I don't like Hawthorn, but that was in the back every day of the week. I do think Adelaide should have had a free for holding the ball at the end though.

All the people saying AFL isn't close, that's the 3rd week in a row the 3-time defending champions have won by 3 points. Good things do in fact come in threes, what a game.

They've won 3 weeks in a row with 3 late free kicks in a row.

As I said, don't particularly like the Hawks, but Platts was still one of my favourite players as a kid, and an all round top guy.

Parachutist at Sydney vs Eagles game crash landed and broke his pelvis.

More than a game

Port/Cats quarter time fight glorified as the best thing in the game.

I mean wtf

Bit the bullet and decided to get back into play I g footy. Here's hoping I can stay injury free. Last time I played (U/15s) I broke my arm in round 3 and only played another 5 games as a shell of the player I was through fear.

Starting small this year, Div 4 EFL just so I can get a game without a pre season. Want to play Div 1 Yarra Ranges next year for my home town.

On another note, go the fkn Blues.

Freo in serious trouble.

Freo all over the place atm

So somebody who has never played the game before walks into the biggest club playing the biggest match at the highest level and scores the opening goal

Won't happen in any other sport

Just shows how poor the skill level of the game is.

For the last 15 years, the game has become all about fitness and athleticism now. Who cares about who has the most accurate kick or controlling the tempo of the game when you can just kick it long and into space and use your fitness and physicality to win the contest.

Coaches just have to find a bloke who can run 20k, jump for high ball and has the absolute most basic ball handling skills and BAM, you've got yourself a AFL standard player.

For the last 15 years, the game has become all about fitness and athleticism now. Who cares about who has the most accurate kick or controlling the tempo of the game when you can just kick it long and into space and use your fitness and physicality to win the contest.

Coaches just have to find a bloke who can run 20k, jump for high ball and has the absolute most basic ball handling skills and BAM, you've got yourself a AFL standard player.

Lies. Before the change in quarter length. the clock only stopped for scores and severe injuries.

The biggest part of the 25 to 20 minute change contributing to long matches, was the introduction of time on for throw in's, ball-ups (circa ~2003) and setting of the mark. These changes combined with the large amount of stoppages in the last 10 years has lead to long, drawn out matches.

I highly recommend you all get back into it, because this season's footy has been fantastic. The number of stoppages is down by about 20 per match, leading to free flowing contests between attacking sides. The Hawks v Crows match last Friday was the best match I've ever seen.

Edited by 11.mvfc.11: 26/4/2016 06:12:23 PM

GWS Giants stadium voted best in AFL

:lol:

A skeptic would say that the AFL manufactured this vote :p

GWS Giants stadium voted best in AFL

:lol:

A skeptic would say that the AFL manufactured this vote :p

Two in a row for the Blues! That second quarter was the worst I've ever seen, however.

Why AFL will never be a level playing field

Voices.
THE AUSTRALIAN
MAY 14, 2016 12:00AM
Patrick Smith
The concept? Oh, they like that. The money? Yes, please. It is just the compromises though. They could do without all of those.

For example. All the AFL clubs reckoned it was simply smashing that the AFL Commission was going to establish a second side in Queensland, followed a year later by a second side in NSW.

The commission told the clubs that it was a must for two reasons. An extra two clubs blow the competition out to 18 and thus an extra match for broadcasters every round. The likes of Channel Seven and Fox Footy would pay heaps more for that. So would the AFL’s digital and print partners.

But there was also the benefit that the AFL would have a presence in the two big growth areas in Australia just as rugby league was getting its act back together again.

Arguments raised by Swans heavy Richard Colless that the Sydney market was already swamped by professional sports clubs — league, rugby union and A-League for starters — left little or no opportunity for another AFL club to grow never mind blossom were dismissed. Ultimately the Swans voted in favour of the ­Giants and they have never stopped wishing they hadn’t.

So now, it is the talent being draining away and not just the money going up north that has set off another round of who’s a naughty boy then?

The legend Leigh Matthews entered the ring this week. The Brisbane Lions deputy chairman and three-time premiership coach of the club wants the Gold Coast Suns to finally set forever. He doesn’t think southeast Queensland can support two AFL sides. And always has. “I thought that from the very beginning,” ­Matthews said. “Nothing will change that. The Suns might win premierships, that’s not the issue. I don’t think there is a demand for two teams in this part of the world,” he said.

But he is right to think there is no expectation of change in policy.

“The people who made that decision are still running the AFL,” he said. “While those people are running the AFL, I don’t think anytime soon will there not be two teams in southeast Queensland.”

He could have been more definitive. While the AFL is halfway to sinking $200 million into the Gold Coast licence, the Suns will outlast schoolies week.

Matthews’ comments drew a fierce response from Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane.

“It is not helpful to the Gold Coast Suns, it is not helpful to AFL in Queensland and it is not helpful to the AFL full stop.

“I don’t mind getting arrows fired at me head on, because I can see them coming and hopefully I will dodge a few, but I wasn’t expecting to get them in the back.”

Cochrane, as did AFL chief ­Gillon McLachlan, said the Gold Coast was a 20-year project.

“This is not a natural AFL ­market, we are not Geelong who have been around for 150 years, we have been around for six years and it is going to take brick by brick to build up a foundation.”

Cochrane, an experienced sporting administrator and entrepreneur, said he had been amazed how the AFL industry turned on its own. “It’s quite interesting,” he said. “The statement doesn’t look at the long-term view, it just looks at the immediate short term — we’re not winning enough games, how do we fix that, get rid of the other mob. Life’s a bit more complex than that.”

The Queensland stoush followed an unpleasant exchange between the presidents of Sydney clubs the Swans, the Giants and Collingwood’s Eddie McGuire. Swans boss Andrew Pridham unwisely called McGuire an “intellectual pygmy” and Giants chief Tony Shepherd threatened to resign over suggestions there would be changes to his club academy and its zones. After last week’s loss to Carlton, McGuire, too, was pondering his tenure at the Pies.

And here we have the AFL’s problem. It is an 18-team comp­etition in which — at some stage — different clubs will dominate and others wallow in mediocrity. So the AFL’s attempt to stimulate an even competition eventually means teams will need to seek ­special assistance from the AFL — both in money and access to the best talent.


It does not always seem fair. Brisbane appeared in four consecutive grand finals from 2001, winning the first three and failing in the fourth to Port Adelaide. They boasted one of the greatest teams in league history and one engorged by fierce but finessed stars — Nigel Lappin, Michael Voss, Simon Black, Jason Akermanis, Johnathan Brown, Justin Leppitsch, Chris Johnson and the Scott brothers Brad and Chris.

Ill-considered decisions, poor appointments and tame playing efforts saw the club build up both heavy debt and consumer apathy. Matthews’ argument fails here because his club will never have a better chance than a hat-trick premiership to establish a strong and permanent market share. The AFL was forced to send up experienced club administrator Greg Swann last year to fix the business. The league also gave him as much as $5m to help chip away at large debt and fund his remake of the Lions.

The NRL has pounced as though the Lions were injured prey. Brisbane play the crowd-pulling Collingwood tonight. The record crowd at the Gabba for these two teams is 37,224 in 2005. Even last year, with both sides wobbling off poor seasons, more than 31,000 lobbed. The game normally is a big revenue driver for the Lions but up against them at Suncorp Stadium the NRL has plonked back-to-back showdowns.

At 5.30pm third-placed Storm will play ladder leaders the Cowboys. At 7.55pm the Sea Eagles play the Broncos. The Lions are hoping for 25,000. That’s AFL ­reality in the northern states.

Yet it is tough at home, too. Collingwood, which lost the 2001 and 2002 grand finals to Brisbane, are shackled to their own enterprise and vision. Like hat-trick premiership winners Hawthorn, McGuire’s side is taxed because of their accomplishments. The president is worried that his club’s own excellence is turned into his worst enemy.

McGuire and other club chiefs also know professional sporting teams on the Gold Coast mostly wither and die. But that is no guide to the future of the Suns. To argue that’s the case is specious. A-League team Gold Coast ­United was backed by Clive Palmer. They lasted two seasons, unsurprisingly. The basketball clubs Gold Coast Rollers and Blaze were fatally underfunded. As was the NBL.

The AFL has promised to back Gold Coast with $100m but when the Suns and then the Giants were added to the competition a senior AFL official told The Weekend Australian that might get as high as $200m each for the expansion clubs. Every other sporting club on the Gold Coast has failed through lack of financial heft. Not just for the football department but promotion and marketing. If Gold Coast disappear, lack of funding will not be the reason.

This is the cycle with no circuit breaker. As one or two clubs grow strong the AFL must dilute their power and strengthen the weak at the same time. Collingwood and Hawthorn are hit by the “wealth” tax and clubs up north are given all but exclusive access to the best kids available in the nation.

These northern academies are seen as unfair because they give all but exclusive access to areas, some of which have been traditional AFL nurseries.

The rest of the clubs have been given $30,000 seed money to establish their own academies to grow indigenous and ethnic talent. The Kangaroos and Adelaide presented their early planning at Thursday’s AFL chief executives meeting. They showed it was possible to engage with 110 schools.

That the AFL Commission is wedded to equalisation means there will never be a level playing field in the competition. It is an oxymoron.

Brisbane’s draw for the start of the season was drawn up in Hades. First up was West Coast followed by North Melbourne, Geelong, Gold Coast, the Bulldogs, the Swans and Port. Tell Brisbane coach Justin Leppitsch that the Melbourne clubs are worse off. And how does Brisbane reignite a once famous brand when the competition’s own generals turn on it, sending in their toughest battalions at the start? As does rugby league amass its troops tonight at Suncorp.

So if this is the system how do we explain Hawthorn’s run at a fifth grand final in a row and a fourth consecutive premiership? The Hawks, like Neptune, circle the system, never sailing too close to the sun after their near death experience in the proposed merger with Melbourne in 1996.

Like Neptune again, Hawthorn are the outliers. They do everything right. Financially strong, wisely administered, shrewdly coached and prudent list management.

Yet the greatest threat to the Hawks’ long-term reign is not a club with years of experience, steeled by struggle, steeped in ­tradition. It is coming from the land of the baby Giants, born in 2012 with the silver spoon of equalisation in the mouth.