I picked us to beat Carlton and Collingwood (on QB), but that's more wishful thinking than a realistic prospect.

So 8 wins it is.

This year's draftees will struggle to win rising star as Hurley, Watts and Ziebel are all still eligible.

If skully plays more than 12 games he will win the rising star for 2010. he reminds me of a former Fitzroy great - Gary Wilson. Similar build. Terrific 'blink and miss' hand skills. This kid can catch arrows in mid air.

Put me down for 8 wins next year.

Would be looking for 8 to 10 wins, anything less than 8 would be a disapointment, we could have easily won 6 this year.

This year's draftees will struggle to win rising star as Hurley, Watts and Ziebel are all still eligible.

True, although I think Ziebell in the greatest threat of those three.

It'd be great if Watts won it, but I think Ziebell and Trengove are the favourites.

I think we will all be very surprised with how many wins we will have in 2010.

In 2008 we had many thumping losses, in 2009 we still lost games but we had VERY FEW blow outs and a few games were just lost. i recall watching the game against the dogs, we were quite impressive and disappointing to lose by the 2 goals. And the Geelong game (you know where ablett kicked the goal in the first 2 seconds), even though we lost by 40 odd, the boys looked like they were working well. Just my thoughts..

I think 7-10 games look likely, I'm hoping 10, that way we can play finals..

very good post, you can say exactly the same thing about the Saints game r22, the final result looks very average but the facts are these were the top two sides and we more than matched it with both of them for long periods in each match. What we saw was our kids eventually being run down by more experienced and developed sides... as we go on the bulk of the side is just getting better and better

Definitely expecting to jag a couple of wins off some top sides and also to demolish a couple

Interesting to see the numbers for each game.

I've put us down for wins on a couple of games that are really only maybes, so the number of games tipped is higher than the 7-8 I think we'll win. My votes:

Richmond

North Melbourne

West Coast

Port Adelaide

Essendon 50-50

Fremantle

Sydney 50-50

Richmond

Port Adelaide

North Melbourne

The games against Essendon and Sydney I regard as 50-50 because there is no way to know how they will look next year. Both have had some very significant changes to their lists and could well find themselves struggling, especially towards the end of the year when injuries take their toll. If their new-look forward lines work out, they may well still prove too strong for us, but if they don't I think we can take both sides.

It'll be interesting to see how much missing Brock effects us this year.

I've just started thinking the last couple of days, that we could miss his experience and leadership in the middle this season.

Don't get me wrong, I still think we're on the improve, but when we miss one of our better midfielders it's a blow.

Realisticaly I think 5-8 is possible and on a side note I think Tappscott will be the jumper for this year with his big boot and body I thinkk he will be leading the way as far as our boys are concerned and if he gets enough games could easily get the rising star award

The great thing is that there's four legitimate chances for the Rising Star award in Watts, Scully, Trengove and Tappy.

At least 50% of pollsters believe that we will beat:

Richmond

North Melbourne

West Coast

Port Adelaide

Essendon

Fremantle

Sydney

Richmond

North Melbourne.

This would leave us with 9 wins.

45% of pollsters believe we will win 7-8 games compared with 31% who voted for 9-10

At least 50% of pollsters believe we will finish above:

Fremantle

North Melbourne

Port Adelaide

Richmond

This would leave us in 12th.

7-10 wins and a finish of 10th-13th sounds about right to me. Hopefully with a good run of injuries and some good form we can make the most of our home games early on and make a run from there.