Roos and the AFL sparring, again
It was an issue which sparked a barney between Paul Roos and the AFL hierarchy 11 years ago, and it's had exactly the same, incendiary effect ahead of the 2016 season.
The issue is the playing style of AFL clubs. The league's honchos want teams to play more "attractive football". Roos, among others, wants the AFL to butt out and stop telling coaches how to do their jobs.
AFL supremo Gillon McLachlan made the request to the 18 coaches this week, having witnessed a dramatic decline in scoring over the past few years. That trend culminated last season in a scoring average of a paltry 86 points per team, per match.
McLachlan reportedly cited the free-flowing Adelaide-Western Bulldogs final last September - in which 30 goals were scored - as an example of what the game should look like.
But his plea for more "attractive football" was not embraced by all.
"None of us knew what that (attractive football) meant," Roos said. "So you have 18 coaches who are controlling a team and none of us knew what that meant ... because it never really has been articulated to us as to what it is."
Roos, of course, ran foul of the game's administrators when he was coach of a Sydney Swans team in the mid-2000s that placed much emphasis on preventing goals, and not so much on scoring them.
Their stodgy style prompted then AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou to say in 2005: "I think it would be fair to say in the early part of the season we saw some games that weren't attractive, and I think they've been described as ugly."
Roos, of course, had the last laugh when the Swans won the flag later that year.
Timing is everything for Hardwick
More than one pair of eyebrows was raised last week when Richmond announced its re-signing of coach Damien Hardwick for a further two years.
The Tigers, not normally noted for their tolerance of under-achieving coaches, decided after much soul-searching to offer Hardwick the new deal, even though his current one did not expire till the end of 2016.
Some naysayers felt the club had caved into a pro-Hardwick media campaign, led by former champion player and games record holder Kevin Bartlett, and were left scratching their head by this show of confidence. (Especially in a week when Collingwood chose to extend favourite son Nathan Buckley's coaching deal by a single year.)
Hardwick's win-loss record after six seasons in charge is 66-67 - at 49percent - and the club's three finals' appearances in that time have yielded precisely zero wins. The Tigers' finishing position in those six years has been: 15, 12, 15, 7, 8, 7.
How Tony Jewell (first and seventh in the two seasons before he was sacked in 1981) and John Northey (fourth in the season before he was axed in 1995), among others, must be wishing the new age of tolerance at Tigerland was in place before they were unceremoniously shown the door.
Bulldogs now the underdogs?
The Silly Season brings with it all the predictions for the season ahead and there were a couple that jumped out at us. In an anonymous poll of the AFL's captains taken at the Docklands last week, they were asked which teams (other than their own) would play finals. Hawthorn, Fremantle and Geelong were the three clubs who received a unanimous 'yes', but it was the lack of love for the Western Bulldogs that surprised. Only six captains tipped the Doggies to play in September, despite their great rise in 2015 under Luke Beveridge.
In The Age pre-season guide, writers who nominated their 2016 premiership team appeared to have forgotten about Hawthorn, well almost. Only two of 20 tipped the Hawks to win a fourth flag on the trot, and one of those was columnist John Silvester, aka 'Sly of the Underworld', who wears a Hawthorn guernsey to bed most nights. West Coast, with 16 nominations, was the raging favorite in that publication.
The Hawks extracted five of 18 first votes in a similar poll in the Herald Sun.
Carey confused over Lyon-Brownless coverage
The brouhaha surrounding Garry Lyon's well-publicised case of infidelity with the wife of his close friend Billy Brownless has died down somewhat, following Brownless' controversial 'tell-all' appearance on The Footy Show.
What has been interesting to note is the footy media's treatment of the affair, if you'll pardon the pun. Virtually all of Lyon's mates and colleagues in the media - and there are plenty, at The Age, Triple M and Channel Nine - have run for cover. Hardly any have popped their head above the parapet to offer a view on the episode.
Mark Robinson, at the Herald Sun, is about the only high-profile pundit we can think of who's come out with a punchy column that's been supportive of Brownless and critical of Lyon.
Which is in marked contrast to 14 years ago when Wayne Carey so infamously blotted his copybook by having an affair with the wife of his best mate, Anthony Stevens. Then, media commentators - many of the same ones who've remained so silent this past month - lined up to sink the boots into the wayward North Melbourne captain.
Little wonder Carey was heard to mutter this week about the hypocrisy of some of those involved - and how he, too, should have thought about nipping the controversy in the bud by playing the public sympathy card.
Will someone please challenge the Hawks?
Old hand helps out The Age
Strange goings on at The Age where the lead story to Monday's paper - about Hal Hunter's legal action against Essendon - carried the byline of long-time footy scribe, Jake Niall.
Nothing too unusual about that except Niall left the paper for FoxSports a month ago, exiting the Spencer St bunker after a ring-a-ding farewell party. He can now be seen hosting his own footy show on the pay-TV network.
The Age staff were on strike over the weekend and Niall's story - which had been sitting in the system for several weeks - was resuscitated to coincide with the Four Corners-Fairfax joint investigation that aired later that night.
Which way to the SCG?
Collingwood's season-opener at the Sydney Cricket Ground raises the question as to whether the Magpies will find their way to the ground in Moore Park. Just remember Sydney president Andrew Pridham's mocking comment after Collingwood expressed dismay at the switch from ANZ Stadium to the SCG which came without warning: "We've got perfectly good roads and I'm sure in 20 minutes or so, they'll be there."
Collingwood actually played its round 20, 2015 game against the Swans at the SCG, losing narrowly, but it was the first time the club had set foot on the grand, old ground since April, 2000. For even a veteran like Dane Swan, it was his first-ever game at the venue.