1. What is Carlton waiting for with Brett Ratten's new contract? I mean, do they seriously think there's someone better out there to coach the Blues? Carlton was a free kick away from one of its great wins on Saturday night. The club has exceeded expectations all season. Many pundits - including BPL's esteemed Ashley Browne - thought Ratten would fall flat on his face this year, as the Blues missed the finals altogether. Not only has he stood tall, but the development of Mitch Robinson, Lachie Henderson, Chris Yarran, Nick Duigan, Jeremy Laidler, Andrew Walker and several others has shown he can not just manage established stars but bring on emerging players as well. And yet he's still forced to answer questions at the weekend about whether he thinks he'll be reappointed or not. Ridiculous.

2. Mark Neeld is a great appointment by Melbourne and will be one of the revelations of 2012. That's our early tip. Too many people at Richmond, Collingwood, on the Bellarine Peninsula - specifically Ocean Grove - and the school where he teaches, Geelong College, have got too many positive things to say about him for it not to mean something. And he's done his apprenticeship the hard way - via years in amateur and country footy - not the James Hird/Nathan Buckley/Michael Voss star-player route, where top jobs just magically become available. The Demons mightn't have a West Coast-type transformation next season, but the club's fortunes will start to head very much in a northerly direction.

3. It ill-behoves the Perth media to start coming on all macho with Ross Lyon when he turns up for his first Fremantle media conference on Thursday. What a joke. Where were these tough guys when the Dockers' CEO Steve Rosich rang Lyon on September 4 to gauge his interest in the Dockers' job, and for the 12 days of negotiations Freo had with the then Saints' coach after that? The AFL has about five - or is it 15 now? - accredited reporters for every player. Yet, this group which earns its living by reporting on the code didn't get a whiff of the biggest AFL story since, well, Karmichael Hunt's defection from rugby league a couple of years ago. And that heist was pulled off under everyone's noses, as well.

4. Perhaps the one thing to be said in their defence is that Craig Kelly, the boss of ESP, an ironic acronym if ever there was one, didn't know a thing about the Lyon deal, either. That's what happens when several coaches are among your stable of clients. The interests of one client might well conflict with the interests of another, hence Lyon's entirely justifiable decision to freeze ESP out of his negotiations with Freo. And then make a St Kilda administration pay for sitting on its hands for far too long - as captain Nick Riewoldt bemoaned today.

5. It can be a messy business having to manage coaches when they're coming out of contract and other clubs come calling - and the order of the day suddenly becomes secrecy and subterfuge. Kelly would know this better than most. His company was managing Terry Wallace when Wallace quit the Western Bulldogs late in the 2002 season - supposedly because the Sydney Swans had made the coach a huge offer to move north. That was all fine - until Swans' caretaker Paul Roos managed to win six of his nine games in charge late in that same season. The huge groundswell of support for Roos as coach was something the Swans' hierarchy simply couldn't ignore - so 'Plough', much to his chagrin, was left on the outer. That left Kelly in a tight spot, too, and with much explaining to do. Come to think of it, we're still waiting for a full explanation of that murky episode.

6. And, just to confirm that AFL coaching is close to the most transient, temporary and tenuous job that exists in sport, the coaches of the top six sides in 2010 - which would be all of 12 months ago - will not lead those teams into the 2012 season. The Disappearing Six? Mick Malthouse, Mark Thompson, Ross Lyon, Rodney Eade, Paul Roos and Mark Harvey.

7. While we're paying out on others, time for a self-serve. We gave Buddy Franklin no chance of being fit for the semi-final against Sydney. In fact, someone with the initials CH - from BPL - said on ABC radio on Monday afternoon anyone could have odds of 150-1 with him on Franklin playing. Luckily it was a brief segment and clever punters didn't have a chance to swamp the ABC phone lines. So memo to self: don't make medical diagnoses from 150 metres away. And stick to things you know something about (second memo to self: find out what that is.) And congratulations to the Hawthorn medicos and physios, and Franklin himself, for pulling off the recovery of the year.

8. Remind me again why Josh Kennedy, who has brown and gold running through his veins, was let go by Hawthorn ....

9. Campbell Brown and Maverick Weller might have spent a night in a Thai jail, but they're still the luckiest footballers in Australia. Because no sooner did the reports emerge of their wild night at the Full Moon party in Koh Phangan than the AFL v AFLPA bout went into its 12th round, Ross Lyon decided to choof off to Fremantle and then Buddy led the Hawks into a preliminary final. And amid all that news, Brown and Weller have pretty much disappeared into the night, giggling at their good fortune. In a quiet news week, things might have been quite different.

10. OK, the preliminary finals. Can't go past the favourites in both games - Geelong and Collingwood. But reckon the Cats will have a much easier time of it after West Coast got pretty banged up in their torrid semi-final against Carlton. So the Cats by at least five goals. The Magpies, however, will have a real fight on their hands against a Hawthorn side that might be feeling now that fate is starting to smile on it. We can see the Hawks holding nothing back, being very unsociable and running the Pies very close indeed.