La Dee-vina Comedia

I don't think we coached it out of him. I think, instead, age caught up with him.

A simple change will fix it. Instead of doing 100x100 in one direction, they should do 50 in one direction and 50 the other. I'll now sit back and wait for a call from someone from North Melbourne offering me the senior coaching job. It's insights like this that are clearly missing at that club.

You don't want to put him back in the middle? I wonder whether Brayshaw is a victim of the inability of Jones to play on the wing. My suspicion is that the coaches thought that the joint output of Brayshaw on the wing and Jones in the middle would be better than Brayshaw in the middle and Jones on the wing. I have no doubt that Jones has been better with the shift; but at the expense of Brayshaw. I'd put Brayshaw back in the middle and Jones in the forward pocket and find someone else for the wing.

Pardon my ignorance, but if he plays VFL would it be with Casey or Footscray? In other words, does drafting to an AFL club automatically mean the player fits into that club's VFL (or equivalent interstate) club or is there a need for some form of formal VFL transfer?

I haven't done a close comparison but is it the same posters who don't want him playing in the seniors that are now complaining that he's been suspended and therefore can't play in the seniors?

Perhaps they were referring to his actions rather than his leg speed. He is certainly quick, sometimes too quick, to offload a handball. Nevertheless, when he gets it right, it's a thing of beauty.

ANB should definitely not play... ANB should definitely play. That's clear, then.

Either you haven't seen many of the players in the last 20 years or you have a strange assessment criteria. Are you claiming Stretch is worse than Tom Gillies, James Sellar, Troy Davis, Jace Bode, Isaac Weetra, Tom McNamara...(I could go on)? I don't mean to disrespect any player I've just mentioned, but let's stop being so emotive and be a bit more realistic in our criticisms.

To state the obvious, the reason for drafting a player in the mid-season draft is to have that player available for the rest of the year. I wonder when the club would feel Dunkley is ready to play. What would he need to do first? Get fitter? Understand the game plan? Would he be ready immediately?

But the players have become really good at sprinting off the ground for an interchange. You don't get that without significant input from the sports scientists.

I might be easily impressed, but I like that the last four letters of his surname are the same as the four letters of his first name.

Good point. I assume the retirement allows the clubs from which they retire to draft another player as the retiree can be considered the equivalent of a long term injury.

This would seem to suggest that a player who has just retired (meaning players like Tom Boyd, Shaun Grigg, etc but not specifically them) could be drafted by another club, although I suspect that part of their retirement agreement with the club they have just left would have some form of restriction (a "non-compete clause") to stop this from happening.

Based purely on radio commentary (so I request that Demonland not use my votes): 6. Gawn 5. Hore 4. J Wagner* 3. Harmes 2. Viney 1. Baker (although it would have been Hunt if he'd kicked straight) *The commentators weren't being particular about which Wagner (or McDonald) had the ball for a lot of the game. I presumed a lot of the call was J Wagner primarily due to the location on the ground where I believed the ball was likely to be.

B: Jetta May Hibberd HB: Lewis Lever Salem Do I really need to say more?

Red shorts plus codpiece. Must be the away strip.

Agreed. I'm reasonably confident the players don't have to wait for the team to be published to find out whether they are playing on the weekend.

Tricky margin.

Perhaps it was the other way round. I wonder whether six o'clock closing contributed to attendance by giving people something to do after the pubs closed, whether liquor was available at the ground or not.

Keep in mind that defenders generally have higher kicking efficiency than forwards. I suspect that's because they are kicking to more options as the ground ahead of them is wider. Forwards, on the other hand, have a narrowing ground and ultimately are penalised if they score a behind rather than a goal, even if the shot at goal is a snap under pressure or from the boundary line.

So your moniker is "Rusty" and you claim to have had a "blonde moment". Something's not right.

Such nonsense. It might have some merit, but a statistic like this on its own is useless and possibly misleading. Maybe Gaff's and Oliver's chains don't result in as many scores because the players who receive the ball from them subsequently stuff it up.

Maybe, like Viney, he made the call himself. I fully expect a subsequent media release which says he's fine followed by a 4-6 week period where there is no information but he's missing in action. I actually find it somewhat amusing that after Goodwin left feeling ill the last comments came from a Chaplain. (Yeah, I know, different spelling.) In the meantime, get well Goody.

I don't think anything said on Demonland will drive a player forward. However, if you mean that the coaches should push the players harder as stated in Demonland, you might have a point. But it's actually much more nuanced than that. Every player is different and professional coaches need to know what works to get the best out of each player. For example, Mick Malthouse was known to drive his players hard and move out of the club any player who didn't bend to his expectations. Look where that left Carlton. On the other hand, Brendan Bolton is presented as a coach who takes a modern school teacher approach. And look where that's left Carlton. In other words, every player is different and there isn't one guaranteed approach which will work in every circumstance.

Even if there was no reason to lie about it, it's possible that it was said without thinking but once said Goodwin might have felt he then couldn't change his story.