Breathless speculation this week that Buddy had dropped Charlie (the Charles Brownlow Medal) was just too much to bear. The last key forward to "take Charlie home" was ....

That's right! Buddy's chances of getting the Brownlow are akin to mine of getting the six special numbers on Saturday night.

Can we please get over this Buddy mania? Sure, he's an exciting player, but let's give the boy a chance to establish himself before we begin the beatification rites.

In the wake of his nine-goal haul last weekend, The Age’s Rohan Connolly saw fit to draw favourable comparisons between Lance Franklin and Wayne Carey. The Age must have been short of words for the day, because the comparison served up was so much confected nonsense.

While Franklin’s statistical output compares with Carey's, his on-ground presence is a shadow of Carey's. Can anyone seriously imagine Franklin today being seriously touted as the Hawks’ captain? Does anyone seriously think that Franklin could impose himself on a game and turn its course purely through his own efforts?

To put Franklin's effort into context, we should consider the Matthew Lloyd of 1999 and 2000 versus the Lloyd of 2008. In ’99 and ’00, Lloyd was near unstoppable, as Franklin (still only occasionally) is today. Both served by dominant midfields, getting the better of defenders was/is not insurmountable. The Lloyd of ’08 gets fewer opportunities, less favourably, because the midfield is being trounced. In these circumstances, it is becoming obvious that Lloyd is a more one-dimensional player than many would have thought.

The lone adjective not applicable to Carey was one-dimensional. When Franklin has, almost single-handedly, carried a team to glory in September, not once, but twice, it may be appropriate to start drawing comparisons with Carey.

News this morning that Essendon Captain, Matthew Lloyd, may be fined after making a comment on the report of Western Bulldogs’ Robert Murphy is worrying.

This AFL administration is no stranger to the notion of on-the-fly changes. In recent weeks we have seen the clear overreaction to an interchange issue, and a subsequent backdown on a crucial part of the “solution”.

The umpiring department regularly targets particular rules — it’s no use the AFL denying this, the proof is on show every weekend!

Now we learn that players are forbidden to comment on ad hoc changes that may have profound effects on how they can ply their trade. No other workforce would accept such restrictions. The AFL, in its single-minded determination to silence criticism from within the AFL ‘family’, is simply being precious.

A mature organisation avoids knee-jerk policy shifts, and so can compete effectively in the contest of ideas through weight of rational argument.