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 5 hours ago5 hr 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.