La Dee-vina Comedia

Someone will come on here and agree with you if you mean draft selections in 2009.

Bugger. Light rain is forecast apparently due to start around 4 pm. May impact (1) the crowd size, (2) the pre-game ceremony, (3) quality of the game, (4) the result...all negatively (for us). Official forecast: Partly cloudy. Slight (30%) chance of a shower late this afternoon and evening and the chance of a thunderstorm tonight. Winds northerly 20 to 30 km/h becoming light in the late afternoon then tending southwest to southerly tonight.

Or the veteran players such as Vince or Jetta. But I agree regarding the rest.

BUMP I saw an ad in one of the newspapers on the weekend promoting the "new" programming on 3AW's sister station in Melbourne. It's a new all-sport channel on frequency 1278 and includes David Schwartz and Mark Allen in the drive-time slot Monday to Friday. I wasn't a listener of their program on SEN, but I'm pleased for them to see they are back on the airwaves. The ad also mentioned that weekday breakfast will be hosted by Tony Leonard with Jimmy Bartel and Tony Shaw. I don't know whether the 1278 station (sorry, I don't know its name) will be calling football or what other sports coverage it has.

I agree with your comment about AFL's lack of consistency on this (or almost any) issue. But I disagree that Richmond should wear a clash jumper. That's because I don't believe clash jumpers are ever necessary.

I noticed Hawthorn played Frawley in the forward line against us in the second half. And were Hawthorn accused of tanking? Of course not.

I'm going to read something into this story that I probably shouldn't. If JW is going to be a proud sponsor of both the Friday night TV broadcast and of the MFC, does this mean the AFL has given the club and the sponsor an in principle commitment for more Friday night games in 2019?

...fully expect us to lose to the worst performing team out of Essendon, St Kilda, Gold Coast and Carlton in the games following and be 6-3 after 9 games.

Thankyou, Sir Humphrey.

I have no idea what this means.

Some useless trivia: Demonwiki's list of players for Melbourne includes a George Walker (who played between 1914 and 1921) and, of course, Max Walker. But no John Walker, Johnnie Walker or, indeed, any other Walker.

One wonders why you keep reading and posting in it, then. For anyone who cares to look more closely, you might find there's possibly a trend which might be useful for the coaches to consider. I appreciate that the opening post is subjective in determining what a "shocker" might be, but I find it interesting that there's a consistent theme of "shockers" occurring every 4 or 5 games. This may be due to a number of different things, such as injuries, weather conditions, travel and consecutive short breaks...but proper analysis should be able to account for those which might tell us that perhaps the players have been getting ahead of themselves too often. Coaching is not just about gameplan, fitness and player's physical development. It's also about understanding how your players are thinking and why.

In the second half of the Hawthorn game it looked like Gawn was mounting a one-man protest. He seemed to be doing things that were not consistent with what the rest of the team was doing, such as tapping the ball to no-one or trying to roost the ball when he kicked it with no apparent method. Given the poor performance of the team, though, it was difficult to tell whether his message was for the players trying to get them more involved or whether it was to the coach to fix something structurally.

Hilarious non-story from SEN about Tom McDonald including this gem: "According to SEN news breaker Sam McClure, the 25-year-old’s rehab is going according to plan..." Wow. That's breaking news?

The one thing that didn't seem to be a problem last weekend was inconsistency within the game. We were consistently bad for much more of the game than usual.

My suspicion is that those people actually only think there are three (ie, no ABC or SBS).

I have serious doubts about the criteria used by Champion Data to measure flubbing it.

What proportion of TVs in use don't have access to 7Mate? I would have thought very few, if any. The bigger problem - and this goes for all games on any night - is what it is up against across all TV networks. I accept that there is a certain inertia among viewers who seem incapable of tearing themselves away from the "main channels", but as long as 7 promotes on its main channel that the football is on 7Mate (and whether they will do that remains to be seen), I can't see people not knowing that it's on if they want to watch it.

While I support the call for a cautious approach, for all we know we may already be doing that by holding him back until the Essendon game.

Selfish.

I like your thinking, though what would likely happen is that the player with the ball would take the advantage and play on. Same effect though in that (1) the game progresses as it would have and (2) the AFL will have to step in and amend the rule because the tackling by the man on the mark of his opponent will be a blight on the game, particularly if the player who is attacked retaliates.

A post which explains quite well why you call yourself "don't make me angry". I recommend a Bex and a good lie down.

For those who have a choice and are contemplating not going to the game on ANZAC Eve, how would you feel if we win and you are not there to see it? From a purely emotional perspective, I've always found the unexpected victories to be the most satisfying.

I worry about this point. Why is it that we (as supporters) seem to fall back on this excuse yet we can't beat teams in an identical situation. Last weekend Hawthorn were two down on the bench from around half time and it didn't seem to tire them; in another game (was it last year? year before?) against GWS they were, I think, three down on the bench and still won.

I agree with everything you've said but want to add that the best game plans revolved around the strengths of the players you have AND the personnel and gameplan of the opposition. To use a cliche, horses for courses.