La Dee-vina Comedia

This one's obvious. It's an allegory portraying the MFC at the time as donkeys.

I seem to recall the AFL does this every year with each of the team captains. But why? What's the marketing value of this photo? I'm not having a go at the AFL (there are plenty of other more important - and unimportant - issues to do that), but I'm genuinely curious. Why is this photo taken? What's it used for?

And the other 26k are recycled members courtesy of Visy.

I think we may have drafted some sort of Benjamin Button. According to Knightmare (see above) on 14 June 2017 he was 183 cm tall. According to Mad As Hell on 2 October 2018 (in the Jay Lockhart thread started last year), he's 177 cm. If he keeps shrinking at this speed he'll change sports and become a jockey before the Spring Racing Carnival. Some confirmed height and weight numbers would be appreciated.

I'm not sure he flies under the radar and more. Among my non-Melbourne supporting friends and work colleagues, he seems to be the third player (after Gawn and Oliver) who they comment on when discussing the best players in our team.

Were you meaning Richmond supporters? If so, there's a typo in your post as I imagine you meant to write that they are "rank and vile" supporters.

Two crimes against English here. "It's understood" is completely unnecessary and who describes people as "faces"? They don't have bodies? minds? souls? Ugh

Or "AFLXtasy"

Because of the change in the rules allowing recruitment of relatively recent retirees, you'd have to assume clubs are striking deals with their higher-quality retirees which commit those ex-players to agree to come back to the club they've just retired from, should they decide to play again. The equivalent of a "non-compete" clause as used today in business.

While we debate the illicit drugs in off-season (and in season) issue within the AFL, the NRL has had a nightmare off-season.This is in today's Sydney Morning Herald. I wonder whether the AFL will soon be embroiled in something similar? I hope not, but as much as I like to think NRL and its supporters are somehow inferior to the AFL, I suspect that our code will not be immune to something similar.

The trouble is, where does one stop? True leaders would donate blood; true leaders would sleep at the G for the homeless; true leaders would pick up rubbish on Clean Up Australia Day. Nevertheless, I concede that as the drugs policy is the AFL's, I think you make a point and if I were an AFL Commissioner I would agree to being drug tested under the same scheme (ie, randomly - which means it wouldn't necessarily be done "before the players")

In the old days - and not that long ago - conservative politics was the opposite of the nanny state.

Up until recently, I would have thought your reference to a "hard conviction over illicit drugs" referred to Tony Mokbel. Witness X has changed all that. The AFL's conviction, as weak as it might be, might still now be stronger than Mokbel's.

Is the AFL taking an ethical stance? I don't think it's that. I think its a commercial decision and (perhaps, although I'm not 100% convinced), a player welfare decision. With respect to the commercial issue, AFL players caught taking recreational or performance enhancing drugs damages the AFL brand. The player welfare link is not as clear cut. Some (many? most? all?) illegal drugs can be harmful, but I'm not sure the AFL is concerned about the harmful effects of illegal drugs on individual players who voluntarily take them. I suspect that stated position is lip service to make the AFL looks like it cares for something that's arguably not its concern.

I assume you mean Brad Hodge. Because Luke Hodge has all those traits you've ascribed to Viney AND talent. (Otherwise I agree with the rest of your excellent post).

I expect we would lose to every other equivalent team with the exception of Gold Coast and (maybe) GWS.

What were they thinking? Surely it would have been more appropriate to buy him the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche. He could start with 'The Birth of Tragedy' and then move on to 'The Case of Wagner'. What could be more appropriate than that?

You make a good point and get into the area of whether executives in any business should be drug tested. Personally, unless it's a privately owned business and is not in an area of public risk, then I think executives do not have the right to say it impinges on their privacy because their actions affect others. So, I would have to say that the AFL is not privately owned and as such I have no problem with AFL executives being drug tested. (IQ testing might be a good idea, too.)

While I agree with you that some players might think that it's inconsistent that they're the only ones being tested from within the AFL community, those players are forgetting another inconsistency - they're the ones getting the big money to perform. I think there is an argument that perhaps coaches (including assistant coaches) could be tested, but how the rest of the AFL community performs and whether they're using illicit drugs is not relevant.

I wonder whether we wanted to but he (perhaps on the advice of his manager) wanted to keep it shorter. He may believe his value will increase substantially over the next 2 years, especially as he becomes a free agent* at the end of this contract extension. *Based on Lucifer's Hero's post above which I'm sure will be correct.

Amazing how Garry Lyon is universally supported on this site for his assessment of Oliver but totally vilified for his role in choosing coaches. Apparently he only knows some things about football.

And he invariably found a player, usually in a better position, with his precision disposal, .

Well said, Ernest. Your last line sums him up. Very few players have that skill and I think it means he's worked out what he's going to do with the ball before he gets it, rather than making the decision afterwards. Not many players have that capability. In fact, you can see many players "spending it before they have it" which shows how hard it can be to do what Oliver does consistently.

I assume you mean by Melbourne. I think Hawthorn getting Roughead, Franklin and Lewis in 2004 and Geelong getting all of Bartel, James Kelly, Steve Johnson and Gary Ablett in 2001 fared reasonably well.

My suspicion is the opposite. I believe the data will show that top players generally get a better run with the umpires. In addition, the change to the rules this year which sees all punching of players a breach of the rules which will earn a free against the puncher should assist genuine ball players. As such, opponents of Oliver and Brayshaw won't be able to use that particular tool in their arsenal.