free-to-air TV?

Luci, I wouldn't give too much credence to anything Goodwin says publicly (or any coach, for that matter).

In the last post in the now locked Changes thread, Kev Martin says Sparrow is a great kick. Who's right?

Has Sparrow been training with the defenders? if not, who takes the seventh defender's spot to replace Jetta? Harmes?

Which airport? Could we not fly in and out of Maroochydore's airport?

I wonder if that's muscle strength, fitness, confidence, game style awareness or a mix of all the above. Anyway, hopefully all of them will improve with time.

You may be correct. I didn't check any stats to confirm my impression. Maybe he did change last year and I didn't notice until now.

Working from home is really dulling my senses. Truly, my first thought when I saw this picture was that Covid had really aged Max Gawn. Then read the piece and realised it wasn't him.

I'm not sure there's a common understanding of what "x factor" means. In a football sense, to me, it means someone who is not possible to define. They're not a forward or a back and they're not reliable. They show potential with occasional flashes of brilliance but have never yet realised any semblence of a consistent form line. If they were a comedian, they would be described as "zany" - a word used to describe someone who isn't actually funny, but you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. (The word to use if they're not funny and you want to be critical is "buffoon", regularly used among people I know to describe Bill Brownless.) For what it's worth, I don't think Smith has x factor (as I've defined it). He meets some of the criteria, but I'm yet to see any flashes of brilliance.

Nice pun

Today's Age suggests strongly that rorting the salary cap was widespread around this time. https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/many-clubs-rorted-salary-cap-league-knew-veteran-hawk-official-20200727-p55fy0.html In other words, nothing to see here, folks. Don Scott just seems to be grandstanding for no reason.

The Melbourne score that day is similar to scores this year. I assume that means we were playing 16 minute quarters while Fitzroy played the full 31 minutes and 10 seconds of Q4 and the equivalent in the other three quarters.

On my reading of Richo's report there might be nine changes! It's like everyone who played for us deserved to be picked in the seniors next week. (I presume the players get real feedback, not the confected garbage we're given. To be fair, I'm not sure what else Richo could actually say publicly about individual performances, though.)

It's a sad state of affairs when this becomes a necessity. The game suffers and becomes a less pleasurable viewing experience. For this reason alone, it is incumbent on the AFL to do something pro-active. Maybe we won't need to worry about zones, 6-6-6 and interchange limits if the ball moves quickly away from stoppages in the first place.

I see it the other way around. Don't discount the possiblity that this story has been released now to distract the media away from Hawthorn's current problems. Kennett would know a thing or two about not wasting a good crisis. And if there's to be a Clarkson v Kennett brawl (and I suspect there probably won't be), it would be a beauty.