La Dee-vina Comedia

As an ethical alternative, I've always found a bottle in front of me to be better than a frontal lobotomy.

What a wasted opportunity. This thread would have been much better if posted in the off-season. We could have gone to town on "um" versus "umm" and argued back and forth about whether an ellipsis has space between the dots or not.

You make a good point. I suspect that one of the reasons the AFL and SA Government came to a long-term agreement last year was to encourage investment in infrastructure, such as additional accommodation and conference facilities for Adelaide.

I think the economics is a bit more complex. Firstly, the SA Government benefits from their own people choosing to stay in Adelaide for school holidays because of Gather Round, rather than spending their dollars outside SA. Secondly, I assume Gather Round is a hook for other events such as conventions, conferences and business meetings that wouldn't otherwise occur in Adelaide. I was dubious about the Gather Round concept last year, but am now fully on board. My bigger problems is that the footy calendar has become too spread out with games all over the week rather than with consistent scheduling. With Easter, Gather Round and Thursday night football (and ANZAC Day and eve to come), there is too much football on non-traditional days and particularly inconsistent timeslots.

6. Petracca 5. May 4. McVee 3. Gawn 2. Sparrow 1. Lever

Forget Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Elton and Pink. Whenever I see it written as "The Gathering" I keep thinking of Diana Ross and the Supremes singing "The Happening"

I often wonder why the broadcasters don't include a retired field umpire on their calls occasionally to explain the rules.

Somewhat disappointed that this thread was not about Whispering Jack changing this first name to Hungry as some sort of sponsorship deal for the club.

It's a bit weird knowing we have been in Adelaide for more consecutive days prior to this game than the team called Adelaide.

You mean on Demonland or on the field of play?

Never thought about it before, but the surname's a bit of a give-away.

Completely agree with you regarding it being an error by the umpire. I don't agree, however, that one instance of an umpire making a mistake warrants his demotion. I'm not being critical when saying this, but umpires make mistakes regularly. That's because it's a hard game to umpire. The best we can hope for is that the number of mistakes made by umpires is minimal. They'll never completely disappear.

I fully expect May to be selected this week. Whether he'll play, though, is a completely different question.

I'd love to see the re-instatement of a proper reserves competition. However, how would that work in the northern States? Where would Gold Coast and GWS find enough players to make up a seconds squad? I suspect that may be one of the main reasons for the mess which is the VFL competition at the moment.

Apart from Clayton Oliver

Maybe it is. Salary caps mean not all our players can be stars. Just maybe he's the best player available at that price range.

Maybe he's making up new words, too. Is "pre-agent" a word that's been used before?

That's just your way of saying, under the parson's nose, right?

I grew up with the understanding like so may others that I supported Melbourne first and then any team playing Collingwood. And that's still the case. However, one change is that whereas I also used to despise Collingwood supporters the most, I now have Richmond supporters on top of that particular table. (For the avoidance of doubt, I chose Collingwood in the poll. And it is certainly a lot easier to detest them when they're actually a good football team.)

Having seen the replay, I suspect the damage to May's ribs was caused by Chol landing on top of May who was partially lying sideways on the ground. I doubt it was the collision itself (and even if it was, Chol did nothing wrong).

I'm old enough to remember the pictures of Oliver before he was drafted and we all thought he overate.

My biggest concern about this team selection is Hawthorn's forward line. It's very small and with May, Lever, McDonald and to a lesser extent Hore and Howes, we seem to be going in too tall. Adding Petty in place of Woewodin limits our ability to add a pacy, small defender should it be needed. I should add that I'm not questioning Petty's selection from a form or fitness point of view. It's purely a question of team structure.

There are a number of interesting political nuances which I've heard over the years, but I'm not sure what's true and what isn't: Sir Kenneth Luke, who was the Chairman of the then VFL (and before that, President of Carlton), had a feud with the Melbourne Cricket Club which controlled the MCG and decided to build Waverley Park to spite the MCC once he couldn't get whatever it is he wanted for the VFL at the MCG; The Waverley location was "justified" by the VFL because most of the new housing developments were extending Melbourne eastwards and the suburb of Waverley was expected to be in the demographic centre of Melbourne by the time it opened; Before the decision to develop Waverley Park was made, Luke had advice that the government, with Henry Bolte as Premier, had decided to build a railway line that would pass by Monash Uni and then Waverley Park; For whatever reason (budgetary, maybe?) the government had to make a decision between extending the railway line past Waverley Park or extending a different line which subsequently became the train line to Dandenong; The decision to build the train line to Dandenong was made because Bolte thought a racetrack which went via Sandown Racecourse was a better option than one that would go via a new football stadium. If anyone can confirm or reject any of the above, feel free to do so. I'm not in a position to confirm any of them.

Would need some bold personality, I would have thought.

One fond memory was attending the Night Grand Final we won in the 1980s. Our first piece of silverware since 1964.