La Dee-vina Comedia

Quick question. If Hogan wins the Rising Star, will this be the first silverwear (meaning any award/prize/flag/trophy) won by Melbourne for anything since Jared Rivers won the Rising Star back before the Dark Ages? (Excluding meaningless match day trophies and the meaningful women's competition).

Dear Gillon McLachlan If you are wondering why the crowd at the Melbourne v GWS game was the lowest for an AFL game ever at Etihad, let me help you out: Melbourne members and supporters keep telling you (both in writing and by their absence) that they object to home games at Etihad it was Fathers Day 1.10 pm on a Sunday...which was Father's Day. Seriously? Stop blaming Melbourne supporters and remember your own comments about match day experience. The supporters are telling you what they want. Stop trying to dictate to the supporters what you want from them

The club chose to play him in 87 out of the last 88 games from 2012 to now, including all games coached by Paul Roos. I reckon there's a fair bit of "buy in" from both the player and the club. I suspect his future just boils down to price. The club is likely to want to keep him if the price is right. If someone else wants to pay him more, that's the nature of professional football and good luck to him.

Has Steve Johnson formally retired or, in effect, been delisted?

Jack Watts listless? In so many ways.

I suspect Watts wasn't eligible to play.

Can anyone please enlighten me as to how the voting works? I remember that one year recently, every player was awarded votes from 1-7 for every game played resulting in the strange result that players who might have played just one poor game for the year still got votes. Is it still that system? if so, it makes it hard for players who missed multiple games with injury irrespective of how well they played when on the park (eg, Viney).

Not when you're arguing about a team's performance in an individual game. It might be for an ultimately different prize, but if a team isn't trying its hardest to win...it isn't trying it's hardest to win. There's a different question to be answered, though, whether it matters as much if a team's actions impact on the fairness of the finals competition by (1) potentially changing the finals mix and where teams play and (2) giving some players in some teams a rest when other players in other teams do not benefit from this same advantage. In my view, what Freo and North have done is significantly worse than any team attempting to improve their position in the draft. There are eight teams with a chance of winning a Premiership and two of them have been granted an AFL-endorsed advantage. That's an immediate reward. With the time period between drafting and a team at the bottom becoming a finals contender, any advantage of an improved draft position is reduced by a whole suite of other factors.

I gather you don't think Hogan has a future.

Agree. My highlight is that every single one of the players drafted last year, including the rookie draft (other than Petracca) played at least one game. And none of them seemed to have been out of their depths beyond what one might expect for first year players (although I haven't seen O-Mac or White play so am basing that on comments made on here as well as stats, game reports, etc). Take a bow, recruitment team.

The converse, however, is that with so many draft choices it could be argued that it would be impossible to stuff them all up and therefore the only reason for failure is their subsequent poor development. Anyway, it's a moot point and it's been done to death. In another thread I've commented that Paul Roos' gameday coaching doesn't inspire me but his ability to get the list management, recruitment and player development right is where I see his lasting legacy.

Some broken clocks are better than others.

I think we'll be OK. We've still got Lamumba, VandenBurg, Trengrove and Dunne

Wouldn't it just be fantastic, though, if North and Freo bowed out of the finals quickly? (Note: Until the "resting" matter arose, I would have been happy for any one of the Bulldogs, North Melbourne or Fremantle to win the premiership. Now there's only one team I want to win it.)

That Age story is somewhat, but not entirely, flawed by not recognising in the data that there's a big difference between free-to-air and non free-to-air broadcast audiences. It doesn't change the result, but may help explain it better. And I accept it's a bit chicken and egg - if we had better engagement numbers we'd get more free-to-air exposure. I particularly like that if we want to criticise the data behind the story, in this case we can actually, legitimately blame Jack Watts.

It's easy to criticise the decision to introduce the sub, but I understood the motivation at the time. What I'd like the AFL to do now is look at every rule introduced (or "interpretation changed", whatever that means) in the last 30 years and decide whether they should be abolished too. And it needs to be a sophisticated analysis. For example, the rule which changed the kicking in from a behind. Previously, the ball could not be kicked into play until after the goal umpire had waved the flags with the statement at the time that this would speed up the game. But what other impacts did it have? If the ball is not kicked in straight away, players get extra time to rest on the ground. So, did the supposed advantage of "speeding up play" get offset by increased rotations and, eventually, greater congestion? I would love to see a "test" game played in the preseason using the rules in place in about 1985.

I keep hearing (reading, actually) about White's fantastic left foot kicking. Can he also kick with his right? And congratulations to the kid. A sterling effort and a great reward for consistent VFL form.

Of course they probably won't line up in the positions named...but surely, as named, that's the most inexperienced half forward line for Melbourne since about 1859.

Perhaps pedantic, but also perhaps fairer on the players... Blease and Pettard retired. For all I know, they may have been delisted anyway, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. The end result might be the same, but the method of getting there makes a subtle difference.

Amusingly Essendon tweeted yesterday congratulating themselves for this great achievement 10 (sic) years ago. Tweet has subsequently been deleted. Presumably they couldn't remember which year due to inadequate record keeping.

Speaking of Shannon Byrnes, if Cross accepts a development role, would he replace Byrnes or would both be working with the club? I ask because someone on here about 12 months ago suggested Byrnes was given a development role because he still had one year on his contract so we "used it up" by having Byrnes retire as a player but work in a development role.

If we thought matters were bizarre before, this new Supreme Court action takes it to a whole new level.

Because it was our best finish since 1964 (better than 1988 because of the margin). To me that's a positive. Admittedly, very low bar.

Melbourne last played in a VFL/AFL Grand Final on 2 September 2000. How times have changed.

I think Cross has followed the dictum of it's better to quit when people say 'Why did he retire?' than to leave it too late so people say 'Why didn't he retire?'