Middle Australia Rule(s) Committee

North Melbourne small-forward Brent Harvey has been offered a four-match ban for two separate incidents: a three-match ban for striking West Coast’s Daniel Kerr and a one-match ban for striking Kerr’s teammate Adam Selwood in the Kangaroos’ season-ending loss in Perth yesterday. Middle Australia Rule(s) committee. Rule 1. Smacking an annoying opponent There are players, [Read more]

AFL Finals Week 2: Why the underdogs can win

After tipping Fremantle to defend Geelong and Sydney to defeat Adelaide last week (alright, I also tipped Collingwood), I firmly believe that both underdogs can win this week’s semi-finals. Such is the nature of finals football and in a testament to the competition’s evenness this year, both of the favourites (Collingwood and Adelaide) could be [Read more]

Predictable news reports for an unpredictable game

Keith Almond believes TV coverage of football on the nightly news has not improved since the 1960s; in fact if you take colour out of the equation it has hardly changed at all.

Trains,Pains and Silver Linings

By Paul Spinks Seagulls fight over a discarded hamburger as I leave Bon Beach station with a Sunday hangover on the 10.45AM Frankston to Southern Cross. The train is already late and proceeds to travel at a pace mimicking tempo footy …slow and measured. I’m on my way home via the noon V-Line to South [Read more]

Indigenous players to the AFL? Why not bring the AFL to Indigenous centres and communinties? The case for NT Thunder FC in the AFL.

As I suspected it seems that I’m not the only person who has seen a gap between Indigenous and White Australia. To some extent this gap has been narrowed by participation in sport but as I have outlined in an earlier installment it has also created an entirely new problem with players being taken away [Read more]

AFL Finals Week 1- Adelaide v Sydney: A comfy old pillow

I like my pillow, its durable, supporting, hard working, a little worn at the edges and cost me about $10 from Kmart a decade ago. Sure there are flashier versions with dodo bird feathers or maybe endorsed by Buzz Aldrin, but I like mine just the same. I depend upon it. The Sydney Swans are [Read more]

My Brother Graham

By Bob Utber My brother Graham suffers with that most terrible of diseases, Motor Neuron. Originally called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the great American baseballer who died with it aged 38, the disease is a progressive degeneration of the motor neurons of the central nervous system, leading to muscle wasting and paralysis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  [Read more]

Blacks Clinch ’12 GF Spot and ’13 A-Grade Berth

NO PROBLEM FOR OLD MEN AS EXPERIENCED BLACKERS GET THROUGH TO GF They say that love can make music sound sweeter and food taste better. Whilst your narrator is not normally prone to such sentimentality, a similar feeling came over me as I carved through my sweet and sour pork whilst Rose Tattoo’s ‘We Can’t [Read more]

September for losers (reprise)

September is a non-event for those of us who rarely see AFL finals action. Unless we swallow our pride and follow someone else’s team. Always full of hope at the start of the season, we keep September free until the last minute just in case, resisting the urge to plan a weekend away an overseas [Read more]

Geelong Era at an End

  2007 Coming off an horrific 2006 season, and with coach Mark Thompson given the last year of his contract to turn things around, Geelong launched an aggressive and ruthless campaign to win the flag and break a 44 year drought down at Kardinia Park. Characterised by daring, up-the-middle, play on at all costs, all [Read more]

1980 A Personal Footy Almanac – Second Semi Final, Saturday 13 September, v Geelong, VFL Park

(For Geelong fans still licking their wounds from Saturday night…sorry, folks, I can’t help the timing of this piece…) A roar goes up as umpire John Sutcliffe signals a free kick in the Richmond forward line. In the tense early moments of a big semi-final, it’s pretty typical of the men in white to assert [Read more]

Off Season Odyssey – Part 11: New Year’s Without Resolutions

Off Season Odyssey Pt11.   New Year’s Without Resolutions.   Princetown has a beaut oval. Round. Hard. There’s no team any more, no town. Just the reedy wetlands that is the last gasp of the Gellibrand River, where farmers, back in the day, paddled their milk downstream, on longboats, to the Saturday market. Just coastal [Read more]

Almanac Footy History: Clegg’s Match

1949 Brownlow Medalist Ron Clegg played a match for South Melbourne in 1951 of such dominance that is still referred to as “Clegg’s Match”. Richard Davis reports.

AFL Finals – Week 1: The 2012 ‘Mopsy’ Fraser Cup

All power to the Funky Purps, this is their highest point, even better than when they made a prelim against Sydney, to beat the reigning premier on their home turf and knock ‘em out of the finals, it’s a great day for the Purps. Perhaps it’s their Great Day for 2012 and nothing else will come of it.

The Footygods: the Algea

The Footygods must have enjoyed Saturday. Adelaide and Geelong thought they just had to turn up to win. A mate of mine from Adelaide said that most people there thought that the cup was in the bag. The crows had stormed home to second. They had beaten the swans early and others had beaten them [Read more]

Off Season Odyssey – Part 10: Pre-season is Serious Business

  “Come have a kick!” I say to Louie. We were teammates at Otway for three years. I have no idea how, yet here he is, on the coast, working in Kenty’s Surf Shop. “Up yours, Zurbo! It’s summer. You haven’t changed.”

VAFA: Parkdale are not Catholics

I have cancelled all my Saturday morning appointments for three weeks. Better to be prepared for any combination of results of our three semi-final sides than have to rearrange both patients and staff. So it was down to Sandringham to watch our beloved Roys. I missed the first ten minutes of the Thirds, but I [Read more]

Double dipping for premiership success

Cats aside, players from six clubs competing in this year’s finals have the opportunity to become dual premiership players. Miles Wilks looks at who is best placed.

The 2012 ‘Mopsy’ Fraser Cup – Round 23

For you, the war is over. And you and you and the rest of you. It’s time to put on silly outfits have that one big drink of the year then start thinking about next year.

Stats never lie

They say that statistics never lie, but certainly a good massage or selection of data can allow you to tell the story you want. After so much talk of Adelaide’s easy draw this year, I thought I would have an historical look at the last 5 years and the performance of the top 8 against each other and against the bottom 4 sides.