Shane Crawford came out all guns blazing in his column in The Sunday Herald Sun, labelling Melbourne's decision to remove Brent Moloney from its leadership group as a "cop-out".
Crawford, as Judge Judy, had a better solution - he would have dropped Moloney from Sunday's match against Gold Coast at the Gabba.
Why? His view was that it was better to take away what players love doing - ie. play - than to take away leadership roles; in the case of Moloney this included the vice-captaincy of the Demons.
His argument was that Moloney's long-held goal of captaining Melbourne could still happen.
It seems to Media Watch is that Crawford is underestimating the importance of the modern leadership group, and the pride players have in taking such roles within AFL clubs.
Crawford was having none of this, claiming that by not dropping Moloney Melbourne missed an opportunity to stamp authority over its playing group.
"It's time for Melbourne to make a stand.
"The club has accepted mediocrity for far too long. If the Demons stick together, they have a real window of opportunity.
"If they don't, then they will just be another side that teases and frustrates their supporters once again."
D-Day for Kangaroos
It must be a weekend for having shots at clubs on the way up - or at least those needing to climb the ladder.
Matthew Lloyd had his sights on North Melbourne, lining up for its first match since captain Brent Harvey unloaded on the team's young players after the club's disappointing loss to Collingwood in round two.
A bye has given the Roos time to get together and discuss home truths, something that Lloyd wrote had also happened during his reign as captain of Essendon.
He recalled a time when he led sides to seven straight losses, and during those dark days "peer assessment sessions at the club aren't pretty".
He wrote: "the microscope is on every single individual who runs down the race to represent North Melbourne today, none more so than Harvey."
The Kangaroos face up to Fremantle in Perth, their second trip west from three rounds, a tough task for any club much less one under the spotlight.
Lloyd proclaimed: "Today is the day for North Melbourne to stand up and become a significant player in this competition."
We live in interesting times - in the frenzied world of modern media, opinions are made before the seeds of a season have sprouted. Already, according to many, St Kilda's season is shot, so is Richmond's, North must step up, Melbourne needs to be tougher with its players, the sub rule is a mistake, accuracy is down because of the sub rule, the sub rule is a winner, the Karmichael Hunt experiment is a failure, and nobody will go to GWS.
We look forward to more doom saying through the week.
To sledge or not to sledge?
Geelong's brilliant midfielder Jimmy Bartel answered the question he's often asked in his column in The Sunday Herald Sun. Well, sort of.
He wrote that the way the game has developed - into a speedfest - he was usually too exhausted to think up witty lines, and that sledging was all but disappearing from the field of battle.
He had two basic premises to his article: the first, was that sledging used to be a significant part of the game, especially when the Brisbane Lions were running the show in the early 2000s, not so now; the second, was if a teammate were to do it, pleased don't sledge his - ie. Bartel's - direct opponent.
"The worse thing is when your teammate starts sledging your direct opponent and not his own.
"This normally is a bad thing because it fuels them to go harder and therein lies the risk.
"What if that perfect one-liner gets used as motivation and makes your opponent go harder - creating a monster?"
LARS option to be considered by Bombers
Essendon football manager Paul Hamilton told the Seven Network's Game Day program that the club had not ruled out the LARS surgery option for Jason Winderlich and Courtenay Dempsey, after each suffered season-ending ACL injuries during Saturday's draw against Carlton at the MCG.
"We'll look at what's right for each of the lads," he said, noting that the LARS method was not suitable for all knee injuries.
"We'll leave it to the doctors and the surgeons to discuss and come up with the best option."
Hamilton said that MRI scans would define the extent of each injury, but it was clear that the season was over for each player.
He added that scans in the next 24 hours would reveal whether Mark McVeigh had suffered a broken hand in the same game.
McVeigh told Nine's The Footy Show that he believed his hand was swollen, but not broken. "I had it iced through the night, and I feel this morning that it's not broken, just bad swelling."
He was to undergo x-rays later on Sunday.
(LARS refers to the use of artificial ligaments in the rebuilding process - as in Ligament Augmentation and Reconstruction System.)
