AFL reveals first week of 2019 draw

Only 141! 20 weeks of all those sports that separate one footy season from the next. Less 2 weeks of JLT of course. It takes less time than that to build a house. Keep your spirits up And the AFL have given the Eagles a Good Friday game against Port, good ,bad or otherwise,I don't know

Interesting you picked that up Doc, as did I. The Demons at least made the prelim. What Auld said in regard to particularly Essendon, is he is giving them more prime time on potential rather than performance. Essendon finished 11th but because Travis Auld's opinion is they had a good trade period, they get rewarded? Dangerous thinking Auld. What about the "potential" of North? Crows? Port? All finished either above or equal with the Bombers but were disregarded.

How many days to the new season? I found myself watching a replay of round 23 Richmond V Dogs and Fremantle V Pies on Foxtel this week. Two average games but very enjoyable to watch. I hate cricket, tennis, all other sports, normal TV and only watch movies, docos and Footy. Come back soon footy.

2 matches on Good Friday.

Or worse still,as Auld has just revealed,have Essendon and Melbourne get more than their share of primetime, "We want to reward teams that have been playing really good football. West Coast and Collingwood are the two obvious ones but Melbourne and Essendon look quite exciting after trade period." “So we want to feature them in the right spots as often as we can." GWS,anyone? Brisbane? Fremantle? Didn't they trade? Doesn't the VAFL have any idea?”

It will make a nice change for North from the cyclone they played in at Cairns Rd 1 this year.

No doubt Anon wants Freo hosting GWS on the opening Thursday night.

Add josh Kelly and a match hardened green who knows? Looking at the players traded out two count in Shiel and lobb but a fit Kelly balances that and Taranto will slot in to more mid time and Whitfield will likely return to the middle, gws are in great shape imo

Meant for Punter, of course

You've completely missed the point. The more travel, the lower longevity, unless you're Pavlich. Do you think the Eagles would have liked another two seasons out of McKenna, Kemp, Peter Matera or Ash McIntosh,(better than Silvagni by a country mile), and had them mentor the newer players? Less travel and more recovery would have dealt better with the injuries that Worsfold, Hunter,Waters and LeCras carried and would probably have prolonged their careers Only Darling,Gaff,Shuey and Hurn of the current team have played more than 150 games. That has to speak of the difficulties in kicking along at a high level in the latter part of your career when you can't recover from injuries without a herculean effort,e.g.McGovern And also,although it's not a new finding,travel from west to east has a measurable,if slight, deleterious effect on player performance. So, to reiterate, 1. Victorian teams will benefit slightly by travelling east to west, 2. The competition will have another boost to equalisation because the Perth teams will face more of the higher ranked Victorian teams at home 3. Victorian teams' supporters in the West get to see them more often with a corresponding increase in merchandise and the benefits of seeing their team in a brand-new stadium What's not to like about more Victorian sides travelling more often?

Conversely, Vic teams don't play away from home as often as non-vic teams... they don't have to travel as much, and EVERYTHING that entails. Non-vic teams play MORE games where 85% of the crowd is supporting the home team... surely you can see this? Also, when WA and SA have their local derby, the hosting team has a crowd advantage only... both teams share the ground, so no difference in ground dimensions or travel. Non-vic teams also play on more grounds than Vic teams. How can a non-vic club be responsible for the attendance of a vic team's fans to their home ground? Sell more season memberships, and you will have a larger home crowd when playing a local team.

Could be worse, they could design the draw around players who have moved teams...

GWS could well have beaten the Tigers do you think if they got over the Pies? It was only ten points and we got a leg up in the first quarter from some terrible umpiring. They tried to square it up but it gave us our start.

True Pete, already tipping pies to win first up, cats are to shallow in fwd talent and unless danger has greatest season ever I don't see them going anywhere but down. Also don't agree with ppl expecting gws to fall, the list is still talent filled.

I refuse to write off the Cats any more Paul. They simply find a way to contend each year and have made GMHBMHAHGHMBA Stadium a fortress. Scott will surely be trying to capitalise on Danger/Selwood/Ablett/Hawkins/Kelly while he can and they stifled our avenue to goal last year easily.

Stop talking yourself down Pete with this false modesty, the pies are going to give the cats an absolute bloody hiding

I for one heartily endorse the recommendation you not watch it. In fact, stop watching and stop talking about AFL altogether. I think it'd be great for your health.

Usually don't watch. Its a shocking start. Imagine Richmond v Collingwood or Richmond v West Coast. Nothing against Carlton but the opening game should have some anticipation not be over by half time.

Collingwood will thump them, Geelong are on the slide.

What Non-Victorian team supporters dont factor in is that those Victorian sides dont get a true home ground advantage at every home game they play like non Victorian teams do. You might believe its unfair that Vic teams only travel interstate 4-5 times a season but when they play other Victorian teams at home the crowd is never 85% pro the home team. Non Vic teams even when playing against their home town rival still have majority home gorund advantage.