Is AFL vendetta driving vandalism?
Tom Westbrook

ANIMOSITY towards the AFL's expansion in Sydney may be behind the theft of a local team's advertising banners.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/the-hills/afl-advertising-banners-torn-down-in-beecroft-and-clubs-suspect-sabotage/story-fngr8i1f-1226806002006

Not very smart if the idea was to stop AFL being advertised in Sydney. It only meant the banner got wider exposure in the paper lol.

It's western sydney...come on, half the population has been arrested for something.

I thought Pennant Hills was the respectable part of Western Sydney.

"respectable" and "sydney" in the same sentence is a bit of an oxymoron.

there must be some respectable pockets in a city the size of Sydney, even if they are far and few beween

http://aflnz.co.nz/national-combine-offers-talented-athletes-opportunities/
http://aflnz.co.nz/strong-nz-hawks-squad-named-to-face-australia/

The AIS AFL Academy will play the New Zealand Hawks on 25 January 2014, having also played against each other last January.

This looks like being the strongest NZ squad ever assembled and they are a good chance to knock off the Academy team for the first time ever.

While the Hawthorn listed pair won't appear (Shem Tatupu and Kurt Heatherly), the international scholarship holders Siope Ngata and Joe Baker-Thomas are in the squad (Hawthorn and St Kilda), and Khan Haretuku, of the Frankston Dolphins.

There are also four NZ players currently playing for the Northern Territory Thunder, including their captain, Cameron Ilett.

It will be interesting to see how close NZ can get this time as the quality of NZ aussie rules continues to improve.

Two days before this match the annual NZ combine will be held where 40 of the best young athletes will be put through their paces.

North have just announced a profit of $1.3 mill for 2013, not a bad result for a smallish club in the middle of the ladder.

SCHOOL SPORT AUSTRALIA TOUR - MATCH 2 RESULTS
21 JANUARY 2014- POTCHEFSTROOM

School Sport Australia 16.9.105 d South Africa Lions 5.5.35

Congratulations to Adam Goodes for winning Australian of the year.

Full credit to Brayshaw for turning the club around to this point.

He has been brilliant for North. Makes Caroline Wilson look like an even bigger cunt for her vendetta against him

Wouldn't be surprised if he took over as AFL CEO after Demetriou calls it a day.

The New Zealand Hawks have gone down to the AIS Under 17 squad in a close match, with the AIS 4.16.40 defeating New Zealand Hawks 5.6.36.

This is the closest the Hawks have ever got to the AIS academy team. With more players on AFL scholarships and/or playing at VFL level, we can expect their first win is not too far away.

Many have an interest in the breakdown of AFL memberships.

This table shows the AFL memberships of the Melbourne clubs for 2013, how much membership revenue each earned, and the average revenue earned per membership:

This table shows AFL memberships as at 27 January, and how much each club needs to sell to reach 2013 numbers:

Collingwood announcing leadership details for 2014, strong rumours of Pendleburry finally taking the captaincy.

confirmed

I'm calling shenanigans on those Fremantle figures. I also find it hard to believe that clubs selling tens of thousands of memberships (averaging over a hundred a day) don't sell a single membership all week.

Fremantle is the only club that doesn't keep a membership tally update on their official website so that's why that table says "zero" for them over the past week. There's been no updated figure published anywhere since a Perth newspaper article mentioned Freo had 43.5k a week or so ago. Freo rarely reveal how many members they have until the AFL releases the final yearly membership totals for each club in August.

Some clubs update their current membership tally daily (eg: the big Victorian clubs) while others like Sydney and Adelaide update once every so often (ie. every few weeks or once a month).

Further to that, both West Coast and Freo have waiting lists, their seating allocations are sold out well before the season starts, so its rather meaningless for them to release numbers.

Recently, West Coast started selling non-ticketed memberships allowing them to go some 15k above their seating cap.

Freo doesn't appear to have done that yet, but given that they too now have a waiting list for memberships, it's the next logical step.

Speaking of caps:
http://www.afl.com.au/news/2014-01-31/cap-on-afl-members

Last year, AFL memberships reached an all-time high of 56,000 (a special category of membership).

The AFL will cap AFL memberships at 60,000, meaning in the very near future, they will have a waiting list like MCC memberships.

So MF any advice for Supercoach this year?

Here:

Yeah been with the partner for quite a few years now and brags about how being a full AFL member pays for itself going to the prelim and grand final every year. So she convinced me to finally front up and get one myself when they came out a couple of month ago. Ten or so years to wait now though for a full membership.

Actually, did my first team only yesterday, and it's easily the toughest team I have ever tried to assemble.

There appear to be fewer rookies to go round, and the better ones are worth a bit of coin, so it's going to be hard to stack your team with quality rookies and fill the rest with premium selections.

A complete re-think is needed.

You have to spread your premiums a bit more thinly, and start looking for value in the $200k to $300k range - it's going to be tough.

Like O'Meara last year, Jack Martin is a lock.

And there are a few players who have changed clubs who are worth keeping an eye on.

I like the look of Gary Rohan at around $176k.

I try and avoid any player in his 2nd year - conversely, I'll be checking players out who are heading into their 3rd year, especially top 20 picks from 2011.

I'm tossing up whether to leave out players like Ablett and Pendles in the first round, and try and catch them with a price fall in later rounds - but risky strategy.

Gun players like Dayne Beams and Tex Walker have had huge price drops due to injury, Beams ended the season strongly when he returned and should be a lock imo.

I'm doing the draft format this year for the first time so I'm looking forward to the challenge of that.

Tried it last year. The draft took a little long for me, but would of been a lot of fun to do with everyone together. Can get a bit boring if people aren't active with trades etc. during the season. It's a fun change to normal where everyone has the same team bar 4 or 5 players

Beams looks like good value - good price range.
Some uncertainty over Tex in the early rounds, he might take a while to get to peak fitness.

http://www.afl.com.au/news/2013-12-10/afls-new-international-live-streaming-deal

They delivered 2.5 million live streams last year (all of them overseas, not available in Australia).

I've been thinking and from what I've seen, everyone seems to have D Thomas, so I might take a gamble and not select him and play rookies from M5 down instead. Not a fan of many of the forward rookies so I'll use this extra cash to have a big five in the forward line.

Dangerfield, D Martin, Wingard, Franklin and Pavlich.