Undeeterred

What a wally this bloke is. So he's talking to both of the teams who have the oldest lists in the comp and who have both been bundled out in straight sets from top 4 possies. He'd be mad to go to Freo - they simply can't fill as many holes as will sprout in the next couple of years so he'd want to start winning flags with them pretty bloody quickly.

A real WTF happened there kind of player.

Probably the worst player to kick 5 goals in a game other than the previously almost unknown player from any other club who seems to do it against us at least once or twice a year. Just the wrong type of player at the wrong time. Ten years ago he would have been a star.

Wasn't that bump against Adelaide an absolute rip snorter. I really hope he didn't fade towards the end of the year because the aggression is leaching out of his game.

I think it would be a touch easier to swallow in Lockett's case than in Robinson's.

Wow. What an unbelievable coincidence!

Bingo.

So we really want to bring in the guy who concussed Rohan Bail behind play? Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

After tonight, I wouldn't want to be going down to Geelong. They're cooked.

Have the chauffeur bring the car around the front, James. You're free to go.

It would be pretty hilarious to see North get rolled by 5 goals in the last ten minutes, I have to say... Even I don't hate Geelong enough to not take pleasure from that prospect.

Bet that guy who wrote the article this week in The Age about how it was practically impossible for North to win is feeling a bit of a dill.

Perfect scenario. Geelong get bundled in straight sets and North, thinking they are all that, will get absolutely spanked by Sydney. Best of both worlds.

Deanox has it right. We may need to burn a few highish picks to right the ship and get back to mid-table. While in the long run that will hurt us as we may lose a 10 year superstar or two, unfortunately we don't have that long to wait. We just need to get amongst it in the next year or two, get some strong players in the 25-27 bracket and get some grunt in the midfield. Then we can survey where we are at and go from there, hopefully not with any more picks 1, 2 or 3...

Interesting that there's no flexibility with Blease. I clearly agree he doesn't have the tank to go all game. But gee, he is quick, can find the goals and would be a cracking sub 5-10 times a year. Not like he is holding a list spot away from some other star.

Holy Christ.

My view is you have to have something, the boundary line will always be grey and, as is the case with lots of areas of law, Courts have to do their best to decide whether particular things drop on one side of the line or the other. Plenty of stuff is almost impossible to define legislatively, but I guess that doesn't mean it should be dropped entirely. I do agree though that the word offend is pretty woolly. Stronger words like vilify are less grey and easier for everyone to interpret.

Yep, you're absolutely right. I completely misunderstood the wording of that section and happy to be called on it.

This is not censorship and doesn't depend on the censor's view. It depends on the law.

It isn't a slippery slope at all. There is nothing in the law that says anybody has the right not to be offended. The law is that you can't vilify people. If the legislation changes, and 'community standards' or the 'community' don't like it, then vote for the party which wants to change it and if the majority of people agree with you, it will get changed. Exhibit 1 - recent attempts to change 18C. The community, democracy, whatever, flatly refused to accept a regression in those standards.

Why do you think the Senate was hostile? Gosh some of the guff on this thread is incredible.

It is pretty simple. The right to free speech is tempered by the prohibition on racial/religious vilification. Not that hard to grasp, really, and preventing people from spouting race hate doesn't impinge on free speech in the slightest. It just stops race hate.

Nasher! You've stopped the stream of comedy for two whole weeks. How on earth do we get our laughing fix now??

Not to be nit picky, but the right to free speech for political communications is not actually in the Constitution. It was 'discovered' by High Court judges in various cases before them.

Playing Devil's Advocate, if in fact we did pay out a portion of his 2015 contract, then in actual fact we probably are in a better financial position than we would have been. He would have been perfectly entitled to sit on his bum and pull down the $700k or whatever it is, so I can't see that there's an issue there. Loyalty, etc, completely different issue.