La Dee-vina Comedia

Everybody betting has the same information. In addition, there are many more unknowns than a player's specific injury that may affect a betting outcome. These include weather conditions, other teams' injuries, whether the player has a happy and stable private life, coaches' instructions on gameday and so much more.

Struggling to work out whether you're worried or not. I'm more worried about the data itself. Steven May ranked 3rd against Essendon? I assume that he got credit for each of the free disposals he got kicking in from Essendon's 10 behinds. But does this analysis in any way take into consideration how well his opponent played? Having said that, there might be merit in the team score, rather than for individual players. But, really, the best data about the team and how it's playing is the final score in each game.

Reading this thread, and it seems that everyone must believe that Brayshaw should continue to play as a defender instead of returning to the wing. If Lever is ready, why doesn't he come in for Brayshaw, with Brayshaw moving back to the wing? That would mean our seven defenders would be Lever, May, Tomlinson, Bowey, Rivers, Hunt and Smith. I realise Brayshaw just played an outstanding game at half-back; but it's only four games ago that he was equally outstanding on the wing. Given we train our players for specific roles, I would have thought the intention would be for Brayshaw to return to the wing as soon as possible. Brayshaw returning to the wing leaves a decision to be made about Jordon, who I think has played well so far this year. Nevertheless, either Jordon becomes the sub or he takes Sparrow's spot in the mid-field. As to B Brown, if he's ready he must play and Weideman should be given another opportunity. It wasn't just Weideman's 7 scoring shots. He also provided a great marking target. Unfortunately, Tom McDonald is wearing iron gloves, again. Hunt and Smith are playing against each other for Salem's spot when he's ready to return. So, assuming everyone who played against Essendon is available, I would pick B Brown and Lever in place of McDonald and either Jordon or Sparrow.

I was tossing up between Gawn and Weideman for my final vote. Gawn's unlucky - I might have been swayed by the idea that Weideman needed an encouragement award. To be fair to Weideman, though, he really made a difference in the forward line by being a consistent threat. Let himself down with his kicking, but seeing as his history has shown he has struggled more to take marks than convert marks into goals, it was a pleasure to see the way he played.

6. Oliver 5. Brayshaw 4. Langdon 3. Bowey 2. Rivers 1. Weideman

As a matter of interest, does the player replacing someone out due to the Covid rules have to come from the four named emergencies? I realise that M Brown has been added to the squad and could still replace Weideman (or anyone else) tonight.

Weideman coming in means this is a big test for both him and McDonald. Brown will return as soon as he's over his enforced absence, meaning only one of Weideman and McDonald will keep their spot. It's also an opportunity for Weideman to show his forward credentials without having to worry about being the back-up ruckman.

Never went to Windy Hill. Clearly it was a place that has scarred people for life. Just to be clear, I'm not critical of others and their choice of teams they hate. I just don't have the same feelings.

I'm surprised by the hate strongly negative attitude towards Essendon in this thread. There may be all sorts of reasons for it, but I wonder whether it all boils down to latent hostility following on from the result of the 2000 GF? As I've said before, I don't dislike any team but subscribe to the view that I support Melbourne and any team playing Collingwood. I've always believed that other teams are our friends in battle with the true enemy (for want of another word) being the other winter codes.

Can Mitch Brown ruck? I am in no doubt that Weideman is an emergency in case we need to replace a ruckman at the last minute. I hope Bedford is the sub again, but unless he's needed to cover injuries, I expect Melksham to get three more games as sub during the year to allow him to achieve a 200-game career before he retires. It's essentially a similar strategy to what we did with Jones last year to get him to 300 games.

Gulp! How do we know it's not Max posting the April Fools Day joke pretending to be at a cafe 20 minutes ago...?

Hard to know. Without pictures, I can't tell if you're playing a team of midgets or not.

The AFL seems to have an intermittent policy of commenting on contentious decisions. That suggests to me that they review the umpiring in all matches (although I concede that is not necessarily the case - they could just look at the contentious ones). Clearly what you are referring to, though, is a more transparent process and I think that would be a good idea. I'm in favour of a holistic review being the "rules of the game and how they are umpired", not just the umpires per se. However, I don't buy the argument that it costs teams matches. Or, rather, it doesn't cost teams matches any more than the mistakes the losing teams make.

How does that help? By reducing overlap by 30 minutes? I understand that the two Friday night games were to assist the AFLW when the Grand Final had been scheduled for this Saturday afternoon. But my point has always been a general one, and not just about tomorrow night - I believe start times being inconsistent are bad for football. People expect consistency in scheduling rather than irregularity. I predict that the talkback shows on Saturday will have callers complaining about missing the start of our game because they had assumed it would start at 7.50pm.

In fact, three out of four options give lousy outcomes. All of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, being in the right place at the wrong time and being in the wrong place at the right time all produce less than optimal results. Sometimes it does take some luck to be in the right place at the right time. Essentially, what I've just written above is the basic plot structure of your standard rom-com.

Whoa! I've just discovered our game tomorrow starts at 7.20pm not the usual Friday night start time of 7.50pm. I wonder how many people will turn up late or miss the first part of the game on TV? I'm going, but had plans in place to get there with 10 minutes to spare...for a 7.50pm start. Thankfully, I can change my plans so will be there on time.

Thanks. But you need to get out more. Unless you're being sarcastic...which is fine with me.

I agree with your point about Viney. However, as tough and as committed as Viney is, he can't do this role successfully against the bigger-bodied mids such as Bontompelli, Cripps and Fyfe. It's just physically impossible for him. He could, however, do it against Parish.

Given the sensitivity of the auto-censor, I'm quite surprised your nickname for Essendon got through unscathed. Mind you, if the Essendon equivalent of Demonland is equally as sensitive, it must drive them absolutely nuts every time they want to discuss arguably their best player ever in [censored] Reynolds.

I would suggest that the disposal efficiency stat is not particularly relevant unless you're comparing defender v defender, forward v forward, or midfielder v midfielder. And even then, it depends a lot on whether the role of the player is inside or outside mid, the distributing defender (a la Salem and Bowey last week), etc. I think you'll find defenders generally have a higher disposal efficiency than anyone else, possibly because from where they are disposing of the ball the ground is opening up thereby creating more space. Compare this with a midfielder kicking into the forward line where the circular ground is narrowing and therefore with less room for error and a greater concentration of players.

I assume this is correct, because it's otherwise hard to explain the reason for how much better he has become. He also needs to be credited with having put in the hard work necessary to be better. It doesn't matter how good the coaching is if the player doesn't do the work.

Is the Salem injury related to his pre-season one? Or is it a completely new and unrelated problem?

https://www.westernbulldogs.com.au/news/1090080/bulldogs-welcome-federal-government-funding-commitment Might be wrong, but I think that this was previously announced.

I think WERRIDEE has started something with this thread.

A life-size statue including beard may require too much bronze to be affordable. Might have to settle for a hologram in the Sports Museum instead.