Macca

Good betting race is the Fireball Stakes DZ (Race 2 Randwick) Santos' 3 trials have been against some very good company and it should end up racing on the speed tomorrow ... I've included it in an exacta (on top with a couple of others) Some terrific racing coming up at both Randwick & Flemington though - looking forward to the day.

If our forward line fires and we have a reasonable run with injuries we'll go alright.

Take every win along the way H ... savour them in fact. Enjoy every win. Beats the hell out of losing.

Good players win games W11 ... now we've got those good players we can win To win big comes down to the coaches and the best of the best firing on all cylinders We're in with a chance this year

Love the ruthless approach but as a supporter/member only I will take 4th place with 2 wins in the finals over any of our myriad of deplorable years. But we are just onlookers ... we control nothing. If we could control things those deplorable years would never happen. The footy side of things that is

To me the biggest issue is still PED use but no one seems to care anymore and most have given up. All sport is tainted too ... all the way down to suburban level. And the AFL doesn't care either because just like most sporting organisations, catching drug chests damages the brand (money) Since the Essendon saga, the PED use debate has gone silent. Again, no one cares. If a sportsperson wants to cheat, they can and will most likely get away with it. But if someone utters a word in a non politically correct way (no matter how minor) there's hell to pay. And 5% -7% PED use in any sport taints that sport. Does anyone truly believe that AFL is clean? I don't.

The field for the Newmarket Hcp is elite ... any number of horses have the class to win and the exotic dividends are sure to be healthy with such quality running around. By contrast the Australian Cup is not so strong as compared to previous years ... we're on Ace High for the place here at ADATR and the horse is sure to run a bold race. Be interesting to see how Rekindling fares after such a long lay off and of course the favourite Avilius will be hard to beat. Up in Sydney there are 2 Group 1's - the Canterbury Stakes has got 4 strong winning chances engaged whilst the Randwick Guineas may well see a match-race between The Autumn Sun & Nakeeta Jane. And James Jordan's (Safari JJ) best bet at Morphettville is Race 6 No.1 Extreme Thrill $5.00

Best Bet Flemington Race 9 No.2 Spanish Reef $4.50 (win)

Finally, the draconian quarantine laws have been lifted for horses racing in HK. That means that horses here can be flown into HK, compete and then return to Australia after a mandatory 2 week period. I'm fairly sure that HK based horses like Beauty Generation, Pakistan Star or Mr Stunning can compete here with the same 2 weeks only quarantine period being applied. Conversely, our top group of sprinter/milers could travel to HK for their big race days (esp in April & December) and then return to Oz soon after. Read more here - Australian and Hong Kong governments end quarantine stand-off

Not sure ... think it might still be 90 per team MC. I still don't know why teams can't make do with about 20. Might be a OHAS issue now or at least the threat of. The interchange is now primarily used to rest players and that was never what it was designed for.

They could make the JLT games 14 a side. Less contact, less tackling, less congestion, less injuries (?) The players still get to run around on an oval and game plans can still be enacted. 4-6-4 instead of 6-6-6

The rotation numbers should have been capped 20 years ago ... and those in charge are supposed to be ahead of the game. That is their job. In Soccer and Union there are no rotations and in League it is 8 maybe 10 per team (for the entire game) Footy went to 160+ per team. Custodians failed. And I am not late to the party either ... been saying the same thing for years now. Finally, something is being done about it.

Refreshingly honest FE ... should be more of it. Others are saying that there is nothing wrong with footy but are also saying that they only watch their own team play. Their acquaintances the same. Which of course makes no sense Tough love can work but and the soft approach is often doomed to fail ... sitting on ones hands achieves nothing The good news is that the new rules are a good first step to fixing the sport Leigh Matthews can see no downside to 6-6-6 and he should know

The AFL are late to the party though ... if they were ahead of the game then this conversation doesn't even exist. The explosion of rotations led to where we are now but the new rule changes does address the issue from a different direction Reminds me of the introduction of the diamond in the early 70's to counteract the congestion we saw in the late 60's The VFA went to 16 a side in the early 50's for the same reason.

So you don't know anyone who watches neutral games? Do they like the sport at all? Doesn't seem like they do TV footy needs neutral supporters by the way ... without neutral support, it won't rate.

All sound reasoning dc The feedback I get (and I talk to a stack of people about footy) is that many say that they hate congested footy. And the AFL hasn't brought in all these new rules for the sake of it either ... they know that they've got a viewership problem and they are trying to fix it And they've got my support because when I watch neutral games I only watch those games for the aesthetic qualitities. Scramble ball/congested footy is ugly to my eyes. For the myriad of keen watchers there is no issue. But the keen ones aren't the problem ... most here (on this site) I'd describe as keen. Night GF is related as the broadcasters need to bring in greater revenues. May or may not happen.

But that has always been the case New information here bub I'll ask you as well ... do you know people that have dropped off watching the game? Wall-to-wall down to 'selected' games does matter.

Yet the NRL have maintained their numbers whilst the AFL numbers have dropped off at an alarming rate I am not barracking for the NRL either ... couldn't give a rats toss bag Do you kbow people that have dropped off watching AFL? If so , ask them why. If not, you and I are obviously in different circles.

No Numerous people have been banging on about the commentary (and the umpiting, perceived drafting errors etc) for decades You are allowed to criticise yoor own sport ... I have no problem doing it. It is called tough love. But my view is in the minority

Most I know hate the congestion ... they have switched off accordingly. The sport has come down to their team winning and that is it. Others here might have an opposite view with their circle The keen ones aren't going anywhere ... they don't mind the congestion at all and a large percentage of the keen ones are into fantasy sports where the stats rule supreme. They love their footy no matter how it is served up. A good example is the 'Other game' threads on this site ... hardly a word about the actual sport and filled with people complaining about the officiating. The sport needs to be spectacular and bullet proof.

And the truth of the matter is that the AFL has lost nearly 20% of it's TV viewers since 2014 ... a peak of 108 million down to 90 million last year .... read more here It's any wonder they are bringing in new rules to try and get rid of all the ugly congestion. Facts are facts. Most people I know just watch their own team predominately. The keen ones aren't going anywhere but it could be argued that north of 120 million should be watching the sport now ... and that's not even using incremental growth.

The Giants could get in first anyway (?) Here's his Combine performance ...

There's a lot going on next weekend apart from Super Saturday at Flemington & Guineas day at Randwick. We've got the Group 3 Newcastle Newmarket on Friday and then on Sunday it's Black Opal Stakes Day at Canberra with 4 feature events to be held. And then Bruce McAvaney graces us with his presence on Monday for the Adelaide Cup Meeting ... hopefully working with James Jordan again with JJ giving out his tips. They worked really well together last year. The horse that won the cups treble out of Tassie in Eastender is running in the Adelaide Cup ... drawn 18 but it often gets back as a general rule. Still, with 20 horses in the field that's a lot of horses to get past. Good field, all the same. Run over the classic 2 miles.

Foles to the Jags? @Clintosaurus @Dappa Dan - thoughts?

I only watched our game rjay but I felt that we saw a different balance between the in-close footy and open footy. There was plenty of pressure on players disposing of the ball - especially on Angus who, to be fair, did have 37 disposals. So from an overall perspective, if that's the sort of footy we get to see, I'm on board. You don't want too much one way or the other (congestion/open footy) so I hope we get to see a good balance in the neutral games. Our game looked like it was easier to officiate too. We saw the 'longer' bomb from the kick in and that was interesting - cleared the press a few times thus opening the game up. But it's early doors ... we won't be able to make a judgement call on the rule changes until about a third of the way into the season. My ideal game would see about 32 goals being scored in a match - and both us and the Tiges scored 16 goals each on Sunday.