Diamond_Jim

Strange..... Given that the first VFL game is not until after we have played our third AFL game you would think the fringe AFL players would be desperate for a chance to show their wares

Must have been done before Collingwood played last night

Losing to the cellar dweller North not once but twice was what killed our season. North only won 6 games for the season and was one game and percentage away from the wooden spoon. We also just fell in against Carlton and didn't exactly shine against the Lions and of course we lost to Freo. Have to toughen up this year. Our run home in 2018 is not easy so we had better be around 7-4 at the bye if want to be comfortable.

Interesting to look at who we play twice this year: They are ; St KIlda, Gold Coast, Geelong, Crows and Bulldogs Other than GCS , none of those teams are pushovers.

You've got to admire a guy with the name "Harry Himmelberg" .... such beautiful symetry

Interesting Brodie is beating the GWS ruck, Simpson 24-9 but Collingwood can't get their hands on the ball. Thought Collingwood had one of the AFL's leading midfields

GWS starting to brush off the rust... 4 goals so far this quarter and some good running play

The problem is that the stronger kids in junior football will start to imitate the play. The old "don't argue" was revered but in reality was rarely used. Martin has turned it into an artform and personally I don't like it.

I am an AFL member. For the MCG I like the third level in the Southern Stand. It's open so if it rains there is a problem but viewing wise it is great. The second level is under cover but I like the openness of the third level. Even the first half of level 4 is pretty good. Do you know anyone who is an AFL member. They can buy a large number of guest tickets and the member does not need to accompany you. Whether they can do it for the dreamtime game is hard to say. That is one of the marquee games at the 'G. Essendon also have one of the highest numbers of pre reserved seatholders of the Melbourne clubs assuming it's an Essendon home game. Etihad it is of course level 2 or the absolute front of level 3. Level 2 is hard to get as it is Medallion club mainly. The real trouble you will face is that the tickets are released in blocks and in simple terms they sell fence to back in one section before they release the next section. Good luck ...sounds like great fun

Was reading on Big Footy that Freo were practising how to tackle Dustin Martin. The theory is that if you tackle low the push off technique used by Martin goes into the tackler's face and thus attracts a free kick. Not sure what it does to the strength of the tackle itself but it will be interesting to see how the umpires react. On a related note can someone explain exactly what Gawn was getting free kicked for in his ruck duels. This time last year I along with many others was excited by the prospects of what Gawn as a dominant ruckman could deliver. His early season injury put rest to that excitement and then his return was dogged by the umpires frequently awarding free kicks against him. cheers

I assume the rating for Essendon is based on the theory that because of their recruiting they will be better than last year. Personally I thought they over performed last year... just as we under performed. Stop Daniher and you stop Essendon in all probability.

I had that thought as well and you are probably right. Of course if they are big enough and the traditional cable TV (ie local providers) fall away the monolith becomes a "price maker" rather than a price taker and the AFL will have to take a much reduced price to get onto the system. More likely that the sports will get into direct marketing and the monolith will never get off the ground but who knows.

You can fly to Asia for that amount ....Australian airfares are way too high. On the other hand by comparison to what thy used to charge us that's a bargain. Now all you have to do is to find some accommodation under $200 a night ! Enjoy yourself ... a nice 10 goal first quarter would be good and then outscore them by around 2 goals each quarter for the rest of the match. Somehow I doubt that will happen. The low clubs always think they have a chance against us ... and we always seem to give it to them.

Remember the policy of no TV unless the GF was a sell out. One year Channel 7 had to buy a swag of tickets so it could show the game. If you think about it the VFA were the ones who blazed the trail with their FTA live matches every Sunday. Fascinating to try and predict the future of sports broadcasting. Ten years ago would we have imagined that Netflix would have the reach that it has today. Perhaps there will be a Netflix that emerges in the Sports market ie.one company..... all the sport you can watch for $20 a month.

Interesting... Most are in the ballpark but Port (2-8) and Essendon are rated too highly and perhaps Bulldogs (7-12) and West Coast (8-12) are under rated. I'd have both these clubs at 6-10. In the case of Port and Essendon.. I would also rank them at 6-10. One of Port's problem is that it will probably lose to Adelaide which means two less wins for the season. Just saw Moonshadow's post .... seems we are in agreement that Bulldogs and West Coast are under rated.

Interesting vibe on the board these days. Starting to feel like 1987 where a lot of players that had been okay to that time started to have a real impact. The Febey brothers come to mind as a good example. Hopefully this is Salem's year. No doubt he has the talent.

Thought it might be time for a World Cup logistics update for those who are interested. I planned to drop into Moscow for three nights before heading onto my base in Kazan. Booked a hotel through Agoda in the normal way with attendance guaranteed by credit card and then started hearing all these horror stories about hotels in Moscow cancelling bookings for the WC. Emailed the hotel twice but no reply. Did a dummy booking at the hotel and was told 4 nights minimum stay (I had booked for 3 nights) and the rate had increased.I got in touch with Agoda and they had their Russian speaking consultant phone the hotel and supposedly my booking is good. Who knows... so if you guys know of a couch that I can share in Moscow it could be good back up. Now onto Kazan where I have booked an Air bnb. Have used airbnb all around the world for the last few years and they are great. The big plus is the payment system. Airbnb act as the broker and no probs with false sites etc and payment is so simple. Russia however has a twist for foreign visitors. Usually if you are in any city for more than 7 days you need to formally register your presence with the authorities. For the WC the requirement to register has been reduced to 24 hours if you are in a WC host city. Registration requires a personal visit by you and the host to the authorities. Nobody knows how this mass registration is going to work in practice. My Kazan airbnb host with whom I communicate by means of google translate has no idea either. Such joys ... but all part of the adventure.... PS Is Timmy ever going to get onto the park with Milwall??

Now that is a nice debating point and deserves a considered response. Cricket is facing such a question in a round about way with the Big bash. Should it keep it on Channel 10 where it rates well and the kids love it etc or should it give it to foxtel or even worse Optus for more dollars. Cricket in the UK (including test cricket) has been behind a paywall for around 10 years after cricket lobbied to be taken off the UK anti siphoning list.

Thanks SWYL ... I downloaded one from a third party that got me onto 774 but I also like my News radio occasionally so I will try Tunein

That is the total number of foxtel subscribers .... the number who sign up because of the AFL package would be far fewer. Total membership of all clubs is a tad under 1 million but that is often 2-3 persons per household. My figure of 1 million is reasonable but even at say 1.5 million the amounts are around the same. Remember under the internet package you are getting nothing but the AFL.... no movies.. no Game of Thrones etc etc As to advertising who would pay for a service with ads especially a lot of ads. Foxtel advertising revenue would not be that great. In many cases it's just promos for other shows. I agree banner advertising might get you a few dollars

but why .... please do not tell me that they are intending to sell their streaming rights a la the AFL overseas listening app.

The world of internet streaming is complicated. Just noticed that my ABC apps had disappeared from my phone. I downloaded new ones and cannot find the links to radio that used to be there. Just news in text form. Google ABC and find out that now their App has disabled radio streaming while overseas. I can understand that they need to do this for some content such as cricket etc but to completely shut off their app to overseas streaming is weird. Strangely enough I can still stream by going through web sites. This is from their FAQ page: I downloaded the App in Australia and when I am travelling overseas I can’t see all of the features Yes. Outside of Australia some features are limited. These include streaming content, weather, and notifications. Rest assured, as soon as you arrive back in Australia, your ABC App will restore full functionality.

Foxtel use AFL as a loss leader to sell their subscriptions. The sports package premium itself would go nowhere near what they pay for the rights. So that begs the question. In an internet world selling just the sports package what would we mugs pay? Hard to say to the last dollar but in simple terms the rights are now worth $418M per year. Let's assume there are 1 million people prepared to pay for an AFL subscription. At that fee we would need to each pay $418 per year plus a share of production costs. As you can see if you only took foxtel for the six months of the AFL season you are getting line ball on what we would need to pay under an AFL internet model. Where I think we all have a very legitimate beef with Foxtel is that it is selling old school technology in the sense that its premium HD model only goes to one TV set etc. Foxtel Go is a much better product but it lacks HD and a lot of the other bells and whistles that we have come to expect. For the sake of my argument I have ignored what the FTA network contributes to the rights deal as increasingly they will desert the field as the rights prices increase.

Interesting about all the "depth comments". Much the same was said at this time last year and yet when the injuries hit our depth was shown to be lacking. Brayshaw and Frost are a cut above the VFL and rightly challenge for inclusion as does Pederson but the rest of our fringe players are yet to show that they can play at AFL level. When the likes of JKH, Maynard, White etc were included last year they failed to impress. Perhaps 2018 will be different.

Thanks Earl .... you are really filling me with dread but I like the honesty. I like going to VFL games ... went to about five last year but have never ventured out to Casey. Those bacon and egg rolls do sound good though