La Dee-vina Comedia

I disagree. Why not give Collingwood the headache of deciding who they should play on Pickett? Now, let's get back to this week's game...

The Eddie Betts Foundation is also written up in The Age today. It includes this paragraph: "The foundation will be led by Betts with close involvement from former Melbourne Demons defender Neville Jetta, a Noongar man. Jetta is also a development coach with the Collingwood Magpies, playing alongside the ladder-leading club’s younger Indigenous players in the VFL as an onfield mentor." Congratulations to both Eddie and Neville. Both continuing to show they were not just great footballers but also outstanding people.

Very glad he didn't miscalculate and place a foot over the line. For what it's worth, I think the fine is appropriate. If no action had been taken, players would believe they could do this with impunity. That could lead to dangerous outcomes.

Is that a category of membership which I don't think I've previously known about or are you just referring to your personal lifetime support for the club? If it's the former, it's something I should look into.

And I'd say with respect to Sylvia, van Rooyen and Thompson, "fair's fair". Good work as always, DS.

The headline is an example of why the three letters "AFL" can cause confusion. In this instance, the media outlet is using "AFL" to mean "Australian rules football". It is not using it to mean the coach is part of the professional AFL competition. I am in no doubt, however, that the headline writer would have known full well that the use of "AFL", while technically correct would have attracted readers to the story assuming it meant the professional competition. While I may be accused of cynicism in holding this view, I would argue that I am not being anywhere near as cynical as the media outlet.

Interesting data. Just to clarify, are the previous years' figures for the whole season or up to round 9 in each case?

Autocorrection for "partisan" perhaps? Otherwise, I have no idea what this means

Have we ever played Port on a Friday night?

Big Freeze Day, perhaps?

Why LOL? After all, it's not that long ago a team won the flag after not playing in the finals the previous season.

It's a good article. I find it both ironic and humorous that the staunch republican and lefty still refers to the second Monday in June as Queen's Birthday.

Or Melksham, perhaps.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether Salem comes in with either Brayshaw or Rivers moving from defence to take on the Sparrow role.

Are you sure it's real? I just see three stuffed toys...

I wonder if it might be the other way around. Jordon may appear to be ahead of Harmes because he (JJ) was sub and Harmes didn't play at all. But I suspect Harmes will play the Sparrow role better than Jordon. On the other hand, if it was Viney or Oliver who needed to be replaced, I would expect Jordon to play ahead of Harmes. It's all about the role being played.

If anyone out there is looking for a topic for their PhD in Psychology, I can recommend "AFL supporter paranoia". Plenty of material to work with.

Has Simon Goodwin been sent a "please explain" for his comments at his presser yesterday?

Maybe we're going with an alternative plan. Perhaps the strategy has always been to lose gallantly to get the rest of the team up in arms with an "us and them mentality" which is intended to take them through to the end of September. Mind you, it's not the strategy I'd be going with.

I read this and think...how on earth do we still allow boxing as a sport? The sport is all about attempting to inflict harm to another person's head.

I think they may have failed at escaping, too.

There's another reason why Petty might be playing forward. Goodwin might be playing him there to make Brown and McDonald work harder to get their spots back. When there's little competition for spots, players might become a bit lazy; when they aren't guaranteed a place, they probably work on all aspects of their game better.

I think it's because the producers believe viewers want to see the players close up. Some probably do; but I don't.

I don't. The Rioli incident was off the ball. I believe any incident which is not in play should cop extra weeks. I'd go with two additional weeks, although I could understand others might suggest one extra is enough. My thinking is that incidents such as this Rioli one are far more problematic for the game than offences which occur in the course of play. So, if it were up to me I would change the rules so that the Rioli incident would have resulted in 4 weeks made up of 2 weeks for the offence itself plus 2 for being off the ball.

I blame it all on the soft-on-crime government which means there are Collingwood supporters who should be in gaol but are instead roaming the streets.