Gotta be Simmons or Priestman’s turn.
Speaking of sloppy seconds, does anyone know what the deal is with Brillante? From what I can see he was noted as “promoted” back into the squad the week they lost to Western, before they got absolutely mauled by City. He’s continually been named in their extended squads since, but then fails to make the match day team sheet.
So does he have a niggle or is he this seasons Antonis and has been banished by Psyko Rudan?
Wouldn’t surprise me if Brillante has plainly decided he’s looking for a seventh A-League club for next season.
Watch that Serbian criminal Milos Imalittlebitch pop up and score the winner in the 90th.
Burn down the stadium if so.
Why would we burn down our own stadium? Burn theirs down by all means, but burning ours down isn’t the own you seem to think it is.
Don’t burn down Commbank either.
Lot of good memories of that place.
Just be a little angry and meet them again in the finals.
Milos is dead to us
Aside from how the lengthy delays suck the life and fun out of the sport, my next-biggest issue with VAR is what it has done to the law-makers and the guidance they push down the referees.
In order to assist with the ten-minute freeze-frame VAR analysis, IFAB has been making the laws increasingly prescriptive.
Th most obvious example is the handball rule.
Before VAR, the 2015/16 LOTG contained a single dot-point in Law 12 - “• handles the ball deliberately”. Now, Law 12 of the current LOTG commits two full pages to handball.
Obviously there was more to it than that - the LOTG doc included a section on interpretations, and there would be different channels for guidelines to be distributed out to officials about specific nuances of specific rules.
But the outcome is that, where a decade ago how you’ve positioned your body was a factor in the referee assessing whether they think the contact with the ball was deliberate, now it’s expressly an offence to “tou[ch] the ball with their hand/arm when [they have] made their body unnaturally bigger”.
The difference may seem subtle, but in my view this kind of over-prescription has the effect of robbing referees of their agency to make appropriate decisions in the context of the game.
When I did my refereeing course two decades ago now (fuck I’m old), I remember asking a lot of nitpicky questions about the minutiae of the laws, and ultimately I would routinely be referred to Law 18 - Common Sense. At the time I found this deeply unsatisfying, but it’s something I’ve completely come around to since.
“Law 18 - Common Sense” is an unwritten law in soccer that is considered the most important of all the laws. It allows the referee and the game of soccer to retain their human characteristics. [1]
Law 18 overrides, modifies, and controls all the other written laws of the game. It gives the referee the discretion to interpret and apply the laws in a way that ensures the game is played fairly and with common sense. [1].
Some key points about Law 18 - Common Sense:
Overall, Law 18 - Common Sense is a critical part of soccer that allows the game to be played fairly and with the human element intact, rather than just as a rigid set of rules. Referees must use their discretion and good judgment when applying it. [1][2]
The more black and white the letter of the law is, the less latitude the referees have to resort to common sense.
Consequently, the correct decision (per the letter of the law) is increasingly the wrong one (per the spirit of the game), and this is where a lot of my frustration with the direction of the game lies.
Burning down Parra Stadium is actually traditional with a history behind it.
I mean I rekon I would take him back. Not the worst idea…. Prefer Brannerz though
He’s been bang average since he left us.
I can’t believe he’s only 31.
Nailed on for Auckland I reckon.
It’s not about bad decisions. Fuck, I can remember tours to India and Pakistan before neutral umps.
It’s not about the wash or the distribution of bad decisions.
Refs are human. They’ll make mistakes. I’ve no idea if we put enough resources into them, but I doubt it. But it’s not about making mistakes.
It’s about having someone off the field, watch a telly in slow motion 2 times telling the guy in the middle to go look at a wee little iPad and watch a replay in slow motion 30 times, and then sending off a player.
That’s the problem. I’ve got no beef with Thierry Henry’s goal. I do have beef with VAR fucking up in the Newcastle GF. I do have beef with VAR stopping the game for minutes at a time and then coming to a conclusion that is just as, if not more, controversial as the decisions before we got saddles with FIFA’s dumb fucking idea.
I love the artistry of football. And I love the emotional outburst of football that is really not rivalled by any other sport.
VAR has robbed me of one of them. I can get the artistry on youtube highlights, hours, days weeks, years after the fact. Why spend time for the moment when VAR will rob it nearly every fucking time?
Just my opinion, but I wouldn’t take him over Hollman.
Are they? With all the controversial decisions that ended up up a penalty or a red, there’s just as many that weren’t reds. I’d say the biggest issue that everyone is having is that there’s zero consistency in the major decisions. If you’re going to mandate reds for specific contact, then you should be doing it completely across the board. In the past, you couldn’t really do that, as you had 10 or so refs that would officiate a single game. Now, you have one or two people in VAR who are sitting there, who very much can do so. If a tackle of the likes that JGR made a month or so ago is a red, then VAR should be sending a message to the ref letting them know that it’s a red in previous games. In this case, VAR should have intervened to either stop the red, or to raise the possibility of violent conduct on the part of Cancar. That’s what people are actually pissed off about.
If you had multiple reds across the board for the same offence, then supporters would be slightly pissed, but they’d also be questioning why the players haven’t learnt their lessons. The fact that the same play can end up with offences ranging from, “play-on”, through to a straight red is absolutely perplexing.
How dare you speak ill of Miloš Dimitrijević
The one true Milos!
The positive i can take from the shit of the last few days is that Mak’s got some defenders in this situation even if he was often seen as not good enough or important enough for us.
He is hot and cold, often looks too hot and struggling, but if anything, as long as we make the finals i’d love to have him in those games. Looks as though some of our forward youths are also struggling to make the grade for whatever reasons with their minimal minutes.
That would take him level with Reddy and Golec iirc, and having only just turned 31 he’d be a real shout of going on to take the record in 12-24 months time.
Do it, you journeyman bastard!
Agreed, definitely not over Holman. I was thinking more of a cheap experienced sub
With his experience I don’t see him going too cheap. I reckon he’d be a solid starter for an expansion club or maybe the Jets, but that’s about it.
No repeat clubs please. 
He’s on a 2 year deal at Wests but I can see them getting mutual, he can continue his trajectory at Auckland or Canberra, then collect the gong at Perth. Done.