La Dee-vina Comedia

This is a very interesting analysis which essentially argues luck has more influence in close games than one would think. As a friend of mine (a former mathematics teacher) pointed out, it's why Ross Lyon coached games were more prone to the influence of luck than a Simon Goodwin coached game. Why? Because in a low scoring game, the element of luck becomes even more influential. (Stephen Milne and an unfortunate bouncing ball immediately comes to mind.)

I suspect M Brown doesn't make the emergencies because of the Weid...who is primarily there as an emergency should one of Gawn or Jackson not be available on game day. But if a tall forward has to be replaced, I assume Weid has that covered, too. I'm more interested in who comes in should we need to replace a defender before the game. After all, there has been some suggestion that Smith may have a hand injury. Would Bedford come in but someone else (Brayshaw? Harmes?) play in the backline with Bedford taking on their role?

Wow. I'm glad I took the safer option of dissing the use of the word "hero" for any footballer rather than try to decide who was and who wasn't a hero in the GF. I hope BBP has some thicker skin than me. I might not have survived such an excoriating attack!

Yep.

I know (at least I hope) you are being flippant, but we should assume that the current bunch are the best available right now. So, would we miss them? Absolutely. Just imagine how much worse it would be if they were replaced with those not considered to be as good?

"Flag hero"? I don't like sportspeople being called "heroes" at the best of times. It's a word more befitting people in the Ukraine and those who put their lives at risk to save others, such as firefighters. But even if it's to be ascribed to footballers, why, exactly, is Rivers a "flag hero"? To answer my own question, by that standard every Premiership player is a hero. Really?

That's a good point. It also lowers the risk for Goodwin because he's outdoors.

I'm slowly starting to come round to the idea. I'm still not sure, though, that there's enough to do in the off-season. There's also another potential short-term problem if field umpires go full-time. The current crop of field umpires might quit if they prefer their current day job. Nevertheless, that's not a reason not to proceed to go full-time. It could always be a staged transition. (Mind you, I'm still not sure going full-time is the right answer. Wavering, yes. But not entirely convinced, either.)

Irrespective of the cause, the Western Bulldogs and Richmond are quite stunning outliers.

Mark Neeld was part of a successful Premiership team at Collingwood. Success isn't always transferrable. Correlation doesn't imply causation. The players' breaking down might have been because of poor training methods in other ways. I am yet to see any hard evidence that Dank's treatments (for want of a better word) did anything helpful.

Not convinced that would have helped them. Irrespective of their illegality (in sport), I remain unconvinced that Dank's project was in any way beneficial. A witch doctor might have been more effective than what he was peddling.

Has that 5 year time-line been stated anywhere? I would otherwise have thought it would be 3 years from now (ie, season 2025) when they would be in the AFL. 2024 would have the team playing in the VFL (or equivalent) while 2023 would be a development year where the new Tassie team gets to put its playing list together. I never understood why Gold Coast and GWS had different processes for establishment, but the AFL would have learned a lot through those processes and should know the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.

I agree, but not with the choice of players. I don't think Salem is under-rated any more. But I agree if it's Langdon and Neal-Bullen.

Geelong were also significantly advantaged by some incredibly good father-son picks (G and N Ablett, Scarlett, Hawkins, Blake) with some (all?) acquired when they didn't have to pay full price in the drafting process.

Generally speaking, you've come to the right place.

While the concept of full-time professional umpires has some attraction, I struggle to see what umpires would do every day during the week and during the off-season. There's only a certain amount of fitness required (and they already seem to have that). Perhaps if being full-time involved a secondary role, such as mentoring junior umpires or working with clubs so everyone fully understands the rules, might help. There might not be enough work for all the field umpires to become full-time, but perhaps we can end up with a mix of full- and part-time umpires with every match having at least one full-time field umpire. I still think, by the way, that the low hanging fruit which would improve umpiring more than making them full-time, is an overhaul of the rules to eliminate as much as possible the subjective assessments wherever possible.

I also like the idea that he plays on the southern wing for the whole match. I've seen it stated somewhere that he does so to make it easier for the wingmen on the northern side to interchange. I have no idea if that's the real reason, but it makes for a good story whether it's true or not.

That's a fair point, but hard to see how the news of that wouldn't have already leaked.

I really hope the author of the article was raised in the US. Otherwise there's no excuse for having used the word "acclimated" instead of "acclimatised". The signing of King and possibly Andrew is why I believe Dew will be coaching Gold Coast in 2023. He's gradually putting the building blocks together. (I expect Clarkson will be made a Godfather offer to bring Tasmania's AFL team into the competition. It's perfect for him - big dollars, he's well known in Tassie already and he doesn't have to fear failure. He doesn't have to win another Premiership. All he has to do is make them a competitive team in quick time.)

When considering selections, keep in mind that Tomlinson played 100% game time last week (as did Langdon, but no-one else). That, in itself, has some value as it allows other defenders more rest time. I don't know if that would be enough to keep him in the side, but I imagine it's something the Match Committee will take into consideration when balancing all factors.

A quick bit of spreadsheet analysis shows in the last column how many Premierships should have been won if in proportion to the number of weeks on top of the ladder. Geelong right on target. Saints the worst offenders mathematically.

If we can arise from the depths of despair in 2013 to Premiers in 2021, anyone can do it in 9 years. We were worse in 2013 than Hawthorn today. In fact, I think our 2013 was probably the worst VFL/AFL team I've seen. And, yet, we still managed to climb out of the abyss to the summit in 9 "short" years.

If you mean both first name and surname are unique, I have a feeling Taj Woewodin won't be on the list. And not because of his first name.

A bit of trivia discovered when preparing the Brainteaser. In our entire history we have only had one player whose surname started with the letter U. Ray Usher played 82 games and kicked 2 goals in his career which was in the period 1928 to 1933. source: demonwiki.org/players

Firstly, there was no intention of sarcasm on my part. My apologies if it read that way. I think the addition of any technology that stops the flow of the game is detrimental to the end product. I'm not even sure that the use of technology to assist with goal umpiring decisions is worth the delays that they engender. Generally speaking, I think the umpiring standard is pretty good but not perfect. I expect perfection in a 360 degree, fast game with rules subject to interpretation is expecting too much. I think the AFL could help the umpires more by trying to eliminate the subjectivity in decision making. The best example, and I think the rule that bugs people perhaps more than any other, is the "insufficient intent" rule. I'm not in favour of a "last touch" free kick as it would discourage players going for the ball. Perhaps we eliminate that rule altogether and live with the consequences or we make it a free kick if t goes out of bounds without being touched and has travelled less than 30 metres for a kick and 15 metres for a handball. The umpire then doesn't have to consider the subjective question of intention, although there would still be the assessment of distance required (and sometimes whether it was touched, although that's no different from decisions made now regarding whether a mark should be paid). The most important point I want to add is that I do not believe in any way that umpires are biased for or against any team. It is stated far too often on this forum.