Nice for the athletes, good for us spectators because medals come thick and fast, but in the scheme of things with Olympics and world championships every two years as well as the lucrative circuits, like the Diamond League in athletics, the event has lost a great deal of its prestige.
My understanding one of the next major targets for the Arabs is athletics / Olympics, they are going to disrupt a swath of the games in much the same way they have disrupted golf.
Dropping Kemp makes no sense....Don't mind Cunningham especially if he plays forward given our small forwards have been a non event and need to provide more support to our big key forwards. I would have liked Kemp in as an option for Mihocek who is a different FF to most and requires a mobile defender.
I'm a bit ambivalent to the Commonwealth Games situation, for me it is a tragedy for the athletes but most of the finger pointing and rhetoric seems to be coming from various hangers on, bureaucrats, supply chain and political aspirants.
As more and more issues surface, it looks to me like another too many fat pigs in the trough scenario that has spoilt things for everybody. All that money, bugger all actually going to the development of the athletes.
i reckon a lot of teams roll the dice with this. hold the playmaker at every opportuinity - they arent going to call it every time. so, you hold him at 100 stopages, and they pay 2 free kicks. pretty good result
What I've always stated is that it's the when and where that is more important than the count.
Sometimes they call it when you've got a clear break and kill your momentum, sometimes you get it on the HBF or Wing where it makes stuff all difference, then all of a sudden someone gets the odd one in front of goal which can be game changing.
I do like the NRL system, which as part of it's score review looks at infringements through the whole chain of play / possession to the score, start taking goals off teams who infringe in the chain of play and you'll see it greatly diminish. They wouldn't need to do it for everything, just when a goal is actually scored. Like that push in the back to Young last weekend.
I don't get some of the proposed changes to laws surrounding domestic violence and deep fake porn, etc., etc., they seem to be based on a rather naïve outlook on society. I suspect the government is being lead by social media factors not good policy.
Firstly, offering cash for abused women you'll get as many spurious claims as you get genuine, some may claim the cost is for the greater good, but really it's just another loophole that will make the process unmanageable. What victims of domestic violence need is physical protection, not a nice dinner before being beaten to death. Pieces of paper are ultimately worthless as defence against weapons or fists.
Banning deep fake porn seems to be a confusion of revenge porn, I'd assert there are as many women making a living out of the deep fake stuff as are being harmed by it, so in that regard a blanket ban probably analogous to banning prostitution. All it will do is send the industry underground making it harder to police. In any case is the producer of deep fakes is doing so for nefarious reasons, the laws related to fraud already exist, and apply not just to porn but also schemes like the misrepresentation of celebrities in online Ponzi schemes.
Finally, bans in general tend to be a lure rather than a deterrent. The people who won't do this stuff don't do it already, and the people likely to do it are almost encouraged by making it harder to do and effectively more lucrative. If you want to stop people doing this stuff, find a way to demonetise it.
Our defence issues are directly related to our inefficient forward line.
Agreed, it's not the entire problem but it's a large contributing factor.
If you are going to frequently turn it over in F50 and keep missing gettable shots eventually the defence breaks down at the other end of the ground, simply because they are continually under pressure while the opposition are gaining confidence.
Wasted opportunities build pressure and destroy confidence all over the ground.
Hurt the Handbaggers on the scoreboard, and they are the ones feeling the heat going the other way.
He's come in for some severe criticism so the onus is on him now to prove his mettle. It's a character test for him, and he has the talent to rise to it...it's whether he has the attitude and will.
@Lods Fans carry on a bit, they bang on about it was just an arm across the body, no force, etc., etc..
But from an AFL perspective that delay from somewhat trivial contact costs you 2 or 3 steps, and 2 or 3 steps of an AFL player on the move is 6 or 7 metres, you'll never close the gap unless you are chasing a dullard like Riewoldt.
In NRL, they look for shoulder to shoulder, if a player is detained illegally it's a professional foul with either a send off, a penalty try or sometimes both! The AFL need to look at this as part of the score review chain, to stop those two bullcrap incidents enacted by Handbagger players.
I don't care if it's in the fall of the ball zone, I want to see the contest in that zone, but this sh1zen happening 20m or 30m away from the footy is a joke. Scott's learned that his blokes can get away with if it's far enough off the ball, and it delivers them a field wide overlap.
Perhaps a few players need to hand out a Barry Hall solution to scraging, reminds me of the good old days when Yarran dropped the pest Chapman! The media jumped on Yarran, but Yarran copped his whack, they said nothing about Chapman's poking, pinching, ankle kicking tactics behind play.
What happened to Williams has always been a free, his flopping is a symptom of the Handbaggers being allowed to scrag and delay players way off the ball. Even if he wasn't scraged it's unlikely he would have got half way to the opponent before they scored, it's the absence of the free that changed the game not Williams ability to get near the fall of the ball.
The discussion about Williams is a smokescreen to stop the focus on an illegal Handbagger tactics, nothing more and nothing less.
Yet I wouldn't say the defensive problems are a function of our defence.
I'd assert, many of the shortfalls come from the other end of the ground or perhaps the midfield. It's possibly being masked by some players having good tackling or 1%er stats, but the counts can be misleading, it's far more important to know where and when they collect those stats.
For example, how many times did a Tuohy or Guthrie type find themselves unattended just outside of goal range, and Cameron for that matter? How many times was Cameron unattended exiting our F50, the escape kick, then became a target a kick or two later inside our D50? There is next to nothing the defence can do about that, the problem starts further up the field and it's not about body type or size, it's about evening up the numbers and closing down space.
Many times the Handbaggers were actually forced by our defence to pause entering our D50, and yet they still ended up with a loose player as a target inside F50, that player comes from somewhere in the overlap created outside of the arc.
Once we start getting players back, if you want to play both rucks in your 22, you are leaving out someone like Kennedy, Cottrell, Hollands (x2), Williams.....etc.
The above assertion is just an extension of the media trying to peg Voss on a fixed selection strategy, nobody should be gifted a spot, the MC should not take a formulaic approach. the real world is not like Supercoach.
Week to week MC selections should be based on merit, conditions and the strategy of the day. I hope our MC will be clever enough to analyse and pick the eyes out of the best strategies for each opponent, some weeks we might go tall, some weeks we might go small.
Every week the opposition will try to leverage our deficiencies, if we are predictable it becomes easier for them, like last weekend kicking it on the head of Charlie or BigH who were stuck between 2 or 3 defenders.
And both would be well within the best 22 at the moment. Would you drop Pittonet or Tom to add 'one of' Cincotta, Binns, Durdin, Owies, Carroll, Cowan, either Hollands etc etc.
Agreed, they are automatics at the moment, Midfield and Ruck is not our problem.
If anything yesterday perhaps we got it wrong with Charlie and BigH, should have got up the ground a bit more and made themselves an annoyance for Cameron? Most rucks can't go with Cameron, so you either need a big mobile KPD or you have to find ways to make him accountable, if Cameron charges off up the ground to become the loose man in defence, make his opponent a focus.
I didn't give him a vote, but plenty impressed with Boyd, gets better every week.
Made a few mistakes that burned some opportunities, but fixed most of them, his relentless 2nd efforts are A-Grade, others need to watch his intensity.
