Yes, I know Gold Coast and Essendon have a game in hand.
BUT…..
Because Carlton beat St Kilda and Collingwood beat Fremantle:
if Melbourne beats Hawthorn,
if Geelong beats GWS,
if Sydney beats Essendon,
if Adelaide beats Port Adelaide,
eight clubs on sixteen points from positions 8-15, separated only on percentages, will all be vying for eighth spot.
If Richmond beats West Coast, they will also only be one win behind.

Fremantle was just resting him just as Collingwood did with some of their best players.

While he has kicked more goals for Sydney this season that any other Swans player, with so many first-choice forwards injured Will Hayward needs to improve the team’s scoring potency and kick multiples goals more frequently. Last season the Swans’ top four goalkickers were in order: Amartey; Hayward; McDonald; Papley. He is the only one of those players currently not out with injury. Hayward has kicked multiple goals only twice in eight games and also has been held goalless once. Last season he finished equal 18th on the goalkicking list but currently stands equal 35th. He may have an excuse with supply into the forward line being poorer than last season, but with several of the Swans’ more potent forwards missing, Hayward should find himself targeted more often.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. No one’s rankings will determine who wins the premiership.

Jarrod Witts may be a ruck option ahead of Briggs. Cooper Sharman was also from Riverina, but it takes more than one game to be a star. That squad will make up a team, no doubt, but it’s short of what I’d define as A-graders (half a dozen at the most, or less). There are plenty of role players, plus a few players who have recently found themselves playing VFL more regularly than AFL (Finlayson & Brown). A few currently playing AFL regularly may be playing VFL when the injured cavalry returns (Bice and Campbell).

Callum Brown is from Ireland. Then again, if Trump wants to take over Greenland, maybe New South Wales can take over Ireland. England has done it before (and still hasn’t given it all back, so we may have to take over England too).

Clubs being corporately well connected is good. It can help a club to encourage players to enhance their skills and education and set themselves up financially for life while playing and assist those players in making a transition to life after football. What I don’t like is when clubs and the corporate connections backing clubs and corporate bigwigs on the boards helping to run clubs become too political.

I would see it differently, because in general society I would like to see the not-so-well-off have (and take) an opportunity to thrive. That’s why people migrate to Australia. That’s why South Melbourne football club migrated to Sydney. However, you have your reasons for your deep-seated feelings. Who’s to say the Swans, or another club or organisation, won’t do something that I really don’t like to make me feel differently about them? There is some pleasure to be found when a rival club for which you have a distaste is defeated. Why should I try to take that away from you when I have it myself elsewhere? Anyway, how western are the Giants? My gut feeling is that most of the Greater Western Sydney Giants players, at least those not born in Western Sydney, live east of their home ground, maybe even in sight of the Pacific Ocean. If the Tigers in Melbourne flounder (no chance with their membership numbers, of course), they could always be transplanted north of the border to become the Richmond-Windsor Tigers. What a western Sydney club that would be!

The Roar needs to improve the format of comments on its website, as it can sometimes be confusing when there are responses after multiple comments. This is particularly the case when a comment is short enough and ambiguous enough to apply to any one of several preceding comments. For clarity, I think The Roar should have indented your comment and also placed it directly below the Wiki comment rather than below mine.

Freo and Crows were started from scratch in culturally dominant AFL states of WA & SA, not states where there was limited interest in AFL. Maybe given the location of the club’s current facility, South Melbourne Swans may have been better becoming the South Sydney Swans. The club could have then kept the “South” label, but it would have tempered their geographic appeal. The jumper design and colours are also reminiscent of those of the St George rugby league club, also located in the south of Sydney. Unfortunately, the Swans seem to associate themselves more with the horrid Sydney Roosters. If transplanting other Victorian clubs that may have been once in trouble, at the same time you could have started the North Shore Peninsula Kangaroos and the Greater Western Sydney Bulldogs (and of course, we know that there is also a Bulldogs rugby league club in the west of Sydney). Having written the above, this is what I call AFL Fantasy. It wouldn’t have worked.

Yes, prescription Azarga eye drops for glaucoma. So, I see no evil, though I may speak, hear, do and write some occasionally.

If they make me CEO, the WAVICs doesn’t sound like a bad name to me. However, why not combine VIC, SA & WA against NSW, QLD, TAS & NT and the game can be called the Enemies vs the Allies?

I’ll leave the cold and rain to you and the Pope, and may you also befriend his successor in some shape or form. However, in football I’m fickle, not fanatical, interested but not invested. I prefer Allies to Enemies, but I’m hardly going to pay to watch the Allies, especially as Trump has ensured the Allies will no longer be able to select from the USA. And despite the existence of the Melbourne Storm, I’m certainly not going to pay to watch NSW or QLD vs Victorian State of Origin in rugby league.

I doubt that would have worked. You can’t expect to start a war on two fronts at the same time and be assured of success on either. You have one existing club that was transplanted into a non-traditional AFL state and re-branded at a time when it hadn’t been done before. If you had then simultaneously started a new club from scratch in a non-traditional AFL state at a time when it hadn’t been done before, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Even when the Giants were formed decades after the Swans’ move, the first attempt at starting from scratch with a Gold Coast club had not yet been a proven success. As I don’t live in QLD and am looking from outside, to me the Gold Coast blueprint seems to be in a current state of equilibrium from which it has base to flourish longer term, but it’s hardly job done. Same can be said of the Giants. The Swans seem to have their niche with a supporter base, on-field success and a junior program, but there is still plenty of room for growth. If any of these clubs fails to be well run from here in a state with a different supporter culture, it could still end up a different story down the track.

If you did that you would have to have NSW/ACT vs QLD or vs Tasmania. If you put together the best players from the Swans and Giants into one team, most of them are not NSW players. You could still probably put a NSW Origin team together from the lesser lights at each club, along with some NSW players at interstate clubs due to being traded interstate or not being part of the Academy zone. I’m not sure there would be the depth for NSW Origin to be sufficiently competitive against Victorian Origin. It may be different in another 20 – 30 years.

With you having said that, if you were picking a list of 18-year-olds in hindsight, I wondered how many current players from each club may get a spot in the other club’s first choice XXIII. You may have different thoughts on who would get in or be left out, but I’ve surprised myself by ending up picking more Giants than Swans:
Back: Callum Mills/Jake Lloyd Tom McCartin/Jack Buckley Dane Rampe
Half Back: Lachie Whitfield Sam Taylor Nick Blakey
Centre: Errol Gulden Tom Green Josh Kelly
Half Forward: Isaac Heeney Aaron Cadman Toby Greene
Forward: Tom Papley Jesse Hogan Jake Stringer
Followers: Brodie Grundy Chad Warner Finn Callaghan
Interchange: Lachie Ash Harry Himmelberg Stephen Coniglio Brent Daniels
Substitute: Darcy Jones
Coach: Adam Kingsley
Time for some other players/coaches to prove me wrong.

Nothing wrong at all. It may have been better to keep Sydney as a one team town, but now that it’s not, a Sydneysider could do well to get some enjoyment out of the younger club doing well even when you prefer the older one to do better.

No, but I’m an AwFuL player.

If Doggies fans “know,” they “know.” I don’t know. Anyway, I’m off to the gym. Maybe JUH would like to join me? No drinks after, except water.

JUH’s social media has shown him out having drinks with people. A lot of footballers do that, if not in season, out of season. There is no evidence of substance abuse by JUH as far as I am aware. We don’t know whether JUH is drinking socially as much as or even more than the average young man of his age. I note that the average is probably more than is recommended by health guidelines. Nonetheless, it’s well known that alcohol and personal issues are not a good mix, because alcohol is a depressant. I’m sure the Bulldogs wouldn’t be paying JUH for not playing if it was legally feasible to do so. None of us know what has caused the personal issues, but there may be complications if he is being paid on the basis that the personal issues are workplace related. The obligations to make payments must either reduce or expire eventually. When they do, JUH will then need to fund a lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. If he already has not begun to address his personal issues that prevent him from playing or training to fulfil his football contract, he will need to come to terms with what actions he needs to take to fund his desired lifestyle when the money runs out.

We don’t really fully understand the exact nature of the personal issues plaguing JUH, but I hope his state of personal wellbeing improves soon. His response to Riewoldt’s comments is an understandable reaction but it shows he is still some way off recovering and growing in the maturity required to handle criticism. He needs to learn to respond with dignity in the manner of Harry Sheezel’s response to Kane Cornes’ criticism. JUH needs to get both his mind and body sufficiently fit for professional football and the scrutiny that goes with it if he decides he wants to play next season at the Bulldogs or elsewhere. Getting off social media and the drinks for the time being, detaching himself from media comment, and keeping good people and role models around him, may help.

Thanks

Maybe, but I think it was Matthew Lloyd who said Cameron was spending too much time up the ground earlier in the season for the Cats to win the premiership. He doesn’t have Tom Hawkins as a tall option up there any longer to kick 40 or 50 goals per season. Cameron has kicked 665 career goals, which is more than anyone else still playing. So, while you want him creating goals for others playing higher up the ground, you still want him averaging at least 2-3 goals per game, because he is the most productive goalkicking forward on their list. Perhaps in the last few games he has achieved a better balance because his output this season has so far been in order: 4, 1, 1, 1, 4, 2, 4 = 17. While Danger may be hitting the scoreboard, Cameron’s other tall and medium sized partners, Neale and Henry, haven’t been hitting the scoreboard enough.
Shannon Neale: 1, 2, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0 = 5 in 7 games after 23 in 15 games last season.
Ollie Henry: 3, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0 = 5 in 7 games after 37 & 41 the previous 2 seasons.
We are yet to see if Neale can turn out to be a long-term replacement for Hawkins, but has the Danger role affected Ollie Henry?

Yes, I think you’re right there.

I missed the first quarter, but the general consensus of commentators seems to be that Francis was one of the Swans’ forwards playing fairly well. However, you want your key forwards impacting in the forward 50, which has been part of the criticism of the way Geelong had been using Jeremy Cameron earlier in the season. Francis had 15 disposals and 7 marks. I’m not sure how many of these were accumulated when Francis was pushed back into defence. I couldn’t find a record of how many score involvements Francis had but he kicked one behind and had one goal assist. Ladhams and McLean finished with a goal each and two goal assists apiece. Ladhams had four marks, McLean one. Grundy laid 5 tackles but had no marks. Make of that what you will.