Carlton Supporters Club

That's exactly how I saw the Laidler 'dive/pose for a free'. Seems Walks let him have it too. You'd think that all opponents of the Swans will be niggling Laidler over his acting. And so they should. Pr1ck.

Wishful thinking guys; the elbow clocks Laidler just below the point of the jaw and a blow like that is almost guaranteed to sit the victim on his butt.

We'd have had biomechanical experts all over it if there was the slightest chance that Thomas didn't hit Laidler's jaw.

Have you actually seen the video?

I saw Daisy elbow Laidler in the jaw at the game, on the big screen, on the replay, in the news coverage and just watched the same footage again in the Blues News segment - and no, it wasn't new footage as you intimated, just the same two camera angles that we've all seen ad nauseum.

Had your eyes checked lately? 

Believe me, if there was the slightest chance that Thomas missed Laidler's chin and struck him in the chest, I'd be jumping up and down with everybody else.  He did it and he copped a week.  Move on!

I'm no longer stressed out about it. Daisy has barely survived Round 1 in our colours. Having him miss won't hurt us (not with his kicking if it is like last week's!), but may help him. He won't have to worry about being eliminated in the first 30 seconds.

I've looked at it virtually frame by frame, the gap between Daisy's upper arm and Laidler's chin never completely closes but I admit the frame rate is low. There is no apparent motion in Laidler's jaw that indicates contact, it even appears that his mouth opens as he throws his head back. The closest he got was Laidler's collarbone and throat.

But it's all academic now as we accepted the penalty.

I've looked at it virtually frame by frame, the gap between Daisy's upper arm and Laidler's chin never completely closes but I admit the frame rate is low. There is no apparent motion in Laidler's jaw that indicates contact, it even appears that his mouth opens as he throws his head back. The closest he got was Laidler's collarbone and throat.

But it's all academic now as we accepted the penalty.

Didn't touch him on the chin, Laidler dived.

I saw Daisy elbow Laidler in the jaw at the game, on the big screen, on the replay, in the news coverage and just watched the same footage again in the Blues News segment - and no, it wasn't new footage as you intimated, just the same two camera angles that we've all seen ad nauseum.

Had your eyes checked lately? 

Believe me, if there was the slightest chance that Thomas missed Laidler's chin and struck him in the chest, I'd be jumping up and down with everybody else.  He did it and he copped a week.  Move on!

DALE Thomas isn’t to blame for the deal that will handicap Carlton’s list management strategy until 2018.

If someone offered you $3.5 million to play football after two ankle surgeries in the previous 10 months, what would you do?

Especially when one surgeon had just told you that same ankle would need a complete reconstruction, keeping you out another year.

Thomas’s determination to jump at Carlton’s four-year offer — with a fifth-year clause — was a no-brainer.

Yet only two years into a deal set to run another three seasons, it is apparent Carlton has been lumped with the modern equivalent of the Mark Mercuri deal.

David King wondered if Thomas’s kicking was AFL standard this week, while Kevin Bartlett pondered if he was in Carlton’s best 22.

Yet a question just as valid was why Carlton were prepared to offer Thomas, 28, such a monster deal when rivals were never going to come close to matching it.

Carlton’s free agency deal for Thomas — at least $700,000 a year, maybe as much as $750,000 — was clearly designed to blow Collingwood out of the water.

Carlton wanted to hand him a deal the Pies would never match under Thomas’s restricted free agency provisions.

And yet a handful of phone calls to the right sources would have unearthed the reality — that the Pies couldn’t wait to move Thomas on.


Dale Thomas during the Blues’ NAB Challenge clash against Sydney. Picture: Getty Images
It is understood he was offered a three-year deal at Collingwood worth $450,000-$460,000 a season with various triggers for playing games.

In other words, $1.35m in cash compared with $3.5m from the Blues.

The Pies knew his ankle was dodgy, they had already made the decision to turn over the 2012 premiership list and they didn’t love the constant reports of Daisy on the social circuit.

Collingwood has privately wondered at times why Carlton’s deal remained so high when Thomas’s future was so uncertain.

We learnt last year the Blues were aware for the whole of 2013 that Eddie Betts would leave for Adelaide, so had they offered Thomas those terms many months before he arrived?

Even a $700,000-a-year deal for three years would have got him to Carlton, yet given it flexibility to cut his wage by the end of this year.

If someone offered you $3.5 million to play football after two ankle surgeries in the previous 10 months, what would you do?

The story would be stunningly one-sided if Collingwood had used that No.11 compensation draft pick to recruit a megastar, but AFL trading is never that simple.

It used that pick to trade for Sydney’s Jesse White, giving up 11, 31 and 49 to get back pick six (Matt Scharenberg), then used its first-round pick on Nathan Freeman.

Scharenberg is out with another knee reconstruction, his tally of AFL games matching his four surgeries at the club so far.

Freeman left for St Kilda with his own hamstring issues and was effectively traded for Brisbane’s James Aish.

What is certain is the decision to let Thomas go saved the salary cap space to recruit Greater Western Sydney star Adam Treloar.

Thomas was always going to battle after his ankle injuries in 2014 and was dead stiff to last 40 seconds in the first game of 2015, when his shoulder popped.

He would go on to contribute only 70 possessions for the year in five games.

Now he will sit out Round 1, suspended after elbowing Jeremy Laidler in the jaw, perhaps because of frustration at Friday’s poor showing.

Rock-bottom may have come Friday night, when he nearly missed his foot with a handful of drop punts.

The only way is up for Carlton’s $3 million man.