La Dee-vina Comedia

I'm always amused at number of posters who want a player's return from injury delayed another week based on no insight. It's like scans, GPS results and the player's conversation with the medical team are all valueless. How would we know whether any player's treatment and return date are either aggressive or conservative?

This is the real story. If Richmond can prove that the AFL forced them to do something at the same time the AFL denies having done so, it's an indictment on AFL HQ. Heads should roll (but probably won't).

So, somewhat similar to Israel Folau in that rather than being penalised for what he said he has been penalised for breaching an undertaking he must have made. That makes more sense.

I thought I heard someone say it wasn't an AFL decision but made by the Richmond FC. Either way, massive over-reaction, if it was for using the expression "green maggot".

Perhaps also the most difficult game to officiate out of any professional sport. And the AFL should do something about that. It should start be reducing the number of rules where umpires have to make judgement calls. For example, why require an umpire to decide whether a ball is juggled over a boundary or goal line before deciding whether to pay a mark? Why not just say if the player touches the ball prior to the ball being over the line and completes the mark whether the ball is juggled or not, the mark gets paid. The deliberate out of bounds rule is also too subjective. The reasoning is sound but the execution is too difficult. Change it to something that is less subjective. For example, could the rule be changed so that a free kick is always paid if the ball only bounces once inside the line? In other words, "out on the full" would be become "out on the full or only one bounce". Rather than spending its time in denial about umpiring and virtually never admitting the umpires make mistakes, the AFL would help everyone if they made the job of umpiring significantly easier.

I suspect Hannan and Kennedy-Harris were brought in one week earlier than planned so that next week we can bring in another tranche of formerly injured players. Hannan didn't look ready but I thought Kennedy-Harris was good. It is questionable whether it is wise to bring in all of Salem, Hore, May and Lever - 4 defenders - at once, even though all of them deserve their place in the team. Nevertheless, given where our season is at, I would bring them all in and omit O McDonald, Stretch, J Wagner and Spargo. Fritsch finally gets the chance to go forward in place of Spargo. Spargo could count himself unlucky as he was much better than Hannan, but he (Hannan) needs a second game before we judge him too harshly. Neal-Bullen, if he's ready, will have to wait another week. It's not like he has been dominating when he's been in the side and I think four unforced changes at once is enough.

6. Gawn 5. Oliver 4. Harmes 3. Frost 2. Viney 1. Fritsch

The "long centre end". A very confusing set of locational descriptions. Sounds like some sort of rupture in the space time continuum.

I suspect the club anticipated Sparrow would be hypoglycemic from too much sugar from his birthday cake.

Of all the reasons we may have recruited Preuss, this is not the first one that comes to mind. I would have thought Max was quite capable of relieving himself.

It's a terrible tragedy and a reminder that all forms of surgery have some risk. Let's keep that in mind given how many times our footballers (in fact, most footballers) go under the knife during their careers.

We play seven defenders to allow for rotations so you can both be right.

The MRO was a lot tougher in those days, too. Jack Ruby made sure his decision couldn't be appealed.

I am amused that you used some rhyming slang for the last two words of your post to avoid using a known swear word only to have the auto-censor decide that the cleaned-up version doesn't meet its definition of an appropriate community standard anyway.

Isn't the game in Darwin?

It's a reasonable question to ask, but game time is but a small part of the total number of hours of rehab. It's reasonable to assume that Lever has done hours of fitness work including during the last couple of weeks, so I would expect him to be fully fit. If he's not, I would be very disappointed in the club's decision to pick him. I appreciate that his "touch" may not be back, but I'd be dubious about any player trying to regain their touch in the VFL anyway. The pace of the game is so different, I'm not convinced there's much value for a player trying to regain their touch via the VFL. In fact, I have been of the view for some time that players who spend most of their time in the VFL struggle when promoted to the AFL not just because of their inherent deficiencies, but because they've become conditioned to playing in the lower grade and find the transition difficult.

On a completely different angle, how good is it to see that panel of quality sponsors behind Goodwin? All are big, international players (except maybe IG). Not only does it make us look like a professional club, but anyone who's new to the code seeing that panel should be in no doubt that this is a club of quality.

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.