La Dee-vina Comedia

Does his body break down regularly or has he had difficulty returning from one specific, albeit longterm, injury? For what it's worth, whether it's Kent, vandenBerg or any other player(s), I would be expecting the list managers to be trying to get us back into the pointy end of the draft this year, so some reasonably good players may be traded to fulfil that aim.

I remember when we previously picked an under-developed first year player for his first game on Queen's Birthday. What a difference today. If Petty plays, he's not going to be selected as the hope of the side like poor Jack Watts was required to be.

My view is that Pedersen plays really well in his first game back from the VFL with diminishing returns thereafter until he is dropped again. It's also a bit of puffery to claim he's "good for 2-3 goals a game" when he's actually only kicked 69 goals in his 78 games. We always play 7 defenders. Usually 2 talls (Oscar and Lever) and 5 running defenders (Jetta, Lewis, Vince, Hibberd and Salem).

It's very dark in Melbourne at the moment. Will they be training under lights?

It must be a very fine line between maximising revenue on the one hand and maximising exposure on the other. Personally, I don't think either the AFL or Cricket Australia has the balance right at the moment with too much of the product hidden behind paywalls.

Strong statement. Who do you have in mind?

As a matter of interest, when Peter Jackson was on leave, who stepped into the role of CEO in an acting capacity? You'd think if it was the same person every time, that person would be the preferred in-house candidate. Doesn't mean he/she will get the job, but it would be hard to imagine someone else internally would be ahead of him/her.

Maybe. But that just seems to be try to find a reason to justify the first argument. So, I'll reiterate, I think the comparative data for West Coast and Fremantle throws a spanner in the "home ground bias" theory. Having said that, the AFL would not be doing its job properly if it didn't try to understand why the Eagles do so well with free kicks.

Those figures do support an argument that Sutherland has done a good job. But I'm not sure I can believe the figures. Participation of over 1.4 million (which is actually one in 17, not one in 20) seems very unlikely to me.

Makes a change from 2013 when we had to have the membership tents outside the 'G' before the game to catch people on the way in when they still had hope rather than on the way out when their dominant emotion was despair.

This is a good post. The concept of convergence over time would occur if the awarding of free kicks was fully random. That the convergence hasn't occurred effectively confirms that other matters are at play. That's not to say there is anything nefarious, but you are correct that it deserves a proper assessment to ensure there is no unconscious bias or (in a worst case scenario which I don't believe for one minute has occurred) some form of corrupt practice.

Dr Matthew Cobb

I don't share your enthusiasm for James Sutherland. In my view under his watch cricket has gone backwards overall. I accept that there has been great progress in women's cricket and the Big Bash, but cricket is no longer the dominant summer pastime like it used to be.

A good idea but can't be implemented because Round 1 sometimes falls over Easter and Geelong is already "locked in" to play Hawthorn on Easter Monday every year.

The problem with this theory is that if it were true you would expect Fremantle to be similarly advantaged and instead they are minus 308.

I think it would be coup for James Sutherland rather than for any club that might appoint him. I've been surprised for the best part of the last decade that Sutherland has remained as CA CEO while that sport has progressively diminished in so many ways.

Code for leaving Mt Buller?

The order of value of the three Jetta cousins has changed a fair bit in the last few years.

Many years ago the AFL (it might even have been that long ago it was the VFL) considered gate sharing for all games and concluded that the hard working clubs would end up subsidising the unprofessional ones. They changed to the model that the home team should be the beneficiary of the proceeds to encourage them to work to get people to attend. I don't know what the arrangement is today, but for every argument that favours pooling and equal sharing there is another one which discourages it.

I think he looks more like a buckyball.

Lottoland is licensed in the Northern Territory which only taxes bookmakers on bets on racing. Lottoland is therefore not paying any gambling taxes (unless it also has a horse betting business on the side). That's one reason why traditional betting companies (eg, Tabcorp) don't like them. Anyway, due to Federal legislation, Lottoland will be unable to take bets on lotteries from the end of this year. Personally, I think that's a good thing.

Not sure where to pose this question, but given it's a question about stats recorded for this game, this is probably better than starting a new thread. According to the AFL website here are some players, their disposal numbers and their contested possessions (CP) and uncontested possessions (UP). However, the contested and uncontested possessions do not equal disposals. Perhaps this is because a player may take possession but not dispose of the ball. But if that's the case, how does Petracca have more disposals than possessions? Does anyone know how these numbers are actually derived and what they measure?

How many games did Hibberd miss at the beginning of last year? I've always been of the view that AA selections are rather like job interviews in that the "primacy" and "recency" factors have too much influence. "Primacy" means the ones noticed first (for the AA, that means those players who dominate in the first few rounds; for job interviews, it's the first person interviewed) while "recency" refers to the ones noticed at the end (last few games in the home and away series for AA, last person interviewed for the job). If Tom McDonald retains his form, though, particularly if he's strong in the last 2-3 weeks of the season, I doubt the games he missed will go against him.

They may have failed the medical, too, if having your own teeth was considered to be an essential requirement in wartime.

They did, but that was back in the days when we couldn't manage to break an egg.