Random Discussion - NO POLITICS, NO RELIGION

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HBF said:
He's only 12 weeks old, and he's already turning his head to watch the TV when he's on his mat.
Even watched a bit of the cricket with me last night before he went to bed.
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Ours is due in 10 weeks. Mrs KohPhi asked me to pick a song to sing regularly to bump...
It's fair to say he/she will be well versed to the words of the Carlton theme song at birth!
 
Metalcrusher said:
OMFG .......











Or the night garden ... uppsy daisy .....
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In the night garden is the worst show on TV.

Need a study done to show if people are dumber for watching it, answer seems obvious given the content.
 
The upstairs bathroom is being demolished today. Bang, crash, smash... I applying the Bolton philosophy while I sit here. I’m getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

As for the cat. Delist. She scarpered before all the banging started.
 
BuxbaumBixby said:
You can challenge or disagree with me at whatever time you like - don't feel like you have to delay it.

My comment was based on a long conversation I had with a friend over a couple of beers who used to be 2IC at the Sports Commission - and one of the things he was responsible for was looking at the sustainability of amateur sport.

I'll have a dig around because there is a published study on this, but what he said - from a very academic standpoint - made a lot of sense. He had statistics showing that there was a noticeable decline in participation rates of most sports that required > 60 minutes commitment at any one time. This started through the 60's 70's and 80's and aligned with major changes to the family unit (broad statement but single parents and mum's working full time were stated as key changes and factors in the capacity for families to commit to sports that lasted long periods of time).

Cricket participation is up or steady - because of 20/20 cricket (a shortened version of the game). There is very little long form cricket played any more at club level unless you play in the top couple of grades. Most 50 over cricket at club level is now 45 or 40 over cricket. Many comps have dumped '2 day' games. New golf courses are being designed where every 6th hole takes you back to the clubhouse. One of the highest growth sports in Europe is Futsal where the game is over and done with in 50 minutes .... all isolated statements designed to support my narrative, but indicators of the way traditional sports are innovating to address change.
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To further the cricket discussion:

About 6 years ago (give or take) my local cricket club, where I've played for close to 20 years, found itself without any juniors. None. Basketball was the culprit at the time (realistically it was complete apathy and lack of attention from the club committee, but I digress...) because getting parents to commit to sticking out 4 hours outside, in sometimes ordinary weather, watching their kids spend most of the game standing around in the field, was simply too horrendous for parents to consider when compared with <1hr games in stadiums.

Since then we've set up a partnership with a local primary school, running clinics on a regular basis, to catch kids waaaaay early (5+ for Milo) and get them involved in short-form cricket. Milo clinics -> T20 Blast (round robin tournament) -> U/10s on Friday nights, done by 7:30pm.

The challenge then was retaining kids as they progressed to U/12 level. The answer: One Day games only for U/12s.

What about getting them to stick around for U/14s? Split innings for two dayers (each side plays half an innings per day).

Then you've gotta get them to transition to seniors. Whaddaya know, split innings for the lower grades too.

Attention spans are dropping. You'll always get some tragics who love the sport at its core level and want to play the traditional formats, but more and more people are refusing to commit.

Tying it back to the discussion at hand - I think there's absolutely a place for something like AFLX. However in my view it should be like indoor cricket/soccer - small casual competitions aimed to provide access to the sport for time-poor people. I really don't want to see the AFL try to create a national AFLX comp, it's unnecessary and defeats the purpose of the idea.

Run it a couple of years during pre-season to raise awareness, encourage local associations to run a comp for any local clubs that want to get involved, then let it grow organically. You'd probably find local clubs will be able to bring back the "ring-ins" who play a couple of games a year but don't have time to commit fully, and that's good for AFL in general.

As far as the international growth strategy goes...I really don't get why we need to venture down that path at all. Do the half a dozen little NFL teams rocking around the suburbs of Melbourne do anything for the NFL organisation as a whole? Colour me sceptical.
 
BuxbaumBixby said:
You can challenge or disagree with me at whatever time you like - don't feel like you have to delay it.

My comment was based on a long conversation I had with a friend over a couple of beers who used to be 2IC at the Sports Commission - and one of the things he was responsible for was looking at the sustainability of amateur sport.

I'll have a dig around because there is a published study on this, but what he said - from a very academic standpoint - made a lot of sense. He had statistics showing that there was a noticeable decline in participation rates of most sports that required > 60 minutes commitment at any one time. This started through the 60's 70's and 80's and aligned with major changes to the family unit (broad statement but single parents and mum's working full time were stated as key changes and factors in the capacity for families to commit to sports that lasted long periods of time).

Cricket participation is up or steady - because of 20/20 cricket (a shortened version of the game). There is very little long form cricket played any more at club level unless you play in the top couple of grades. Most 50 over cricket at club level is now 45 or 40 over cricket. Many comps have dumped '2 day' games. New golf courses are being designed where every 6th hole takes you back to the clubhouse. One of the highest growth sports in Europe is Futsal where the game is over and done with in 50 minutes .... all isolated statements designed to support my narrative, but indicators of the way traditional sports are innovating to address change.
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Wasn't exactly disagreeing, because what I know is mostly from my own area, and the statistics provided by the competitions my club in SE Melbourne is a part of.

While there is definitely an upswing in T20 related participation, it's translating into longer form games as well. Juniors begins at U10-11's with 20-25 overs, before expanding into 45-50 overs over 2 days at U15-16 level in turf competitions. My club is involved in three different competitions across juniors/seniors, and in two of those three - with the third being a senior turf only one day offshoot of Subdistrict - are increasing the amount of 2 day competitions, as more and more participants enter senior level cricket.

So when I hear the 'long form cricket is dying' song - and I hear it rather a lot - I tend towards cynicism. It doesn't marry with my own experiences, nor with the statistics I'm seeing, as the junior co-ordinator of my club.

For what it's worth, sorry for derailing the thread with unrelated stuff.
 
Blue__Balls said:
To further the cricket discussion:

About 6 years ago (give or take) my local cricket club, where I've played for close to 20 years, found itself without any juniors. None. Basketball was the culprit at the time (realistically it was complete apathy and lack of attention from the club committee, but I digress...) because getting parents to commit to sticking out 4 hours outside, in sometimes ordinary weather, watching their kids spend most of the game standing around in the field, was simply too horrendous for parents to consider when compared with <1hr games in stadiums.

Since then we've set up a partnership with a local primary school, running clinics on a regular basis, to catch kids waaaaay early (5+ for Milo) and get them involved in short-form cricket. Milo clinics -> T20 Blast (round robin tournament) -> U/10s on Friday nights, done by 7:30pm.

The challenge then was retaining kids as they progressed to U/12 level. The answer: One Day games only for U/12s.

What about getting them to stick around for U/14s? Split innings for two dayers (each side plays half an innings per day).

Then you've gotta get them to transition to seniors. Whaddaya know, split innings for the lower grades too.

Attention spans are dropping. You'll always get some tragics who love the sport at its core level and want to play the traditional formats, but more and more people are refusing to commit.

Tying it back to the discussion at hand - I think there's absolutely a place for something like AFLX. However in my view it should be like indoor cricket/soccer - small casual competitions aimed to provide access to the sport for time-poor people. I really don't want to see the AFL try to create a national AFLX comp, it's unnecessary and defeats the purpose of the idea.

Run it a couple of years during pre-season to raise awareness, encourage local associations to run a comp for any local clubs that want to get involved, then let it grow organically. You'd probably find local clubs will be able to bring back the "ring-ins" who play a couple of games a year but don't have time to commit fully, and that's good for AFL in general.

As far as the international growth strategy goes...I really don't get why we need to venture down that path at all. Do the half a dozen little NFL teams rocking around the suburbs of Melbourne do anything for the NFL organisation as a whole? Colour me sceptical.
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I don't see that at all; the majority of my juniors, from U11's up, are asking if they can play the age group above theirs, so they can play more overs. Of the U13's about 4 years ago, all of them stated their intent to play 2 day cricket; they are still playing for the club, just near finishing off their juniors, playing 2 days on turf. From that, they don't want one dayers or hit and giggle sport; they want to be challenged a bit.

People love to think cynically about the death of long form sport; people think that mobile phone gaming is the death of video games. Then you get releases like Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild.

Ultimately, there are always going to be trends, but this one I think is exaggerated.
 
Blue__Balls said:
To further the cricket discussion:

About 6 years ago (give or take) my local cricket club, where I've played for close to 20 years, found itself without any juniors. None. Basketball was the culprit at the time (realistically it was complete apathy and lack of attention from the club committee, but I digress...) because getting parents to commit to sticking out 4 hours outside, in sometimes ordinary weather, watching their kids spend most of the game standing around in the field, was simply too horrendous for parents to consider when compared with <1hr games in stadiums.

Since then we've set up a partnership with a local primary school, running clinics on a regular basis, to catch kids waaaaay early (5+ for Milo) and get them involved in short-form cricket. Milo clinics -> T20 Blast (round robin tournament) -> U/10s on Friday nights, done by 7:30pm.

The challenge then was retaining kids as they progressed to U/12 level. The answer: One Day games only for U/12s.

What about getting them to stick around for U/14s? Split innings for two dayers (each side plays half an innings per day).

Then you've gotta get them to transition to seniors. Whaddaya know, split innings for the lower grades too.

Attention spans are dropping. You'll always get some tragics who love the sport at its core level and want to play the traditional formats, but more and more people are refusing to commit.

Tying it back to the discussion at hand - I think there's absolutely a place for something like AFLX. However in my view it should be like indoor cricket/soccer - small casual competitions aimed to provide access to the sport for time-poor people. I really don't want to see the AFL try to create a national AFLX comp, it's unnecessary and defeats the purpose of the idea.

Run it a couple of years during pre-season to raise awareness, encourage local associations to run a comp for any local clubs that want to get involved, then let it grow organically. You'd probably find local clubs will be able to bring back the "ring-ins" who play a couple of games a year but don't have time to commit fully, and that's good for AFL in general.

As far as the international growth strategy goes...I really don't get why we need to venture down that path at all. Do the half a dozen little NFL teams rocking around the suburbs of Melbourne do anything for the NFL organisation as a whole? Colour me sceptical.
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When I was playing cricket about 8 years ago the club went through every senior player they had lost over about a 5 year period. Well over 50% were because of wives/girlfriends and a lesser extent family. Apparently they just weren't allowed to be away from the house for an entire day, where's football was much more family and partner friendly.
When it came to the junior drop off (after 12's) it was mostly put down to kids not being any good. Other sports like football, soccer ect you can suck and still enjoy where's cricket it's not a lot of fun making ducks and getting embarrassed while bowling.
 
Gethelred said:
I don't see that at all; the majority of my juniors, from U11's up, are asking if they can play the age group above theirs, so they can play more overs. Of the U13's about 4 years ago, all of them stated their intent to play 2 day cricket; they are still playing for the club, just near finishing off their juniors, playing 2 days on turf. From that, they don't want one dayers or hit and giggle sport; they want to be challenged a bit.

People love to think cynically about the death of long form sport; people think that mobile phone gaming is the death of video games. Then you get releases like Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild.

Ultimately, there are always going to be trends, but this one I think is exaggerated.
Click to expand...

Our club has those kids too, for sure, but in my experience if you've got 5 kids wanting to play a higher age group, you've probably got 4 sets of parents who are against it for a number of reasons (time, risk of injury etc.). I also suspect, without any real knowledge to back it up, that the kids getting into turf cricket are mostly in the "cricket tragic" category. My comp is synthetic, so it's more about getting high volumes of kids in young and accepting that there will be some significant drop-off over the journey from Milo to Seniors.

When I played juniors, it was pretty much the same team playing together for 6 years. Now it's 60 kids in Milo, 30 kids playing U/10s, 12 kids playing U/14s and 8 kids playing U/16s (with a few extras on loan from a club that had 15 players). Of our 8 in U/16s, 7 are playing senior cricket (rotating one into the 3rd XI each game, 2 in the 4th XI, the others playing 5th XI Father/Son) - which indicates to me that 15yrs is about the age where you can hopefully cement a player long-term.

I think there's certainly an argument to be made that, at an amateur level, there are a lot more demands on people's time nowadays that potentially prohibit long-form sport. Study, jobs, relationships, parties, other sports - they all existed 20 years ago of course, but it seems more common for people to drop an afternoon's sport from their schedule to accommodate everything else.

The core of my point though, is that AFLX seems to me a fantastic outlet for those time-poor people to enjoy their sport. I've got a baby on the way in a few months and I'm anticipating that training twice a week and disappearing all day Saturday is probably not the wisest of moves. I'll try to play without training if possible, but the fall-back for me is going to be a 45min game of indoor cricket once a week. Can AFLX do the same for footy - I think so.
 

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HavUEvaSeenTheRain said:
When I was playing cricket about 8 years ago the club went through every senior player they had lost over about a 5 year period. Well over 50% were because of wives/girlfriends and a lesser extent family. Apparently they just weren't allowed to be away from the house for an entire day, where's football was much more family and partner friendly.
When it came to the junior drop off (after 12's) it was mostly put down to kids not being any good. Other sports like football, soccer ect you can suck and still enjoy where's cricket it's not a lot of fun making ducks and getting embarrassed while bowling.
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"Weren't ALLOWED to be away from the house for an entire day" ... Lol
 
Blue__Balls said:
Our club has those kids too, for sure, but in my experience if you've got 5 kids wanting to play a higher age group, you've probably got 4 sets of parents who are against it for a number of reasons (time, risk of injury etc.). I also suspect, without any real knowledge to back it up, that the kids getting into turf cricket are mostly in the "cricket tragic" category. My comp is synthetic, so it's more about getting high volumes of kids in young and accepting that there will be some significant drop-off over the journey from Milo to Seniors.

When I played juniors, it was pretty much the same team playing together for 6 years. Now it's 60 kids in Milo, 30 kids playing U/10s, 12 kids playing U/14s and 8 kids playing U/16s (with a few extras on loan from a club that had 15 players). Of our 8 in U/16s, 7 are playing senior cricket (rotating one into the 3rd XI each game, 2 in the 4th XI, the others playing 5th XI Father/Son) - which indicates to me that 15yrs is about the age where you can hopefully cement a player long-term.

I think there's certainly an argument to be made that, at an amateur level, there are a lot more demands on people's time nowadays that potentially prohibit long-form sport. Study, jobs, relationships, parties, other sports - they all existed 20 years ago of course, but it seems more common for people to drop an afternoon's sport from their schedule to accommodate everything else.

The core of my point though, is that AFLX seems to me a fantastic outlet for those time-poor people to enjoy their sport. I've got a baby on the way in a few months and I'm anticipating that training twice a week and disappearing all day Saturday is probably not the wisest of moves. I'll try to play without training if possible, but the fall-back for me is going to be a 45min game of indoor cricket once a week. Can AFLX do the same for footy - I think so.
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Could do. I just really can't see how footy's that labour intensive or time consuming.

I don't know nearly enough about AFLX to comment on it, but I somehow cannot help but think that if the end for AFL comes, it won't be because it goes for two hours.
 
How ridiculous that the passport office doesn’t allow one to renew their passport for less than 10 years! I’ll be married before it expires which means I’ll need to pay again! Absolute bullshit!!!
 
BlueBelle said:
How ridiculous that the passport office doesn’t allow one to renew their passport for less than 10 years! I’ll be married before it expires which means I’ll need to pay again! Absolute bullshit!!!
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Easy solution , defer the wedding for 10 years :p
 
BlueBelle said:
How ridiculous that the passport office doesn’t allow one to renew their passport for less than 10 years! I’ll be married before it expires which means I’ll need to pay again! Absolute bullshit!!!
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don't they know who the * you are?
 
I’ve seen a number of Aussie flags fluttering today. Somebody opted for the boxing kangaroo as a compromise.

When I was young Australia Day didn’t exist. Colonial settlement occurred on this day which is an historical fact but it wasn’t celebrated. That all changed with the Bi-Centennial in 1988 when the traditional Aussie ‘Long Weekend’ was created. Then Economic Dries decided it should be celebrated on the day and that ****ed the long weekend.

When I was young I thought Australia would have its own unique identity in my lifetime. Alas either apathy or entrenched conservatism has prevailed where we have a foreign head of state and a flag with a Union Jack on it.

The problem with achieving big ideas is that we have had too many small minded leaders. So we don’t discuss the big three seriously. Reconciliation with the indigenous people of this country is treading water and has been for far too long. Becoming a Republic and changing the flag doesn’t get a look in at all. It’s easier to lay a wreath and get good PR for events that occurred 100 years ago.

Why shouldn’t the Aboriginal people of this country have its own representative body. They get * all from having established institutions looking after their interests.

Why shouldn’t we have a flag that represents all the people who live in Australia. The current one represents the past.

And a Republic of Australia. A President of Australia sound good to me. Not a great deal needs to change despite the bleating of the Tories. It’s just the usual smokescreen that has been used since time immemorial.
 
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