La Dee-vina Comedia

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.

Well, that didn't age well. (I'm so glad I added "if the polls are correct".)

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was a US band from the mid-1970s onwards and Ginger Baker was a drummer with the band Cream which he formed in 1966 with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. Cream is generally considered to be the first successful music "supergroup".

We're going through a season from Hell. However, if anyone should be able to cope with hell, it should be the Demons. But it still won't be enough to win. I'd be surprised to get within 40 points.

I hope the Saturday headline is "Cream for the Dees" rather than "Heartbreaker for the Dees". PS: If you don't know what I'm getting at, ask your parents, or perhaps your grandparents.

How Picket Fence imagines himself differs from how the rest of us imagine him. Guess which is which:

Viney has just done a presser in Perth and confirmed that Lewis won't play.

A question for Perth folk. This game is scheduled to start at 6.10 pm Perth time, being 8.10 pm on the east coast. Are you pleased to have a Friday night game which starts at this time or is the time inconvenient and you would prefer that it not be scheduled at this time?

I'm sure we could get a priest, rabbi and imam as well as an exorcist to work together to cleanse the area. Might need some heavy duty steam cleaning as well.

I think you're mixing up events. I was talking about the football on Friday night. You seem to be referring to Scott Morrison's chances the following day.

Isn't that our Standard Operating Procedure? I'd be gobsmacked if we did it any other way.

He might sit behind the glass at Marvel, but I saw him at the Richmond game sitting on outside seats on level 2 in the Richmond members area at the MCG. At the time I thought (quite seriously) that it's a fine thing that a public figure can sit in a public area at the footy without the need for security.