La Dee-vina Comedia

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.

Why do so many people believe we didn't review the Preliminary Final loss? Surely we all know by now that everyone in the AFL system doesn't always tell the truth. (To put it more bluntly, everyone in the AFL lies.) Just because it has been said, doesn't make it so.

I'm surprised that you consider Oliver has a good technique. It seems to me he swings his kicking leg across his body, that is, at an angle, rather than straight through. That technique requires pinpoint timing, otherwise the likelihood of the kick going exactly where you want is reduced.

Oh! My money was on "eternal".

It's possible we got him not to play in the same team as Max but: As insurance for when Max is injured or needs a rest. To replace Max when he retires. [For what it's worth, I think this is the main reason] To give Max someone decent to train with. It must be hard for Max to get better at his ruckwork and contested marking when training with smaller players or a retired ruckman with a padded bag. To take some heat out of Max's manager's pay expectations for his client. A threat to "walk" isn't as intimidating when there's a ready-made, albeit not as polished, replacement.