6 hours ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

You could listen to Champion Data analysis. Or you could watch an octopus point to club logos with its tentacles. Both are arbitrary; one is at least entertaining.

Brilliant. Put it in the same file as 'Expected Scores'. It's BS but providing a 40 year old in his mum's basement a source of income

16 hours ago, Adam The God said:

See, I was proved wrong on Collingwood. I was convinced they couldn't win the flag with a defence that gave up as many points as they did. And yet they did. And even when their defence leaked goals in 2022, they managed to make a prelim.

I disagree that our defence can't be good enough. And this is probably the thing, our defence, injury-permitting, should only get better as the season goes on.

Yes, we have some youngsters back there who may tire, but as we get more and more confident in the system and how to move the ball from back to front, and it becomes increasingly instinctive, our defenders will start to trust each other even more.

I think there's no reason to believe with the platform we've given ourselves, that we can't finish top 6, top 8. Forget top 10.

Until this week I was feeling like any talk of the F word should be played down. I'm starting to see this season more and more like a 'Why not us' season.

Edited yesterday at 06:361 day by layzie

So here's the thing about our leaky defence -

Against Brisbane we gave up five goals directly from unnecessary turnovers.

I don't think I'd be pushing it to say that a lot of the scoring against us this season has come directly from clumsy, inexperienced or simply poor communication turnovers.

Add to that an awful lot of ground given away because instead of going 30m further forward things got bogged in contests, loose ball chases or stoppages.

Cleaner play, more familiarity with teammates styles and the rhythm of the plan, and simply more experience should all take a slice off that turnover or bogged ball element.

That also greatly reduced the total amount of two-way surging we need to do, which means when we do have to rush back, we can keep up better with our opponents.

Anyway, it is hilarious and stupid that any headline could say 'threat to the top 10' and not much better to claim that specialist proprietary data unlocks the insight that there might be a reason to monitor a team which recently knocked off the reigning premiers and before that the ladder leaders.

It's a discussion about finishing 10th not about going deep.

How many games for tenth???

12 or possibly 11 and a good percentage.

Which teams are in that 6-14 band. Bit early to tell but we are definitely in the mix. Beat North and you'd say we can finish 8th. Stay ahead of Adelaide and Collingwood and we might even snag sixth.

Way too early and the Essendon loss is a very sobering reminder about crowing too early.

6 minutes ago, The Taciturn Demon said:

You could listen to Champion Data analysis. Or you could watch an octopus point to club logos with its tentacles. Both are arbitrary; one is at least entertaining.

Arbitrary?

Champion data's key stakeholders, and primary source of revenue, are the AFL clubs.

All of the data, stats and categories (eg speed of ball movement, pressure, player ratings etc etc) has been developed in response to what data AFL clubs have said they need to understand the game and increase their chance of winning a premiership.

Much of the data is available in real time during matches (watch fagans post match presser for evidence of that, and the stock AFL clubs put in Champion data stats)

That's almost literally the opposite of arbitrary.

7 hours ago, layzie said:

Until this week I was feeling like any talk of the F word should be played down.

F that

Not a lot of love for the top 10 here… wait until talk turns to ‘conferences’ (which it will) with the 19th and 20th teams coming in!

Averaging 101 against is obviously too high, with Bowey, Rivers, Salem, CJ all out we are missing some experience that will help.

The other factor is a new game plan takes time to settle, let’s see where we are at the end of the season.

I’m not sure who mentioned it or even the thread, but Collingwood were run & gun when McCrae took over, they are back to conservative keep the ball today. They had luck winning their flag, but most teams do. Let’s see where we finish playing style by years end?

My preference is play fast but we definitely need to improve our defence! Or perhaps how we defend is more accurate!

14 hours ago, Return to Glory said:

Brilliant. Put it in the same file as 'Expected Scores'. It's BS but providing a 40 year old in his mum's basement a source of income

Really don’t understand how anyone can call expected scores arbitrary. It’s clearly a useful measure; by removing only the kicking for goal it can help to understand how your team is going and is likely to go in the future. The data suggests accuracy in front of goal is largely random, so expected scores is shown to be a better predictor of future performance than actual scores.

It’s the same crowd who last year were criticising every facet of the club who are now spruiking that we’re a contender. And the same crowd will get so frustrating at times this year when we have bad losses and our young players show inconsistency. In reality, things are usually never as bad, or as good, as they seem.

Went and had a look at who finished 10th last year which was Sydney on 12 wins.

Interestingly at the exact same round as last year they were sitting on 2-4.

I'm pretty confident we will avoid relegation into Division 2 next year

Losing to Essendon really hurt.

A team that had lost so many in a row.

But beating lions made up for it.

We will reach top 10 but can we make finals?

13 hours ago, Little Goffy said:

So here's the thing about our leaky defence -

Against Brisbane we gave up five goals directly from unnecessary turnovers.

I don't think I'd be pushing it to say that a lot of the scoring against us this season has come directly from clumsy, inexperienced or simply poor communication turnovers.

Add to that an awful lot of ground given away because instead of going 30m further forward things got bogged in contests, loose ball chases or stoppages.

Cleaner play, more familiarity with teammates styles and the rhythm of the plan, and simply more experience should all take a slice off that turnover or bogged ball element.

That also greatly reduced the total amount of two-way surging we need to do, which means when we do have to rush back, we can keep up better with our opponents.

Anyway, it is hilarious and stupid that any headline could say 'threat to the top 10' and not much better to claim that specialist proprietary data unlocks the insight that there might be a reason to monitor a team which recently knocked off the reigning premiers and before that the ladder leaders.

Interesting. I've been thinking a bit about this. Isn't there an element that when we're encouraged to take the game on, we're going to take more risks and in doing so will cause more turnovers. Obviously some are coming from unforced errors - but there is still greater risk in picking out targets from defence rather than going down the line?

I like your prediction that we will likely clean up some of this as the team get more comfortable playing the style with each other. On the other hand, I think as the season goes on, more teams with go to work on developing strategies to shut us down. Hope our improvement outweighs the opposition's tactics. Whatever happens, it is a lot of fun at the moment.

The top 10 is a joke, it is next to impossible to win a flag from 7th or 8th let alone 9 and 10. There is of course a major reason why, the teams are not good enough if you finish 8 through 5th its because teams above are better and 9th and 10 are significantly poorer. As usual with the afl it is about the money. A small upside is that the season is not over in August for the teams in 9th and 10th or possibly 11th.

If you don't finish 4th through 1st you are just making up the numbers.

On 22/04/2026 at 11:24, Bring-Back-Powell said:

The main benefit of the top 10 IMO is not the finals format itself but the fact that there will likely be more relevant games in the later rounds than usual as more teams will be in the hunt.

As for us, I’m really hoping we can finish 7th to 8th in order to host a wild card final at the G.

I know I carp on about this all the time but, tbh, I can’t help myself.

If we finish 7th or 8th we should be straight into an EF against 5th or 6th. Instead, we’ll have to exhaust ourselves playing 9th or 10th instead and might not even get the shot at the EF.

All so that we can have more games of “relevance”, which is questionable given no one truly believes the sides in 9th or 10th can win the flag.

1 hour ago, old dee said:

The top 10 is a joke, it is next to impossible to win a flag from 7th or 8th let alone 9 and 10. There is of course a major reason why, the teams are not good enough if you finish 8 through 5th its because teams above are better and 9th and 10 are significantly poorer. As usual with the afl it is about the money. A small upside is that the season is not over in August for the teams in 9th and 10th or possibly 11th.

If you don't finish 4th through 1st you are just making up the numbers.

Of course history is on your side here. However, OD, this year finishing 5th or 6th might yield a significant advantage.

First final opponent is a lesser team coming off a do or die game, while 5th/6th can rest and reset.

And then the no other finals bye has proven some momentum value.

Not out of the question we make 6th… anything can happen!

2 hours ago, old dee said:

The top 10 is a joke, it is next to impossible to win a flag from 7th or 8th let alone 9 and 10. There is of course a major reason why, the teams are not good enough if you finish 8 through 5th its because teams above are better and 9th and 10 are significantly poorer. As usual with the afl it is about the money. A small upside is that the season is not over in August for the teams in 9th and 10th or possibly 11th.

If you don't finish 4th through 1st you are just making up the numbers.

Yeah, but they still have to play the games

Funny things happen

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by rpfc