The Richmond flag is not a one off. Even though the pies pit maximum pressure on them, they we able to adapt and play a slingshot forward setup to win easily.
I didn't expect Richmond to be traveling so well in their premiership defense but I think we are witnessing a mid to high level talent team that are gelling beautifully as their belief in themselves rises......a dangerous combination that reminds me of certain Swans teams of recent past. They will be prone to off days, as their loss to Adelaide suggests but they are becoming a formidable force.....albeit with a fairly soft fixture so far, softer than ours has been.
Something from an AFL.com article on the Max Gawn/spectator incident:
" "The patron in question from today's incident actually removed himself from the seating bowl," an Etihad Stadium spokesperson told AFL.com.au."
WTF is a seating bowl!?? Are individual seats now seating bowls? Or instead of bays, do we now have seating bowls? Or is seating bowl now the innovative, proactive term for stadium. As in, "Yes, Derek, our administration has been instrumental in upgrading the MCG to a magnificent, state of the art, seating bowl; offering the consumer an unsurpassed match day experience."
Grrrr! Language like that should be flushed down the seating bowl, located adjacent to the free-flowing, aqueous grime removal facility.
I concur. I took a mate - down from Sydney - to Docklands yesterday for his first ever AFL game. It was a scrappy affair that never reached any great heights. Neither of these two teams will figure late in September based on that performance. Given, they were both the tired losers from ANZAC Day games, but I can't see either Dees or Bombers getting anywhere near the pre- and early-season hype that was heaped upon them.
There was some good transition at stages but a lot of that was due to to poor forward pressure (from both teams). Lots of intercepts from misdirected kicks, handballs to no-one and dropped easy marks. I've seen better play at Port Melbourne games.
The 36,000 crowd never really got into the game either. Old mate enjoyed it but I think I let him down taking him to that game. I literally nearly fell asleep at one stage.
From Wikipedia: "[It] is a British slang phrase meaning those who arrive earlier than is customary, and was often associated with pub customers who wait for or arrive soon after evening opening, around 5:30 pm. Until the law was changed in 1988, pubs in England closed in the afternoon. Most are now open all day. It is also widely heard in British football circles, and was resuscitated in comments about football. The phrase originates in the practice of British theatres from around 1870 of allowing customers who paid a little extra to enter the theatre early and choose their own seats before the rush just before the performance started."
Though what that has to do with early in a footy game escapes me.
Ta, it makes even less sense now. Thankfully, the trend of using the term seems to be dying off. And it's use was always more popular in soccer, rather than AFL.
Though it probably still leaves the question, why did a number of commentators feel the need, to use a phrase that had no relation to what they were describing?
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