Chris Scott slams AFL 'furphies' amid Geelong's home final push

PS "of course it is ok" is not an argument well grounded in policy. let's end it here.

relevance. On the Roar? oh, you mean nobody who matters actually reads this stuff. BUGGER! thank you for your actual opinion. That's all I was after. AFL doesn't need to have minimum/maximum standards for length and width. I will bear that in mind when I build my next stadium. All your other material here is inflammatory and ill-informed. You are attributing opinions to me that I have never expressed. As for nobody caring, you are demonstrably wrong. I care. It may not interest you, but it fascinates me that of all the global football sports, ours is the one with the least control over the playing surface dimensions. yet another quirk of our great game.

Peter, you can be happy as you like, but your musings are irrelevant. You are revising history to make your argument, which invalidates it immediately. KP has been that shape for 70 years or so, you have only just woken up I suppose? No one cares whether you think there is some sort of standard size and shape. There isn't.

Of course it is ok. If you think the shape of the ground is the problem then that is probably the reason your team is not as successful as the Cats. Jumping at shadows and focussing on distraction rather than the lack of footy being played by your club. Rather pathetic to have to stoop to blaming the ground itself, really.

I'm sorry, but that is pathetic. If players at the elite level can't cope with eleven metres difference in width, they have bigger issues to worry about. It's a complex game, and variable ground size has always been part of it.

The truth is they do care. Everyone cares and we're all the same soo.... It's just political.

No one told Giants stadium what dimensions it had to be. No one told Metricon what size to be. No one told WA Gov't what dimensions their new $1.6b ground could or couldn't be. As long as its reasonable no one is going to care. No team will want a ground excessively different because (if you believe) ground dimensions make a big difference in how teams play than playing away will be troublesome.

Yes darling I was just being playful Fabulous place

Btw, what would happen if a team came in somehow and wanted a new stadium that was an outlier to the general pattern above. What would the AFL and the other clubs think/say/do? I don’t have a strong opinion I just note the variation because that’s my training.

Geelong is not a western suburb of Melbourne. It is it's own distinct city.

They can share Docklands with other western Melbourne teams... ... runs from the room...

Geelong has been playing out of Kardinia Park since 1941. There have been 677 games played there. It’s not like the dimensions are new. Why the sudden, ‘it’s not good enough’? Do you want to plonk down the ~$750m-$1b it would take to widen the ground? If you doubt those numbers I’d be happy to explain why the ground cannot easily be changed in width (and why one wing is almost flat).

It's really unfair to Geelong that they don't get to play their finals at home but then when have the afl ever cared about fairness.

Merry (July) Christmas to you too and goodwill tidings to all. No he's not Santa Clause showering the footy world with gifts. The Footy world doesn't need more Santa Clauses. So his message is only for the willing or the diehards. So strap yourself in. Let's say you you are doing your tips and weighing things up. Relative importance's are the priority (once you get past form)and home ground outweighs everything else to the point it becomes ridiculous.... Maybe injuries but even that has to be pretty major to overrule home ground advantage. there goes your weather and dimension theories that have the influence of a butterfly flapping it's wings in Brazil in comparison. You cannot quantify the dimensions advantage, ... to the point it may not even exist and certainly no greater anywhere than in creative people's imaginations. To focus on such a thing is a choice and gives your intentions away no matter how innocent the plea. Ground dimensions are another Furphy. The dimensions are part of Cats home ground. That we know. Home Ground is an advantage. That we know, Does one beget the other. No but it will if you want it to to use it as an excuse. But that's up to you.

Yes, I do agree with you. The home ground advantage is real. I'm just not sure how you can think weather and ground size is not part of that. Along with the crowd, the travel etc. I'm all for higher-seeded teams playing ALL finals at their home ground. It's just too bad Chris Scott used up all his goodwill complaining about things far less important over the last decade.

Furphy is the new salty

If you are truly interested in influence (which I doubt because this one is so obvious it hurts)the first port of call is home ground advantage. That's an influence everyone is actively conscious of every time they do their tips. it's a real living huge part of footy. The rest is smoke mirrors and more furphys. When you are doing your tips and considering home ground advantage think of Geelong and what a home final (and other games) might mean to them. So don't look now but you are actually arguing my case when you talk about 'influences'. You are just being selective about what are the important ones. Well there's one big one and it's called home ground advantage. Must get mentioned three of four times during every tip commentary. The rest is more furphy diversion.

hey I am a policy guy. I am more than happy to entertain the prospect that the Kardinia dimensions are the appropriate ones and that everyone else has committed petty bourgeois deviations. or you can mount an argument that variation and local character outweighs standardisation as attributes i.e. a no to codification, uniquely for unique code. i think everything else you have added here is just blue and white noise. another flag will look good fluttering in the wind there, I grant you that.

Why are average scores relevant? Margins maybe, but still a stretch. You've obviously never watched a game played in Tasmania or at the SCG if you think weather and ground dimensions don't have influence.

Furphy about a Furphy .... nice touch. I look forward to playing the striped MCG darlings (either) down at the comp starters (160 YEARS) and see if the rich and powerful can do what the fixtured lesser lights often find a bridge too far. If you want to change our home record come and play down there (like men). Playing all our games at home will weaken the Cats in some ways but it must be done and is only a matter of time. Aministrations come and go. Gill is good and he should stay but there are people there who just do not have the best interests of the game at heart.