Re: AFL 2008 thread

by PearlJ Sun 22 Jun 2008, 23:59

This season sucks.

by horace Mon 23 Jun 2008, 02:10

Fred Nerk wrote:West Coast play Melbourne for the only time in the third last round.

toast are one win ahead and have the factor of a better percentage than melbourne...need a few more losses like saturday to be competitive for pick 1

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 02:41

If Worsfold is still coaching the turkeys and not already back in his white coat handing out the Prozac by round 20, he knows he's finished two weeks later in any case, and therefore Melbourne are a shoo-in to win that match. Bailey is a first year coach, therefore safe in the short term but still to prove himself and so he'll be trying, and you can bet your last cigar and port bottle the players will be. And a percentage gap that took 13 weeks to build can be easily zeroed in nine - especially if the team that has the worse % wins more often.

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 02:50

Carlton were crap last year, but as Libba can rival some subi forumers for bitterness, his allegations that the Blues were tanking are hard to evaluate.

For a while, I did suspect that there may have been a few fade-outs once Ratten took over that were too convenient to have been anything other than tanking. But this season, the fade outs against Geelong and Essendon suggest there's still some softness in some players' underbellies leftover from 07.

As for the Wet Toast Drug Beagles? Well, given that
[*]they've lost their best player
[*]That another star has been rubbed out because of his drug-f*ckedness, and
[*]there are still some who question if other players may have been on some sort of juice (and getting away with it) have now been brought back to the field because they've got to play clean.
I don;t think they're tanking. They're just shit.

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 02:58

Of course the other thing about the Great Tank Wank is that it's easy for a club's critics to have it both ways - they're both tanking and crap.

by Paul Keating Mon 23 Jun 2008, 03:01

Phurt at all this anti Toast rubbish.

we are shite at the moment, but we will NOT finish last. We are not that cRap.

As I said before, we still have the game's best ruckmen, 2nd or 3rd best midfielder and the 2nd best fullback. So we are not entirely shite.

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 03:04

Nah - the turkeys are shrinking before our very eyes.

Even Dean Cox's nose doesn't seem as big as it used to be.

by embee Mon 23 Jun 2008, 05:29

Paul Keating wrote:Phurt at all this anti Toast rubbish.

we are shite at the moment, but we will NOT finish last. We are not that cRap.

As I said before, we still have the game's best ruckmen, 2nd or 3rd best midfielder and the 2nd best fullback. So we are not entirely shite.

Cox and Glass are both on leg ...and Kerr is suffering from being tagged every week and from only using the Kelloggs supplied "special K"

by horace Mon 23 Jun 2008, 05:31

fair analysis...some of the others also seem to be suffering under the ordinairy Special K regime...stenglein, braun and crumbley

by G.Wood Mon 23 Jun 2008, 05:38

embee wrote:
Paul Keating wrote:Phurt at all this anti Toast rubbish.

we are shite at the moment, but we will NOT finish last. We are not that cRap.

As I said before, we still have the game's best ruckmen, 2nd or 3rd best midfielder and the 2nd best fullback. So we are not entirely shite.

Cox and Glass are both on leg ...and Kerr is suffering from being tagged every week and from only using the Kelloggs supplied "special K"

It makes it easy when all you have to do is double team Kerr and then play with 16 free men.

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 05:41

Recommended reading: Rohan Connolly in the centrespread of the sports section of today's Age, right hand page, the story underneath the photo.

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 05:54

There an online version available on their site Nerky? Or maybe a title for those of us who can't be arsed getting the age?

by embee Mon 23 Jun 2008, 05:58

This one Fred?

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 06:05

If that's the one, Connolly makes a good point. Sometimes, some teams are just crap.

This year, it's the Eagles.

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 06:05

If that's the one, Connolly makes a good point. Sometimes, some teams are just crap.

This year, it's the Eagles.

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 06:48

Yeah, that's the one. 'Team building' has been going on since time immoral.

In 2000 St Kilda picked Riewoldt with #1, Kojohnhowardski with #2 and traded off #4 for Aaron Hamill, and Fraser Gehrig would have cost another top 20 pick at least. Three points arise:

1) By what bonehead system did they get three of the top 4 picks in the first place?

2) There was no talk of tanking then, most likely because the smart-arses in the media and the noisy gits on talkback hadn't invented it yet.

3) Here we are 8 years later and where the hell are all the St Kilda flags that would inevitably ensue?

by embee Mon 23 Jun 2008, 07:22

St Kilida ...something like...

1 Priority ..Winning less than 10 games in 2 years (which is why Carlton had the No 1 pick last year despite finishing higher than Richmond)

2 Priority...Winning less than five games in a year ( Now the picks come before Round Two)

3 Priority....Some other crab team must have had less than five wins

4 First "Real" Pick for finishing last

There is an article somewhere about a game Freo "tanked" at the Cattery in the Dramien Dum era which got them a priority pick ...I'll see if I can find it

St Kilda missed out on the GF in 2004 when they lost the PF to the eventual premier by far call ...and arguably if the G Train had have kicked his 100th goal the week earlier or at a time when the Saints didnt have the momentum in the PF they could have been in the GF...plus St Kilda competes with Freo and Richmond as the biggest basket cases in the AFL ...Was 2004 the year the Saints were "flying" and Thomas took them to the movies instead of training and the wheels fell off?

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 07:42

That was in 1999. Freo played Geelong at Cardigan Park and lost by 50 points. That year Geelong were good on their day but inconsistent, and two weeks before had beaten Carlton who played in the grand final. Collingwood finished last and had first pick and took Josh Fraser who has been handy but not quite the next Nicholls or Farmer. Freo than took Paul Haselby (ditto Diesel Williams).

Apparently the fact that Freo had led at half time was somehow significant to those Sherlock Holmes wannabees who alerted the football world to this major scandal, in 2003 FFS (or what had to pass for one that week anyhow).

by embee Mon 23 Jun 2008, 07:57

If I remember correctly there were a few "facts" misinterpreted in the article ...but it was more in reference that the concept that teams may tank has been around for a while that I mentioned the article

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 07:58

Malthouse: My players are soft as shit and need mollycoddling.

Increasingly embarrassing embittered perpetual Collingwood coaching failure Mick Malthouse has called for more players to be added to the interchange bench, after his soft Magpies collapsed under the weight of expectation from their feral tribe in yesterday's match against the Western Bulldogs.

Collingwood were at one stage down to just one man on the bench, but instead of sucking it up and accepting that Australian Football is one of those games where sometimes you get a few injuries, Malthouse virtually cried for his mother and said that the AFL should have listened to him years ago when he first sooked on about the need to increase the number of players on the bench, even though nobody could remember him saying it at the time.

Malthouse went on to say that Collingwood, as the only club anyone in the league actually went to watch, should be entitled to have a fresh player added to the bench every second of the match, and that they should even be able to grab a few spectators from over the fence if they really needed them.

Malthouse's delusional whinges are becoming part of the modern-day folklore in the game, where he seems to think he's some sort of replacement for true visionary Kevin Sheedy. Unfortunately, his post-match press conferences are now being regarded as the funniest show in town this year, given that the Chaser is on a break from TV. Any claims that Malthouse had to being a serious thinker about the game were blown away last week, when after the Pies' second loss to basket case of the past five seasons Carlton, he tried to explain after the match that the Blues' list is now superior to that of Collingwood.

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 08:18

The allegation is not new at all, it's just that now we're meant to take it seriously.

After the last round of 1968 Richmond whinged long and hard when Geelong were thrashed at Moorabbin in the last home and home round, then beat st Kilda by 44 points in the first semi final seven days later. The implication was that Geelong had let St Kilda, a team they knew they could beat, through into the finals ahead of Richmond, a team they knew they couldn't (although they had, earlier in the year). It gets a two-line run in The Book Of AFL Finals.

Doubtless there are Richmond fans still screaming 40 years later the way the Collingwood crowd still bleat about Harmes (and doubtless Coventry in 1937, regardless of whether they were actually alive then or not).

by embee Mon 23 Jun 2008, 08:18

Snigger@ Malthouse ....I'd like to see him confront the journo who would 'dare' to print that article

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 08:20

Fred Nerk wrote:After the last round of 1968 Richmond whinged long and hard

Sorry Fred, you lost any cred there. Tigers fans never whinge.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

by Fred Nerk Mon 23 Jun 2008, 08:21

"Malthouse's delusional whinges are becoming part of the modern-day folklore in the game, where he seems to think he's some sort of replacement for true visionary Kevin Sheedy. Unfortunately, his post-match press conferences are now being regarded as the funniest show in town this year, given that the Chaser is on a break from TV. "

The Chaser are saying they're taking a break - and one of that mob does have a superficial resemblance to Malthouse, and it is a bit dark in the coaches box....

by Zat Mon 23 Jun 2008, 08:22

Yet another conspiracy theory for season 08.

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