La Dee-vina Comedia

I always like the optimism that somehow players who apparently aren't good enough to be in team that is 16th on the ladder will somehow have trade value.

I wouldn't know Tony Cochrane from a bar of soap, but having listened to him being interviewed quite a few times now I'm absolutely certain he's part of the problem. I'm not sure of the governance arrangements of the Suns (is it owned by the AFL?) but if I were the AFL I would want to provide the Suns with help, but on condition that Cochrane was replaced. Otherwise, the AFL will find that additional picks or any other form of on-field assistance will just be wasted. That club's problems are not just on-field and what we know from experience of just about every other club in history is that you can't fix the on-field without getting the off-field right first.

You can add that Frost has become a much more reliable defender, although we know he will provide a "what the..." moment in every game. And Salem has become more consistent.

Where's Sigmund Freud when you need him. No votes from me this week as I only saw a few minutes of the game here and there. What I did see, though, was some outstanding tapwork from Gawn.

I've always thought that teams who play badly are more likely to have injuries because players are forced to twist and turn unexpectedly. For example, a kick that misses its target forces the player to stretch more to reach it than he would have if the ball had hit the target. If this hypothesis is correct, it's not just muscles that might be damaged by overstretching, but joints could be damaged by sudden unexpected twists, and collision injuries might increase due to players being forced into more body contact when a ball is more often in dispute.

Today I got around to filling in the survey and I've finally got it off my chest. It's been bugging me for years. I am sick and tired of only ever being offered a free scarf every year. Where's the innovation? How about socks or a cap? Seriously, it's good that they conduct the survey (assuming they read the answers). AFL football clubs are strange beasts. Full of members, most of whom the club administration never gets to meet. A survey is at least one way of finding out what moves the membership, for good or ill.

And factor in also that a significant number were also under-prepared at the beginning of the season due to late starts to pre-season. I wonder how many players had essentially a full pre-season and a year uninterrupted by injury? It wouldn't be too many.

We always play a back seven to allow for rotations, so there is still room for Hore in the side. Probably replaces Petty on the bench unless Jones plays as the nominal seventh defender. I'm not averse to Salem moving to the midfield, but I just can't see it happening.

Just on a technicality...Ablett started at Geelong. (Unless you're playing the long game and talking about Ablett Sr who started at Hawthorn and from whom Geelong scored arguably the cheapest father-son deal of all time).

Sigh... Hasn't it been "put to bed" that Smith's OP was unrelated to being put back on the ground? If that's correct, your shortlist might be of the candidates who are not knowledgeable enough to do the job.

Perhaps appropriately, RDB looks like he's asleep in his dressing gown.

The AFL was always going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the new franchises win premierships too early in their existence there will be complaints that the AFL made it too easy and it's unfair on clubs like Melbourne, St Kilda, Fremantle and the Bulldogs (although not any more) who have been waiting a long time. Conversely, if they don't win premierships, the expansion will be criticised as a failed experiment.

No. To maintain the high value of TV rights and the sponsorship dollars which follow, the AFL needs two games on TV each week in Queensland and NSW. The only way to get that is to have two teams in each of Queensland and NSW. While Qld is a big land mass, it's not practical to base a team in tropical Qld, so the only potentially viable locations for a second club are the Gold Coast, Brisbane or the Sunshine Coast. The AFL would always have known that the Suns and the Giants would need longterm support. However, I doubt they would have expected Gold Coast to have been managed so abysmally.

Tony Cochrane has been on the Board of the Gold Coast Suns since 2014 and Chairman since 2016. Could that be where part of the problem lies? I'm in favour of giving the Suns more support but if I were the AFL I'd be providing more back-of-house support and part of that would mean replacing the Chairman with someone who is less combative. I would also give the Suns one or two priority picks at the end of the first round which they can use for trade only. That would enable them to boost their stocks of experienced players.

Wasn't Hore dropped earlier in the season? Nevertheless, and more importantly, Hore has been a great recruit for us. It's obviously a shame he'll be out for the next few, but he's already done enough to be our best first year player.

*(cough)...Salem. Although, to be technically correct, Josh Wagner and Oscar McDonald have perhaps been the most consistent...just not consistently good.

4. To replace Gawn when he retires.

You believe Gawn won't be fit or do you see him playing in the seconds?

If you thought I was criticising you I apologise. That was not my intention. I was listening to 774 and it's just that I didn't hear their names during the call much at all. As a side comment, it was an uninspiring call of what they kept describing as an uninspiring game (actually, they were much more harsh than that).

To be fair, he wasn't much chop as a defender in those days, either. However, he seems to have found his spot in the backline and I would only move him forward if every other tall forward, Oscar McDonald, Preuss and May were all unavailable.

I wasn't at the ground but listening on radio. I don't recall hearing Hannan's name being called at any stage during the game. Not much of Brayshaw, either.

He'd play if they were red and blue. Slacker.

Just a word about the Emergencies. They are not the "next best four players" after the 22 have been selected. Rather, they are a ruckman, a defender, an onballer and a forward. On that basis I assume Preuss and OMac will fill the first two slots (unless Preuss comes into the side in place of Smith). Dunkley or C Wagner are likely to be the "forward emergency" although C Wagner might be the onballer. I suspect J Wagner will come into the side if Hibberd isn't ready. And I still have no idea why JKH hasn't been selected.

Not sure I want as captain an experienced player who wasn't in suitable condition when he arrived for pre-season training. Hardly setting a good example.

We changed a number of the coaching roles recently. As a matter of interest, how long would people expect any impact from such a change to show itself in the way we play? I would have thought at least three matches and that's if the players understand the changes and can actually execute them. I'm not being critical, just curious.