Diamond_Jim

of the fringe players he is probably one of the best but will need to show something this season

and what coin do we have to trade with next year as Lewis Jones etc etc come to the end of their playing careers. Not as though we have a wealth of players we can offer up for trades

Way overs and when combined with the high salary it is much too high for a medium level performer. (By medium I mean this is the price that one pays for an elite performer and he is not that.) Oh well let's hope he delivers .... MFC does not have a great history with high priced trades

Sport's a funny thing The attached article describes how the almost unthinkable happened in that the USA failed to make the soccer world cup. Just change the names and you have MFC. USA just needed to beat the lowly Trinidad who played some fresh untried players (sounds like Collingwood). Even if USA lost all would probably be okay because the top team Mexico (Adelaide Crows) were playing the not so good Honduras and then the US would have another chance against Australia. You guessed it Mexico who had already topped the group lost to Honduras and the mighty USA are out ! Just goes to show .... never rely on other teams !! https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/10/usa-trinidad-and-tobago-world-cup-2018-qualifier-soccer

Interesting comment by the US coach: "I would love to see one of these hotshot teams from Europe come here and play in our CONCACAF qualifying and really get a taste of this and see what that's about," Arena said. "This is very challenging, it's like survival of the fittest. They could do one of those TV shows on this. Who will survive in the end, that's basically what this is."

The return leg is in Sydney .. why I don't know More importantly there are reports that Ange will resign in November .. win or lose https://www.foxsports.com.au/football/socceroos/stunned-reaction-to-socceroos-coachs-plan-to-quit/news-story/6840e7416865f28294488a53e364a13e Just saw that Chile failed to qualify ... wow

spot on G .... it was a horrible season ... hard to believe that with five games to go we were still on track for a possible top 4 spot. Just unforgivable

Time to start thinking of sponsors (or more importantly lack of them). Unfortunately because they made the finals Essendon will take the Friday nights that we were so desperate to get for the purpose of sponsor exposure. I would like us to get one of the Thursday night games in Adelaide for the purpose of TV exposure. I would not be adverse to a Thursday night game at the Cattery if they have them again for TV exposure. If we are going to play Alice Springs in the indigenous round we need to get the game on national television with strong local indigenous input. It is just so obvious. Tasmanian afternoon games should be avoided if possible. Darwin is a dead end and other than getting through it I am not sure we can improve it. Finally I want an early season game against North so we can just beat them and move on !!

Another high humidity game (relative humidity for November.. 77%) ... temperature just a little lower than Melaka at average high of 26 degrees. Will be a very tough first leg. Any word on where the Australian leg will be played. Got back to Melbourne just in time to watch the extra time .... painful stuff..... seems to be no flow to their game. Desperately need another class striker.

Hope this young man makes it. At the very least it will be great to have another player to keep an eye on at Casey.

Slightly off topic but following up from those "interesting" Jason Taylor tweets here is a big instance of Fake news reporting from the US: "A CBS reporter clarified his televised report saying free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick told him he would stand during the national anthem if he played in the NFL again, saying he didn’t actually discuss the issue with the player when they spoke. Jason La Canfora said in a series of tweets on Sunday that he was relaying previous reporting about Kaepernick and did not ask whether the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback would sit or stand during the anthem when he spoke about his interview with the player during a pregame show." Journalism is plumbing new depths ! https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/oct/08/colin-kaepernick-stand-for-anthem-nfl-quarterback

Second disappointing start in a row from Daniel. Seems not to want to push Max .... Perhaps he just expects Max' car to fail as it has so many times this year. Other than the last few laps it was a bit of a yawn fest but at least there was minor excitement for a few minutes. Love F1 but it does seem to be slowly dying as a race even if the spectacle and hype are still there on occasions. Will be interesting what the new owners do.

Now that makes a lot of sense. In the old days players would come out and quash rumours. Now the advice is say nothing because then they will expect you to deny/confirm everything in the future. The classic conundrum. Ah... life in the spotlight of social media.

cutting but so true fn dee. On Fritsch .. I have seen him about five times and while I have seen his marking impact I have not noticed him breaking away etc into space. Not to say he cannot (does not) do it but at VFL level the game seems to me to be a lot scrappier and less open than AFL games. I am no expert but I liken him in my mind to Gunston. A good goal kicker who knows how to position himself. His repeated pack marks are very "un Watts" like of course.

Have just read this article in the Guardian on UK Soccer academies. Had never realised that they were so structured. Children identified at 6 years of age and then allocated to a club at age 8 !! The irony is that very few if any make it to the EPL as the money clubs buy in talent from overseas. Even the lowly Huddersfield has not had a player make its senior team from their academy for 18 years ! Huddersfield scrapped its 8-16 academy this year. "The Premier League’s advocacy of the EPPP system was fundamentally challenged last month by one of its own clubs, newly promoted Huddersfield Town, who announced the blunt conclusion of an extensive review by scrapping the academy altogether in the 8-16 age groups. Parents of 100 boys were called to a meeting with the chief executive, Julian Winter, and told that their association with the club was to end in a month. Half the academy’s 25 permanent staff are to be laid off, along with part-time people working evening and weekends. Huddersfield had found that of all the boys who had come through their system, not one had played in the Premier League since Jon Stead, who graduated in 1999. That is 18 years of boys being taken out of local and school football from the age of eight, the overwhelming majority not securing a career. " Makes you glad that our AFL system, flawed as it might be is not as bad. Would be interested to hear views on the various methods of youth development in the AFL and other sports. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/oct/06/football-biggest-issue-boys-rejected-academies As usual the comments make for great reading

Seemed to have a quieter second half to the season but then again so did most of the team. IIRC some teams were tagging him which may have limited his impact. Will be interesting to see how he goes with Lever in the team.

let's bump this thread in say another year.......... I have no idea and I expect neither does most of the football world. Worth a chance... I hope so... will his nickname be the Hog? Good Luck Harley !!

Well. In the end perhaps lucky to get away with a one all draw. Back to the hotel now. Syrian fans rightly proud of their team

Penalty goal to Syria. Aussies playing themselves out of it in the last 15 minutes 2 minutes to go

Crowd has grown to perhaps 3.5k. Lots of Australians came in at the last minute. Suspect they were having a beer outside. Both sides with chances. Australia took one but Syria is certainly in the match. If anything they look taller and stronger than the Australians. Here's hoping for an early australian goal in the second half.

At the stadium now. Small crowd.. 2k...maybe. 1.8k Syrians. No sign of rain and quite warm with high humidity.

No rain overnight and the usual warm day here in malacca. Kick off is quite late... 8.30pm local time. I assume this is for broadcast reasons back to Syria. I'll post again from the ground if possible.

A great year. Lots of incisive comments and not too much useless arguing. Thanks especially to Forum management and the regular commentators.

Apparently Syria have been getting some of their stars back and they are now a relatively strong team. The socceroos must have just about had a record number of shots on goal in that last game against Thailand. It was that draw in Bangkok that caused them all this trouble.

Here's a picture of the goal set up. Look closely at the back posts. Sorry... Just cannot seem to get the picture to upload