Lucifers Hero

I agree that Oliver is being ‘transformed’ but my take is a little different in that he will be a better player than he already is as he feels more loved, and valued as the person he is warts and all. One aspect of the transformation is he always shunned the limelight. But look at him now! Chosen to model our ANZAC jumper – a great honour and implicitly equating him with the ANZAC spirit: Courageous, mate ship, sacrifice. Oliver has those in spades. Recently he has conducted several postgame interviews even when not BOG and has embraced the role of representing the club with humility and courage. His confidence is growing with the media showing him respect and love. They are implicitly saying no one cares about his past foibles. His self belief as a person is noticeably growing. My sense it is a deliberate strategy by the AFL, the club and the media. If so, kudos to them all. I’m loving watching Oliver mature as a person and come what may in his football I have little doubt he will be in a better place generally. Like you, just seeing him happy brings me joy.

Haha!!! Its all part of the AFL's 'special herbs and spices' they use whenever they want to make something up that the rules don't allow. The confusion is in part because the AFL/MRO flip flops between assessing the action vs assessing/imputing the impact.

There is no grade below careless (which like you I think is a problem). An act is deemed to be either 'careless' or 'intentional'. This is the structure the MRO works to (unless he uses his 'discretion' 🤨) Source: AFL

If it wasn't for the automatic 'medium impact' classification or if there was an 'accidental' classification, all the chat about eyes on the ball, bracing for impact, self protection etc would not be relevant. Toby, Kozzie and many others would just be fined.

It was graded as careless. Accidental no longer exists. If it did then Toby and many others would get off/fine

The problem is the rule: ' head high contact is automatically 'medium impact' thus one week. Then last week the Tribunal 'used its discretion' that the Cameron case was on the 'lower end of medium'. A correct decision. But it then added the 'good guy' BS. Without the 'good guy' BS the MRO could have used 'lower end of medium' precedent to assess Toby. A can of worms has been created.

Being a Brownlow favourite trumps Pies' interests ... 🙂 Gleeson finds obscure reasons to support his decisions ... he should go. The Tribunal is a joke. It needs change.

Christian and Gleeson (who was the AFL advocate at the Tribunal prior to being made its chair) have a vested interest in seeing Collingwood's competitors for the premiership be weakened and imv their bias has been shown at various times. Port missing SPP for some key games. We missed Kozzie for a key game. So how did Cameron get off a with a key game vs Cats this week ... maybe the AFL is concerned about some optics that @Ethan Tremblay didn't suggest in the post below. Blind freddy can see the potential for conflict of interest of the MRO and Chairman and the AFL should fix it - at least rotate the Chairman to someone who has no interest in the accused's team nor who they play in the following weeks. Ditto the Tribunal panel. Of course it won't!!

LOL! iirc your husband wasn't a Dees supporter before you made it a condition of marriage that he become one!. Good to see his blood truly runs red and blue and he has adopted the universal hatred of Ess and Coll. Well done!!

Browsed bomberblitz and bf. The outrage has settled and resignation at another lost season has set in. That aside, I found a few things that made me chuckle !!! grab another couple mid table players as FA. We’re all frustrated given the last 20 years however we need to be patient. watch the first quarter. We played really well. Who gives a toss what the senior players think? They dished up the 12 goal loss That performance left me feeling edgy. Haha. I could give them a piece of my mind but they'd probably just refer it to Dodoro. Also, worst song in the league. Keep drafting sh-t, keep trading sh-t, keep getting sh-t results Well finish 9th. No hard decisions will be made and on it goes. There’s an excellent team with $10 memberships and a bright future of draft concessions you could join. Port players just ran through us like turn styles all night. Is it acceptable to change AFL teams after 35 years? I expect a written apology from all the Essendon Happy Clappers. I do wonder what it’s like to support a successful team We need to actively bottom out … This fight for mid table has to end. Culture at Essendon has been [censored] for a long long time now Have not seen the score how did we go? Was it close and did we bring the edge? Praying one of my 4 kids gets drafted so I have a legit excuse to pack it in with this mob Time to start tanking. The smashing we had to have Poor bastards who went over for this. I’d suggest to them that they get on the wine tours and not to drink for pleasure but to drink to forget My Favourite Put $5 on WC beating us when we meet them

It didn't take long for them to lose 'The Edge' Decided to check out bf! Thought I wold drop by and share their comments: Gather round sucks! This team is trash. Make a statement at selection. Embarrassing. I ******* hate being a fan of the most pathetic club in the competition. And now hopefully people see why Scott said it’s an 8 year plan and not 3 or whatever. Essendon Edge? More like Essendon lay down and die. Amazing example of an arrogant upstart team coming in and thinking ‘if we do what we do, we don’t have to worry about the opposition’, and the getting absolutely ****ing smashed for their hubris and naivety. absolutely owned. outworked and outclassed. Finally, it feels like a normal season again. Was feeling a bit weird there for a hot minute. Every year it's the same s**t. We knock off dawks, norf, etc Maybe have a "breakout" win against 'aints or whoever, have a chance to make a statement (even if we don't win) and what happens. We s**t the bed. No composure when we had the ball and no pressure when we didn’t. Is draper undroppable ? The hype around this bloke is ******* hysterical Parish … 6 years for a bloke we don’t need. Fair to say its the same stuff with this group - against the big clubs/games & adversity(interstate away games) we are soft, weak & unskillful. There are no positives to that game. None. Zero. … Need to burn the entire list and start again post Dodo. We have no speed, no skills, no grunt, no winners …Same s**t, different year. Kinda tempted to have an all time melt but don’t have the energy for this s**t anymore. We undid every positive from the first 3 rounds. Lots of work to even cement ourselves as a mid table team. Get someone from the Melbourne Storm to teach those soft pretty boys how to tackle for a start. Our style is flat track bullies. Calling it, season over. Huge% loss tonight. Now an uncompetitive 82%. i am essenDONE Need more AFL lifestyle The Understatement A bit s**t A hint of optimism: Need to put this behind us as quick as possible and use it as a reality check. My Favourite: Oh well, where was the Edge? They lied, we were on the Edge of a cliff! Can't agree with this comment: Cats V Power GF, calling it now. I had the Dees in the GF before the season even started. Stand by that. Don't care who we play, probably GWS. My wish for Ess is not to be stuck at the bottom of the ladder as they would reap early draft picks. My wish is for them to be forever stuck in the wilderness of a mid tier team. Hoping like hell that Collingwood join them there for a long time to come!! Enjoy the season D'landers. It will be a very good one.

Greetings my phonetic namesake 😊 Apologies for late response - I don't venture onto DL very often these days and only just saw your notification. Not sure guest passes can be bought there. Last year they could only be ordered/paid for directly with the club and then collected at the ground. For future reference, this year guest passes can be purchased on line. One would think they could email/sms/mobile app the guest passes back but no, we still need to line up at the ground to collect them. Still in the dark ages !!! Lou.C - you can be DL's new Luci !!! 😉

Its amazing the number of different messages that are happening!! Yes, that window is the spot! I reckon they would give you a pass that matches your membership (they have access to the membership data base) so you should get your reserved seat. Like @george_on_the_outer this year I opted for a plastic card as back up.

A cameo visit to DL for rescue before tomorrow. So thanks DLers! However, some things worked but then they stopped working. So had to try other methods, Binman, if this is the error message you received click on OK and it should take you to the tickets screen and your ticket will be there. Or click ok and if it takes you to the menu page click on 'mobile membership' and the ticket should be there. Failing all that and for the benefit of other DLers, several other things I tried were: to login thru the mfc website which worked sometimes and I could then access the tickets in the app, sometimes I couldn't. turned the phone off/on and I think that worked ... a bit hard to tell if it worked as I was trying other methods at the same time. Hopefully, one of the above will work for you and others. Binman, rather than go 2 hours early just go to the mfc office (between gate 3 and 4) and they will give you a pass for the day and you can sort the app out at your leisure. Go dees! Edit: As extra safeguard save the ticket to 'wallet' or take a screenshot which saves the ticket to the 'gallery' ... just in case the app fails when at the G

Thanks guys. I’ll be back on DL when we play in the 2024 GF !!! City hotel already booked for that weekend! In the meantime, I have lots of fun things: restarted playing bridge early January, am indulging in art (skills leave a bit to be desired but its fun), have organized some i/state and O/S holidays. And, of course will enjoy being with family and friends. Oh … and watch the dees!! So a pretty good year ahead! This is a good time to hand this thread over to @red and blue forever who will do a great job for you.