Diamond_Jim

if you are referring to the post 2005 era (the Clarkson years) you have to assume we would have made the same coaching and player selections....why would we do that when as I pointed out Melbourne was the dominant player in the merger. The decisions were likely to be similar to those we did make and not those made by the Hawthorn board.

you can divide this into several categories: Financial Coach selection Player selection On field performance Membership Other than membership there is no real reason to think we would have been drastically successful. The so called glory years of the Hawks ended in 1991 as their players aged. In 1995 the year before the proposed merger the Hawks were near the bottom of the ladder at 15th. Fascinating discussion as one of my pet loves is alternative histories.

well I suppose it's not as dumb as listing the Tour de France complete with spectators for late August. Talk about a rolling disaster. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/16/august-tour-de-france-recipe-for-disaster-says-public-health-expert

You have to remember that it was an MFC lead merger where Hawks were the target club.It is reasonable to think we would have had the usual suspects leading the club and we would have been the basket case we are anyway. (MFCSS requires no other response.) What is interesting to speculate upon is what our membership numbers might now have been. I suspect about the same as Carlton 55-60k

you don't need to send any of the Melbourne teams interstate for a while if you base all the Melbourne teams in Melbourne and the interstate teams together somewhere else...say Adelaide. That way you have seven rounds until any of the Melbourne teams need to move To complete the season you would then need two moves from both hubs of four teams at a time. (Some how there are two more rounds needed which I'm sure the spreadsheet people can work out. Under this plan all teams would spend four weeks in the foreign hub.) The complicating factor is the first round as it was an uncontrolled mix of the hubs... all the more reason to cancel that round ?

the kick backwards or across the ground is an excellent attacking/defensive move. I could live with limiting it to one kick thus avoiding a chain but as other have said the other team is employing a zone and should suffer for not manning up. The problem with the last touch rule is that the free kick is too big a penalty. We would end up like soccer where players are skilled at playing for a corner. Happy with the fewer rotations and throw in a reduction of the bench by one while we are at it. 20 metre kick .... maybe but if the other side is using zones the short kick can be a good zone breaking strategy. Most importantly these rules should be trialled in other comps for at least one season before coming over to the AFL where they should in their first year form part of the preseason comp only. The last set of rule changes were an absolute failure

This is why the VFL is endangered. For reasons that are beyond me VFL form rarely converts to AFL form. At best it delivers an injured best 22 player a few weeks of match practice before rejoining the main team. This can be done reasonably well by an alternative training program at far lesser cost. Finally the AFL has largely killed off the community spirit aspect of the VFL competition. It has always been a pleasure going along to the standalone clubs and seeing their supporters passion for their club but in the main they are a mature declining group. Long live the Burra Burger !!

Virgin airlines a major sponsor of the AFL and a big media buyer on FTA coverage of AFL are investigating going into formal administration https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/virgin-australia-considers-going-into-administration-as-labor-calls-for-government-rescue

https://www.sen.com.au/news/2020/04/13/lifting-the-draft-age-to-19-a-no-brainer-beveridge/ Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge believes the AFL should use the COVID-19 situation to raise the draft age to 19. With underage pathways and leagues not running because of the virus and a situation where list sizes may be reduced, limiting the need for a draft in 2020, Beveridge believes it is time to pull the trigger. “It’s an absolute no-brainer (to lift the draft age). I mean, every other year as much as I’ve advocated for the draft age to be lifted, I was finding it hard to work out how you would actually do it,” he told SEN’s Whateley.

August at the earliest.... Mind you to discuss it before mid May is... Wrong

Those businesses would also have stock on hand and debtors which cover the line of credit providing short term liquidity. The clubs have no liquid reserves to handle business risk even for a period of a few months. If you did a quick asset ratio test on most of them they would fail. Anyway the nature of the game is that each board will take financial risks in search of the elusive element of success. Not long ago now that Collingwood was technically insolvent.

very few businesses would carry sufficient reserves to go through a whole year without revenue. That being said the lack of any real reserves at the club level underscores how financially weak many of them are. This pandemic is an outlier event but there are many significant events that should have been included in any business disaster recovery plan.What would happen for instance if Channel 7 went broke and could only pay 50% of their media bill for the remainder of the season.We have also seen major sponsors go under etc etc

MFC is a workplace and can continue while social distancing is practiced. Read recently that one of the big EPL clubs are practising in groups of four passing etc. They have separate fields and separate change rooms for each group. Of course these clubs have mega facilities that allow such activity. I wonder which of the AFL clubs will be the first to try this type of training. As Gosch's paddock is an open field I cannot see it working there but Casey which has two adjoining ovals is a possibility.

not to mention Smith and AVB. I wish them all including McCartin the best

was watching a show recently on TV. It appears that certain Hawaiian printed shirts are now very collectable ?

Agree... That of course was the year Collingwood broke their premiership drought. There was no outstanding team and it was ours for the taking.

I'm still undecided but while there are over half a million cases in the USA with over one thousand deaths every day it's way too early to think about something as peripheral as a contrived football season. Let's have a look in a month and then think about it. To have games when it is illegal for two children to kick a ball in the park is not the right message. Like many I cannot help but think that the willingness of sports to restart is motivated by money rater than any altrustic desire to provide entertainment in these difficult times.

88 was similar if I recall in that we won the first 8 plus and then cratered but we recovered to sneak into the six? and then we all know what happened from there I was in Europe for the first six odd weeks of the season and was amazed when in the Qantas lounge in Singapore on the way home to read of our success. Definitely no internet cafes in those days

I suspect that the resolution for the NRL will be the CEO losing his job. It is clear that he has alienated Government and his media backers. Hard to see him continuing in his job. This is one time when sports need to follow rather than lead.

We were plagued by injuries. IIRC we lost one or more key players each of those last four games of the regular season

I was wondering when a country was going to use polling techniques to conduct a random tested sample of its population. While electoral opinion polling may get the final result wrong in elections the margin of error is such that for this purpose they can give you excellent trend analysis. The poll conducted in Austria had a surprising result: Less than 1% of the Austrian population is “acutely infected” with coronavirus, new research based on testing a representative sample of more than 1,500 people suggests. The research, if replicated and confirmed elsewhere, would appear to scotch hopes of countries being remotely close to relying on “herd immunity” – where enough of the population is exposed to the virus to build up a combined immunity – as a viable policy option. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/less-than-1-of-austria-infected-with-coronavirus-new-study-shows

TJ wasmy vote. He embodies Melbourne.... could have been anything but no His third quarter against Adelaide was the best individual effort from a footballler I have ever witnessed

you're right dc but having been to Bangladesh a few times it is a complex issue.The garment industry has greatly assisted in the liberation of the women of Bangladesh and has enabled them to put food on the table for their families. Like Filipinos their menfolk provide a very large proportion of foreign labour in the Gulf and South East Asia. Yes it's a horrible life but compared to poverty levels of thirty years ago it's a big improvement. As an aside the Bangladeshi workers love a protest march. The marches are lead by drummers and the must have is an elephant !! An amazing site on the streets of Dhaka

Reports that AFL and Channel 7 are in talks to extend the present media deal until 2024 at a slightly reduced fee. As Foxtel pays more than half the annual fee it could be interesting. At least the AFL are getting better press than the NRL who are looking almost rugby unionesque in their ineptitude.

Relocation of the GCS to Tasmania is the way to go but other than a few million a year I cannot see anyone down there interested in ownership. Back in the late eighties some teams played with public ownership (share listings etc) but it didn't really work out. One of the problems is that in an insolvency the licence reverts to the AFL so the actual asset values held by the clubs is limited. Relocation of GCS to Tasmania would also put pressure on North's existence