Bluey's Dad

Interesting article: http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8605158 Quote from a 'former Essendon player': " ... it does seem very odd the type of stuff we were taking. "They admitted to us it was right on the edge of the levels you could be taking."

Good point. If the allegations were true he either knew and did nothing or didn't know and is incompetent.

Indeed. Fairfax is crediting their own 'requests for information' for providing the catalyst for this investigation.

I wish I could like a post twice.

This was Essendon being transparent and requesting the AFL investigate. The club is the reason this isn't being swept under the rug, not the AFL. I'm not suggesting that the AFL would, just saying that in this case the transparency is coming from the club, not the AFL. It's not like the AFL found evidence and then demanded Essendon comment on it. Edit: Of course it could all just be damage control and they are trying to appear transparent.

What I'm going to say is completely unfounded and biased, but I believe he didn't know. He seems to me to be an ethical kind of guy. Just my opinion.

But we beat them in the first half right? Melbourne Demons - so good we can beat teams on steroids! Sorry, alleged supplements.

I would have thought the same regarding our tanking investigation. The longer it went on, the longer it festered and tarnished the game (and AFL administration).

I think you can get a cream for that.

Clothier is in charge. Don't expect a quick investigation.

Ah good. I don't have to worry about buying adult nappies to protect the pants I undoubtedly would have shat in had that been the case.

To be fair I don't think there were any outright accusations before this. At least none that I heard. I remember vaguely reading about a substantially amped up pre-season resulting in significant bulking up of some players. Subsequently some of those players developed soft tissue injuries due to the strain, but I don't remember any accusations of anything other than an enhanced pre-season program. Could be wrong though.

Just reading the commentary on the presser (no sound at work). It sounds like they are framing it as a request to the AFL to investigate, not a declaration of any wrongdoing. Looks like Clothier is in charge.

Sigh. I guess if he left BECAUSE of the cheating then that's ok. Maybe. [censored].

Don't even joke about that I couldn't handle another [censored]-storm being flung our way.

If true, would Essendon also be charged with 'bringing the game into disrepute' (in addition to drug charges)? Surely this is worse than 'tanking'.

Didn't help the second half of their season.

In the interests of fair competition, below are the resources I use. I've found them very helpful: Raw stats (and estimated break evens during the season): http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/dream_team_round Players likely to rise in price: http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-01-22/afl-fantasy Under-priced players (those who should score above their current price): http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-01-27/price-droppers Best defenders: http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-01-30/fantasy-defenders Comprehensive DT forum: http://www.fanfooty.com.au/forum/index.php?board=1.0 Between those websites you should be able to create a pretty solid first round team even with little DT experience. It is a lot of reading though, but there's a lot of time between now and the end of March. Remember that we now get 2 trades per round, so for beginners you have a lot more opportunity to fix your team if it's not ideal. You don't actually face off against anyone until round 3, so that's 4 trades to fix errors before we even start. It's much more generous than last year when if you had a bad team at the start it would take a long time to fix.

Really? I can't find any news on it. Found an article from 8th Jan saying he was targetting at a round 1 start. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/afl/more-news/gold-coast-youngster-jaeger-omeara-targets-round-1-debut/story-e6frf9jf-1226549154064 I think he has surgery last year but I thought he had recovered?

Thanks for the invite. Are we doing pre-draft or live?

Goobers is me. Thanks for organising all this Deevoted, looking forward to it :-)

I'd like to give it a go, love normal DT and was really interested to read about the elite drafting thing.

Just joined, really looking forward to this season. Going to assume every man and his dog has J Viney. So how does this work Deevoted? Those who do well in the 'rookies' league get an upgrade to a harder one next year?

I remember reading somewhere that Trenners was top (or near top) in the team for some KPI's that Neeld had set. The article didn't say what those KPI's were, I got the impression Neeld was keeping them secret. Maybe when the team structure takes shape a bit more understand what those KPI's were and we'll all have a big "NOW I get it!" moment when it all slots into place. It's possible the rest of the team needs to click into place for Trenner's KPI's to be visible to us on the sidelines or to have significant effect on the game.