Diamond_Jim

35 games in 5 years.. 7 games in the last three years I hope the medical staff are doing a very thorough assessment and not just "hoping for the best." He'll be 28 at the start of next season. Rose coloured glasses spring to mind.

agree KK is the high risk/reward player.. perhaps one more year but I am not qualified to assess the real risk

agree but we have enough risk projects at present. KK, AVB the two Smiths and arguably Stretch. Need to remove three of those before we add another one. Also need to have clear triggers and ability to exit at mid and end season. I suspect these conditions would not be attractive to HB such that he would leave the West. Perhaps we list him and leave him in the WAFL for a few months to find form so if and when he moved east he had a high probability of making the senior team. As you say it's risk and managing the total risk exposure.

Here's a Guardian article on the test venues in England. It was hard to recognize Edgbaston after its renovation. We tend to forget how small their grounds are by comparison to those we have in Oz. "English grounds have never been cavernous – Lord’s is the biggest with a capacity for 28,000 souls. But the upside is that they are easier to fill, and an atmosphere builds quickly. " https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/06/england-ashes-test-grounds-splendour-cricket If in London stroll over to Lords and look at the museum. It may be small but boy there's history not to mention THE urn.

Most of them did including Brad Scott

If football clubs were listed on the exchange they would be all done for misleading the market. It's rather easy to smooth the market... full membership =11points (11 games) and then the partial memberships are weighted accordingly. How many are purchased by sponsors as part of pre-arranged deals. (Suspect NT buys a lot of three game memberships for example.) When we get there we could look at reserved seat revenue etc etc

A very big rubber ball

Must say it was a little disconcerting seeing the boundary advertisements for "Simplicity Crematoriums"

Je suis... Melbourne

and if we do Ratten will be coach by July

Goodwin... throwing everyone under the bus we knew it was coming but it does leave you wondering about the elephant in the room

Hard to ask for a better first session Without wishing to tempt fate this could be wrapped up by tea.

that early wicket probably removed the win equation for England if it was ever there. Now for another 2 wickets this session. How many overs until Lyon comes on ??

A nice article from today's Guardian on Steve Smith. As usual some of the below the line comments are instructive. "Well, what did you see my blue eyed son? And what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a man batting without a chance for 149 overs. I saw Joe Denly bowling in mid-afternoon. I saw a thousand pad-roll fiddles and five hundred box-flicks. I saw a game and a series and a career defined. And yes, like everyone else I saw quite a lot of Steve Smith. The fourth day of this first Ashes Test may have ended with England’s openers battling for survival, set an impossible 398 to win and a day to play out for a draw. But once again the chorus, the melody, the rhythm of the occasion belonged to the greatest Test batsman of the age." https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/aug/04/steve-smith-australia-england-ashes-second-hundred

In the world of what ifs..... imagine if the Weed had been having a reasonable season and he hadn't signed an extension. His manager may have been proved right

Interesting... watch Sydney call for medical retirement for Buddy and general salary cap relief (the equivalent of the old COLA). For Joe D it could be a good thing to get out of the local fishbowl and ply his craft in relative obscurity.

I think there's a common thread there... Viney.... perhaps there's a better player for his position. Viney's upside is limited whereas we know Brayshaw has another level.

and of course fall away mid way through the third and go relatively scoreless in the last while Collingwood rest Grundy and Pendlebury from about 15-20 minutes in the last for more important matches. Plus another financial nail in the proverbial coffin with a crowd around 45k. (Weather of 12 degrees and rain might even make it lower.)

great hour till drinks then

Three fours to Wade in his 15 runs. He "could" break this game open

Wade has had some prolific scores in England on the Australia A tour. A whirlwind 100 would be nice now. Lunch to tea session is really big needless to say.

Aim is to get through to lunch without a wicket being lost and say 40 more runs. We need a lead of 250 to make a game out of this and that's still another 170 runs away. Need to get them in on a 4/5 day wicket if we are going to rely on pitch deterioration. The worst thing would be to all out by tea today.

we paid very big money for Templeton. This guy is apparently bargain basement. Who would you prefer to take a chance on.... AVB or Patton.

took a dive tonight but I'm still pushing the national pandemic to get us over the line