La Dee-vina Comedia

The difference between your excellent team and mine is that yours makes sense at any time; mine only since late September last year. And that's a hint for anyone still interested.

Irrespective of the wording of the marking rule, it frustrates me when a player who doesn't move and is attempting to mark the ball is penalised for blocking because a player from behind or coming in from the side can't get to the ball.

Made me laugh, but you raise a serious point. If coaches criticise umpires, or show dissent in the coaches' box, should they be penalised? If so, how? The issue is the same. The AFL wants umpires to better respected to encourage more people to take on the role. Surely coaches being disrespectful is also a problem.

Walking Civil War is the silver medallist. And as both Demonstone and WCW know, you don't need me to tell you if you've worked it out. It will be self-evident when you do.

Go ahead. Silver is still up for grabs.

I fully expect the club to claim that the injury is in no way connected to his knee injury from the practice match the previous week. Whether that's true or not.

That didn't age well.

Maybe one of the umpires has tested positive? (So many jokes...positive to stupidity? Covid is believed to have transferred to humans from animals. Can it also be transferred from humans to white maggots?)

Gold medal is awarded to Demonstone.

Don't know anything more than this tweet from Rohan Connolly. I'm certainly curious as to what he means by "huge logistical issues". For the competition? For the AFL? For the MCG?

31 votes last year and 3rd place. Not sure I agree.

Nails? Wasn't Grinter's nickname "Balls"? Or are you referring to someone else?

This thread needs to be promoted, to give us something to do in the (too) long break between Rounds 1 and 2. And to make it interesting, here's a team made up entirely of Melbourne players, past and present. Everyone is in exactly the right position, even though some never played that role in their life. What am I looking for? FB: May Elshaugh Lord HB: Bourke Osborne Usher C: Richards Neal-Bullen Emselle HF: Dixon Elliott McDonald FF: Oliver Neitz Schwarz R: Petracca Robertson Eishold I/C: Mann Ingerson Ellingworth Ridley Sub: Salem (It's another team without the great Robbie Flower - but there is just no position for him in this team.)

Umps just want to make sure Oliver earns his Brownlow the hard way.

Having Luke Beveridge in the WhatsApp group might have been a bit awkward in September last year.

If the umpires are paying free kicks that should be paid and not paying the ones they shouldn't, they are not influencing momentum within games. The players giving away the free kicks are.

At least Dunstan has seen the example of Ben Brown. Brown had to work hard to get his fitness level up and spend a lot of time at Casey in 2021 before settling in to the senior team. From that experience, Dunstan should understand what he needs to do to have a chance of playing senior footy. He would also have seen what happened to Hunt. Played all year until injured late and couldn't get back into the side for the GF. That could happen to any of our midfielders, so Dunstan needs to be ready to take his chance should it come his way.

In your team, we only have 8 backmen if Hunt plays if Brayshaw remains at half-back. have you considered moving Brayshaw back to the wing in place of Sparrow, who could go to the bench in place of Bedford or Jordon? The question really becomes, should Hunt play instead of Bedford or Jordon?

Grinter talked on The Front Bar about a WhatsApp group of 100+ former Melbourne players. I wonder whether ex-players actively involved with other clubs, such as Luke Beveridge, Neville Jetta and Shannon Byrnes are in that group?

I was at the MCG. I must watch the replay to see what I missed with Spargo's game. Given the comments here, he must have done a lot more than I can recall seeing.

Salem spent less time on the ground last night than Ron Barassi.

I'm guessing 640MD meant Bedford.

Seemed to be playing half-forward for much of the night. Whether that was to change their on-ball mix (a polite way of saying whether he'd been demoted from that role following the pasting they received in the GF) or he had a particular role, such as tagging one of our defenders, I couldn't tell.

Irrespective of the disparity in number, I was more concerned about the inconsistency. I thought, overall, the umpires had a poor night. To be fair, the quality of the football was inferior to last year's Grand Final, too, with a lot more fumbling and poor disposals. Hopefully, both the quality of umpiring and football will improve next week.

Wouldn't that mean that most people wouldn't know which variant they've caught? It might be different for footballers, though, with the presence of club doctors and access to all sorts of medical specialists.