The heart beats true

Brisbane umpiring is the new Perth umpiring.

This free flowing, run and gun, Ross Lyon game plan is so good to watch.

If he doesn’t get suspended for that then I don’t understand. He swung his fist back and hit a player in the head off the ball, which caused him to bleed and leave the ground. That’s a minimum week easily.

That’s the kind of act the AFL should be doing everything in its power to encourage. Creative and chaotic. An Eagles player could have run onto that and kicked goal of the year and everyone would be lauding Liam Ryan for his creativity. Umpires don’t need to be forcing players to be robotic. Nobody wins then.

The amount of AFL fans who openly talk about how often he throws the ball is laughable. The media never talk about it, but everyone can see it with their own eyes. It’s nuts.

The umpiring against Essendon in the third quarter on Saturday night was an absolute disgrace… and some of the best TV I’ve ever watched.

I laughed out loud when I read this on the AFL’s Footy Fan Survey… Has the score review and the use of technology improved the game? Yes, it's important to get decisions right - 73 per cent No, leave it to the on-field umpires - 27 per cent So the options are - get the decision right, or don’t get it right by leaving it up to the umpire. And they wonder why we don’t trust umpiring decisions? They just told us they don’t either.

Get out a map and look at where the Melbourne footy club is, and then look a long way to your left and you’ll find Adelaide. Geographically 90% of our supporters are in Melbourne, and the vast majority of them aren’t travelling to Adelaide.

I can’t afford to go to Gather Round. It’s an absolute spud of an idea, and the only people who truly like it are those that are there on the AFL’s dime - and it infuriates me when they tell us how great it is all week. Any other week of AFL games played on substandard grounds with 4,000 people in attendance would be qualified as an unmitigated disaster. With 2 South Australian teams anyone who wants to go to Adelaide and see their team play is already guaranteed to get the opportunity every year regardless. So what this is is the AFL taking money from a state government at the expense of the fans. People will say ‘it’s an extra round of footy’, but it’s not a round I, or almost all, Melbourne supporters can go to. Gather Round sucks for the average footy supporter, and the sooner we all start calling it out for what it is the sooner the AFL might learn that it’s pushing us too far, and its product too thin.

After the Maynard incident Jonathan Brown immediately says ‘got to be better than that’ and then realises what he’s said and says ‘anyway, he’s earned himself a free kick’. The pandering to big clubs is ruining the game. I’m so bored by the AFL coverage. It’s making the game seem so fake and manufactured.

I imagine Isaac is just happy they didn’t call him Isack.

I picked Geelong tonight, purely because I firmly believe Essendon are very average, and have only elevated because of the extreme softness of their draw.

Craig McLoss.

Collingwood lobbied the AFL to play on the Gold Coast in the school holidays, so more of their supporters can go. I hope that ruins a lot of people’s holidays. Have fun at Movie World. 👋

But Dwayne said they’ve been Nicked? 🤣

Hahahhahaha

Footys alright.

Nice goal Benny Long.

Listening to Dwayne refer to all the Collingwood players by their first name makes me wanna vomit. Its super unprofessional.

I actually don’t disagree with this. My issue is with the amount of, and various nuances, of the rules. Over the last 2 decades the AFL has jumped at shadows to try and end a team’s dominance. No 3rd man up, the protected space around the mark, and the stand rule, are all direct results of Hawthorn’s 3 peat - which was really an issue the AFL created by giving the Hawks insane draft concessions at the same time as bringing in 2 new sides, which denied other teams talent. They don’t trust coaches to solve problems, but by constantly adjusting rules they actually give a huge advantage to the more experienced and better resourced teams. They need to create a fan lead charter, and then massively simplify the rules to reflect what its most important stakeholders want. I’m sick of hearing about how hard the game is to umpire. That’s the issue, and it’s easily solved.

If Melbourne got the umpiring that Collingwood do every week we’d have the last 3 premierships. They get away with murder.

More umpires has made the standard much worse. Within the game we have four officials adjudicating the rules differently. I could show 4 marks from last nights game (arguably the simplest rule they need to adjudicate) that were paid, and 4 that weren’t that look identical, and that was for both teams. I’m over the AFL and the umpiring. They’re deliberately made it obtuse, so they can use it to their advantage. It happens so consistently that it’s clearly by design.

I felt like the umpiring was incredibly inconsistent across the game. Marking in particular was so confusing.

JVR quietly becoming everything we’ve hoped.

Very good handball from Fritta