“need a ruckman” – that has been the case every year since Ottens retired. Selwood I think will continue to spend more time as a half back flanker same as Bartel did in his later years which will make room for Jack Stevens. Your statement on Kelly is ill-informed as it implies he’s leaving for money when the reality is he has an autistic child so understandably wants the family framework around to help. Our VFLM team did well so time to give some of those players a chance, rather see some young kids develop than signing bit part players from other clubs. Even though I advocated playing Rohan this week I wouldn’t re-sign him if he’s out of contract, just doesn’t perform to a high enough level consistently. Ablett I am happy to keep but he has to accept basic salary and that he’ll play as a forward pocket. Agree re Harry, love him to bits but time for fresh blood. Touhy also I would move on and 100% Henderson has to go. And for the love of God accept that Stanley is rubbish and stop being seduced by his one good game a season.

A lot of experts in women’s footy were very surprised Carlton got a licence for the inaugural season as many felt Geelong, North Melbourne and St Kilda all had stronger cases. The suspicion was the AFL got seduced by the prospect of Pies v Blues matches and thus awarded Carlton a licence when they perhaps weren’t ready. For women’s sport it seems it can be a tricky balancing act between trying to create their own organic rivalries vs tapping into rivalries in the mens game to try and grow their audience.

Mark Mclure made good case on Fox the other night for bringing in Gary Rohan and play him out of the goal square – get him to constantly lead as he can kick goals. His point being we don’t have like for like replacement with Hawkins so give Tigers something different to look at. For my money if the 2nd tall is Taylor or Henderson then Grimes will still be able to zone off and mark the ball as neither of those two are good enough to play forward (and robs the backline of Taylor’s marking). The idea behind saying play Rohan is not a bad one as he’s a very capable forward and if he starts marking the ball early then that splits the Richmond defence, and unlike Charlie Cameron would be on the move constantly. A big part of Richmond’s success in 2017 was really only Reiwoldt being a permanent forward and having a rotating cast of smalls (and Dusty) to support him so I would take a leaf out of their book. It may not work but more chance of it working than Taylor or Henderson based on a large body of evidence. It’s selections like Henderson’s this week that see so many Geelong fans fed up with Chris Scott – all available evidence says playing him or Taylor forward doesn’t work yet rather than trust in youth he persists with something that doesn’t work. Sure Ratugolea may not work either but there’s more upside to playing him there than Taylor or Henderson.

I really don’t understand bringing in Henderson. Neither he nor Taylor have ever worked as a forward so just put trust in Ratugolea, at some point we’re going to have to trust him. Play through him and surround him with smalls so grimes can’t zone off. Play Danger majority midfield but throw into the forward line for a rest instead of taking him off. I’d be inclined to also play Gazza close to goal and trust his smarts to create some opportunities. We can’t win playing a controlled, possession based game as Richmond are too good at stopping that and will do what Collingwood did – clog up the centre and force kicks long down the line to a pack where they control the numbers. Fight chaos with chaos and move the ball forward as quick as possible by whatever means possible. To me that’s our best chance of winning.

The ABC would have to pay some of Fox’s production costs but it would still work out cheaper for them that doing a standalone broadcast, which i’m not sure they could do anyway as pretty sure they sold off all their outside broadcasting equipment a few years ago.

I would hazard a guess that it’ll be a simulcast of Fox Sports coverage same as ch 10 did. ABC did this for a time with the w-league before the FTA component switched to SBS.

Mike, if you think the a-league off-season is too long then try being a w-league fan. The off-season starts around mid February and runs until whenever the FFA decide to get around to deciding that they’ve nothing better to do so they might as well start the season (usually with only a few weeks notice).

Having a longer season might even force the game to pull its finger out and build football only stadiums.

Summer break is an excellent idea as the quality of football suffers due to the heat and a lot of people go away as well. Also stadiums that don’t have much under cover seating understandably fans don’t go as they don’t want to sit in the blazing sun.

The great unknown for me is whether we can or will even try to move the ball like that next week. My worry is that we played like that last night as West Coast aren’t ones to apply the same levels of frantic pressure the likes of the Pies and Tigers apply and also aren’t ones to clog up the centre of the ground. I worry that Scott will revert back to the slow, controlled ball movement against the Tigers because of their pressure (especially if Hawkins misses) which won’t work. Very interesting match awaits.

It was pretty stupid of him to do it and he has form unfortunately for stupid things like that but if you can throw a player into a fence and not get suspended then anything’s possible. I’m a Geelong supporter but wouldn’t have any issue with him getting a week as we need to eliminate those off the ball incidents from the game regardless of whether he meant it.

“none of the cash flows downhill” – great point and of all the major sporting codes in Australia football is the only one that has a bottom to top model in terms of funding.

Agreed, and my belief is one way that the game can command respect from its base is from greater transparency as this then gains trust. From there a proper dialogue can happen internally about how to grow the game and once there is a broad consensus on how to achieve this then the game can look outwards and say “this is what we can offer, do you want to join us?”.

Interesting article and yes as football fans what we always want is the respect the sport deserves. If people don’t like watching football that’s fine but at least respect our right to watch it and respect that the whole world loves it. I would add that those governing the sport at all levels need to show respect to all the game’s stakeholders by providing greater transparency. The lack of transparency applies across everything – lack of transparency on who sits on a-league club boards, lack of transparency around stadium deals, lack of transparency on exactly why Alan Stajic was sacked, lack of transparency on the game’s finances etc. They also need to show respect to the game itself by respecting the game’s history and not pretending that the game started in 2005 (although credit to the FFA they have at least started the process of recognising the game’s history).

Great article Jay and you encapsulate brilliantly the frustration many Geelong supporters have felt over the last few years. We accept that the players aren’t the caliber of our 2007-2011 era but that’s no reason not to try and play a similar attacking style as to what we did back then. The current cautions ball movement really came about a few years ago when our defence wasn’t that good as a way of trying to protect it so we wouldn’t get caught on the rebound. An admirable approach if you have a young team and are trying to protect them from getting belted every week but not if you’re trying to win a premiership. For years after 2008 Hawthorn played a slower, controlled style of ball movement but at 3/4 time in the 2013 preliminary final Clarkson freed the shackles up and they overran us. So you can change the way you play in the middle of a finals series. As a supporter I’d be more willing to accept defeat by taking the game to the opposition and trying to outscore them because even if you lose at least you saw a great game (and I say that as someone who well remembers the 4 grand finals we lost in 7 years).

The key to this team is Kellond-Knight. Put her in midfield with VanEgmond and VE becomes a totally different player. KK will help dictate the tempo and screen the back four which allows VE to play slightly more advanced role which she’s better suited to. Polks back in defence helps as Catley moves to LB thus creating more play down the left side. I’m hoping that now we’re out of the group we’ll finally put in better performances.

I like what Ante is trying to do and he seems to be a good mix of Ange Postecoglu and Tony Popovic. The problem is the lack of time he has had. The warning signs have been there for a while now but the FFA were asleep at the wheel. Our performance at the Olympics was poor, we played a couple of great matches in a glorified friendly tournament in 2017. 2018 Algarve cup we were terrible and although only glorified friendlies again when combined with a really really poor Asian cup a pattern had emerged. That was when the change should’ve been made as I felt Stajic had taken them as far as he could. However I still believe we can make the semi finals as our group is reasonably straightforward and a likely quarter final against the Netherlands on neutral territory is a different matter. And that would constitute a success.

A contributing factor to your point about the world catching up in women’s football is the full home and away qualifying UEFA nations had. The Netherlands played 12 matches to qualify. Add this to the 6 matches at Euro 2017 and that’s 18 competitive matches in 2 years compared to 6 for Australia. When you combine this with a lot of European nations now investing in youth development for the women’s game the same way they’ve done for the men’s game it spells trouble for Australia. To be fair to Stajic this was a problem he was well aware of and spoke about often prior to his sacking.

I dunno Paul D, I just dunno

When talking about the history of the AFL it has to start in 1990 as that was when the name changed to the AFL. What we need to do on top of that is stop saying ‘such and such a club has won X flags in VFL/AFL history’ as that is demeaning to the SANFL and WAFL. By all means respect the history of the VFL but treat that as a separate competition to the AFL (I am Victorian for the record). After all the stats for Victorian clubs that started life in the VFA before the VFL was created aren’t included in official AFL history.

not to mention how dumb it is that Geelong and Collingwood played in rd 1 and may not meet again this season depending on how the finals pan out.

Waleed Ali has spoken about this previously too, how white Australia is happy to paint itself as multicultural right up until the moment that migrant/minority communities start acting in a way different to what white Australia has laid out for them. The reason we as a society struggle to deal with this is because of the great foundational myth at the heart of the creation of the country called Australia – that the indigenous population accepted the arrival of white ‘settlers’ without rancour. Indeed still using the very term ‘settlers’ which implies the country was vacant when they arrived (the terms terra nullius was used by the British) when the reality is they were invaders (pedants pls don’t reply as this is a legally established fact as part of the Mabo case ruling by the High Court in 1992, as Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people had been here for thousands of years). Therefore there’s an underlying guilt that hasn’t been properly addressed by white Australia so when someone such as Adam Goodes so publicly celebrates being Indigenous, certain sections of white Australia lashes out as it’s an uncomfortable reminder of out past.

100% that is what as a Victory fan I am looking for and why I think the whole football operation of the club needs a re-think in the wake of Muscat’s departure. For me there has been to much focus on building a squad to win the a-league which sees us hold onto players such as Troisi when they’ve never shown consistency across multiple seasons and re-sign players such as Milligan that have left for overseas but used Victory as a fail-safe if things go wrong. Build a squad that can compete in Asia on a consistent basis and that squad will also be capable of challenging in the a-league also. The history of Aussie clubs in the ACL has shown that the reverse doesn’t work on a consistent basis.

By compete I simply mean being competitive (not getting belted every match) and getting out of the group stage. Deaugu in Korea Republic don’t have anywhere near the budget of other teams in the K-League or Japan or China and don’t spend significantly more than Victory yet easily beat us and also beat Guangzhou Evergrande. Sydney FC did well in the group stage and were a bit stiff to go out. Nothing to stop us signing players from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia or from the lower leagues in Korea or Japan. Plenty of talent in South America if you look hard enough and wouldn’t take huge wages to entice some players across, especially given we’re far more stable off-field than a lot of clubs in Brasil and Argentina in particular Sure it might take years before we start to get out of the group stage consistently but build towards that rather than just signing a whole load of new players every season, not winning the a-league or doing well in the ACL, chucking it all out and starting again the following season.

Agree with your comments about Bolton and the list. The only way to measure a coach is based on the playing personnel available to them. So on that basis Bolton shouldn’t be sacked as you couldn’t argue with a straight face he should be doing better than he is given the list they have. Also coaching is not a one man/woman band anymore, it’s a tam game in itself so maybe examine the assistant and development coaches. Furthermore some players develop into far greater than their potential hinted, others don’t and not sure a coach can do a great deal about that. At Geelong we were hampered for years by small forwards getting injured/not living up to their potential and now all of a sudden we have a group that have all clicked at the same time. Whilst good recruiting and good coaching help luck plays an enormous part (e.g. Rohan and Delhaus both wanting a change at the same time and both having a connection to the Geelong region.