La Dee-vina Comedia

This a good question. Presumably when tobacco advertising was banned, sport and the media found an alternative to replace those funds. My bigger fear, though, is that if betting revenue ceases the AFL (and all others sports) will make up at least some of the shortfall by changing the spectator model altogether and make attending games a much more expensive exercise. The AFL has adopted a strategy over the last 40 years of trying to keep attendance costs down to encourage weekly attendance. It could easily decide to drop that idea and replace it with a model where attendance is significantly more expensive with an expectation that most people who choose to attend will do so much less frequently. Essentially, that's the US NFL model, also known as the "theatregoers model". That's what we already see here with the Spring Racing Carnival and the Grand Prix, but both get away with it because they don't have a product to sell for more than just a few days every year.

Apart from Las Vegas, sports betting was illegal throughout the US until about 2-3 years ago. It will be interesting to see if the US media becomes saturated with betting ads as occurs here.

The issue with the umpire giving betting information can still exist even if legalised betting is stopped. It would just go underground. At least with legal, regulated betting, these types of problems are identified because the legal betting operators work with the sports to identify these problems. In short, the problems of cheating and exchanging information of this type are likely to be greater, not less, if betting was made illegal.

The major sporting bodies claim that they do. They are arguing that their earnings from broadcast rights will be less if the TV networks have their betting advertising reduced. I suspect that claim is right. So, the question becomes not just a moral one but a business one. Are we as supporters prepared to accept a competition with less revenue which either has to be replaced (eg, higher membership or ground entry costs) or there has to be a reduction in costs (most likely to be borne by reduced payments to players). Or a mix of both, of course. When that becomes the choice, do people still want greater restrictions on betting advertising? Fair enough if they do, but it has to be understood that it comes with a cost. My position: I don't bet. But I also don't have a problem with the advertising. I find it easy to ignore.

Just for a moment I thought we had another player with the first name Hunter, surname Brody. Then I realised who you meant.

And our loyal members who pay membership fees every year (and our sponsors, but I accept that our club's relationship with them is never anything more than temporary).

Thanks Lucifer and Hawk for explaining more. It's still a fail that a person cannot confirm their own membership status online, whosever "fault" it is. I wonder how many MCC members like me think that they are also MFC members when, in fact, they are not. It's too damn hard to check, so why would people bother to do so?

Actually, the failure to renew is my mistake, not the MCC's. Where the MFC has failed is that its website does not tell me whether my membership has been renewed or not. I had just assumed it was renewed. The only reason I checked was because I did not receive voting papers for the recent election. Now I know why.

I've recently been on the MFC website looking at my membership profile. Nowhere does it tell me whether my membership is paid up, or when it might expire. I still get MFC emails and I still have a member number which is active. It turns out my membership had not been renewed. I have auto-renewal with direct debit for my MCC membership and had thought it included the MCC/MFC option, but apparently not. I tried calling the MFC today only to be in a phone queue for quite some time. I've now got it fixed by calling the MCC instead. Does anyone else find it bizarre that the MFC website can let me access my membership profile yet not tell me whether my membership is paid up or not?

If we were still in an economy where interest rates were not moving upwards, you might be right. But any fund manager would have known over the last 12 months that the only way interest rates were going to move was upwards. Hence, waiting has a low risk. If we'd moved too soon, we might have invested in less than optimal opportunities. I'm not a finance person, but I can see that what you are thinking of as a delay I could see as maximising a strategic opportunity.

Far be it for me to question the words of a writer of the quality of Hemingway, but isn't the correct expression "no holds barred"? Or perhaps this is just a typo?

Hawk the Demon's motives for raising this issue might be questioned, but the specific questions he has asked are not unreasonable. Nor are they particularly important. Morgan Stanley might have been selected because they provided the best proposal to the club's request for expressions of interest from potential fund managers. The $10 million from Leighoak may have been earmarked for a different purpose. I don't see what the problem is with the investment strategy not being ready by November 2022. It's not like the money would be sitting idle. I'd rather take the time to get it right. All the above might be wrong answers, but unless someone's embezzled the Leighoak proceeds and the club isn't aware of it, I doubt whether any other answer would change people's perceptions about the Board's actions.

The term is no longer in use today, but am I recalling correctly that the term "ruck rover" was created to explain the role Ron Barassi had in the Melbourne team? Unfortunately, my memories of RDB as a player are of him in a Carlton jumper.

Thanks WJ. Is the condition considered to be a sports-related injury or illness? Or is it a condition that anyone could get? I hope he can get better and have a good life from hereon.

Is this game played with proper rules? That is, 4 quarters of normal length plus time on; 4 interchange plus sub with usual rotation limits; limit to 23 players for the whole game; 4 field umpires; etc? (If not, what's the point? And if so, what's the point? As you can tell, I don't like pre-season, practice matches.)

I think the Roughead/Franklin recruitments were more than just luck. Yes, Hawthorn was lucky that both players happened to be available that year, but I recall some story about how Hawthorn played their draft hand in a way that encouraged Richmond to pick Deledio and Tambling with their first two choices and not one of either Roughead or Franklin. In addition, as we know, it's not just good selections that matter; it also needs a good development program to be in place. And a good gameplan helps, too.

Story is behind a paywall. What is (or was) his disability and what's he up to now?

About one-third of our players will have their names regularly mis-spelt on Demonland.

I agree with both these points. Having said that, I'm not sure whether there would be much value in a summary of what the Board discusses. Any juicy bits will be left out of the disclosed information.

Didn't know that still existed. I don't think I've heard the name for 40 years!

I'm torn on the issue of publication of the minutes. While I appreciate the idea that it should support the principle of democracy, the reality is that if minutes are made public, two things happen. Firstly, debate at meetings becomes stifled because people might not want their comments and opinions shared widely and because information that might be sensitive for commercial or political reasons might be disclosed. Secondly, to avoid the latter problem, the minutes themselves are more likely to be a sanitised version of the discussion. That's not helpful to future discussions of the Board. On balance, I'm against the disclosure of the minutes as I believe the Board should not feel constrained by concerns as to publication of what they might say and because any future Boards should be able to look back at minutes of past meetings and know that they fully record what was discussed. I'm speaking from experience here having recorded minutes for very senior government meetings as well as being a member of a government board that had to make highly sensitive decisions.

That's a really good point. Players need to be shown how a minor change in the way the ball is held will alter its trajectory as it falls to the boot. If you're spinning the ball around, you're not concentrating on having the ball set into your hands correctly and in a consistent manner. They should look at Brendan Fevola as an example (of goal kicking, not lifestyle). He held the ball in an unusual way, but it was identical every time he kicked and it worked well for him.

Maybe you should change your name to LimpingCivilWar. (Seriously, I hope you recover quickly.)

Typical of Demonland. Langdon has been mis-spelled as Longden

I find this to be an amusing statement. It's like saying Adam Lambert's best performances with Queen were in his audition for the lead singer role. (It's OK, Picket. I know exactly what you mean and I appreciate your snake-defying visits to Casey.)