Garbo

Media love to talk up the underdogs and how they can win, it’s simply less entertaining to talk up the favourite. The neutral supporter needs to think the game is 50/50 despite what reality says. The same reason they won’t call a game as over even if a side statistically is 95% a sure thing.

Time for the Shane Warne diet when he traveled India, suit case of baked beans

Get the feeling cats had been dealing with it for weeks, didn’t danger have the runs in round 23

Interesting looking at the 88 finals series hawks had a bye week 1, played week 2 and won had another bye and went straight into the grand final. Meanwhile dees had to play 3 consecutive games just to meet hawks in the grand final, no wonder we got blown off the park. Also very similar to this year’s series with a bye one game then another bye and the grand final.

If you go back over the years the favourite wins vastly more often then the under dog, we will have to be very unlucky to be one of those teams. It’s coming home boys.

This is a bit worrisome, every one remembers crows in 2017 stern faces all round and got pumped, need to let the players have a life and not get to wound up this far out. Still got another 9 days to go.

Wouldn’t you rather beat them and there be no excuses for either side, our best 22 vs there best 22 I still think we win more often than not. I know that would be much more satisfying. I don’t want to win only because they couldn’t put there best team out there and or have people put a question mark over it. As to the bye it won’t hurt our prep so not worried about that, if we do loose it’s only because the dogs were better.

I’d love to see Petracca goto Bont, Oliver to Macrae and Viney to Libba. None in a defensive roll just straight head to head backing them self vs each other. If we could win that game over. Dogs win that then they are looking up at a sea of red and blue to kick into. We can always go more defensive but they can’t

Our normal play is to let the other team have an extra at the ball while we have a extra sit off, that is fine when we can win our share a player down and rebound when we don’t but the dogs are to good for that. At least for the first half while the game is hot we need to have equal numbers at the ball to stop that roving off Gawn.

Going to be a cracking grand final

Port were always sus until the last few weeks when they beat dogs and cats. Shown that that was an anomaly. Don’t think it matters either way we match up well vs any side. Dogs only play is to dominate the mid which won’t happen. Going to be a rude awakening in a fortnight for them

No change but if May does fail to get up, I’d be very tempted to throw tmac down back and bring in Mitch Brown or Weid (can’t believe I typed that)

Is Goodwin the right guy…

Happy to say I was completely wrong I certainly would have played the odds of him not winning a final as a pass mark and kicked him out the door early, always knew we had enough talent on the list to be a contender but after 19 and 20 was convinced he wasn’t the one to get the most out of it. Listening to the players talk about him and how he goes about it safe to say he knew what he was doing but just needed total buy in from the players.

Think weid not locking in a spot is more of an indication of where he is at and not the strength of our key fwds, I doubt very much if anyone currently performing as a kpp on a senior list on a consistent basis would have any trouble keeping one of tmac or Ben brown out. If you look at our list we have the whole best 22 and then some locked in for next year and beyond, the only players yet to sign on are not in the team on a regular basis. I don’t foresee any one under contract asking to go in this years trade period unless we push them out. To get Cerra a top 10 player would need to be traded like a viney or Langdon or Salem or a young high pick like Jackson or Pickett. Which means a zero net gain. No fringe player would bring in enough to get a deal done even with picks we have. If it could great but I’m trying to be realistic.

Firstly given we have no picks and he is a highly rated young player who was also a high draft pick, we would need to trade something to get something. Who are you willing to trade out which is of roughly equal value. Rivers and picks, Jackson, Pickett? That’s the sort of trade that you would need to do. 2nd when tigers went after Lynch he was a free agent all he cost was money. A 2nd key fwd was a need of tigers as they only had Riewoldt. 3rd our biggest issue all year has been our fwd line if we are going to trade capital for anything it’s got to be another key fwd. Tmac and Ben Brown aren’t a dynasty 1/2. 4th our mid and backs are settled and the equal to best of any team going round. In the mid we already have the best top end talent in trac and Oliver and Gawn, solid experienced roll players in Viney, Harmes and Langdon and Brayshaw. Up coming best 22 talent in Sparrow and Jordan and who ever else we draft. Our balance right now is basically perfect for the next 4-5 years. In summary Cerra would only marginally add to the mid mix, would cost us talent else where both now and going fwd if we can’t resign players due to cap space and prevent us filling real holes in our list. Just look at pies or swans now, do you want to see the team pulled apart just as it starts. We could easily be them in a year or 2 if we play it wrong.

Sure I don’t disagree that he is better than those 3 more that he would still be relegated to being a roll player and would he be satisfied with that (my assumption would be no). Trac and Oliver both have a license to take the game on and leave there man while the rest of the team backs them up and does the dirty work, you can’t have to many doing that or the whole thing falls apart.

Rosman needs to start getting opportunities next year to show what he has, similar to jack watts it’s time to get what we can for weid and go again, nothing to say we can’t get some underrated slightly mature player like Fritsch again with whatever we get in return.

Cerra might end up a good player but I find it hard to see where he fits in, Petracca and Oliver are clear 1 and 2, Viney isn’t going anywhere and is a solid 3rd mid, Harmes, Sparrow and Jordan are all fighting for whatever is left over, Cerra if he came would be fighting for those same minutes. If dogs and gws have shown anything over the last few years is you can have to many star mids, someone need to be the roll player and sacrifice there game which I’m not sure someone like Cerra would be happy to do, the former 3 are happy to do this every week.

Smith is only 191cm only 3cm more than Hibberd, personally I don’t think smith is tall enough or strong enough to play on a kpp and he lacks the footy smarts to play on the mid and smaller fwds as we saw with Cameron the other week. I shudder to think how he would go vs Danger if he got isolated, I’d much prefer Hibberd even if he has lost a yard we only need to look back to his job on Martin earlier this year.

Id have to find a spot for Aaron Davey, probably in place of Fritsch, Brad Greene fairly stiff to miss to.

Brayshaw is a Melbourne (city) boy through and through there is no go home factor there. His parents are here his GF is from here, his mates are here, the only ppl not here are his brothers.

Why would we trade him when he is contracted for another year and value can only increase. Crows would need to be paying massive overs, something like a mid first round pick given he was taken at 27 and shown himself to be at least capable.

I think it’s more that reputations are earned in finals and anyone watching that game could see Oliver was on another level. If he keeps that up for 2 more games no one will ever question Oliver’s status as a genuine star again. I find it interesting that Petracca is now the sidekick in the way the media talks about them now.