16 hours ago, Timothy Reddan-A'Blew said:

Please let today deliver lessons for next week, not learnings.

And the difference is?

18 hours ago, Diamond_Jim said:

Looking like Crows next week.

Straight sets a definite possibility

There's MFCSS, now there's even anticipatory MFCSS!

I hope the club has been on the phone seeking clarity around Zanker’s availability this morning.

Obviously her wellbeing is the number one priority especially in light of what happened to the Storm player while on national duty for Tonga.

37 minutes ago, mauriesy said:

There's MFCSS, now there's even anticipatory MFCSS!...

...a disease 'aerosol borne' at Princes Park on consecutive weekends at the (our) end of Season 8. I caught it there, having lowered immunity from other consecutive weekends, in 2022 and 2023.

2 hours ago, mauriesy said:

And the difference is?...

...between English and clichésh 😉

Edited November 10, 2025Nov 10 by Timothy Reddan-A'Blew

22 hours ago, Big Gun said:

We have a much younger side overall and it showed a bit today. They will be much better for experiencing a hard finals game and with continued smart recruiting, especially with running mids, I’m very optimistic for our future. Put Chaplin, Purcell, Zanker and Goldie in today and may have been quite different.

This is it for me. It went about as expected (from my point of view, actually better!) given where I see the team currently. Too reliant on a few players at the top (Kate, a huge game). The "bottom 6", despite having some really encouraging shining moments (that O'Hehir tackle, Wotherspoon's increasing impact, Mahony's first goal, pressure from Rigoni), a lot couldn't sustain for the whole game. Meanwhile, too many others with more experience went missing or let themselves down in big moments - Paxman, Lampard, McNamara, Bannan, Harris, to name a few.

Still, it's not often you get to measure against the same opposition in such quick succession. And if you look at the team we had two weeks and ago compared to this week, and the team they had, Brisbane stacked on plenty more experience, while we lost heaps (that's the technical phrasing). And yet, a similar result.

Of course, injury becomes a worn-out excuse, and great teams can play through the loss of a few. We're just not there yet. Where we are this year (a roughly 5-6 ranked team on a proper ladder), is where I thought we'd get to last year, if not for the injury plague then. The finals experience is really valuable for those 6 players of ours in their first final.

Despite all that, the result and the path it leads us on in this campaign is disappointing. Our players need to be more ruthless, better able to own the big moments and bounce back from adversity (umpire lottery included). On the plus side, the continued push into the last quarter was a good sign, I thought, and if there'd been more players with enough left, especially to tighten up down back, who knows.

The deficiencies aren't going to go away overnight, but we can hope for a lift from several players and another step forward for the young brigade. Time to fire up now and give it a red hot crack!

5 hours ago, spirit of norm smith said:

Accurate goalkicking. That was a huge difference v Lions, indeed all season our accuracy has been poor.

I agree and actually accuracy has been a problem since pretty much day dot. It's just that for many years we got away with it through sheer weight of i50s.

4 hours ago, mauriesy said:

I think someone like Aimee Mackin would have been good too.

The forgotten one! Will be interesting to see what happens there. Two plus years without playing Aussie Rules and will be 29 by the start of next season...

2 hours ago, Dee Viney Intervention said:

I hope the club has been on the phone seeking clarity around Zanker’s availability this morning.

Obviously her wellbeing is the number one priority especially in light of what happened to the Storm player while on national duty for Tonga.

She's since been ruled out 'Dee Viney' and in concussion protocols...

As you say, number one priority is her wellbeing.