La Dee-vina Comedia

You left out that he photoshopped the image to make Schofield's elbow visibly connect with his chin. Otherwise, nailed it.

If he's making decisions like that at 6 months...you have an extremely gifted son.

Watching those goals shows how much Stretch and Neil-Bullen contributed to the team beyond the goals they kicked themselves.

The real news in this thread is that someone's found a way around the autocensor. Well done BB. I assume it's three upper case and one lower case letter. Apologies if I've missed the original genius who identified this strategy.

Yep, that's unpleasantly humid.

A quick question for anyone who's been at a Darwin night game this time of year? Is it actually particularly humid? It is the dry season, after all.

Because of the MRP formula, Schofield won't get the penalty he should. The penalty should always be about the action, not the consequence. The AFL likes to lead on progressive issues and a good one well within its purview would be to crackdown on violence. Not only was this "not in play" it wasn't even during game time. As to the question of staging, I can't see how anybody could "stage" that quickly. Wouldn't it require the brain to make a decision to react? I know Oliver has quick reaction time when he's playing, but that involves muscle memory and lots of training. I can't see how he could have "staged" that response.

I think that's what Gwyneth Paltrow's "Goop" does, apparently.

One more to go.

Agree with every one of your four sentences.

Clint, I'm not trying to be obtuse or disagreeable, but I don't understand your point. At the beginning of the thread you mention the win percentage with Pedersen in 2016 as 66.7% then subsequently refer to 71% and then 75%. I'll assume that's the cumulative win rate since 2016? Anyway, I think my point (meant in good humour, by the way) still stands. If we start being selective with statistics, we can similarly find selective statistics which tell a different story.

From 1858 to around the 1970s, if you described one club as arrogant with a sense of entitlement, I suspect most neutral supporters would have thought it described us. The team that did it tough and struggled for many years during that same time could have been any one of Fitzroy, North Melbourne, Footscray, South Melbourne or Hawthorn. Times change.

Careful, my friend. If you want to go down that path, would you keep playing Nathan Jones? What's the win record like with him in the team?

I think sometimes it's the primacy/recency effect. Primacy - players that dominate the beginning of a game; Recency - players who are noticed for what they do in the last quarter. Pedersen had no impact in the first three quarters, but his last quarter was fantastic. Hence, recency effect leading to votes. Hint: If you're a job-seeker, try to be either the first of last interviewed. Primacy/recency works a treat.

6 Viney 5 T McDonald 4 Tyson 3 Oliver 2 Vince 1 Gawn

Hasn't he retired? I'm sure he's now commentating for Foxtel.

I'm not sure if all Commonwealth countries have suitable ovals, but I agree with the idea of starting with those that play cricket and must by definition have a "cricket oval". New Zealand is an obvious contender, although Rugby is obviously entrenched. Apparently a new cricket oval is being developed in Auckland which will be big enough for AFL. Essendon and Adelaide are today talking about hosting a pre-season game in India. And South Africa strikes me as a logical location, too.

Actually, I assume AFLX is being developed as part of "seeding the game into new territories (countries)". One of the biggest problems when taking AFL overseas is finding suitable playing fields because of the size and shape required. Given the popularity of soccer internationally, AFLX will be playable virtually anywhere.

I knew you weren't suggesting it. But I couldn't help myself. I love to look at stats even though I know that they are subject to a myriad of interpretations. For example, should we all be worried that we haven't won a game without Nathan Jones playing for nearly 5 years?

You can't tell from the online version, but this story is the backpage lead on the printed version of today's Age. It seems the media has decided that we're worth writing about again. I don't blame the media for its lack of coverage of all things Melbourne in the past decade. We brought that on ourselves. But it's nice to see that now that we're a proper football club again, we're being noticed.

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.

I'm not really sure of the skill set of the Match Committee, but I'd be extremely surprised if they chose players purely based on stats.

Ted, I'm very disappointed in you using language like this. Surely you know that it should be "who's screwing whom"?

Looks like three ex-footballers are about to punch a few kids in the head.

I really hope you don't have an Oedipus complex. I could be in a spot of bother.