Well we know the vast majority of our new players. We know who is staying. We know who ought to be coming back from injury.

New coaches, new attitude and some new blood...

where do YOU see teh Demons finishing in 2008 ?

I for one reckon 5th or 6th

hows about you

How come your poll worked and mine didnt?

Anyway, the Demons will finigh 4th

Dean Bailey will being unleash a dynamic style of football that will compeletly take the AFL by storm

This onslaught will be headed by the brilliant young brigade of Sylvia, McLean, Jones, Maric, Morton, Bate, Dunn, Newton, Grimes, Bartram, Meeson, Petterd, Frawley... ok I am running out of cyber-ink, to many young guns to name

  Yze_Magic said:

How come your poll worked and mine didnt?

Anyway, the Demons will finigh 4th

Dean Bailey will being unleash a dynamic style of football that will compeletly take the AFL by storm

This onslaught will be headed by the brilliant young brigade of Sylvia, McLean, Jones, Maric, Morton, Bate, Dunn, Newton, Grimes, Bartram, Meeson, Petterd, Frawley... ok I am running out of cyber-ink, to many young guns to name

well ...what can I say....lol...

but to the issue ...umm.. I agree that we wil be avery different kettle of fish next year.. I mean 07 was an abberation of sorts anyways but no so much it didnt disguise some major flaws. 1) a worrying real depth to some positions 2) a reluctance to bring on the newbies when it didnt really matter anyway. 3) an attachment to a style of play and persistence of some players in positions that reality just beggered disbelief !!

Something of our effectiveness will be graded according to the true fitmess of out first string players and I suppose whether they come to play. On that last but I will give al the freeby of accrding them the category that they have indeed come to play. This we couldnt say for sure in the past !!

I truly believe we are set up for an instant rebound but there are some teams with genuine merit.. and they will kep us out of the top 4 .. Happy to be wrong and YM right though !!

edit:

an afterthought

Also what this means is we are there to really play finals footy and not just make up the numbers.

I am back from the wilderness, big deal, while i am rapt with Bailey as coach and the emergance of some players last year namely Jones and Pettard, where we finish this will rest in the hands of our defence(and the Flash keeping his arse parked in the forward 50) Many wont agree but Miller is the man for the moment. at 193 cm he has the motor and strength to dominate the big forwards. every thing else has allready been said about him. the main objective of a key back is to make the contest and punch the ball. running out of the back line should left to the flashy back flankers. insert Brad Green.bottom half of 8 is looking good

I see us finishing between 5th and 8th next year. I say 5th just miss out on top 4 by 1 win. But with new coach and players and a energized spirit that will be a fair effort.

I also think if we make the finals we will be there to play, not make up the numbers

Top of ladder.

Straight Thru to Prelim.

Into Grand Final.

Premiership Win.

Bigtop in my jim-jammies.

I believe that it will all come down to how well the players are responding to our new approach... and also how well injuries are managed through the season. People were expecting great things last year, but you cant do great things playing without 18 of our best 22 out.

I think that finals footy is within reach, but im not sure if we will be THAT competitive next year in the finals. I hope we are, but we do have alot of young players who are still working at it, so when they are ready, we will be a real force. i hope.

But then again, it is 150 time, that could just spark us up for some realll foooty next year.

Personally, I cant wait. I just wanna see a demon size up judd, who was 'too good' for us. Lets hope he gets in the way of neita running full pelt, like that poor hawks player did, many years ago.. haha

I wanna know who is the pessimist who picked us as Bottom of the ladder.

Wake up and smell the Flag

9-12.

7th and 14th could finfish anywhere in between these, don't think we will finish higher but could easily do so.

Good run with injuries will see us finish between 7th-10th, or 11-13 wins

An injury run as bad as last year will see us battling out for the spoon.

We have to remember that a new coach will not bring instant success...just look at Ross Lyon during the first half of 2007. We may have to be patient in the early rounds of 2008.

I know its great to be optimistic and predict us to finish in or near the top 4, but we need to wake up and remember just how pathetic we were last year and that a rise of 10 places up the ladder will be a bloody hard achievement.

Scrape the 8 at best but I am thinking its 9 to 10 in 2008.

  Rhino Richards said:

Scrape the 8 at best but I am thinking its 9 to 10 in 2008.

interesting.

So given that most thought we we a definite top eight contender in not higher prior to the 07 season, and given that we have swept out all the dead wood and now have more miles in the legs of some younger bonefide talent. Add some genuine prospects better game plans together with more depth and increased coaching and support staff you place us no higher than 9 -10 !!

hard man to please...lol

I can see us around 7th to 10th next year if we play the youngsters and I would be ok with that.

I would prefer us to manage our injuries and play youth above anything else as we are not looking at premierships yet.

Most of all I want to rock up and see the team turn up to play like say North do each week. We are the worst in the league at putting in soft performances so would love to see Dean be able to get some lazy blokes to be more professional.

I see next year as a continuation of a transition phase for us.

Our biggest concern is our spine, Neitz will continue to slow down and we'll continue to try every man and his dog to fill the hole at CHF.

Our backline will begin to play more as a unit however we'll still struggle to contain the bigger forwards.

The midfield group will match it against anyone else however we'll lack experienced depth in our rotations, but the thing that will make or break it for the mids are the injured list. If Bruce, Moloney, McLean and Sylvia can complete a full pre-season and play most of the year then we should do ok in the centre (Did I see that Grimes has stress fractures in the back!?!).

In the ruck we'll be badly exposed with White also slowing down and Meesen still in the process of just trying to play consistent footy.

We'll most likely finish in the bottom four however the team will have taken great strides for the future.

At the end of the year we'll have some major retirements in Neitz, White, Robertson and JMac. Bruce will get traded for a first round pick and Holland, Warnock, Jamar, Weetra and PJ will all be delisted.

  Yze_Magic said:

How come your poll worked and mine didnt?

Anyway, the Demons will finigh 4th

Dean Bailey will being unleash a dynamic style of football that will compeletly take the AFL by storm

This onslaught will be headed by the brilliant young brigade of Sylvia, McLean, Jones, Maric, Morton, Bate, Dunn, Newton, Grimes, Bartram, Meeson, Petterd, Frawley... ok I am running out of cyber-ink, to many young guns to name

Lets see, Sylvia is yet to show much. Not his fault i know but there is evidence he will not perform due to injury. Maric is young and will take time to develop as will Grimes. Its not a superdraft and looking at last year, few players played each game that were drafted. Morton is young to. Frawley is good but has ordinary disposal and Meeson is yet to show a lot. None of these players in a team replicate much or anything better than finishing 13-16th. In a few years yes but not next year. My money is us finishing 12th but hopefully 16th

Our backline is suspect, but we will welcome back Rivers and Whelan. If they can stay fit the 8 isn't out of the question, Frawley will have to take a massive step and play on some big forwards, looking beyind 2008 we can't pinch hit with Holland.

Our midfield still looks a little on the slow side, but with Bartram fit he adds a bit of pace, if Maric is as good as people say play him as a forward pocket and put Davey through the midfield more often.

If Mclean,Sylvia, Bate, Bartram, Davey, Rivers, Whelan, Yze, Robertson and Neitz can all stay fit top eight is a chance and get on a few few runs who knows. I would like to see some consistancy in our performances the roller coaster seasons over the past 10 yearsboth year to year and game to game needs to be fixed.

top 4...bold prediction i know but we were in top 4 form in parts of 2006 with a worse list than we have now...i think (or hope) that bailey is a genius and we will get instant improvements next year along with marric winning the rising star!!

i forecast 1 more season outside the 8...probably 9th-12th...

thats not because i'm not confident in our list, but because i think we'll really start to improve when our draftees in the last 4 years hit their prime.

we're not gonna be serious contenders with Green, Bruce, Robbo and Carrol as our senior leaders...with Mclean, Jones, Grimes, Morton, Rivers and Bate however i see us pushing for premiership in 2009-2010.

1 more year near the bottom, giving us another great year of drafting, will set us up for pushing in 2-3 years time

  redandbluethruandthru said:

I wanna know who is the pessimist who picked us as Bottom of the ladder.

Wake up and smell the Flag

LOL

Wake up and smell the flag

I like it

We've made finals for a number of years now.

This year however, a lot of things went wrong. Not only injuries, but I think the coach's message fell on deaf-ears, our new game plan didn't work, we ended up relying on too many ordinary players and the list goes on.

When you peel back all the layers, we have some deficiencies, but which team doesn't?

The more time goes by, the less we rely on our senior players, and the better I believe we'll be.

There is no reason we shouldn't make finals in 2008 given that our kids keep progressing. We should expect improvement from all our kids, especially the likes of Sylvia, Moloney, Davey, Rivers, McLean and Bartram who all had big injury worries this year.

Apart from Neita and White, no key player on our list should be declining, and that can only be a good thing.

Besides, you just never know what sort of transformation Bailey will have on our list. We don't even know what sort of game plan he'll come up with.

At times, this team can and has looked brilliant. If Bailey can find the consistency that we've always lacked, than who knows what we can achieve.

Will we win the flag next year? No. But I believe that we SHOULD make the finals. We are not anywhere near as bad as we performed this year.

2007 was a complete disgrace and it should be wiped from the record books as far as I'm concerned.

Well surely the horror of 07 should be well behind us now? We could not suffer the same fate injury wise in 08? New everything in preseason 08, coach, assistants, Footy Manager, fresh ideas, ?a new voice for those who have had only ND as their coach. No favourites. Surely our play will revert to hard running, hard tackling and the teamwork that got us a long way into the 06 Finals. There seemed little wrong with that team for mine. The best thing about 08 is knowing that all of those players are still there and are capable of turning it on. New kids will be coming on Brock, sylvia, and Bell etc will be established players. I would think that we should finish around 7-8. IF we play under Bailey as our boys played under Northey, who knows! Could be top 4. That 87 side was tough, but this side in 08 can be talented AND tough!

  Yze_Magic said:

How come your poll worked and mine didnt?

It didn't work, YM, because your role is not to ask questions but to make pronouncements (and not necessarily sensible ones)!!!!

Anyhow, just watch all the opposition supporters pick us 15th or 16th for next year, just like they all picked North to finish last this year (as I also did).

We will surprise them all and I reckon we will finish 5-8 but could be a chance to finish top 4!!!!!

I reckon 6th or 7th, and we won't make it past the second week of September.

9th- 12th on the basis that the new draft picks will take time and theres a few players on our list im not convinced about + suspect backline but i hope im wrong