La Dee-vina Comedia

I preface this by saying I have no medical training, but I would have thought boots would be helpful rather than harmful. I would have thought that without stops, Viney would have to push his feet harder into the surface to stop from slipping and to get the grip necessary to push off in whichever direction he wants to go.

Definately. (Sorry, can't help myself)

I guess we should just be grateful that the Guardian's link didn't have an apostrophe in the middle word of "admits-its-defeat".

You'd think one of the site's administrators would of fixed it by now.

Auskick. They won't have enough time with a 10 minute half-time break for the Auskickers to have their fun.

Great post. We should also remember that across the competition not all the 18 year olds who have just been drafted will make it to become hardened warriors in 10 years time. Many will find the dream extinguished in a very short time. Let's hope that our boys make it, but if they don't, that they can be happy that they gave it a red hot go.

Predictive text and auto-correct are quite good at spelling errors...but hopeless on analysing and interpreting meaning. I sometimes wonder whether they are worth it.

I'll assume you meant "shrewd", otherwise I'm dreadfully confused.

You could just say: "The game wouldn't seem so long on the tele if they got rid of [insert name here]". I expect that every caller and commentator would get a mention from someone on Demonland. For example, I'd say: The game wouldn't seem so long on the tele if they got rid of Wayne Carey. Who's next?

I can appreciate there might be frustration at the lack of initiative within individual games. But I'm more interested in Goodwin developing a plan to win a Premiership which may mean sticking to a single plan until the players deliver it every time. Changing plans for individual games might not necessarily be in the longer term interest of a club trying to be Premiers.

Agree. And start all night games at the same time, preferably 7.20 pm for Melbourne games. The constant chopping and changing of start times drives me nuts.

What sort of adjustment were you looking for?

Do we know how tall he is (and is he still growing)? The Age and the Herald Sun, between them, have him as 198 cm, 199 cm and 200 cm.

That may be the plan all along. Float the idea of the extreme (10 minutes) but after the anticipated outrage then agree to compromise at 15 minutes. Personally, I'd be happy with a 15 minute halftime break. But I'd also want some other time saving changes, such as Lucifer mentioned. In addition to getting rid of the ruck nomination rule which clearly delays ball-ups and throw-ins, I'd like to see the time after a goal restricted more. It's been allowed to creep out over the last couple of years so there's an ad plus time for a replay. That's unnecessary.

For a moment there I thought you were a time traveller. I read "the night before" meaning that Cuthbertson had kicked his 9 before your accident rather than the reverse. Of course, the even less believable point is that a Melbourne player kicked 9 goals in a single match.

I assume it's purely hypothetical, but I wonder what we would do in the unlikely event that the Gold Coast doesn't select as expected for picks 1 and 2? Would we still stick with Jackson?

I don't particularly like comparing players with chattels and I hope he doesn't want to leave, but if he's a good player and wants to go home, he's still a valuable asset. It's not like he would go home leaving us with nothing in return.

I'm hanging out for part 2 to this story. How, when and why did you become a Demon supporter? Most immigrants I know seem to end up supporting one of the two teams they saw in their very first match. But not you. We know you're a different cat (said with appropriate reverence), but the Saty story isn't complete without this additional bit of info.

There's something noble about being a long-suffering supporter.

Of course, there's another way to look at this. I believe you could argue (because of other factors, such as player development, etc) that there's sufficient randomness in the process for such a small selection (ie, picks 1 to 15) that over time, these figures should "even out". To make that happen the picks with lowest results will inevitably have to succeed more than those that already have. So, clubs might be wise to select players with picks which have been least successful. Maybe that's why we've got a new data analyst.

Apologies if this has already been covered either in this thread or elsewhere, but as part of the general testing that potential draftees go through either generically or specifically by individual clubs, is there any testing looking at whether players are likely to grow taller? Is there even a reliable (or semi-reliable) test to do so? Is it possible the club knows that Jackson is still growing?

I really hope he was talking about a passage of play rather than describing one of our players. Great reports Kev, DeeSpencer and others. Thanks.

I seem to recall some clubs not using footballs as part of their training until after Christmas. This was probably in the 1990s or perhaps 2000s. I can't remember whether the clubs who used that strategy did well or not, though.

You are quite right. I should have said it casts doubt on some claims made in the name of sports science.

Actually, there are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary numbers and those who don't.