La Dee-vina Comedia

Maybe knee problems are contagious and he got it from some other bloke on their list

I understand what you're saying. But the pedant in me needs to explore the expression. I understand about being behind the 8-ball. But I'm not sure about the "so far behind..." bit. Aren't you better off the further behind the 8-ball you are? Allows more angles.

I'm not sure why you say this. I don't think January tells us anything. Until we play another team in a game that matters, I don't think we'll know much at all.

Actually, according to Melbourne's little paper, he's about to travel with his family to South America for a holiday.

Any relation to the Tom Crouch which the AFL's own website has claimed has gone to Melbourne. Oh well, welcome to the home of Maloney, Trengrove and Pettard

I've never particularly liked Channel 7's approach to AFL. What really concerns me is not reasonably trivial matters like when the teams are announced, but the lack of competition form Channel 10. Over the last 10 years we've had two free to air networks so comparison of quality of production of games and non-game programs (such as Before the Game, One Week at a Time, etc) meant viewers and critics could use one network's performance to critique the other. With a monopoly (FTA) provider we lose that and as a consequence Channel 7 is not pressured to perform as well as it should. This is, of course, no different to any other monopoly provider. And I'm afraid it means football coverage won't be as good as it should or could be for the next 5 years.

Lucky typo. Have a look at your keyboard at the relative positions of r, d and f. I assume you meant to type r, but you could so easily have hit the f.

Thanks Bobby Mc. Always like a bit of trivia. But relevant to today, 25 votes for Sylvia is a very poor return for a player of his talent who plays a fair bit on ball. It's now a midfielders medal, so he should be doing better than that. I'd like to see him double that total in one year. In fact, if he doubles it in the next two, I'd be happy.

Is it just the photo or have we gone back to a more tomato coloured red?

John Meesen? Jim Tilbrook? Paul Johnson? More seriously, Brian Wilson?

How about Jim Stynes?

This topic inevitably makes me think of unusual injuries and how they occurred. My favourite involves an ammo about 25 years ago who was running laps at training and tripped over a dog. Out for 5 weeks with strained stomach muscles. Perhaps not the most exciting - but when the player concerned is your cousin, it makes it that much more hilarious. The other one, which might be urban myth, involves a well known number 23 (not the soccer player or the cricketer) who had a hip injury allegedly caused by being, um, interrupted while otherwise engaged in non-verbal discussion with a lady friend.

Unless I've misunderstood what rpfc was saying, I think my comment still stands. The recycled paper business was owned and operated by one person. His money to recycle as he saw fit.

I would have thought the perception of a conflict of interest makes BoQ a certainty not to be a sponsor (Not that I ever thought they would be). When you are responsible for someone else's money, you don't go about sponsoring your own club.

II is 7 points. Edit: Perhaps too obscure the way II is written. Perhaps better like this I.I.7

Now being reported that Judd will miss 4 months with shoulder injury. I guess this finally justifies Hawthorn's decision not to take him with Pick 1 in 2001 draft because of concerns about his shoulders. (As an aside, I heard Dermott Brereton on SEN a couple of months ago saying Hawthorn would have picked him with their first pick in 2000 if he'd been eligible then for the draft but by 2001 because of concern about his shoulders decided on Luke Hodge)

Challenge: S should not be for Scullduggery (or T for Tomfoolery, alhough Trenners has been added as an excellent substitute). The letters are intended to represent Melbourne FC not GWS. I would suggest S is for Stynes

Wow...that really was bad!

Welcome Bob Bob to the board. And I'm old enough to remember when '2 bob' was worth something.

Heard him on 3AW this morning: he's retiring from the Herald-Sun will continue with 3AW football and Fox the article formerly known as 'Mike Sheahan's Top 50' will remain with the Herald Sun and will presumably be [insert name of Herald-Sun Chief Football writer]'s Top 50 in future refused to name his successor when asked by Peter Blunden (Herald Sun's Managing Editor - Sheahan said it would be like Cameron Ling advising Chris Scott who Geelong's next captain should be) said Wayne Carey was the best footballer he's ever seen, with Leigh Matthews second said Ron Barassi was the best coach Personally, I think he was a great football writer and speaker. I dread who his replacement might be. I suspect Mark Robinson would be the favourite...but he's definitely not in Mike Sheahan's class (and wouldn't be my choice).

Mind you, this JT might have been our second pick on the day, as was our other JT - but we can expect a big difference in skill levels between a pick in the 50s and pick 2.

Although West Coast won in 1992 - their 6th year in the competition; Adelaide in 1997, their 7th year; and Port Adelaide in 2004 which, from memory (I'm happy to be corrected), was their 8th year in. Of course, poor old Freo is still waiting...

Don't forget teams had much bigger lists in those days, so teams recruited larger numbers of players to fill out two teams to play each weekend. I have no recollection of any of the players from that draft who never got to play a senior game, but they might have ended up playing a large number of reserves games...similar to players today who play solely for Casey.

If you have a choice between conspiracy and [censored]-up, go with [censored]-up every time. I'm not saying conspiracies don't occur. Of course they do. But if you spend all your time looking for conspiracies, you'll end up wasting a lot of time and energy. So, by all means those who want to can continue to imagine a conspiracy. I'll just accept it was a [censored]-up.

Does this qualify for unco? I remember a game when Nicho came on from the bench with his tracksuit top still on. He probably didn't even get as far as the boundary line before he realised, but it was funny to watch.