Lucifers Hero

I suspect that is the mids but the forwards will relish not having one or two extras in defence at the bounce of the ball. Maybe our mids will start liking it when their bombs into the forward line start going to our players rather than the opp extra.

We had 3 'home' games at Casey and lost all 3, albeit 2 by less than a goal. However, we don't train at Casey so effectively we have no 'Home Ground' advantage. Casey isn't geographically convenient for training but It has some unique conditions which we haven't capitalised on. We need a game plan that works there. If we want to make finals imo we need to have some in season training sessions at Casey and increase our preseason work there. On a different note, this is not good for local fans, especially kids who only see us lose at Casey. The area is supposed to be our growth corridor for all red and blue teams so we need to win there to maintain their interest and attract other fans.

Is it a bit early for May? Was thinking Max...

The sad part is we have played really well all season. Now, there is no 'next week' to earn respect and redemption so the team have to live with it for a year. An eternity. It is reminiscent of our final 2017 game vs Collingwood. Hopefully, it spurs the women on as it did our men. Really feel for the players.

Oliver then Harmes.

Official: https://www.melbournefc.com.au/news/2019-03-15/melbourne-secures-jay-lockhart-as-rookie We continue to do smart things: “When we were considering how to use this position on our list, it made sense to add a player who knew our system and had played under our coaches,” he said. It seems he earnt himself the spot by taking the disappointment of not being drafted in his stride and came back 'in terrific condition'. He may turn out to be another Hannan or Fritsch - recruited for the VFL and have lapped up their chance at AFL.

Damn! I initially thought Viney ? but I doubted the co-caps would be together...

Noticed that shadows are appearing. Good to see the animations again. Are we guessing the players? My guess is Angus.

bb I think the club did all it could with the options it had. It could not predict the Three wise monkeys Stooges of the Tribunal (Loveridge, Loewe and Wakelin) would be told by the AFL advocate to treat real evidence as 'irrelevant' and accept his waffle of: 'potential for injury', the 'look' of the vision, May positioned with 'significant momentum'. None of these hypotheticals seemed to be backed up with evidence nor been raised at Tribuanls before; it is purely gut feel stuff which generates a gut feel outcome. As you said earlier The Fix was in. I do think the club is beginning to play hard ball. That they appealed was a good move - if nothing else sends a signal. Also, our President recently took legal action against some WA reporter and extracted an apology. We are no longer beholden to the AFL - I doubt the new MFC will let many bad calls get past it - but we many not win them all. Respect comes slowly. The MFC of the last 5 years is earning that back. Yes, still some way to go but we are no longer the doormats of the AFL.

From The Age report: '...Woods argued May's left foot rose above the ground and his right foot was on the brink of leaving the surface, which meant May had "significant momentum" when he collided with Berry'. I thought that lifting one's feet one after the other is how a person moves forward - it is called walking!! 'Significant momentum'? But what evidence was there to link it to 'medium' impact? It appears zilch! From The Fox Report: After Brisbane explained that Berry didn't play on because he had played enough minutes, not because he wasn't able, 'AFL counsel Andrew Woods argued that such evidence was irrelevant'. Honestly, I find it staggering that the only real evidence of impact ie no injury, no concussion is considered irrelevant! Where does that leave Christians' medium impact' case: 1. Player reaction: Berry fell backwards. 2. Medical report: which was was not damning at all - no injury, no concussion. 3. Did not return to play as he was not concussed and had played his minutes. So the only criteria left is 4. visual look of the incident. So May is out because it looked bad ie the optics. Woods virtually says as much: 'based on the footage alone, the impact "must be more than low"'. Its laughable that none of the objective criteria are fulfilled yet it is upheld. We can't win: one of our players goes down and it is called 'staging/diving', another team's player goes down and the visual looks so bad the impact must be medium. Not saying Berry staged it at all; just saying the optics is a very poor criteria for any suspension let alone deciding the impact.

I believe Christian deemed it to be 'in the course of play'.

Clarifying two things: - Berry is taller than May while somewhat lighter. - May had an option: he could have gone for the ball which is where Berry was heading instead of 'bracing' for Berry contact or at least gone for the ball after Berry fell instead of walking the other way. Nonetheless, imv it is not 'medium' impact and the criteria applied to assess it are rubbish in this instance. Very pleased the club has shown the mettle to appeal. It shows we will start standing up for ourselves and our players.

Here are some alternative views: Note: 'Roar' is a sports website where it's scribes are non-footballers who generally take an objective position - a refreshing read. Their rankings above are based on a consensus of 3 or 4 of their writers - explains why there are some notable absences. Roar's Top 10 Difficult to comment as no-one outlines their criteria: Club B&F would be a good start, 2019 upside would be another, AA selection. However, the views seem fairly consistent.

Not at all. Just pointing that Robbo seems to be at the other extreme. To put Angus at 43 is bizarre to me. I would have him around #25. Just my opinion.

So Robbo thinks Angus will go from 3rd best player as judged in the 2018 Brownlow to 43rd best as judged by him? That totally discredits the whole thing!

Update: Christian explained how he found it to be medium impact. "The three things we take into account with impact is the visual look of the incident, the player reaction and also the medical report," Christian said. "Taking all those things into account, and the fact that Berry didn't return to the ground, it was graded as medium impact." How the visual look of the incident ie the optics affects impact is beyond me!!. Sure, Berry went down but that was as much from surprise as it was severity of the bump. And then there is the mysterious 'medical report'. I reckon Christian weighed it pretty heavily on the optics - the media was baying for a suspension and he delivered. I reckon we should appeal not only to get May off but to show our mettle - it is time we play the hard game like other clubs do.

Just for good measure: Clayton Oliver ($1500- Striking Lyons) and Aaron vandenBerg ($3000 Stiking Neale and making contact with umpire). Clearly, wearing red and blue means incidents are judged more severely than others!!

Judged to be careless conduct and medium impact to the head. https://www.afl.com.au/news/2019-03-11/bans-for-key-demon-and-docker-fines-for-six-others But "Berry walked off the ground unassisted and was not concussed" So how is it 'medium impact'? Must appeal on that alone!!

Maybe, but they are ancient history. Had we won by a bigger margin yesterday we could have overcome the impact of those two losses and still make finals.

Not possible as they play each other next week! They both have 20pts. Next weeek one will have 24 pts, the other 20pts (or 22 each if they draw). Crows now on 20 pts. We are on 16pts. Next week we play the Crows (184.3% and Dees 148.1%). Imagine how much better our chances of getting over them Crows if we had beaten Bulldogs by a few more goals yesterday ie a bigger %. On my reckoning we need to win next week by 5 or 6 goals. Doable but a herculean task. Crows will defend, defend, defend - they know they don't need to win next week, they only need to keep their % above ours. So, yesterday was all about %'age!!

At least it isn't his troublesome foot...

I agree ANB shouldn't play but probably will. Too often ANB's turnovers kill momentum but he seems to be a coaches favourite so will play until someone consistently does his defensive role better and who has better disposal. Tbh I don't think Stretch warrants a game. Doesn't do enough defensive work and is usually slow in disposing of the ball. I put this down to not thinking fast enough and maybe lack of confidence in his decision making and his disposal skills. So I would say ANB lines up instead of Stretch. Anyone know how Tom Sparrow went yesterday? Any room for him in round 1?

I am so disappointed about yesterday's game that I can't even get upset about the conference system any more. Simply put we blue it yesterday! Kicked ourselves out of the finals in the first quarter. Sure they had the run of the umps all day but more accuracy for goal (1.5 to their 0.0) in the first quarter should have shut the door on them before they could get a look in. We played brilliantly in the first quarter and they didn't even manage a rushed behind! Not sure what happened after qtr time but we didn't seem to know we were playing for a finals spot ie %age, not just a win. This lack of awareness showed in the post match celebrations of the win. Sure a win was nice but nothing to celebrate under the circumstances. I bet if Daisy was there she would have worn the greatest scowl on the siren, that a great opportunity went begging. For the 3rd year in a row we will probably miss finals by %age and it is entirely our fault.

That is a great idea! I don't recall which Vic club it was but they had a multiple game membership (eg 3 or 5) and it could be used to go to those number of games or all used at once ie take 2 or 4 friends to the same game. This could make it worthwhile for an NT member to join and receive the other membership benefits which would include access to finals tickets.

I believe our premium memberships sold out in October with a waiting list so the club converted two general bays to Redleg bays to meet the demand. The club is conscious of selling 'too many' premium/GFG memberships to not exhaust the GF ticket allocation so Full (11-game) members still have some chance of getting GF tickets. Given that a club is allocated about 15,000 GF tickets I feel the club is doing the right thing by capping the number of premium and GFG memberships. I suspect other clubs also cap their premium/GFG memberships for the same reason. If we continue to perform we will have a long waiting list for those membership types. So I think we are well on our way to a higher average membership revenue with the extra Redleg bays, Full members converting to premium/GFG memberships and 3-game members converting to Full members to get some priority for GF tickets.