La Dee-vina Comedia

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.

"And in my client's defence, your Honour, I would argue that the opposition's ruckman, Mr Longer, by jumping onto my client blocked his approach to the contest. If the umpires had correctly interpreted the rule, the free kicks in each instance should have been awarded to my client, Mr Gawn."

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.

In 5 years we have increased our wins by 550% (and it may yet rise further) and almost doubled our percentage. I suspect that rate of improvement has not been seen by any other team in the last 75 years (ie, post WWII), apart, perhaps, from the new teams. Of course, all that really tells us is that we were truly abominable just a few years ago.

Lumumba...or did you count him last year? And the list may yet still add a handy player in Ablett. The 2007 list is pretty good, too: Buckley, M Voss, Ricciuto, Hird, Koutoufides, Chris Grant, Chris Scott, Archer, Chris Johnson (Bris), Luke Darcy and probably others I've now forgotten.

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?

If I didn't think the umpiring was fair, I wouldn't be interested in watching the game. And I wonder why anyone who does think umpiring is biased or unfair is bothering to watch a game.

I'd say that. They may not be 100% correct, but I'm comfortable in my belief that they are 100% fair.

That's not true about the Collingwood supporters. I don't think you are eligible for the dole while in gaol.

I'm not saying it was incorrect; only that we were lucky. Having said that, while it was definitely correct, I'm not comfortable with the rule in the first place. Sure, if a player's encroachment into the protected area impacts the player with the ball, I'm all for it. But the number of times it has no impact but a 50 metre penalty is awarded seems to me to unfairly damage the team without the ball. I guess that's the price we have to pay for wanting "black and white" rules which are not subject to the umpires' interpretation.

The hyperbole about Jack Watts in this thread is only outdone by the paranoia in the regular "umpires have it in for us" threads. All I can say, is thank goodness the Greeks have given us such wonderfully descriptive words to help us fully appreciate Demonland.

Interesting. I wonder whether the non-support was strategic to try and get a lighter sentence (on the basis that it's hard to defend foolishness) or to force Bugg to be more accountable for his own actions rather than relying on the club to defend him. I'm not arguing the club was either right or wrong - just wondering why that approach was taken. Perhaps there was no strategic thinking at all, although given we seem to do everything else off-field so well now, I think that's unlikely.

To be fair, I think we might have seen the luckiest 50 metre penalty ever yesterday. Viney was gifted our first goal after Tyson handpassed the ball back to him for his free kick. The St Kilda player clearly thought the free kick had been given to Tyson (as, I think, did most of the crowd) who he thought had started play again by handpassing to Viney.

If that's a rule, it makes no sense. In fact, the whole "shepherding" players thing has got out of control this year with players regularly receiving free kicks because an opponent happens to be in their way because they got there first. Even worse, how any player can be accused of "shepherding out" another player when they have not moved is beyond me.

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

In what way didn't we support Bugg or, as you've put it, "hung him out to dry"? I don't recall any such behaviour.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."

And hopefully it will be explained publicly so the rest of us can understand how a player standing still and being jumped into can be accused of shepherding in the ruck. As to the rest of the day's umpiring, I thought it was pretty good overall. And slightly off-topic, but I was impressed seeing Oliver going to Gawn and apparently telling him to pull himself together after one of those bizarre free kicks resulted in a St Kilda goal.

I'm suspicious that part of the thinking behind the 20,000 seat giveaway for this particular game was to get a crowd over 50,000 to continue to discourage the AFL from consigning us to a home game against St Kilda at Etihad ever again. I've been wondering why we would try and boost a crowd against a Melbourne-based team rather than do it when we play one of the lowly supported interstate teams. If that's part of the reason for doing it when we played St Kilda, well played, MFC.

If it were earlier in the season (or at this time of the year in any other season in the past decade) I wouldn't mind persisting with Weideman a bit longer and keeping Watts at Casey to work on whatever deficiencies the coaches' believe he has. But when finals are a genuine but as yet unconfirmed chance, I think we need Watts back before finals start. If he doesn't play against Brisbane, he will have only one week out of four (because of the unnecessary bye) to regain touch at the senior level which really compromises the chance of him being useful in the finals. That. And I don't want to see any pictures of Picket streaking naked.

Is the club already selling 2018 season memberships?

6. Pedersen 5. Neal-Bullen 4. Jones 3. Brayshaw 2. Lewis 1. Hunt

The MCC is predicting a crowd of 42,000. Hopefully that's correct. Anything over 40,000 always provides a good atmosphere.

Sounds like that might have been a problem today.

So, if every match was genuinely a 50/50 contest, we'd be a 1 in 128 chance to win the Grand Final. Best odds for this time of year in over a decade.