I haven't started a topic so thought i'd throw one out there! 

Where do we think the club is at in terms of it's premiership window? do we have the talent to challenge but are underperforming, has our football department overrated our list

very curious to hear peoples thoughts on this

With the changes in personnel over the summer its too early to know.

Picking up two hard running wingmen and possibly a rejuvenated Bennell to add to a midfield of Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Jones, Harmes, Salem, Brayshaw and others, the promise of Pickett, Rivers and Jackson as well as the return of Hannan and AVB, gives me heart.

Plus all are fit and, apart from Jones, none are old. The window is ajar and we have to find the way to fling it open and climb through.

2020 is almost gone due to too much disruption against WC and drons.

Go dees.

I think we are currently about a  6th to 10th  team, atmo.   But form isn't showing right now.

Talent wise, there’s no reason we can’t be competing for potentially a top 4 position. I think even outside supporters can see that.

We’re still very young and so few games played together which was evident in the shambles of Lever/May/Smith flying continually at the same pull in round 2.

Also - adding Tomlinson, Langdon and Bennell to midfield rotations will take time to gel also.

We’ve definitely over rated our key forwards.

I’m hoping for a top 8 finish this year with continued improvement over the next three. It’s just going to take time unfortunately which will be even harder without a gun power forward.

 

 

If we had a premiership window, this would be it.

i would hope that we're somewhere between 6-14th with the potential to push up into the top 6 with a bit of luck, and to drop into the bottom tier without any

essentially we're somewhere between a 1st to 18th ranked side

Hard to tell where any team is at the moment with everything so messy.

For what it's worth i have us ranked between 7th and 12th 

I feel the list still has some significant holes, i think our football department overrates some of our players 

and i don't really feel like we have a game style that stacks up at the moment, I feel our coaching is a little bit reactionary and don't see the same development of players that we had, had under Paul Roos 

for me the best 22 looking forward to our next potential premiership side is 

???????    Steven May     Jake Lever 

Christian Salem  ???????    ????????

Ed Langdon     Clayton Oliver    ????????

Bailey Fritsch   Tom McDonald   ??????

Kozzie Pickett    ??????????    ?????????

Max Gawn      Jack Viney      Christian Petracca 

I/c: Angus Brayshaw, James Harmes, ???????  ????????

 

So you don’t rate Last years Pick 3. 

We geared toward and then missed our premature window last year. Now we have to wait another two-three years. 

We are miles off.

One of the worst forward lines in the league atm. Backline has some good names, but is almost as dysfunctional. Midfield looks pretty good, and that is where most premierships are won, but we badly need a few of them (our mids) to become regular goal kickers for us to be some sort of threat.

This current list still needs to be churned over the next few off-seasons. I had my fingers crossed a couple of years back that we were In the window, but each step forward is such a tiny one. There have been no great gains for a long time. If you are waiting for this group to just "Click" you are barking up the wrong tree i reckon. Too many who still want to run one way, and no on-field leadership other than Max, unless you count all the Finger-pointers as leaders.

Where are my anti-depressants......?

2 hours ago, Patches O’houlihan said:

I haven't started a topic so thought i'd throw one out there! 

Where do we think the club is at in terms of it's premiership window? do we have the talent to challenge but are underperforming, has our football department overrated our list

very curious to hear peoples thoughts on this

Successful opposition teams play with structure, and an organised game plan - we have neither of those. So its hard to see us making the top 8. If we were able to implement a successful game plan then we would have some nice role players to compliment our quality. We do have a lot of quality, but its hard to see it when they are asked to do too much too often. We are blessed as a team to have the best ruck in the game, and best tap ruck to give us that advantage out of the centre - in theory. We also have a quality extractor in Oliver, and a capable tap gatherer in Petracca (who has clean hands also). But we waste our advantages because we do not have a coach who knows how to use them. Bombing the football into a crowded forward line may sound like a good strategy when you are in under 11's and goals do not matter, but in reality it doesn't provide the best chance to kick goals consistently, and if you do not kick goals consistently, then you don't win games, and you end up closer to the bottom of the ladder than the top, which is our reality. Makes our list appear as though it isn't in the window, when it should be right in the window. 

No where near a flag. This year we should be getting games into the likes of Sparrow, Petty,Kozzie, Jordan, Jackson, Rivers as these are the blokes that will aid in a premiership chase with the likes of Oliver and petracca as experienced players.

I would have us 8th-12th.

If things were to go our way, we could sneak into the 8, but it would be heavily reliant on other results. The consistency is just not there.

We have a lot of very one dimensional players and have kept players involved for too long, when they are not up to it or past it.

There isn't a single player on our list who would strike fear into opposition coaches/players with their ability to single-handedly win us a game. Clarry could have 40 and no one else would come for the ride, Petracca could have 25 & 5 but he'd be going it alone, Max could win every single hitout for the day and the opposition would destroy us in clearances by roving to him. Occasionally those scenarios could go in our favour, but not often enough to be a legitimate threat

Edited June 22, 20205 yr by BW511

We are years away from seriously contending. We are weak in all key positions and have little depth across the ground. Our list is seriously unbalanced with far too many mid-sized forwards, and few developing midfielders or talls. We don't turn over the list often enough and carry too many injury prone players. The lack of quality draft picks from 2016 - 2018 will hurt us for years to come.

We lack leadership and star quality, and hence we don't perform at a consistently high level across games either as individuals or as a team. Our coach rarely looks capable of swinging games in our favour. We rarely get selection right either.

I keep reading that we are a young team, and in some respects we are, but Gawn, McDonald and May are all 28 or older before the end of this season. These guys are our three most important players. All will be 30 plus by the time we challenge again and there are no replacements in the wings.

This is a weird season and maybe we could fluke a finals spot with a lot of luck, but really it would be a false dawn. 

 

 

On paper at least we have an elite back line and on all brigade, but our forward line is bereft of anyone trustworthy enough to perform well on a weekly basis. We CAN finish # 5-7 , but alarmingly if nobody stands up regularly to kick 3-4 goals a week, we are potentially a # 12-14 position side

9 minutes ago, joeboy said:

On paper at least we have an elite back line and on all brigade, but our forward line is bereft of anyone trustworthy enough to perform well on a weekly basis. We CAN finish # 5-7 , but alarmingly if nobody stands up regularly to kick 3-4 goals a week, we are potentially a # 12-14 position side

8th to 18th.   Anything higher is based on the our best is as good as anyone gamestyle. As recently as Sunday Goody said he wants Weideman and co leading and bringing the ball to ground, not leading hard and going for a mark, leading and bringing it to ground. 

10 hours ago, Patches O’houlihan said:

I haven't started a topic so thought i'd throw one out there! 

Where do we think the club is at in terms of it's premiership window? do we have the talent to challenge but are underperforming, has our football department overrated our list

very curious to hear peoples thoughts on this

1205 am on the clock

I don’t think we are a mile off as my Demonland brethren above think. Even with our list massacred and our horrible lead in to the season, we were the fifth ranked team for inside 50s in 2019. The forwardline is the issue. 

We’ve added some outside run to the midfield and have plenty of weapons to rotate through the centre. We have arguably the best up and coming weapon in the league with Petracca. And yes, one player can make a sizeable difference.

The backline isn’t the best in the league by any stretch but has enough quality if they can get game time together. They didn’t have their best day against Carlton but have looked okay in pre season and round 1.

The forwardline however just isn’t anywhere near consistent enough. How that gets remedied quickly with the cattle we have I’m not sure, but our fortunes rest on it.

I think we are doing a bit of a refresh this year in order to be primed for 2021 onwards.

We have a good young core, but we will see the likes of Jones and Hibberd transitioned out of the team, in favour of getting games into some young guys like Rivers, Pickett and Jackson. Even getting some games into Bennell with an eye firmly on having him 100% ready to go next year.

In saying that, we are desperate for either TMac to get back to his best, or Weideman to come on quickly, otherwise we might be in strife.

I think mid table this year, pushing up into the 3-6 bracket 2021/22.

Just remember our core midfield of Brayshaw, Oliver, Petracca, Langdon, are all still under 90 games. Add the likes of Viney who is on 122 games and even Harmes who's also on 91. Who haven't even peaked, and our best is yet to come.

I'd still like to somehow fit Tom Sparrow in there. Rate him highly.

I really felt we were primed to return to the top 6 with a bang this year.  Burgess had the boys fit, we saw in the Marsh series our ability to pull away in the last qtt with that added fitness. COVID and reduced quarters has gone and [censored] that for us and we now relying on maintaining what we did to Carlton in the first. 
I hope somehow we can consistently replicate that throughout a game but I fear opposition will adapt and overcome our fast starts. 
We have the cattle but we have a hobby farmer running the show. 
I strongly believe if we had Clarkson we’d be a much better outfit. 

Any answer is really only guesswork at the moment 

We need another 4 or 5 games to get a decent picture 

Rank is anywhere from 9th-16th. We are a bottom 8 team. That’s fact now. We were 17th in 2019 and currently sitting 14th. 2018 was an aberration, that’s been shown now.

Our forward line is probably the worst in the league at this point. Woefully inaccurate set shots. No key forward contributing, inconsistent mid sized forwards, poor defensive pressure and lack of crumbing (Pickett potential, but is one game into his career).

Our backline is good, our midfield is ok but lacks class and defensive accountability. Too many poorly coached inside see ball get ball types fighting each other.

Coaching against us is probably the easiest job in footy now. Sit players outside the contest, watch our dumb mids all charge in bashing into each other only for it to come out and be cleared with ease by waiting opposition mids. Sit player on defensive 50 line towards boundary and gobble up long bombs to no one. 

We’re two-three years off seriously challenging again, but may scrape into the 8 next year onwards.

Edited June 23, 20205 yr by Lord Travis

25 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Just remember our core midfield of Brayshaw, Oliver, Petracca, Langdon, are all still under 90 games. Add the likes of Viney who is on 122 games and even Harmes who's also on 91. Who haven't even peaked, and our best is yet to come.

I'd still like to somehow fit Tom Sparrow in there. Rate him highly.

I’d argue Viney and Brayshaw have peaked and Langdon and Tomlinson are about at their best. Brayshaw needs to add a string to his bow to stay in the side. Tomlinson is a fringe role player. Langdon’s very valuable but it’s hard to see improvement. Obviously Viney bouncing back would be great but it’s hard to see him being better than he was a few years ago.
 

Petracca and Oliver have untapped potential, and Tracc has taken big step forward this year. Oliver’s clearly coming from a higher base but he has to start rounding out his game to go to the next level, If not now then when? 

The biggest concern with the midfield is the imbalance with a lack of positional flexibility, speed, skill and defensive pressure. The coaches are desperate for Vanders and Bennell, and if I was the midfield coach I’d want Salem and Harmes as options too, but someone has to play half back!