La Dee-vina Comedia

While I agree with you, don't forget every player has an agent whispering in their ear who gets a percentage. I'm not saying agents are unreasonable but they are, by definition, conflicted in the advice they provide.

Check the date on that paper. It might be referring to James Kelly going to Essendon as a top-up player.

Who knows? You've made one assumption. But there could be a myriad of other reasons (for which I have no supporting evidence) including: relieving salary cap pressure personality clashes preference for one other player out of a list of about 45 to be captain need to regenerate a list in an ordered fashion which means "removing" older players a couple at a time offering a player of Lewis' calibre at a "peppercorn" as a courtesy to the player as gratitude for contributing to 4 premierships if Lewis had stayed Hawthorn may have lost someone else of greater importance to their long-term plans...

Is it? It seems to me the AFL continues to be concerned about the opposite. Isn't that why we have incessant rule changes? I'm sure I've heard the AFL arguing that the rule changes are essential to "keep the game moving". Presumably that means the AFL thinks the game is being slowed down by flooding which leads to those ugly rolling mauls. I suspect the only people who keep complaining that the game is "speeding up every year" are older players who are slowing down.

OK, bad example. But the point I was trying to make was that if you have zero interest in trading a player, you don't need to know what he is worth. If, on the other hand, you operate on the principle that at the right price every player is tradeable, then go ahead and find out what he might be worth. Just don't argue that you'd like to know his value if there is no intention of trading him.

So, what would the point of that be? It's like finding out what your house is worth when you're not interested in selling it. That is, information of absolutely no value.

Lewis also brings nous. When Gawn was required to leave the ground because of the blood rule, Pedersen ran from deep in defence to take the ruck duties. Lewis looked around saw Pedersen moving and immediately ran back to bolster the defence. He was the only player to react in that way. It makes me wonder what might have happened if he wasn't out there. Would the rest of the team be waiting for an instruction from the runner leaving us one short in defence?

You can add Polly Perkins to your list. And Tommy Lahiff. Although perhaps those two only worked on radio.

When I read this thread title my first thought was whether it was story about a Japanese agriculturalist who supported AFL.

I'm hoping the next version of the Demonland software will have artificial intelligence so if we preface a curse word with "excuse my language", the auto-censor doesn't kick into play.

Dangerous path, Chookrat. We've had more soft tissue injuries in the last few weeks than most if not all other clubs. Should we conclude that those players have taken an "unsafe variety of vague substances"? That's the conclusion your point 3 leads to.

Didn't he tell the media he was "best on the ground"...during a recent training run?

One more to go.

For the last decade or so we've been more bad than good, but, it seems to me, particularly in June. I'd like to see us go through June undefeated. The last time that happened was 2006. We still have to beat West Coast and (because of the 6 day break) Sydney on 30 June. Perhaps it's more a challenge than an "embarrassing record" per se, but to go through June 4-0 (plus the bye) would see that particular challenge knocked off the list.

Just to clarify, hasn't Dank been banned from basically anything involving sport? Or just the AFL? Personally I think he should be in gaol, but I'm not sure what law(s) he might have broken.

But if Lovett-Murray is initiating the action, wouldn't the burden of proof, on the balance or probabilities, be on him to show that the supplements were damaging, not the other way around?

That's a very disturbing story but I don't know how the link to the supplements and the poor girl's health can be proved. Would it have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt or the balance of probabilities for any legal action to be successful? The other concern I have is for Lovett-Murray himself. Surely if he goes to the Supreme Court he'll be found to have contributed to his own problem by (a) not checking with ASADA and (b) lying to ASADA about the injections.

I agree with your last line. Given Champion Data has a stat for everything, I'm surprised they haven't come up with a stat called something like "Percentage of team disposals". I would have thought that such a statistic would allow for better statistical comparison of players from different eras when team disposal numbers were so different. It would be interesting to see how Diesel then compared with players of today like Oliver but also with other on-ballers from different eras such as Ron Barassi, Kevin Bartlett and Dick Reynolds (if they had reliable disposal stats in those days).

When was the last time we were more than a third of the way through the season and had a percentage above 100%?

Mind you. He may have records that prove they were innocent but in so doing prove someone else is guilty. Is that why he was shot at? As a warning to keep those records a secret?

He needs help. He is still stuck somewhere between denial and anger.

I like the way you managed to put in some gratuitous but irrelevant criticism of the Poms.

You do realise that under the Federal Government's new citizenship test a Melbourne supporter hoping for a Collingwood victory is deemed to be un-Australian and you may be deported?

I think Melksham seems fine with respect to his body "standing up". It's his skills which are poor and always have been. I think he's playing just as he was, no better and no worse.

Didn't our former coach say something similar about our team after Round 2 last year? What those summaries don't say is that Watson and Stanton might have retired but for their year out and Howlett and Hocking weren't necessarily starting 22 players anyway. Also, Hooker is being played out of position. Apart from the injured players (eg Myers), it's really only Hurley and arguably Heppell that aren't performing as expected without an obvious reason. That's really no different from any other team - all teams have players not living up to expectations. For example, Jack Viney.