Another Tuesday where I try not to suffer a crippling injury on the Docklands surface.

The Marvel Stadium Surface

Docklands, Colonial Stadium, Telstra Dome, Etihad Stadium, no matter what you call it, the stadium surface is still unsafe for a high-paced human being.

After several players had the ground give out from underneath them in the Dogs-Swans and Saints-Suns games, the league will replace the huge sections of the turf that were torn out, and conduct a review into the playing surface, and then watch as some other poor bugger has his ankles destroyed in Round 2.

Former Brownlow Medalist Jimmy Bartel, who played at the ground on countless occasions, decided to impart his thoughts on Marvel.

“The AFL paid boffins millions of dollars to design the stadium and they built it the wrong way. Half the crowd sits there looking in the sun.”

“It’s one of the dumbest stadiums ever built.”

Jimmy Bartel on Marvel Stadium, Macquarie Sports Radio

In addition Jimmy, it doesn’t help that they quite literally built it on top of a car park… although concrete would probably be safer to play on.

AFL Scoring

Well the AFL’s goal of creating historical levels of scoring with the 6-6-6 worked a charm in Round 1.

“Low-scoring round one makes unwanted history”

The afl.com.au headline.

Eight teams kicked fewer than 70 points (The most in the AFL era), and just 3 teams kicked 100+ points, the fewest in Round 1 since 1991… when there was only 4 games.

In addition (Followed by division), the average score for teams in Round 1 was 78.7 points, the lowest in Round 1 since 1965… which had only 53.75 points per team.

But hey, at least the players had more space!

More social media Dickheads

Yet another case of discrimination against an AFL player popped up on Saturday night, when Eagle Liam Ryan was racially targeted after being reported against Brisbane, which teammate Nic Naitanui and West Coast CEO Trevor Nisbett called out for what it was.

Last week it was the Tayla Harris fiasco, and this week it’s Flyin’ Ryan.

Unfortunately, the Australian Financial Review didn’t quite know who Ryan was… and mistook him for Willie Rioli.

And it looks like Fairfax needs to do more as well, Trevor.

This spate of incidents has led to a terrifying message of promotion from one of the great minds in the game, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson!

I haven’t seen Clarko call for this much flooding since the Hawks stopped Brendan Fevola kicking 100 goals in 2008.

A Silky Milestone

If/when Shaun Burgoyne lines up for Hawthorn on Sunday, he and older brother Peter will have created history by playing in a combined 600 games (Many of those together at Port Adelaide), just the 2nd pair of brothers to reach the milestone, behind Justin and Simon Madden (713)

For the record, Shaun has played 359 games, and Peter retired in 2009 on 240.

AFLW Grand Final

Further showing the poisoned chalice that the AFLW are forced to drink every season, this Sunday’s Grand Final between Adelaide and Carlton at the Adelaide Oval gets underway at the ‘No-one watches sport on TV’ timeslot of 12:30pm local (ACDT), or converted, that’s 10am AWST, 12pm AEST, and 1pm AEDT.

Fortunately the game is on free-to-air (Channel 7), and the AFL made a shrewd move by putting two powerhouses in North Melbourne & Brisbane as the Early Sunday afternoon game (On Fox Footy)… The women are sure to get a bigger crowd now!

They probably didn’t want to try Sunday night again, after it went off like a stink bomb in 2014.

NRL

Sticking with the subject of knee injuries and dangerous turf, Brett Morris (Who I keep forgetting now plays for Easts) once again injured his PCL on the Brookvale turf last weekend, ruling him out for up to a month.

And quite understandably, he wasn’t impressed about Brooky.

“If it was the first time it happened to me I’d probably brush it off, but I’ve been to Brookvale twice now and my knee has dug in and I’ve had an injury as a result.”

“If a club lost a major player there would be a lot of uproar, especially a club building their season…. Say Newcastle, they went there and lost someone like Ponga, how would their fans and players react? Probably something we need to look at.”

Brett Morris

Morris has a bad history with Brooky, having suffered a similar injury while he was at Canterbury in 2015.

Between dodgy surfaces at the SCG, Docklands, Brookvale (And to some extent Perth Stadium), this is why I’m calling on the Mummy and Daddy investors of Australia to buy up shares in Turf companies! They’re getting paid millions a year to replace the green stuff!

Moving on, and it looks like former Knights star Jarrod Mullen isn’t in a good way.

After copping a 4-year drug ban in 2017, Mullen supposedly had a near-fatal overdose at Les Mason’s (Brother of Big Willie) 40th in December, and is now being investigated by the NSW Police for “Knowingly taking part in the supply of cocaine.”

Not a pretty tale.

Cricket

Here’s a pearler from Adam Zwar about the budding romance between Marcus Stoinis and Adam Zampa… featuring Tony Greig!

Racing

Sad news this morning, with the Champion Sire Redoute’s Choice being humanely euthanised at Arrowfield Stud at the age of 22, having produced progeny the likes of Snitzel (Now a Champion Sire), Samantha Miss, Lankan Rupee, Golden Slipper winners Stratum and Miss Finland, more locally for me, the Railway Stakes winner Galaxy Star, and of course, The Autumn Sun, who will probably now never set foot on a racetrack again and take up Redoute’s mantle at the farm.

No better time to whip out that epic 1999 Caulfield Guineas win against Testa Rossa as a tribute to him!