Quick question fellas, does anyone know who is showing the AFL in the UK? I've got Sky but nothing, someone must have it!

No idea but nice to see another Cheltenham man here.

Setanta show it, Mickey. The live stuff is mostly on Setanta Sports 2 but they do have full game reruns on 1 during the week.

Magic, thanks Mike.

Tubby - Sorry mate a lot further down than that! Boston United, currently clogging along in the tinpot north just under the conference.

Round 4

St Kilda 94 Geelong 136

Crowd 44,368

Has any other football league given in to television as much as the AFL?

Every one of the 8 games is live or near live (some fixtures can’t be shown against the gate so are shown in their entirety with a delayed start). This is a typical weekend:

Friday night – 1 game, usually at Telstra Dome. This is the prestige game of the round almost always attracting the highest ratings. Collingwood and Essendon always feature heavily on Friday nights as have St Kilda in recent years.

Saturday afternoon – 2 games, 1 almost always at the MCG. Supporter surveys always confirm the traditional time slot is the favourite with fans but it’s usually allocated to struggling teams or those with a low supporter base.

Saturday night – 2 games, 1 live on free to air, 1 live on Foxtel. The latter is often a game in the rugby states. The former is the second most prestigious time slot although it usually rates below Friday because of the competing game on pay tv.

Sunday afternoon – 2 games. Again, a popular time slot in the rugby states plus all of Hawthorn’s Tasmanian games.

Sunday twilight – 1 game. Foxtel’s highest rated slot. Often features a game in Perth with a visiting Melbourne team.

The point of this preamble is twofold. First, to express my surprise that St Kilda v Geelong should be scheduled on a Saturday afternoon. St Kilda’s rare home games at this time are usually against “unattractive” opposition like North Melbourne, Port Adelaide or Fremantle. Second, to express my despair that this will be the only time in 2008 that I will see St Kilda on a Saturday afternoon, easily my favourite game time. A lifetime of watching Scottish football, where there is no such thing as a Friday night or Saturday night game, left me ill-prepared for these times being when I would see the bulk of my football (whether A League or AFL) from now on. I’ll have to wait for St Kilda to be as shit as Carlton if I want afternoon games.

Anyway, onto the game. Let me mention a few statistics:

The expanded scoreline: St Kilda 13.16.94 Geelong 21.10.136. 29 scoring shots to 31 and both Stephen Milne and Nick Riewoldt managed to send relatively straightforward set shots out on the full for no score.

Inside 50s – St Kilda 55 Geelong 55.

Clearances – St Kilda 39 Geelong 23. This one is particularly interesting because the general concensus is that we collapsed against the Bulldogs last week because we got smashed in the clearances after quarter time. Clearly, that deficiency was rectified yesterday.

So why did we lose by 42 points? Because our goalkicking was awful and because when we had the ball we miskicked it, we handballed to the opposition (or delivered hospital handballs to teammates) and, in general, fumbled and panicked under intense Geelong pressure. Geelong, on the other hand, were superb goalkickers and we were precise with their kicking and handballing.

What do the St Kilda players do at training all week? There’s certainly no evidence that they’re kicking for goal.

I knew we would win the first quarter. There has been a barrage of negative talk in the media about St Kilda this week after the pathetic performance in Round 3. The players were always going to be fired up at the start – they’d talked all week about how delighted they were to playing the benchmark team. Sure enough, we led 31-24 at quarter time. Geelong kicked 4 straight goals; St Kilda 4 goals, 7 behinds! Geelong were 16 points ahead at half time but, when we reduced the deficit to 57-66 early in the third term, there was a brief moment of hope. Then Geelong kicked 6 straight goals and the game petered out in fairly tame fashion.
There are big question marks now about 3 of St Kilda’s best known players. Driving back from the game, talkback radio was in meltdown as apopleptic Sainters deluged the radio stations:

Nick “Pretty Boy” Dal Santo. Sublimely talented but doesn’t like getting his shorts dirty or his hair out of place. Seems to be more interested in appearing topless in magazines than in doing anything on the field.

Robert Harvey – will be 37 this year. Sadly, there are signs that the great man may have extended his career one season too many.

Fraser Gehrig – now I’m a huge fan of the big unit but his decision to reverse his retirement is not looking too clever. He kicked 2 goals today but overall was abysmal. His direct opponent, Matthew Scarlett, was Geelong’s best player able to run off Fraser at will and set up Geelong’s counterattacks.

On Friday night we play Essendon who appear to have filled their midfield with all the competitors from the Olympic 100m final. Another nervous night ahead.

The most loathsome, despicable, lowlife, scumbag in Australian sport is in big trouble (I hope).

In 2005, Sydney won a tainted Premiership after Barry Hall was allowed to play in the Grand Final against West Coast despite punching St Kilda defender Matt Maguire in the guts in the Preliminary Final before kicking a goal. Had Hall played for anyone other than the AFL's lovechild, he would have missed the final.

Against West Coast last night, Hall did this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN4Ly_yd9w

I really thought St Kilda might have done something against Geelong, as the Cats did not look as slick or convincing as usual early on. However, once they get going they are unstoppable.

Gehrig may be past his use by date, like Harvey. When Tony Lockett made a comeback after retiring, he didn't kick too many goals, either.

I still think a different coach might be able to make something of the Saints.....

Barry Hall hopefully will retire soon and take up boxing- a la Mundine- if rumours are anything to go by. "Characters" like Hall were much loved in the old days- he is very reminiscent of Mark "Jacko" Jackson- but with the game now having a clean, fast flowing image, he is widely despised...

Port Power are still winless after four games- I think one of their worst starts to a season ever. Expect to see Mark Williams lose his cool before long.....

Setanta show three lives games a week in the UK. Eurosport 1 or 2 show extended highlights of one match on Sunday evening - today it is WCE v Sydney, plus a 1 hour highlights program on Friday - this week its 2pm, but the time changes (so annoyingly you can't sky plus series link it!)

I heard speculation on a sportsline podcast that Kevin Sheedy is hotly tipped for the post as coach of this new Sydney team - largely because of his marketing ability.

This is what Sheedy said today in his column in the Sunday Herald Sun:

"My thoughts about the new club have centred on whether I have the energy, capacity and hunger to build a club from the ground up. They are crucial and essential ingredients and I think I have them. Developing a team in Western Sydney is the AFL's greatest challenge."

He wants the job.

There was a surprising statistic in the papers today. There are 75,000 people in NSW who are members of an AFL club but only 20,000 support Sydney. Perhaps this partially explains how Collingwood had a travelling support of 15,000 at their away game with Sydney last year. According to the AFL, the bulk of the 75,000 live in the Western suburbs and the Swans support is primarily based in the East. Can they tap into this market if these people already have an allegiance to a club? It might work - a large proportion of Melbourne Storm's supporter base in the NRL are Queenslanders and New South Welshmen now living down here.

With Port 0-3 after the showdown, it was the worst start by a Grand Finalist for the last 25 years. God knows when the last time was that someone started 0-4 after a GF appearance.

Your observations on Gehrig and Harvey are interesting, I've heard a few people say that they have played on too long.

I've also heard it said that the Saints don't play well when the big three (Gehrig, Kossie and Riewoldt) play together in the forward line. Is this true? The same person suggested that Saints couldn't win a premiership as they lacked pace in the midfield.

Thanks to Fremantle's incredible 10 goal humiliation by Richmond yesterday, St Kilda have been spared the title of AFL crisis club at least until Friday night.

The worry is that Essendon, although not an especially good side, look as if they've been designed to beat St Kilda. They have big defenders to stand up to our forwards and they are the fastest team in the competition. Some of the passages of play from their game against the Bulldogs on Friday night were just a blur. Of course, they may be too quick for their own good judging by the number of players picking up hamstring injuries.

Ross Lyon's post match comments on Saturday would suggest that we've seen the last of St Kilda's 3 giants in the forward line tactic – it's just too easy to defend against. What Lyon's going to come up with I'm not sure – drop Gehrig, play Koschitzke in defence or Riewoldt in midfield (or on the wing) are all possibilities.

As for St Kilda's midfield, Jamzinho, it just shows how much the game has changed in the last 2 or 3 years that this area of the team is now seen as a weakness. In 2005, St Kilda's midfield of Hayes, Ball, Dal Santo and Harvey was probably the second best in the AFL behind West Coast's Judd, Cousins, Kerr and Fletcher. Hayes, Ball and Dal Santo all made the All Australian team that year and Dal Santo was third in the Brownlow behind Cousins and Kerr. Hayes remains a great player (St Kilda's best against Geelong) but he's a ball winner not a quick player; Ball's career has been sadly derailed by osteitis pubis and no longer can he be mentioned in the same breath as Luke Hodge and Chris Judd who were selected either side of him in the 2001 superdraft; Dal Santo's defects have been covered further up the thread; Harvey, of course, is one of the all time greats not just at St Kilda but in the AFL but he's struggling right now.

There was an interesting piece in the Herald Sun at the weekend contrasting the fortunes of St Kilda and Geelong since 2004 when the two clubs were reckoned to have the best young lists in the AFL and both narrowly lost Preliminary Finals. Here's a quote from it:

There are still many officials at rival clubs who shake their head in disbelief that St Kilda hasn't won a premiership with the list at its disposal.

"Their best 22 is good enough to win it," another club recruiting manager said this week. "But one of the key differences is that Geelong put more resources into recruiting than St Kilda has in the past few years and that is showing right now.

"St Kilda thought they just needed to make sure they didn't drop away and how they went about it (in the draft) is not dissimilar to how Sydney has gone about their stuff.

"Whereas the Swans had a fantastic injury run because they had the right preparation and the right rehab guys, St Kilda didn't have a great injury run and in many respects it was their own fault on the conditioning side of things.

"If they didn't have the horrendous run of injuries they might have won one."

On the subject of the AFL expanding into western Sydney.... you can drive for hours around the western suburbs of Sydney and you will see hundreds of soccer pitches and rugby fields; but you will be lucky if you see as many as half a dozen Aussie Rules ovals.

It doesn't matter how many Collingwood fans supposedly live there, if the game has no presence at grass roots level, it is treading on very shaky foundations... Demetriou can put all the spin on it he likes, but that fact is hard to hide from....

Barry Hall has been suspended for 7 matches. It's not enough.

In arriving at it's decision, the tribunal looked favourably upon the fact that Hall had pleaded guilty and was "remorseful." These people are idiots. Hall broke his wrist (in a separate incident) on Saturday and would have been out for the next 6 weeks anyway. Of course, he was going to plead guilty rather than risk a longer suspension by contesting the case - and pleading guilty makes it easier to back up the claims of "remorse."

The only reason the ban is as long as 7 weeks is because a 6 week ban would have meant his comeback game would have been away to West Coast. The broadcasters would have loved it but a Subiaco riot isn't what the AFL want right now. His comeback game will be at home to St Kilda.

I don't know why they bother with a tribunal- the media had already decided the length of Hall's suspension...

I must have seen Hall's king hit on the Eagles player replayed on TV at least 12 or 15 times since it happened... if everyone is so appalled by the violence, why do they keep endlessly replaying it? Could it be that people really can't get enough of it? Someone mentioned somewhere during the week that Hall's little performance is just the sort of thing needed to get western suburbs rugby league fans interested in AFL....