SaberFang

He's gotten ahead of himself.

Fremantle: Dock-teasers

[censored] you Fremantle, tossers. Back to hating your pathetic, soulless club.

Sigh. Just for once in your existence can you not be a disappointing mess, Fremantle?

You suck Fremantle! Boooooo!

Dare to dream... too nervous to watch.

Yeah can't see the Dockers winning this, seems too good to be true. Pies are just too dangerous going forward and Fremantle skills are rubbish under pressure. Would love to be proven wrong though, Ross..... imagine starting your holidays knowing you cost the Pies a top 4 spot!

So close to another goal there, would've been 3 in a row. Dockers have to keep going, can't give the Pies a sniff.

I'm more nervous watching this game than I am about tomorrow!

Well said. Highly overrated and long may they remain so.

Well, after all that, we would've made finals regardless of losing our last 3 matches. Guess the egg is well and truly on my face. ?

Boy, wouldn't it be funny if Essendon win and it turns out we would've made finals regardless of losing our last two games? ?

I'm literally crying... I don't know what feeling this is right now... "Happiness" ?!

Shuey will be ducking and flopping like he usually does, racking up cheap frees all day long. It's in his DNA.

Guess I just take after the team I barrack for, considering they've created an art-form copy-pasting failure every year ?

I guess that's part of the madness. We've had so... many... chances... over the last 3 seasons and we keep blowing our chances. We've made it a fine art! The players all talk the talk when it comes to wanting finals but never show up when they have the chance to lock it in! 2016: Blew our second last match against wooden spooners Carlton, didn't even show up the week after (could've made finals with both wins) 2017: Blew our chance to make finals in Round 23 against injury-riddled Collingwood 2018: Blew our chance to reach 13 wins against injury-riddled Sydney 2018: Opportunity to secure finals in round 22 v injury riddled Eagles... ? 2018: Opportunity to secure finals in round 23 v injury riddled Giants... ? At least this year our superior percentage has given us a couple of bonus lives to end the year, but unsurprisingly we've already blown the first. It's long overdue this club stood up and delivered.

I've had a sick feeling in my gut all day today, when I was oddly calm and confident before a lot of other recent games like Adelaide in Adelaide. That seems like an eternity ago now. I'm predicting we'll blow it yet again today, and the exact same strategic deficiencies will be exploited by Simpson all day long. Goodwin will stubbornly refuse to make obvious structural changes and we'll never lead at any stage of the match. We will dominate hitouts but Eagles players will reap the benefits (again due to structural issues) and we will finish with at least +15 inside 50s but fail to convert into scoring. Despite the fact they're missing their 3 best players, their structures will hold up better and their experience with the ground will prove a huge advantage. The umpires will clearly have a directive to reward WC with every free kick imaginable and look the other way with us, to ensure the top 8 remains undecided until the final match of 2018. So all things considered, Eagles by plenty. 4+ goals. A few key facts: If that second point doesn't make MFC supporters sick, nothing will. I know we caused a huge upset last year but that final goal by T-Mac was one in a million. Replay that final minute a dozen times and we probably lose every time. We buckle under the slightest hint of pressure and the implications of losing today and needing to win next week will result in something of a self-fulfilling prophecy (where we lose both games and blow the whole season). Funnily enough, I'd rate our chances of winning both these matches far higher if they were occurring mid-season. But the context of our entire season hanging onto these two matches will change the way players approach the game, and sadly I don't think we have the mental fortitude to overcome these demons. Prove me wrong Melbourne, just once. Prove me wrong.

Excitement would be the last word I'd use to describe how I'm feeling about round 23. After the Eagles smash us today (we all know Melbourne is going to blow it... again), this entire week is going to be a slow-motion car crash as we wait for our inevitable capitulation next Sunday and the fresh new chapter in Melbourne's trademark book, "How to build supporters' expectations then crush all hope into a million pieces."

Win, we play finals. Lose, probably miss finals. GWS will be breathing fire next week and we're consistently shithouse under any sort of pressure (as evidenced by the last decade of abject misery). Our destiny is in the players' hands. No more excuses. Sick of the [censored] excuses. Every bloody year it's a fresh excuse for this bloody club! Go out there and win or remain perpetual losers, it's as simple as that. They got their one 'freebie' bonus life against Sydney and they [censored] it up in true MFC style. Failure seems to be in the DNA of this club. So it's time to put up or shut up, Melbourne Football Club. Supporters have had a [censored] gutfull over the last decade and you will have no one to blame except yourselves if this year ends with the 12th successive off-season of misery. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

C'mon now, that's just being offensive.

Absolutely, we would smash Port if we played them in the finals. Would be a dream come true. Just can't see Geelong dropping that game though; they've been handed the most ludicrously soft fixture to end the year. We can dream though!

It feels a bit like the entire season has built around that narrative, doesn't it? All the way from round 1 through to finals. Two agonising losses to the Dees in the H&A season and they get their chance of revenge in the finals. Third time lucky? Of course, I won't count my chickens before they hatch. We're still just as likely to miss finals as we are to make them.

Exactly. We have to win, it's as simple as that. We've blown our first chance of 3, we have 2 chances left. We cannot blow both.

Geez, I dunno, maybe the last TWELVE YEARS of missing finals and blowing every opportunity to make them? Might have something to do with it. We had every chance to book our place in finals last week and, yet again, we blew it. Why would anything be different tomorrow? We'll probably blow it again and everything will come down to our final match next week... and we all know how that'll end.

And they've still only beaten one team in the top 8. Let's not forget they finished bottom 6 last year thus got handed a gift-wrapped fixture for 2018. Funny how the media have completely ignored this fact. Doesn't fit Eddie's narrative I guess.