13 wins has always appeared to have been the magic number to make finals. However in 2018, this may not be enough to sneak in.

The two factors in season 2018 as to why 13 wins may not be enough are as follows:

1.      The amount of rubbish sides that have already fallen off the cliff by round 12. In my below ladder prediction, I have not factored in 1 potential upset caused by Bulldogs, GC, Brisbane, Carlton and St Kilda on the top 11 sides of the comp that are all vying for a final spot. You could not fathom any of those sides causing an upset on the road home.

2.       The bottom 6 draws afforded to Collingwood and North Melbourne. As good as these sides have been this year, they will benefitted from an easy draw throughout the year, and this fact alone may see both of them nudge us out of the finals. While we have a horror last 6 weeks in terms of playing quality sides, Collingwood and North play a fair few bottom dwellers on the run home.

Furthermore, you only have to go back to 2012 when North finished 8^th with 14 wins and nudged out St Kilda with 12 wins and a bloody good percentage of 123. Similar to this year, sides such as GWS, GC and Melbourne couldn’t win a game to save themselves which meant that top 8-10 sides were winning more games than normal.

 

Here is my top 11 ladder predictor after round 23. I have factored in the 4 wins we should be taking care of (St Kilda, Freo, Bulldogs and GC) and a win over GWS at the MCG which looks like a touch task at this stage. The bottom line is we’re going to have to pinch another of those tough games to get to 14and be a certainty.

 

SYDNEY                                17-5

WEST COAST                      16-6

RICHMOND                        16-6

COLLINGWOOD                  16-6

GEELONG                            15-7

NORTH MELB                     15-7

PORT                                     15-7

GWS                                      13-8-1

 

MELBOURNE                      13-9

ADELAIDE                            13-9

HAWTHORN                       12-10

Don't disagree but I think Hawks with a good run home will take our spot

No September action for us once again

Ohhhhhh Dear?

I agree, I think, based on the losses to date, and the size of them, we will lose to

Port

WCE

Sydney

Adelaide

Possibly more.

I think we will miss the finals but hope I am wrong

BPP predicting us to miss the finals?

Get outta town!

Without stating the obvious, we need to knock off a Pt Adelaide or a Sydney otherwise even if we do make it, we are just going to be Pt Adelaide circa 2017 who were just making up numbers. Would I rather be making up numbers than 10th? Absolutely, but our worry is clearly that we haven't beaten a quality team all year (Adelaide and North Melbourne don't count IMO)

29 minutes ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

13 wins has always appeared to have been the magic number to make finals. However in 2018, this may not be enough to sneak in.

The two factors in season 2018 as to why 13 wins may not be enough are as follows:

1.      The amount of rubbish sides that have already fallen off the cliff by round 12. In my below ladder prediction, I have not factored in 1 potential upset caused by Bulldogs, GC, Brisbane, Carlton and St Kilda on the top 11 sides of the comp that are all vying for a final spot. You could not fathom any of those sides causing an upset on the road home.

2.       The bottom 6 draws afforded to Collingwood and North Melbourne. As good as these sides have been this year, they will benefitted from an easy draw throughout the year, and this fact alone may see both of them nudge us out of the finals. While we have a horror last 6 weeks in terms of playing quality sides, Collingwood and North play a fair few bottom dwellers on the run home.

Furthermore, you only have to go back to 2012 when North finished 8^th with 14 wins and nudged out St Kilda with 12 wins and a bloody good percentage of 123. Similar to this year, sides such as GWS, GC and Melbourne couldn’t win a game to save themselves which meant that top 8-10 sides were winning more games than normal.

 

Here is my top 11 ladder predictor after round 23. I have factored in the 4 wins we should be taking care of (St Kilda, Freo, Bulldogs and GC) and a win over GWS at the MCG which looks like a touch task at this stage. The bottom line is we’re going to have to pinch another of those tough games to get to 14and be a certainty.

 

SYDNEY                                17-5

WEST COAST                      16-6

RICHMOND                        16-6

COLLINGWOOD                  16-6

GEELONG                            15-7

NORTH MELB                     15-7

PORT                                     15-7

GWS                                      13-8-1

 

MELBOURNE                      13-9

ADELAIDE                            13-9

HAWTHORN                       12-10

Ha!  I had the same results when I did the Ladder Predictor this morning... then I looked at my tipping results to this stage of the year and realised that the chances of this being even close to accurate are 1000-1.

There are way too many variables to go into a single round of football, let alone half a year.  

No team has makes the finals in June.  Form, injuries and luck.

We won’t make the finals if we play like yesterday again

it was putrid ordinary

21 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

BPP predicting us to miss the finals?

Get outta town!

Prior to doing my analysis to the run home, I was convinced 13 wins would get us in. And 13 wins is what I'm expecting given our sample space against top 8 sides this year.

1 minute ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Prior to doing my analysis to the run home, I was convinced 13 wins would get us in. And 13 wins is what I'm expecting given our sample space against top 8 sides this year.

There is still far too much water to go under the bridge in terms of the season.  Injuries, form slumps etc. will all play a factor.  I can't see North winning 15 games either.  I still think 13 will be enough to get us in.  We have a chance after the bye to win 4 in a row (I think we can roll Port) and be 12-4 going in to the final 6 rounds.

24 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

We won’t make the finals if we play like yesterday again

it was putrid ordinary

and Collingwood were red hot and we still neaerly scored 100 points qand at stages were close enough. 

 

My point: we were bad, made to look bad, outplayed and out coached.. but it wasn't a disaster in my opinion.

9 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

I think we can roll Port

I too think we're a sneaky chance V's Port.

We've won 3 out of 5 there.

1 minute ago, Demon3 said:

and Collingwood were red hot and we still neaerly scored 100 points qand at stages were close enough. 

 

My point: we were bad, made to look bad, outplayed and out coached.. but it wasn't a disaster in my opinion.

It was saved of that with accuracy and Tom McDonald. 

Don’t let too many bandaids get in the way though, our midfield was slaughtered for the entire match

34 minutes ago, lucifer said:

our worry is clearly that we haven't beaten a quality team all year (Adelaide and North Melbourne don't count IMO)

I must rate North higher than others.

That game was a good win over a side that will finish top 8 and has taken a couple of scalps this season.

Yes, the Adelaide win doesn't stack up that well at the moment given how injury riddled they are.

I'd subscribe more to the 'we haven't beaten anyone' brigade if we hadn't smashed these teams off the park.  If they were run of the mill, poorly skilled and hard to watch wins then I'd be in that camp.  But we did what good sides do - we won, and won very well.  That's the sign of a good side.  We will have blips along the way, but no team goes through a season without a few losses.

18 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

It was saved of that with accuracy and Tom McDonald. 

Don’t let too many bandaids get in the way though, our midfield was slaughtered for the entire match

yep, agree on all that, could have been over at qtr time if it wasnt already, but thats footy. And our mids were horrible. 

 

i still cant get my head around using Brayshaw as a tagger. Mindboggling in my opinion.. totally bizarre coaching move.

 

11 minutes ago, Demon3 said:

yep, agree on all that, could have been over at qtr time if it wasnt already, but thats footy. And our mids were horrible. 

 

i still cant get my head around using Brayshaw as a tagger. Mindboggling in my opinion.. totally bizarre coaching move.

 

I don’t fully understand modern matchday coaching. 

18 blokes sitting in a box watching the game and nothing changes!!!!

32 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

I'd subscribe more to the 'we haven't beaten anyone' brigade if we hadn't smashed these teams off the park.  If they were run of the mill, poorly skilled and hard to watch wins then I'd be in that camp.  But we did what good sides do - we won, and won very well.  That's the sign of a good side.  We will have blips along the way, but no team goes through a season without a few losses.

https://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/tg-essendon-bombers?year=2000

Forget about the remaining draw. It’s all about taking opportunities when they arise. We get in position but have blown every main chance since 2016 to put us in finals lock in.  Yesterday we crapped ourselves again. We may win more games  but chickenshit attitude will hit us at the next crucial moment.  The form does not look good and needing a serious readjustment of headspace is not an understatement. ATM it looks like it’s not coming.

Wish Max had have kicked straight Rd1 ?

12 minutes ago, timbo said:

https://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/tg-essendon-bombers?year=2000

Oh yay, they only lost one game.  

My point is still more than valid.

18 minutes ago, Sir Why You Little said:

I don’t fully understand modern matchday coaching. 

18 blokes sitting in a box watching the game and nothing changes!!!!

Spot on. It seems all the coaching these days is done during the week.. very little on game day. Bizarre stuff. I thought we had a genius sitting next to Simon Goodwin in Craig Jennings? if hes a genius, then im Stephen Hawking.

We will play finals.

Yes, the Collingwood game was rank.... We were rank. That doesn't immediately make us a terrible team. We are a decent team who had a bad game.

Too early to start worrying about it, even though i dont see us beating Port next up.

Lets hope the team returns to some good form and we dont lose tons of percentage.

 

If we are who we thought we were on Monday morning - we will play finals. I am more interested in when we will have a win that show we have become a flag chance and I haven’t had that moment yet. It may happen this year but it might not...

I think we are out of excuses/reasons pretty soon.

Getting into the finals might be irrelevant if we play like we did against Collingwood. The team does not seem to cope well with the big stage and games with big expectations associated with them.

13 minutes ago, rpfc said:

If we are who we thought we were on Monday morning - we will play finals. I am more interested in when we will have a win that show we have become a flag chance and I haven’t had that moment yet. It may happen this year but it might not...

I think we are out of excuses/reasons pretty soon.

Pretty much agree. For me, that win needed to be Monday. I stated with friends a few weeks back if we beat Crows, Dogs & Pies consecutively then I'd be forced to put my MFCSS aside and openly embrace the band wagon. Clearly that didn't happen. 

Trying not to be too pessimistic about the rest of the season and too harsh on a young-ish group coming off 6 wins on the trot. Maybe it was the loss they needed...