Round 18 AFL Teams: All the ins and outs for every club

Would love to hear it.

I'll be at the Gabba today Macca. I'll give you my take on McKay and others afterwards if you are interested.

Luck has only been mentioned by you. What the freak are you on about?

He's part of the Kelly/Martin deal at North Melbourne. It seems he is getting above his raisin'.......

Great band and well spotted Pelican. There are many Karpanys living on the LeFevre peninsula. I was good mates with Bart Willoughby, also from the peninsula, from No Fixed Address. As an aside, we used to have footy matches with the guys from those bands when I was a young rocker.

Yeah they were unlucky - I mean that team rule has only been in place for 17 weeks and to get caught on such a minor technicality of completely breaking it is just bad luck.

It was a technical breach of a team rule in a 6 day break.

Taberner shouldn't keep McCarthy out, but he certainly should've played in the derby given McCarthy couldn't.

McCarthy will be all the better for the freshen up, expect him to be much sharper.

Really happy with the blues in's this week Cuningham, MacReadie, Williamson and of course McKay all look like being a big part of the blues future and getting games into them this year will pay dividends in the future. Here's hoping big H can get his hands on it early, get some confidence and end up with a couple of goals. Still not confident a young team missing some key players will get the biscuits in Brisbane but that's not what its about in 2017.

AD — it was always going to disintegrate into an argument from the moment you took the bait.

PS - why do I also get the feeling that if these incidents had happened at the blues it would all be down to Gleeson, Silvagni and Mckay and the old boys, born to rule mentality and not just a case of "these things happen"?

Mattyb - you are correct every club has these incidents - but not every club has half a dozen separate incidents in a year. And it wasn't me who raised the blues - I just pointed out how the comparison wasn't accurate. And yes the two bulldogs players did go on to be premiership players - but one is now taking a break for mental health issues - perhaps the club should have done more than just a suspension at the time? No club is Immune, no one is barracking but that doesn't mean Freo need to examine why these things are happening - perhaps looking at the recruiting players like Yarran, Bennell and Sylvia could be a starting point.

AD,good commenting,and your spot on to claim you don't know what goes on inside clubs. The Yarran incidents have little to do with Freo. He had a history before getting there and has since been arrested after leaving,maybe the mistake was taking the risk with him but that would be it. The Johnson incident was nothing,perhaps poor judgement. He was harassed by a fan,probably an Eagles fan. As a joke to the man filming he pulled down his pants to express he couldn't care. Probably not the best choice but I can understand the logic and how he attempted to defuse the situation. I actually thought it was pretty funny. The Bennell situation has deep layers,a young bloke who loves his footy struggling to deal with a horrible run of injuries. Fair enough if people want to criticise the young bloke but he's dealing with issues people need to consider,Lyon and the club are dealing with Bennell brilliantly. Have a listen to a Lyon interview after the Bennell plane flight,hits the nail on the head with every comment,I'd even call it inspiring on a human level. Perths a two club town where one is treated slightly different in the media. The Dockers have taken a hard line here which is good. Anyone comparing this to their own club has genuinely no idea,all clubs have these issues because their players are young men. At the dogs last year we had two players suspended mid season for getting drunk and one even got injured in the shanadigans,both went on to be premiership players. These things happen. The point is though no club is ammune from player misbehaviour,just as no school is from its pupils or no parent from its child. These things aren't something people can barrack for because it happens everywhere.

AD - A vital part of a clubs role is teaching players how to be professional athlete's and how to be a functioning and respected member of society, a club should foster these things. If Johnson had not learnt these things in his decade or so at Freo that is a failure of the clubs culture. Yarran had issues before Freo brought him into the club, Freo can't be held responsible for them but they made a conscious decision to bring him into their club, the fact he offended after being at the club for 12 months calls into question the decision to bring him in, the club culture or both. Him no longer being at the club removes the problem but doesn't remove the responsibility for something that happened when he was on your list. Bennell has had a bad run but again had behavioural issues prior to coming to the club - again either the decision to bring him in, the clubs culture or both need to be questioned as to why he acted the way he did - many other players have long term repeat injuries without making headlines. On Blakely - how is it anything to do with the club? If the club has an environment where a player think that sort of behaviour is acceptable that is a big issue for the club. And the "young players" (Luke Ryan is 21) again if they believe this sort of thing is acceptable then the club has an issue, especially after what has gone before. 1 or 2 of these things might be fobbed off as just isolated incidents but when it has been a steady stream it points to something bigger - even if that something bigger is only a near enough is good enough type attitude where players cut corners.

Fair opinion, but I'm not sure there's a massive correlation between these incidents and the club itself. Shane's arrest wasn't anything to do with the club or footy from what I can recall, and he's no longer associated with Freo so it's not exactly Freo related, to paraphrase you ;) Same with Johnson's - his incident wasn't anything to do with footy, but I totally understand how disappointing it was especially because he's a senior player and he's supposed to be a "role model". Bennell's removal from a flight was an issue, obviously, but he wasn't "acting up" at the match. That was just a BS blown up media piece. The dude's obviously got some issues, but I believe that any player who has such a bad run with injuries would start to become frustrated and there's the possibility of incidents when alcohol is involved? Besides, how does his personal incidents have anything to do with the club's culture? Blakely's incident was extraordinarily disappointing, but again how was that anything to do with the club itself? And now these two drinking. They're young. They've made a mistake. And I'm sure neither of them will do something like that again. I'm probably just sounding ridiculous, and I definitely agree, Macca, that they're all brutally disappointing issues. And I'm incredibly annoyed with all of them. I'm still not convinced, though, that it's the club's culture itself that it leading these players to perpetrate these incidents or that promotes these incidents.

No one is making it an argument - you and Mattician pointed to things at Carlton, I pointed out they aren't the same thing and that there seems to be some very serious issues with the culture at the club. Given Lyon is an experienced coach who has been at the club a long time and Freo has 8 players with 150 games or more experience plus Spurr, Ballantyne and Griffin who will all be 30 or older by seasons end this seems unusual.

Cripps and McInnes to miss out if I were the coach.

I don't think McCarthy's as bad as you describe - and he'll get better, I'm optimistic on that - but I'd much, much rather have seen Taberner get a game this weekend. 11 goals in the past two weeks or something is impressive. Oh well, just gotta see how Saturday night eventuates.

I didn't want this to disintegrate into a argument, dude. I answered that I honestly do not know what's going on at Freo. I am not privy to whatever is happening inside the club, mate. I'm just increasingly frustrated every time a player (usually young, talented players) screw up like this.