POSSIBLY the media highlight of the AFL's indigenous round occurred when ABC 774's capable boundary observer Kelly Underwood interviewed Carlton's Eddie Betts in the rooms after the Blues' triumph over Fremantle. In what became a rich celebration of the diversity of the human mind, Ms Underwood suggested to Eddie, in words fairly similar to these: "You got your team started off the right way. You had the privilege of tossing the coin, and you won. How did all that come about?"

It might have seemed to the less attentive listener that this was a request for information about how Betts had come to be contesting the toss instead of his captain, with a built-in prompt directed towards the special circumstances of the indigenous round.

At any rate, Betts' response was: "He called tails and it came up heads." No one could dispute the accuracy of the statement, even if the response may have been somewhat more prosaic than the one for which the interviewer was hoping. As one sadder but wiser footy commentator recently remarked after a pointed if obscure statistical inquiry was greeted by resounding silence in the booth, "You never ask a question you don't know the answer to." Sound advice, that.

Also lost in transmission were some of the entertainment highlights of the AFL's Dreamtime match pre-game show, at least if you were among the majority who observed these festivities via Channel Ten's no-doubt exquisite coverage. Only those at the MCG were privileged to note that to a substantial proportion of the crowd, the entertainment consisted of eight or nine powerful lights, trained on the retinas of the attendees — as if the latter were spies, and an attempt was being made to forcibly extract the location of enemy troops emplacements — and a certain amount of smoke. Nothing else on stage was visible at all, until the house lights went up at the end, revealing the spectacle of the Federal Minister for the Arts jigging around and singing. Whatever you might think about the US political system, at least they don't have to put up with that there.

Also probably less evident via television was the response of the Ponsford Stand football enthusiasts to being given those chemical camping lights, which now apparently rejoice in the title of "glow-sticks". What seemed like 50% of them immediately hurled their glow-sticks on to the hallowed turf to no readily apparent purpose. No doubt some of the more traditionally minded football pundits in the media referred to these patrons as "idiots", give or take an epithet, but there may have been a method to their madness.

After the AFL first inflicted "glow-sticks" on the Dream Team game, they may have gone to the well one "Dream" too often. Football is presumably glow-stick-proof for the foreseeable future.