Entitlement, Anger, Denial – Cheats and Apologists

The Essendon wash up is not so complicated, Neil Belford breaks it down for you.

Analysis: Queuing up at the bottom in Melbourne

Sometimes we forget we live in a diverse continent of six nations. Neil Belford reminds us (beautifully) and points out that Victorian-centricity is as relevant as the British Empire.

Teapuhoo – Not all the guys at the top are skateboarders

Epic Chopes http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-19/billabong-pro-teahupoo-claims-casualty-as-mick-fanning-charges/5681176?section=sport    

AFL Round 21 – Melbourne v Fremantle: Melbourne is no Claremont

Neil Belford’s clinical analysis leads him to ask the big questions: why does Melbourne exist, and would Claremont FC show more fight (and ability)?

Essendon Drug Crisis – results announced

Neil Belford has uncovered the Outcome Management run sheet for the Essendon drug crisis. If he didn’t have it in his hand, you would assume he was just being cynical.

AFL Round 14 – Geelong v Fremantle: Cats dust off 2007 game plan

Lowell George sang Neil Belford home after a melancholy night out at the Cattery, where the Cats dusted off Bomber Thompson’s 2007 game plan to thrash the Dockers.

Stevie J: You need friends in the media at the tribunal

Freo fan Neil Belford is sick of The Age stories defending gutless “heroes”. Johnson irons out a defenceless player; Harvey punches his tagger; but the story is Crowley pinching? He’s not happy.

AFL Round 10 – Adelaide v Fremantle: Kensington Road runs straight for a while before turning

This game wasn’t about “the four points” for Fremantle fans like Neil Belford, it was about revenge, cold and simple.

AFL Round 2 – Western Bulldogs v Fremantle: Freo comes to play (yes, in Melbourne)

Freo are in a good groove, and the dogs are definitely on the up, writes Neil Belford.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

2012 was total football The modern coach doesn’t flirt with form, they answer journalists’ questions truthfully or not at all, they control what can be controlled, they enact a strategy. The media don’t like this. They can’t acknowledge that for players, the contest is just a relentlessly, moment by moment battle. A zazen state where [Read more]

MRP – it’s the humans, stupid

We all remember the old AFL tribunal – well some of us do. It was hopeless. Subjective as all get out. Inconsistent. Biased. Incredibly frustrating. Everybody agreed, even the AFL commissioners. There had to be a better way. So they scoured the globe, looked at other systems, and decided that the solution was to go [Read more]

Victoria uber alles

With the revenue from the most recent media deal the AFL distributes an equal amount of money to each of the clubs and then beyond that there is a special fund to be distributed over 2012-14 and be invested into ‘specific initiatives’ (read handouts) for a selected number of clubs. Western Bulldogs $7m and North [Read more]

Alicia Coutts – Thunder Road

Climb in back Heaven’s waiting on down the tracks Oh-oh come take my hand We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land 4 am March 9, 1976 – Hancock St Doubleview – John has just tied his boards to the roof and got in the back of my EJ. The rain is horizontal so Mark [Read more]

Fix the fixture – stop the season-rigging

Sunday Morning Coming Down An even competition needs a fair fixture – not season rigging. In the past decade or so the fact that the fixture has been hopelessly unfair hasn’t mattered that much. The best teams have finished in pretty much the correct order anyway. This season it is all different. Who has played [Read more]

Alternative Strip – Grow Up

Sunday Morning Coming Down. Those grey shorts Essendon wore last week reminded me of the ones I used to wear to primary school. Odd looking on an adult. Essendon’s problem is not that it has developed an alternative strip, it is having developed the worst effort at an alternative strip ever seen in any competition [Read more]

Where do footballers come from

Sunday Morning Coming Down. Emma Quayle has written an excellent intro to this years draft in The Age on Thursday last. That set me thinking about the provenance of those players. For example, it seems to me the number of Father-Son success stories at the draft seriously outweighs their genetics-based statistical-likelihood. I have as a [Read more]

Heave Ho – lid’s back on

Richmond are improving, and possibly can still be finalists, but as far as getting ahead of yourself goes, this Richmond week rivals the 2012 Carlton Premiership. Has there  ever been a game where the arriving crowd was so sure they were going to win! There was no tension amongst the Tiger horde s – they [Read more]

Voss Rolls the Dice …

Fremantle are storming through 2010, ending seasons every second week it seems. They came to the Gabba on Saturday night to break a 15 year hoodoo. They didn’t do it in style, but they did it. Inside 50 Freo were dreadful, but everywhere else they clobbered Brisbane. Michael Voss has drafted and traded for a [Read more]

18 Teams – A fair fixture – It can be done

18 Teams, 22 rounds, Specialty fixtures, And a Fair Draw. by Neil Belford It seems light years since the AFL has had anything remotely resembling a fair fixture, and given the influence the marketing gnomes have, we had all better work pretty hard to see the AFL delivers something that is fair. The Footy Almanac [Read more]

AFL Round 17: A Melbourne Derby

The Rose Hotel in Fitzroy is a long way from Subiaco, but it was full of WA expatriates, mostly rowdy young Freo supporters. Geelong were playing Hawthorn in a thriller in the other bar but nobody in my room cared much about that game. Keen as those supporters were though, it is easy to be [Read more]