Diamond_Jim

So once again we have the contrived round of relative equals. The AFL just cannot help themselves these days. Once it used to be a few blockbusters now it's whole rounds manipulated. Saturday night assuming decent weather maybe 50k. Might go to the Hawks v Bombers game if our "transferees" are selected

Could have the Tramways Band for mood music I like it

Got to admire the fans that made it to the games in Qatar. The accommodation and travel logistics encountered by most made Russia look like a breeze. Getting to the round of 16 match will be another level of difficulty again

I suspect you're right Freo has given Port the play book... Pick 16 anyone??

so it's back to where we were five odd years ago with the fresh legs being added in the last quarter. Amusing doesn't quite describe the change of mind

Okay but Similar.. he was being at least partly paid from the VFL top up bucket used for players and not from the soft salary cap. This will be another version... could be wrong but I doubt that he's making a comeback

IIRC he was on the Collingwood list as a salary saver for 2022 and I expect this is similar for 2023. Frees up some of the soft cap

Season 7 at a competition level was a fail for so many reasons it's hard to know where to start. Will Season 8 be any better.. probably not.

35 predicted for game time at Ipswich. Great timing Gil

time difference makes watching difficult. oh the joy of when it was in Japan and Korea with a 5pm and 7:30pm game Melbourne time. SBS on demand site is rather clunky for me. Very difficult to control the rate of fast forward etc Tunisia match is the big one to state the obvious. Go Roos PS Got an email from my Airbnb host where I stayed in Kazan Russia in 2018. What a difference four years makes. His elder son has fled Russia and after a years exile in Georgia he's now computer programming from Bali The local paper in Kazan reported that the Australian supporters drank many of the bars dry the weekend of our opening match. A bit different in Qatar

Played the long bomb to the pocket far too often

Definitely one of the more innovative suggestions.. we could simply put it into a big underground drain for a kilometre or so

this discussion underscores how badly we were dudded in the LJ trade. There's a gulf between pick three and thirteen

30 plus degrees predicted for Brisbane next Saturday. Could be worse.... they have 35 tomorrow !!

Magic Round in a different country each year. Like the Olympics or the Soccer World cup countries could bid for this once in a lifetime event. It is after all the World Game (woops I think some other sport claims that phrase... perhaps we could call it the Universal Game !!) Think of all that money and exposure Gil.... almost as good as having a game in China !!!

Bringing in a twentieth team to solve the problem of nineteen teams underscores how impractical the nineteenth team is. Locating it in NT would be a disaster as the population of the largest city is barely 170k. Assuming we can't get rid of a Melbourne team, Adelaide or Perth is the logical spot but watch the two existing teams in each of those cities scream about cutting into their market. The unfortunate reality is that no one has a solution to the rolling bye that will not involve a significant change to the competition. A quick look at the VFL ladder fiasco shows what happens when teams are all over the place on numbers of games played. Mad as Hell's idea of relegation of the 19th team is of course the mathematical solution but finance wise I just cannot see relegation working for most clubs. (Would a player be entitled to a free trade form a club that is relegated. Who funds the minimum player payments of the team when it is relegated and for how long. Do they continue on the same stadium deals? The issues just continue.)

true at least Casey is against the traffic and driving time could be similar. The point is that you don't need a CBD training ground. It merely needs space. Hell if we'd acted 30 odd years ago we might have had a chunk of Docklands or even Southbank pre casino days. (Admittedly that disappeared mid '80's) Time to stop mucking around and bite the bullet. If it is to be Casey let's put full efforts into that spot. Anyone can see by a simple visit to the growing suburb of Clyde that the surrounding land even at Casey is disappearing

interesting to note that Brisbane's new training facilities are at Springfield a suburb of Ipswich. Probably about the same distance as MCG to Casey from the gabba to Springfield PS I take that back it's only 35km from Brisbane CBD to Springfield but still a decent commute

good luck today looking forward to a great display by our team. they play an exciting brand which can do nothing but help the development of this competition

the clubs and supporters should demand to know now how the rolling bye caused by a nineteenth team will be handled. A ladder full of teams with an asterisk is not good enough

Of course... need you ask Strange that the NRL have not arced up about use of the term "Magic Round"

Have watched a bit of MFC in the AFLW over the last month or so. The brand is exciting and fun to watch. Helped no doubt by the enormously lopsided nature of the games but gone are the interminable ball ups and scrubby kicks of years gone by. Will be interesting to see how the competition develops. Attendance levels are a big challenge and I'm still not sure that they have the season timing correct

That's an insult to Harry... he is much better I like the abracadabra round... or perhaps the Mad Hatter Round (as in Rabbit out of a Hat)

We also play a relatively slow game. 5 men on the bench would favour fast rebounding teams like Collingwood

We've had dominant rucks for almost the last 20 years if not longer but we've never had a gameplan that leveraged such domination. Max and LJ added dimensions. Max with round the ground play and LJ with his follow up ground ball play. FWIW I'd prefer to see one of the two rucks on the other side of the ground but say another 20 metres closer to our goal opening up the chip kick to Salem and then the long zone breaking kick to Grundy who should be boundary 70 metres out from our goal. The next kick under the Goodwin plan goes to the pocket but I would like to see it squared up to CHF and then kicked to a leading forward. Worth a try