La Dee-vina Comedia

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.

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.