Lucifers Hero

Many good points in that post, RN. Just want to focus on this aspect. Jordan Lewis said the other evening it is quite difficult for coaches to change things mid quarters. But how many unanswered goals is tolerable before the leaders on field do something: 2 maybe 3 goals? (I'm not sure Max playing last week mattered in this regard as on-field in-game direction/adjustments hasn't been a strength). A bit rhetorical but do our leaders have a licence to make changes, especially when the ops are getting on top or a specified run of goals? Undoubtedly May and Lever could see the bulldogs dominance upfield unfold before their very eyes but do they have licence to do something? Or did the official leaders listen. No idea the answer to those questions but I think on field leaders need to take some responsibility for last week's lack of action after x unanswered goals. They needed to do something! Just hope the leaders go in with some action plans this week: if op does A or B happens our options are x,y,z, if they do C or D happens our options are m,n,o etc. No need to wait for coaches. Unless they don't have licence from the coach to take action, which is unimaginable really. Failing all that the captain goes to the bench and gets on the phone to the coach!!

That was one of your suggestions, which is what I was responding to, adding I didn't see him playing this week. Regardless, would still like to see him in Alice in some capacity.

Unfortunately, Jordon is injured. Agree re Jones. Its hard to see where he fits in this week. The wing isn't an option as he would be up against Hill or bro Zac. While the latter has some nice romanticism about it he and Hill would run rings around him and burn him for speed. I would love the moves you suggest that see Jetta come in for this, the Alice game but hard to see it if the club is looking for speed. At least I hope he is an emergency as he is so popular with locals and given he designed our indigenous jumper he deserves to be there in some capacity. This is when I really miss the training reports from track watchers... ...reportedly we want speed so are Baker or Bennell options...

Hated Ess winning. But a great example of how a coach can totally turn a game by a positional change (Hooker fwd took McElvoy out of the game) and made a few tweaks on ball movement from stoppages. Their intensity went up and Hawks couldn't get the ball. 11.5 to Hawks 3.1 in the second half.

Why would they rest King when they have a bye next round? It would suggest some arrogance (and a tad of disrespect...) to simply leave out a key fwd in such a critical game.

Hawks vs Ess on now. Ess are rubbish. No system at all. Eagles vs Tigers on later. - Hope tigers lose so more likely to miss the double chance of a top 4 finish.

My point was if people are vaccinated everyone is safer and we won't need lock downs. Can't see our governments going with the Swedish 'herd' immunity and we are very risk averse as our closed state borders demonstrate. They also have low political tolerance for a 'normal' level of daily cases. So if there is no vaccine they will need to think of something else.

Not sure that is entirely right. Eddie brought in Gubby Allen to take Balme's job so he was demoted/moved sideways. Pert was CEO at the time. Balme was offered the Director of Coaching role at collingwood. At some stage Richmond offered Balme the GM Football position which he accepted. Pert himself lost his CEO job 6 months later. I have no idea the relationship between the Pert and Balme today but it is hard to know how much of the Allen/Balme thing was Eddie's doing and whether Pert had a role.

So you are happy that we all go back into Stage 3 or 4 lockdown every time there are a series of breakouts and our health and hospital systems can't manage the workload and they are getting covid. Hospital wards close and fewer and fewer non covid procedures are carried out. Shops close, schools close, restaurants close, no concerts, football, cinemas etc etc. I truly hope that you and your family do not get this wretched virus, are not one of the frontline workers or someone who will lose their job or lose their business because of the lockdowns. One way or another everyone suffers from outbreaks. Won't happen? Look at New Zealand. No cases for 3 months then within a week there are a hundred cases and Auckland goes into lockdown. Not sure they yet know how this 'patient zero' caught it. Lockdowns will continue until there is widespread vaccination. It isn't about protecting you. Its about protecting everyone around you that you might infect.

Grand Final date confirmed to be Oct 24 which keeps the WA Optus venue option in play. There will be a pre finals bye.

I think Sydney will be tough to win. Not because they are better but the travel we have to do. Alice is on Sat night and we fly straight out meaning players get back to hub in the early hours of Sunday morning. Syd fly to Cairns from Adelaide early Sat evening. On Thur morning we fly to Carins for the 4.40pm Sydney game. The extra hours/night rest Syd get may not be a lot but throw in our same day flight and the fatigue might start to kick in. Generally, Syd beat us by having a player outside the pack to receive and run the ball fwd. If we aren't prepared for it nor spread quickly we will be playing catch up. The next game vs Freo is 4 days later and also a challenge. They are on a role and are giving up miserly scores against. They have an extra day rest and don't travel. Any travel advantage will depend whether we stay in Cairns after the Sydney game or fly back to Maroochydore and fly back to Carins for the Freo game. Hopefully sanity prevails and we stay in Cairns giving us a travel breather. St Kilda is massive as it is an 8-pt game. They won't leave anything on the park as they have a bye after the game. As noted above our travel/break schedule is quite gruelling. Hopefully our players also give it their all and not try to 'preserve' themselves. GWS is the other 8-pt game for us. tbh I don't see any definite wins. But then we could win all 5!

Finally a commentator compared the ANB and Dahlhaus tackles. Last night on 360, Lewis said they were identical actions but the outcome was different ie one had concussion. And if the AFL want to stop sling tackles they need to penalise the action not the outcome. Whateley then said the tackles were different - the Tribunal had adjudicated that because Crouch's head didn't hit the ground (sure looked like it did to me) it was a body tackle and not 'high contact' and downgraded the charge. They conveniently ignored the principle of 'potential to do damage'. Just like they introduced it to suspend May last year for his 'potential to cause damage' bump on (I think) Berry then conveniently ignored the same principle thereafter. Back to ANB I think it was the 'optics' of a player out cold and the Crows' medical report that condemned him. The media wanting a scalp closed the deal.

The person I'm most disappointed with is Gerard Whateley. Most others are 'click-baiters' but he generally seems measured in his commentary. He led the charge with the 'throw the book at ANB' rhetoric. This week he comes out and says "punishments on some recent dangerous tackles are impractical and don’t pass the “flinch” test as the footy world grapples with the harsher assessments...Whateley said the initial suspension handed to Powell-Pepper was “inappropriate”, adding the definition of a ‘dangerous tackle’ had been taken too far...“It seemed like, all of a sudden, any player that tackles another to ground was guilty of a dangerous – and that’s skipping steps,”. dangerous-tackles-gone-too-far No mention of ANB and his stance on him. Whateley has become AFL'd! Its like the ANB suspension has been wiped form the record books. Bizzaro stuff.

Not sure that it does. Stoppages happen all over the ground and at times it is non-midfielders who attend. To my mind set-ups, ball release and spread from stoppages involves lots of players. eg our set-ups for stoppages would be different if the stoppage is in our fwd half or back half and different again on how close the stoppage is to any set of goals. And 'contest' coaching is applicable to all players not just midfield. I could go on but you get my drift.

Of course! Cunnington punches Bernie till he throws up, media said Bernie staged. Oliver gets decked by Scofield, right in front of the umpire, after the end of the qtr and media say Oliver 'dived'. Scofield report was thrown out by Tribunal. I have little doubt the media noise around indiscretions directly affects the outcome. They were baying for ANB blood a month ago. Notice no commentator has dared compare the Nibbler tackle with Dahllhaus. Hypocrites, all of them!!

Our website shows Matthews as the Stoppage and Contest Coach. Sure the midfield is involved in that but what about all the other stuff like spreading, ball movement, linking with fwds and backs, positioning around the ground etc etc. Not wishing to be pedantic but like you I'm confused. I hope the fwd coaching role is not indicative of what is happening in our coaching group. Firstly we have no-one and had no-one on Goodwin's staff who have played fwd. Between 2017 and 2019 they shuffled assistants in and out of the fwd coach role. As part of the last years coaching overhaul they decided to not have a fwd coach at all!! (Ben Gibson's reference aside our website does not show anyone as the fwd coach). All of a sudden in 2020 when our fwd line is still dysfunctional they decide we need a fwd coach so apparently they hand it over to Plapp leaving a hole in the midfield coaching job. Hard to believe it wasn't obvious that we needed a fwd coach when they did the FD/coaching overhaul at EOS.

Did anyone hear Max on AFL 360 last night? His knee was iced up yesterday. He didn't sound at all confident of playing on Saturday but I'm not sure if he was just joking around; its always a bit hard to tell with Max. Needs to pass fitness test today. Whether he is ready or not I guess he has to play as this is literally a real do or die game.

So if Plapp is fwd line who is the midfield coach? Looks like 'Robbing Peter to pay Paul'.

Yes. But the Tribunal has gone to a new level of stupidity. Its 'rational' beggars belief: In the tribunal's reasons for clearing Grimes, three points were emphasised: "...the vision it is noticeable that the player’s trajectory towards the ball had been altered by the propping and contact made by the Essendon player Stringer to the player's back. It can be seen in the vision that the player's left foot digs into the turf and a tuff of grass appears indicating the player's attempt to stay on course to contest the fall of the football. "At this stage the player's timing and balance has been affected by the actions of the Essendon player Stringer at a stage just prior to contesting the football whether it be to either jump to mark or spoil the football. "The player raises his right hand/arm in what appears to be an attempt to spoil or distract the Essendon player number 43 even though the player was under the ball at this stage and moving forward quickly and off balance as a result of the 'nudge' afforded to him by Essendon player Stringer." tribunal-clears-grimes-and-vlastuin-of-staging Talk about myopic excuse making to justify the outcome they wanted. If it was only a 'nudge' how come he took several steps after the 'contact'. Play had continued Tippa had kicked the ball and Grimes is still diving. He raised his arm to get a free! It is an embarrassment that supposedly intelligent people can think let alone write such piffle!

A bit wishy washy. It would have been more powerful if he had mentioned the ANB ban.

Therein lies part of the problem. It wasn't the same Tribunal. It had a different Chair and a different panel (ex players) with different interpretations and different instructions/agendas. Remember last year Toby Greene got a week suspension before the GWS/Collingwood prelim final. The Tribunal were nearly all ex-Coll players as (was and is) the MRO. If the AFL can't ensure indpendence for a prelim what hope is there in season. And the Tribunal don't look at 'precedent' and I doubt most of the panel would understand what it means. Also it usually doesn't allow videos of past similar events (altho this is being relaxed these days) which is a perfect smoke screen to say 'each case on its merits' but it really means 'we can do what we like the AFL want us to do'. There is no chance of consistency by Christian and even less so by the Tribunal until they have independent people on the Tribunal and the same people/Chair case to case. Of course it will never happen as the AFL likes to manipulate outcomes.

The AFL justifies anything it wants to justify however implausible. They call it being flexible or there are nuances that need to be considered etc etc etc The AFL may just want the cold hard cash now rather than dollar equivalent fuzzy benefits further down the track.

WA up the ante: "Despite the premier claiming WA is playing “hard to get”, the Herald Sun reported the state has offered $35 million to host the flag decider, or $50 million to host all finals". Apparently, they also want to buy the Eagles rnd 18 game to have it at Optus Stadium. west-coast-vs-north-melbourne-round-18 C Scott is on the record as saying they 'prefer' the GF to be in Qld, which is no surprise. $50m is a huge sum during covid for the AFL. We all know the right thing to do is for the GF to go to Qld because they kept the comp alive this year. But as we also know the right thing doesn't mean much to the AFL and $50m might be too good juicy a carrot to not take.

Langdon's fine is being appealed tonight - see two posts above yours.

A very gracious and heartfelt response by Muir to St Kilda's reaching out and to the support he has received from so many. i-ve-been-overwhelmed-healing-begins-for-robert-muir-saints-make-contact