La Dee-vina Comedia

No dispute. Matters are always best heard if circumstances permit. Of course technicalities which prevent matters being heard should be avoided as much as possible. Sometimes, however and unfortunately, they're unavoidable.

Not really. Average total attendances at all 6 games was around 120,000 per week equal to 2,640,000 per year (excluding-finals).

What would full time umpires do from Monday to Friday? While full time umps sounds good in theory, I'm not sure whether being forced to work on being a good umpire all week might not cause burnout, boredom or disenchantment.

I'm pretty sure Sigmund Freud claimed that people remember the good times but forget the bad. In a cliche, that would be "time heals all wounds". The question is, though, how much time do we have to wait before we can forget 50 accumulated years of disappointment?

Pretend its 24 July 2012 and read it as if it's written about the MFC. Eerily similar.

Maybe it's a bit philosophical, but I'd always prefer people in any form of prosecution to be found not guilty on a technicality than being found guilty when they're innocent. I realise it doesn't have to be an "either/or" situation, but the essential point remains - I prefer guilty people out of gaol rather than not guilty ones being incarcerated. Same principle should apply here.

So, Kingy, what would you call the games' basics?

None. It's the heart talking, not the head.

Dees by 14 points. My only reason is that we are the better team.

Ironically, I expect the sub will be abolished...which only increases the ability to rotate players. Whatever the AFL chooses to do, I don't want to see another knee-jerk reaction. As tempting as it is to argue for an extreme cap (or abolishing interchange altogether), I could see merit in a gradual reduction, such as 80 changes per match in 2016 followed by 60 in 2017 and then 40 in 2018. Each change would only be confirmed after reviewing the impact of the earlier change.

He's five, for goodness sake. 10 minutes into the game and all he'll want to do is draw in his colouring book. Just bring red and blue crayons though. You can't be too sure.

Can't tell without aural intonation whether that's positive exclamation or deflated resignation.

I'm visualising two footballs being used at once, for some reason. I'm all for seeing what happens when interchange numbers are reduced. But I'm not necessarily convinced it will be the panacea. What I suspect it will lead to is teams going back to recruiting athletes (meaning marathon runners and triathletes) rather than pure footballers, so they can run for longer. Coaches will believe he who has the team with the most ability to run will win the most games. So, I think other rule changes to go with an interchange cap reduction will be necessary. Counter-intuitively, those rules might be ones which slow the game down rather than speed it up so players can "rest" on the ground. This would allow the "pure footballers" more of a chance to keep up with the athletes. Rule changes that might help might be simple things such as disallowing a kick in from a behind until after the goal umpire has waved his flags.

While I generally like Rohan Connolly's writing, this one's a bit facile. I can think of other reasons why people might have lost interest. For example, I'm sick of seeing the same few teams on free to air TV at night. I don't have a chance to watch daytime games, which mean I've consistently had Carlton, Richmond, Geelong, Sydney and Hawthorn games to watch. As a consequence, I cannot recognise the players in teams like St Kilda, Bulldogs, Freo or WCE (and others). That, in turn, means I don't appreciate the competition as much as I should because I don't know enough about these other teams.

When drawing parallels, I wonder whether Malthouse and Collingwood is more apt? It seems to be commonly accepted that one of the reasons Collingwood moved Mick Malthouse on was to enable them not to lose Nathan Buckley. Conversely, does anyone know whether Ron Barassi wanted to coach Melbourne but couldn't do so because of Norm Smith's grip on the job and subsequently moved to Carlton to get that chance? I've never seen this suggested before, but I'm too young to remember.

I note that The Beatles released "Help" on this very same day, too. How appropriate.

I'm just waiting for a coach (preferably ours) to realise you don't have to have all your forwards in your own backline. If you reverse that trend and keep a couple of forwards in your own forward line at all times, you'll either have forwards who are unmanned and an easy target for the get out kick or you'll have the other team's defenders staying with them and therefore out of their own team's forward line and, guess what, away from their own goals where they can do damage. Simplistic? Probably. Would it work? I'd like to find out.

Helpful contribution as always, dc.

Picket, I see you've changed your modus operandi. Now quoting and criticising others for attacking Toumpas. Clever, but your strategy has been noticed.

If alcohol is not the answer then someone's asking the wrong question.

To be fair to Roos, the game plan was not the reason why I suspect he was engaged. The club needed an overhaul in development, fitness, recruitment and player management (or pastoral care, if you like). I'm not convinced Roos is a good gameday coach, but what he's delivered in those other areas is invaluable and sets the club up to go that next step. The style of play is that "next step".

Being a follower, however, consigns you to being competitive but never actually being Number One. While it's better than being 15th to 18th, is that what we really want?

I think it's a mistake to follow the leader. Teams who have done so in the past find by the time they've got there, the game has moved on. Successful teams appear to be those that are innovative. Terms such as Clarko's cluster and Pagan's paddock are testament to a novel approach which worked at the time but not necessarily when copied by others.

I think Luke Hodge is a unique talent. That makes Toumpas one of 791 players who don't resemble Luke Hodge.

Not sure that changing Sam Frost from "4 to 6 weeks" to "5 weeks" means anything. Aren't they just saying the same thing in a different way? Overall, however, that's not a bad list for this time of year.