Diamond_Jim

Defence is looking thin especially if either or both Jetta and Hibberd struggle to find form or are injured

Very close I would think though... I have a hope (not a great one) that we can get another year (2022) out of Hibberd Brayshaw is a conundrum TMac will hopefully be traded (the only reason he wont be traded is because he has another bad year or he pushes out one of the other talls which would be another problem in itself) Baker and Hunt.. no real feel but more likely Hunt goes (did we give him 2 years... not sure why) On the delists... we haven't really seen much of any of them and therefore seems harsh but that's AFL level footy

don't you miss all those wonderful articles written in the 2019 preseason saying how good we were going to be. Best midfield..best this and that and the list went on. I think every pundit had us in the eight and many had us as premiers. Bathwater never tasted so good

the Adelaide quarantine was for the top players only. Only around 15 players and very comfortable not everyone is equal in the tennis world

I can see a future in this thread. How did Langdon go and who played on the other wing?

who uses mail in this day and age Doubt that an MFC election would be a big target for Russian hackers ?

is he on the park at all ? thanks

with Qld having its first hotel quarantine virus breakout case today that only leaves WA of all the football playing States to experience that happening. 2021 will be interesting to say the least

Zero There will be at least one more outbreak in one of the 5 States in which AFL teams are based before July which is probably the earliest month by which we will have around 20-30% of the population vaccinated. After July the vulnerable will have been vaccinated so the Premiers might be prepared to be a bit more lenient with their border closures. No more than 50% crowds until May at the earliest is my guess in Victoria. TBH the AFL might be better delaying the season openers until May. I'm sure the players are sick of hubs. As it has started, 2021 will be a sputtering year where we take a few steps forward and then get belted back. By September we should have a fair idea of the world's roadmap to exit this mess. Anyway it's only footy...many overseas are now fighting for their lives

I'm afraid I have mentally written off most of 2021 Can we skip it and move to 2022

Just looking at the set up for attending the Oz Tennis open in Feb. If that's the footy requirement it'll certainly be a different world Pods, dwell zones, codes.... you name it

the financials are until June 30 2020 so many of the staff cuts would not have taken real affect at that time and you would have had redundancy costs pay outs,annual leave etc that would have been expensed into 2020. You'll see those savings mainly in the 2020/21 financial year. I'm tending towards ground rental and match day costs as the savings but I'm not sure. It has to be something large to effectively reduce annual expenditure by around 50% over a three month period.

One interesting issue is how the expenses were cut so quickly giving a drop of $15M in expenditure. One big element would have been the 50% part year reduction in player payments agreed in March.

I think that is reflected in the movement in financial investments fro negative $7M to positive $6M but I agree it's not obvious

Some highlights they reduced expenses by around $16M due to covid which helped to offset the revenue reduction of $17.5M. Jobkeeper earned them nearly $4M Sponsorship income dropped by $4.4M They revalued Bentleigh Club upwards by $14M There's a positive $13M odd swing in financial investments which I assume reflects the proceeds of sale of Leighoak

no way April 24 will be full capacity. 75% at best

we always have an excuse.... we are Melbourne

No reason not to be 8-2 at round 10. Indeed if we are improving we should be 9-1

Australia is not rolling out the vaccine until March.You need 70% of the population vaccinated. It's a 2 jab process where immunity is given around 15 days after the second jab. Simple maths tells you that the vaccines will not be effective to reach heard immunity until around August at the earliest. By the way they do work and the safety tests have been enormous. As of today over one million doses of the Pfizer vaccine has been given for example. Was reading a fascinating stats paper the other day by a US statistician. Assuming herd immunity is achieved at 70% of the population and no vaccine the US would take 5 years at its present rate of infection to achieve herd immunity. With a vaccine take up rate of 40% it takes 15 months. Jump that take up rate to 60% and you get there in 6 months. Please take the vaccine and get your friends to take it as well. Otherwise 2022 won't be much better.

well at least we won't have to worry about socially distancing for this round assuming we get to go. The latest NSW outbreak shows that 2021 isn't going to be normal by any stretch. Will the players put up with another bubble season?

better win it by 20 plus definitely send the B team to Freo in the practice match if we're smart Mind you we never are

Other than the drive to Casey there's nothing wrong with it per se. It beats Punt Road from a spectator viewpoint where you sit in the stand or nowhere. Lacks the aeshetics of the old grounds such as Port Melbourne. Went to Frankston once on a clear winters day....Fantastic fun The outer wing at Casey is very sterile and usually devoid of spectators. Up until end of 2019 the surface drainage was very bad. I assume that was fixed in 2020. Most VFL games attract small crowds. Have been to Casey on a nice day to watch us play the Collingwood VFL team which was probably the biggest VFL crowd I have seen. Maybe 5-7k. Usual crowd I suspect is between 1and 2k. It's just a lovely day of no stress high class football. Could it be improved.. sure Coburg has craft beer. Frankston has a delightful sausage sizzle. Perhaps because the crowds are small there could be a half time address by a team official to those interested in team tactics/development etc. TBH I have for a while been of the view that they are not interested in increasing VFL attendances. Most of the crowd get in for free and if there were bigger crowds they would need more toilets, car parks, attendants security etc. In fact I can't ever recall seeing security at a VFL match which is a good thing.

we have a pretty good win rate in the meaningless games. It's the ones for points that we find harder

AFL is naturally shielded from the talent decline you mention because there is no external yardstick. For the those more international sports such as cricket rugby soccer swimming and even netball where we continually punched above our weight we are coming back to the pack as other countries develop centres of excellence etc etc

my guess is 5k maximum There's very few seats at Casey so it will be social distancing on the grass. The advantage of it being the second round is that we will get the chance to see what happens the week before