Diamond_Jim

just my feelings in the sense that we have three mega contracts on our books in the form of Brayshaw, Oliver and Petracca. With the benefit of hindsight (form and injury) they were all two years too long. Time now to look to the future In the case of Brayshaw the AFL unfortunately want to get rid of long contracts (over 5 years) and we will be used as the scapegoat

Unfortunately the club will realise that if he stays we have a depreciating asset. The window is shut and it's time to think beyond the next two years. Reading between the train tracks there is a mega undercurent of discontent in the upper echelons of the playing group. Wish it wasn't so but it is becoming damningly obvious

It's not going to be that... unfortunately it's now about simply getting a mega contract off our books. The picks will be middling to reasonable without being high

Sounds unloved..... hope someone found a home I see Lachie Cowan played 17 games at Carlton this so perhaps some good came out of it.

The problem with coaching is that there's no reset outlets. NFL has college football. Soccer has other leagues and national teams. What do you do at 50 if you've been a middling AFL head coach for seven odd years. It's a goldfish bowl existence

Took me a while to wake up (it's a Sydney related pick) for our mate Grundy Who did Collingwood draft for our second rounder ( I assume it was around Pick 32)

Tough but a lot of truth in it. In a couple of years I think most will realise we stuffed up what might have been

Kayo apparently has a 4k replay at 6pm... not sure I'll watch it

Biggest lead in 70 odd years (half time in a GF) It's a mountain from here for Sydney

41 points is a very serious lead. Way past the Clint Biskit 26 points of indecision that haunted MFC in 2022/23 I'm prepared to call it if this is the half time lead

Tough gig doing that in broad daylight in a mega stadium. The Priscilla Queen of the Desert opening gave me images of the Batmobile but I warmed to it. At night in a dark stadium it would have been very good

I was talking mainly of media coverage. Attendance wise 29k for a team that has been in 11 grand finals in a sports mad city of 5M is not exactly killing it

I wonder what the level of interest is in this game interstate. I suspect if you dig a little that it's not great. Similarly the level of interest in Melbourne in the Storm is abysmal. The GF really needs to go on the road occasionally. (One in every three years would be fine)

Enjoy the Melbourne v Sydney game tonight aka Storm v Roosters

I have often wondered if Irish recruitment costs are inside or outside the soft cap. If not it's a decent opportunity for the wealthier clubs. Sounds like these guys will just be in the normal draft so there is no real advantage to any one club in developing a pathway. Not even sure I like the idea of raiding the Irish Gaelic comp. European soccer has effectively killed off Africans and South Americans seeing their stars play locally with the local leagues being a shadow of what they once were

No that goes to the competition known as VFL

what is strange is the number of best on grounds that the winners get. You would expect far more one and two votes in a proper statistical spread. Being the top player out of a possible 46 on 12 occasions is hard to believe. Cripps is good but he's no phenomenal superstar

Will it ever change..... Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions fans are facing Melbourne airfares at more than twice the normal rates, forcing some to contemplate driving as cheaper places on trains fill up ahead of the first all-interstate final since 2006. As of 1pm AEST on Monday, flights leaving either city on Friday and returning on the Sunday of the grand final weekend were around double the cost of the same trips the following week for each of the three main carriers. Excluding flights on its low-cost carrier Jetstar, the starting price for a round-trip from Sydney with Qantas was $1016, compared with $499 the following weekend. Virgin return flights from Sydney were cheaper, at $684, but flights from Brisbane started at $1360, more than double what they were the week after. On the Jetstar route to Brisbane, return flights started at an eye-watering $1807, more than three times the amount for flights the next week. Non-stop Jetstar flights are now also unavailable for returning to Brisbane on Sunday, 29th September. https://www.theage.com.au/traveller/travel-news/swans-and-lions-fans-fork-out-double-for-grand-final-airfares-20240923-p5kcms.html

No wildcard surprises me as it kind of made sense (far more than round zero)

AFL Members are sold out so it's looking like a sellout all round. In reality there aren't that many seats available having regard to the popularity of the event itself. Surprised that the MCC has not gone full ballot but I suspect it will come. I prefer the ballot to the online ticketmaster rush that AFL members have.

There was a ballot which allocated 14,500 reserved seats Total Number of Unrestricted MCC members is now around 41k with a further 20k unrestricted who aren't eligible for the GF

around 7-7:30 am is my guess. Gates open at 8am. You enter get your seat and will be given a reserved ticket for that seat. You then disappear and return around 1pm or thereabouts. Brunch places will be doing a roaring trade. You could take a punt on later but it's up to you. There are only 7k unreserved seats https://mcc.org.au/my-mcc-membership/visiting-the-members-reserve/2024-afl-finals-series/2024-afl-grand-final#Access

If you can over summer watch each game of the 2021 season. (Most games are on youtube) From a scratchy error filled game in Round 1 against Freo you can see the gameplan evolve. Even the kick to the forward pocket. Cannot quite remember when we hit our straps but IIRC it's around mid season. The final H&A game in the empty Geelong stadium is unreal. Kind of sorry they used the fake crowd noise as it was almost other worldly that year. There's a version of the G&F with Denis Commeti commentating. My favourite. BTW I trace the turnaround from Mitch Hannan's failed disposal into the Dog's forward line. It happens about 30 seconds before Caleb Daniels dumps Max Gawn and the rest is history.

The last Virgin flight to Brisbane out of Melbourne is 22:30 which I suppose explains the weird start time. Frankly you'd think that between the AFL and channel 7 they could afford to charter a later plane and make it say a 7pm start

This finals series is feeling like what Hawthorn or Geelong supporters must feel when their team misses finals..... Irrelevant !