von

Not true. You still need enough top A grade talent and the best bottom six etc. it probably just helps seperate the top 4 from each other and probably always has.

That sounds awfully reasonable

Makes sense to me. Especially given our start to the season. Look at what will get top four and play for that and put as Much work into then as possible. I’m in the same boat as you regarding the last four rounds and I’m convinced I saw signs of it in the first half against the dogs. I’m looking at teams like us, lions and freo to start taking back their mantles to finish out the year. Teams like Collingwood to start falling away. Percentage wise they are the eighth best team I think? They are this years essendon or port. Next year they lose most of the close games and fall back to the pack as they revert to the mean. As the anti loaders love to say it’s all conjecture, and fingers crossed we see it start to come together.

No one ever said we are the only team impacted by it. Where was that stated? You can measure it by looking at last years strangely similar patterns. When we played well last year we looked a certain way. When we played poorly we looked a certain way. That correlates very well with this year in my eyes. Throw in some injuries and that explains quite a bit I’d say.

We had inconsistent form from A graders last year too. Why do those who hate loading assume those who are aware of the method think the flag is ours and that’s that. No one has ever said that.

Cool, good chat. I assume you love the astute analysis of David king and the like. Enjoy your surface level, emotional roller coaster support and I’ll talk to you in a month when the season wraps up.

It’s possible we’ve gone harder than everyone else because we had the luxury of being 10-0.

So because you don’t know what you’re talking about then no one knows what they are talking about? Some people have deep knowledge of football and of sports science. They probably know a lot more than you and me. Seems strange to assume everyone’s in the same boat as you. Can’t learn much that way. It is a different year and there are different contributing factors but do you really not see any parallels form wise?

These people couldn’t possibly have a feel for a fair game of football. They’ve never seen one

We had no legs in the second half. All the signs of fatigue were there. Our flanks and mids disappeared. We were second to the ball. Not getting to contests. This correlates perfectly to every game fatigue has played a factor. It seems to happen identically when it happens. then there was the dogs getting the bounce of the ball all game which is partly hard work and partly luck. Then there was the umpiring, which in a three point game obviously cost us the game. Statistically a game decided by less than a goal is pure chance. Throw in the free kick gap from the blatant dual application of the rules and there’s your game. To suggest the umpires didn’t affect the game is noble but [censored] in this case. we looked the best we’ve looked for a while in periods during the first half. I expect to see more of that moving forward. I think we are trending positively. They played out of their skin and got a limo to the finish by the umps and just got over us. Both they and Geelong had to bring their best stuff and only just got over us despite being significantly fresher. We won’t change our game plan so we need more pack marking ability. Weideman just can’t do it. He’s never shown that ability. I thought Steven may was good. Took lots of strong marks when no one else was. The late turn over although it cost us doesn’t define his game tonight. Max got ragdolled which was hard to watch. we will look better next week. Plenty to play out still. Our season had been declared over by the majority at pretty much exactly this point last year.

Geez

Very few people in history can step into Oliver’s role

Expectation is brutal

Never in doubt

I don’t care. It looks wrong. Also I’m joking

That will change in exactly two weeks

Someone needs to get into langdons ear about his short sleeve jumper. He looks ridiculous.

Don’t know how you play well when you have a certain amount of injuries and are loading. Form isn’t a magical thing. It is often explainable.

Aren’t we looking ordinary today. Nothing unexpected though.

Gonna be an ugly slog

There are performance trends that correlate very strongly with last year. It’s a matter of when we play teams not who we play. We’ve hit contenders in our mid season run this time with other factors such as injury also playing a part. We looked just as sluggish last year but the stats will be different because we are playing different teams in different positions. Stats don’t tell the whole story. Injuries tell a lot of the story too. Teams trying different methods against us are also part of it. I’m not sure why losses to contenders are worse than the losses last year to bottom dwellers by the way. When I say what will happen once will happen again that doesn’t translate to a result, it translates to our ability to perform at an optimal level. This doesn’t guarantee a win. I go to all our home games and without question there is a difference from us against the saints or tigers or whoever else from early in the year in the way we cover the ground, get off the mark and get to the contest etc. I didn’t have the luxury of being at the ground v Geelong but we were slow off the mark, which is all I could see on tv. That to me says sluggish. Even without loading as a factor, the 5 day break and a tough, hard game in Adelaide against a 5 day break and a training run against a team that rivals us at our worst could explain the difference there. I’d also throw in kardinia park being no good for us. I was tearing my hair out at times last year during winter. The gws game in particular, after the Adelaide and Collingwood losses really worried me. I wrote us off. Things changed and I think they will again but you are right it is speculative. All of it is. The running in mud look is awfully familiar and doesn’t last forever. That’s where my hope lies. I think everyone is trying to be objective when they talk about our performance. We are all doing various versions of guessing though. The loading argument is speculative but it isn’t without merit. It’s been admitted to this year by Geelong and us last year. There are signs of it across premiership teams of years past when seasons are looked back at. The only real difference I see between your analysis and the loading is the loaders are trying to view things over a longer time scale. Im Sure some of our short terms stats worry the coaching group week to week, no doubt. But there are layers of perspective to look at them through. I just think wait off a few weeks before the doom and gloom kicks in too hard based on last year, and I don’t think that is a ridiculous stance.

This thread sounds like the guy who says “I’m not being negative, sometimes a realist comes across as negative because others can’t handle reality” or something along those lines. But in reality they are indeed a negative Nelly

Short memory. Do you remember the middle part of last year at all and how ordinary we looked? If you’re going to bag everyone who isn’t a doomy gloomy such and such at least be accurate. Most loaders have discussed how we looked just as poor during this period last year. Which is accurate. Yes injuries play a part as well. Also no one thinks oh it’s fine we will still win the flag. They think we will show a lot more before the season is done. That’s never been a guarantee of a flag.

Given he won us a flag last year doesn’t he get the benefit of the doubt at least till the season is done.

We have had to piece together a backline a lot of the season. The flow on effects from that are that we aren’t statistically where we were last year in some areas although our points against has still been very good. We had an outstanding run with injury last year. Our offence comes from our team defence and where we turn the ball over. We’ve been turning the ball over too deep and haven’t had the turn over scores from last year.