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Topics - Mav

2
Robert Heatley Stand / Last Practice Match v Sydney
It’ll be up there in Blacktown at 7.10 pm next Friday.

Probably not ideal playing Sydney as Roos never approached practice matches seriously and Horse has followed his lead. Perhaps that will be less of an issue now that the Sydney list is younger than when it relied on veterans from other clubs. Of course Buddy either won’t play or won’t play much but he’s no longer the superstar that he was.

The good news for us is that there were hardly any injury concerns arising out of the match sims. I guess we’ll see whether there are lingering concerns over Cripps. With our opening game against Richmond less than 2 weeks after this practice match, a full dress rehearsal wouldn’t be a bad idea.
3
Robert Heatley Stand / Practice Match: Blues v Pies, Fri 24 Feb
11am Ikon Park. It’s actually down as an unofficial match sim (4x25min quarters). The official practice match is on the following Friday v Sydney at 7.10pm at Blacktown.

Though it’s an unofficial match sim, it will be broadcast on FoxFooty and KAYO. I’ve checked it out and it seems to be live on FoxFooty (while the North v Richmond match sim which starts before ours will be replayed after ours finishes).

Like our match sim, Sydney v Brisbane will be 4x25mins, no extra time. Every other match sim will have 6 “quarters” with Geelong v Hawthorn having 8x28 plus time on. It seems we’re not so interested in giving our seconds & VFL players a hit out (or maybe we’re going to be resting a lot of our 1st 22).
4
Blah-Blah Bar / The strange case of George Santos
Trump opened the door for con men to make their mark in US politics. He kept fact checkers busy with a firehose of lies in the run up to taking the Presidency, during it and even afterwards. He has also been a con man who has various prosecutors on his trail. But at least there was some truth in his stories. He may or may not be a billionaire, but he’s pretty wealthy. His wealth may be mostly inherited rather than him being a self-made business genius, but at least he did run a business. He may not have been a star pupil at Wharton Business School but at least there’s no doubt he went there. But George Santos won a seat in the US House of Representatives with a string of lies that had no basis in fact whatsoever. It makes you wonder how his opponent failed to prove this during the election campaign.

Here’s a probably partial list of his lies:  Things George Santos Is Accused Of Lying About (That We Know Of So Far), HuffPost.

When a guy lies about his own name, you know something’s off.

Of course the Republicans won’t chuck him out of Congress as their majority in The House of Representatives is too thin. McCarthy even put him on 2 Committees, 1 to do with science and the other with business. Certain scientists welcomed his appointment, saying they finally have a celebrated Astronaut and Nobel Prize winner on the Science & Space Committee  ;D
5
The Sports Desk / AO ratings disaster
Channel 9 must have thought they’d done well by winning rights to the Australian Open after losing the rights to the cricket. The Australian Cricket Team had lost a lot of its shine, seen as arrogant and embroiled in scandals and division. Channel 7 was trying to terminate its rights deal.

But now Channel 7 has renewed its association with the ACB and love is everywhere. Meanwhile, the Australian Open was outrated by Home & Away and BBL on the opening night: the 5-city metropolitan average dropped from 635,000 in 2022 to 357,000 in 2023 for the first night session of the Australian Open, a 44% drop.

Nick Kyrgios & Ash Barty, stars of the last AO, were absent. They continued with last year’s playbook of broadcasting Australian players rather than going with the best matches available. That worked last year because Kyrgios and Barty also guaranteed quality matches, but Kubler and Hijikata aren’t equivalent standard bearers.

Then there was the 3 hour suspension of play for heat immediately followed by rain delays.

It also seems the AO has been hit hard by underdogs getting up. Maybe there’s also a changing of the guards problem. I followed tennis a bit more closely a few years ago and the big names are dropping off alarmingly. Fed has gone and Nadal seems to be cooked too. In their stead are a lot of what I regard as no-name players. I was shocked to discover that Casper Ruud is world number 2 now. Apparently he’s more of a clay court player. If someone had asked me who he is, I would have said a soccer player. The top 20 includes players who I don’t really know although I’m aware that they are top players, such as Tiafoe, Sinner, Fritz and Auger-Alliasime. Channel 9 must be hoping that Tsitsipas, Murray/Kokkinakis, Djokovic, and Medvedev stick around. Love them or hate them, they have distinctive personalities and styles that will be easier to sell to viewers.
6
The Sports Desk / Kyrgios
Now he’s probably into the Wimbledon final (as Rafa is struggling physically and might not even play), what do we think of him?

The assault charge laid in Canberra this week clouds the sporting issues. His ex-girlfriend says the timing had nothing to do with her and that’s almost certainly right. But why couldn’t the cop who laid it have waited a week to do so? Maybe s/he’d been lazy and all the coverage from Wimbledon reminded him/her that s/he needed to do his/her job. Anyway, it has to be put to one side as we don’t know what’s alleged other than it involves grabbing. The incident occurred when Kyrgios moved on to his present girlfriend. Many scenarios can be imagined but there’s no point in getting ahead of the facts. The seriousness of the alleged behaviour is unknown as is the strength of the allegation. Let’s leave it there.

The quality of Kyrgios’ tennis can’t be doubted. His service is a nightmare for his opponent as he doesn’t have any physical tells to help the opponent anticipate where it’s going and Kyrgios doesn’t have set strategies that can be decoded. Add that to his big serving on both 1st and 2nd serve (while rarely double faulting) and the fact he serves as soon as he moves into his stance and Kyrgios can rip through a service game without giving his opponent any time to think.

He’s also the opposite of a grinder. He likes to play every shot in the book during every match, from drop shots to underarm serves to tweeners and more. On the other hand, Djokovic is just a wall whose specialty is getting back every shot his opponent plays and getting back into optimal position to play the next. He’s brilliant, no doubt, and charging the net against him isn’t usually going to help, but he’s not spectacular and creative in the way he grinds down his opponents. Djokovic is Boycott to Kyrgios’ Gilchrist.

Then we come down to sportsmanship. I’m more old school when it comes to how tennis players behave. I prefer Rafter and Federer to Hewitt and McEnroe. A few years back, I went off Kyrgios for that reason. But I must say that I have few problems with how he’s behaved this tournament. I base much of that opinion on my assumption about his motivation for his outbursts. I assume his outbursts are not confected with a view to putting off his opponent and “working the ref”. He seems to react with genuine emotion. By contrast, I think McEnroe never really lost his temper. He just acted like he did. And his temper tantrums tended to coincide with times when he needed to change momentum.

Many of Kyrgios’ celebrated outbursts have been self-destructive. He has often given away matches as a result of losing concentration and has even tanked in anger. If I were his opponent, I’d love to see him engaging in unproductive arguments with the chair umpire or spectators. Unlike in McEnroe’s day, there’s not even much benefit in intimidating the chair umpire as video reviews mean the opponent can erase umpiring mistakes.

His outbursts don’t have the visceral edge employed by other players behaving at their worst. Hewitt insinuated a black umpire favoured James Blake because he’s black and Serena threatened to shove a ball down a lineswoman’s throat. McEnroe’s “bald eagle” taunts were nothing more than schoolyard bullying. Compared to those efforts, Kyrgios’ slams have been pretty tame. If I’d been the lineswoman who Kyrgios branded a snitch, I would have had trouble keeping a straight face. It was almost comedic. Yes, he also attacked her by questioning the eyesight of 90 year old linespeople and that’s ageist and a sweeping generalisation but it’s hardly outrageous. His opponent in that opening round, Paul Jubb, is British and the home crowd tried to put Kyrgios off, allegedly using racist taunts. He lashed the crowd and that threw Jubb off his game but I doubt that was Kyrgios’ intention.

Then you come to how he treats other players. His last 2 opponents have behaved impeccably and Kyrgios has not made any attempt to unsettle them by attacking them. On the other hand, Tsitsipas lit the fuse by whacking a spare ball into the crowd, leading Kyrgios to demand he be defaulted. He had a point - imagine what would have happened if it had been Kyrgios who behaved in that fashion. Then Tsitsipas tried to whack balls at Kyrgios. The moral of the story is that Kyrgios won’t go after a player who respects the rules and the courtesies of the game, but he won’t hesitate to challenge those who do. Let’s not forget that Tsitsipas isn’t without blemish when it comes to gamesmanship either. Andy Murray lashed him repeatedly in one match where Tsitsipas repeatedly used toilet breaks and medical timeouts to break Murray’s momentum. One of the toilet breaks was 8 minutes long. Murray openly accused Tsitsipas of being a cheat and demanded the chair umpire take action.

That makes the forthcoming match against Rafa explosive, if Rafa doesn’t default. Rafa tests the rules by taking every second of the time allowed to serve if not more. This is the polar opposite of Kyrgios. Time limits were introduced because of Djokovic and Nadal, amongst others, but chair umpires seem to be unwilling to crack down on them. That will probably also happen when Kyrgios is serving as Kyrgios serves as soon as he walks to the baseline. The receiver is expected to play to the pace of the server but Nadal needs to go through his routine of picking at his clothes and racquet and it’s almost guaranteed that he’ll demand Kyrgios give him time to do that before he serves. It’s easy to predict that Kyrgios will go off at both Nadal and the chair umpire. And Kyrgios is like a dog with a bone - he won’t let up. This then ticks off Nadal who reacts badly to what he regards as disrespect from other players. There was an incredible spectacle in one of Nadal’s earlier matches when he summoned his opponent to the net to tell him off for grunting and various other sins when his opponent had momentum behind him (and it wasn’t lost on most that Nadal is probably the gruntiest player on the male tour). He managed to wrest the momentum and win the game and apologised for his behaviour at the post-match presser. It’s a match made in hell.
9
The Sports Desk / Jordan Mailata & the Philly Eagles
Looks like Jordan Mailata is entrenched now at the Philadelphia Eagles at Left Tackle. And the Philly Eagles, after a poor start, are now in the hunt for a wild card spot for the playoffs. At least 1 poster on this site won't want them to succeed. To make the playoffs, Philly needs to take the spot currently occupied by Minnesota Vikings. The stats site 538 crunched the numbers and gives Philly a 38% chance of doing just that.

Jordan Mailata is a former Rugby player from Sydney who participated in the NFL's International Player Pathway (which entailed being on a TV documentary following around the contenders). He ended up being drafted in the 7th round of the 2018 draft by Philly. At 203 cm and 165 kg, he was at least the right size for the job. Injuries and a lack of experience meant he didn't get much of a look-in until last year but he showed enough that Philly gave him an $US80m contract just before the start of this season,  $US40.25m of which was guaranteed. They also gave him the LT spot (made famous by the movie "The Blind Side") instead of their 2019 1st round pick Andre Dillard. His performances have driven some commentators to say that Philly got a steal, saying they'd have to pay twice as much if they hadn't signed him up early. As 1 guy put it:
Quote
The 24-year-old Mailata was a seventh-round pick in the 2018 NFL draft who now routinely dominates first-round defensive ends, linebackers and edge rushers. His overall PFF grade of 82.8 puts him in the top 10 among offensive tackles this season.

Over 719 snaps in 2021 (a Week 15 game not yet included), Mailata has surrendered just two sacks and one QB hit. He has surrendered 18 pressures but seven of those came during an off-game in Week 7 against the Las Vegas Raiders (he also surrendered a sack and a QB hit in that game).
ProFootballFocus.com actually graded Mailata as the 4th best Tackle in the NFL.

He has also impressed fans with his ability to run through opponents. Early in the season, he pancaked a cornerback to free up a touchdown run and he put NY Giant Darnay Holmes in hospital with broken ribs when he hit him at speed: see the video of that hit at
https://twitter.com/i/status/1465025423973261312

As time has gone on, the offence has clicked into gear despite trading away Tight End Zach Ertz to the Cardinals. Their running back has now set a record by running more than 200 yards in 5 games this season. And the most recent game against Washington saw an interesting rugby play that utilises Mailata's size and power. The Quarterback, Jaelen Hurts, rushed 2 touchdowns in goal line stands where the offensive line pushed forward like a rugby scrum allowing Hurts to jump over the left side of the offensive line. Mailata might find it harder to stop an edge-rusher with dancing feet and spin moves, but he has no trouble bulldozing his opponent in a tight line.

The only downside is that it looks like he's battling an ankle injury in a bid to take on the Giants on 27 December.
10
The Sports Desk / Jon Gruden sacked by LV Raiders
He’s out because of a series of racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments in emails over a 7 year period as revealed by the NYT. Not great as around 70% of NFL players are black and the first and only openly gay player is on his team.
12
Blah-Blah Bar / QAnon
This is a summary of QAnon nonsense.

QAnon started with tweets from someone who took the username Q. This person claimed to be at the top levels of the US Govt and would drip-feed cryptic tweets forecasting big events. Apparently, Qhas been silent since December’s but his followers are now continuing the conspiracies w/o him/her.

A central belief is that Democrats run child sex rings and drink the blood of children during satanic rituals. The other central belief is that Trump was and is Q and he was preparing “the Storm” during which the FBI and military would round up Democrats and execute them in public. This was supposed to happen on a number of dates over the last few years, but the date would simply be moved whenever the Storm didn’t happen.

QIdiots believed Trump would declare martial law before Inauguration Day and General Flynn, a noted QIdiot, was publicly calling for Trump to declare Martial law. Then the insurrection on 6 Jan was supposed to lead to Trump’s triumphant return. Then the prediction was that Biden and the crowd attending his inauguration would be rounded up and executed (the stage erected being quickly convertible into gallows). Trump would then take the stage and be inaugurated.

Confused that there was no Storm on Inauguration Day, QAnoners tried to bend reality to suit their beliefs. One theory was that all presidencies after the 18th have been invalid because around that time Washington DC was incorporated. This supposedly meant there had been a corporate takeover of the government of the people. Inauguration Day was March 4 back then and the conspiracy theory is the Storm will occur on that day with Trump being inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States. Law enforcement tracking the chatter believe this poses a credible threat and it looks like Congress will take a day off as a result.

Another branch of QIdiots believe that Trump was actually inaugurated on 20 January while wearing a Biden mask. They point to Biden wearing masks all the time as proof: apparently Trump’s people haven’t worked out yet how to sync up the mouth with the words as yet. But wait, there’s even more evidence! Biden signed 17 Executive Orders on his 1st day in office. That just happens to be a significant number for QIdiots. It also matches the 17 flags displayed during Trump’s farewell at the Air Force base before flying to Florida in disgrace.

If anyone comes across any QAnon insanity, please post in this thread!
14
Blah-Blah Bar / Las Vegas Mass Shooting
Wow!  Some guy unleashed a machine gun from the 32nd floor of a hotel on the crowd at an open-air C&W concert. At least 20 dead and 100 wounded. 

Given Trump hasn't come out already to say this was radical islamic terror, chances are it isn't.  Apparently, the lone shooter is dead and he was apparently a local.

But how the hell does someone access a machine gun?  Watch one of the clips and the rapidity and duration of the gunfire is stunning.

Despite police being in the crowd, there was no hope of the shooter being taken out from ground level.  So much for this idea that the way to deal with a bad man with a gun is for good men to have guns. 

This is the country that is so keen to protect the right to bear arms that the NRA wants to get rid of prohibitions on silencers and automatic weapons.  Some commentators are saying the weapon used here may be a beltfed or drum machine gun.  Absolute insanity!