Undeeterred

This is the most insightful thing anybody has posted thus far.

It was 'fair' but this is why I hate the MRP. He went past the ball to bump and made a bloke cough up blood - why is the MRP focussed on impact, not intention? If he hit him in the head he'd have got 4 weeks, with the same intent to hurt someone.

I disagree - I could see 20 metres away he was going to give it away. He was nowhere near the contest, arrived a full second late, and should have pulled out way earlier. He's just clumsy - I don't blame him necessarily but it was such a critical time to give that away.

With Ling being his typical idiot self and saying 'yeeeeeah, it was a free kick' when it so clearly wasn't.

Well, they did. Because if they literally just blew the game 50/50, we would have won easily no matter how many times we just bombed into a pack. It's just not acceptable for umpires to have any influence whatsoever.

When it boils down to it, really the difference in the last was one mark to Dixon on the line, which was just bad planning, and an idiotic 50m from Oscar when he was nowhere near the ball. I don't think we were too small for the most part - but we did lose it in critical moments when big guys stood up for them

Jordan Lewis getting whiplash 40 out in the last few minutes from someone smacking him on the head.

I counted 7-8 frees that were called the wrong way either against him, or not for him. He had a filthy run. And was super on form as well, should have kicked about 6.

How many utterly 2017 gazelle in headlights frees did McDonald give away?

Never truer words spoken on Demonland.

Utterly disgusting umpiring But gee we do some stupid stuff, ie Oscar's 50m penalty when he was three weeks late, to pick one example

Oh mate, please stop embarrassing yourself! It's cringeworthy.

LOL if you think Sloane is coming to us. And you're kidding yourself if you don't think we need mature players and leaders. Vince and Lewis are both on their last legs so we'll at least need to replace them from a leadership perspective.

What's wrong with an outside running downhill skier in a potentially top 4 team?

What precisely is it about being 5th and a game clear inside the 8 that isn't meeting your expectations?

Lol. Apologies for basically repeating your post.

I definitely trust your gut instinct based on a shift job 30 years ago over multiple contemporary official and unofficial sources.

Did you not see the stories last week about him being paid the most free kicks against in the entire league? Classic even ups...

What a shocking game. Can't believe I'm still watching it.

This.

Interesting. What often happens in a corporate setting like this is that when the bloke who has done the hard yards internally is passed over, he goes somewhere else to get the promotion. If you thought you were ready for a CEO role, and obviously got close this time around, why would you hang around for 10 years until Pert retires? There will be fallout from this, no doubt.

And Hannan when he goes in there. I cringed on Monday when he got stuck on his right and kicked it like I would kick on my left. Awful stuff.

We are about 20-30% ahead of the teams we are likely to be competing with for one of the last couple of spots. Will be irrelevant, if we have enough wins we have enough wins.

Who cares? We will finish in the bottom half of the 8 and have an elimination final against someone like Adelaide, Hawthorn, Geelong, Collingwood or GWS, any of whom would smash us under finals pressure home or away. I'd even be terrified of playing North in those circumstances, given our history.

Typical shallow analysis. You clearly didn't bother going and finding the article I mentioned, so here it is: https://www.playersvoice.com.au/tom-bugg-im-not-who-you-think-i-am/#373wIODgRMwQ9ZXp.97 Last post on this to avoid further derailing