At the break of Gawn

I think we persist with Petty. You need absolute competitors up forward in finals. Finals tend to bring heaps more pressure on the ball carrier, and at times we may need to just bomb it in long to gain territory. Petty, at his best, is a fantastic contested mark and is someone who could have one of those nights to turn a game.

It’s not the fact that Carlton gave up 20 goals, Carlton’s defence is horrible at the moment. They’re in the bottom 10 for points against. No premiership winner in the last 20 years has been below 6th for points against. I know they’ve got some players out, but even Adelaide has conceded less than them. Melbourne is 1st for points against. I’d almost be willing to bet that we wont give up more than 80pts against Geelong. If we take our chances and kick accurately we’ll win.

I really can’t understand the Carlton love at the moment. They’re in the bottom 10 for points against and they’ve conceded more points than Adelaide this year. Melbourne, Cats, Giants and Sydney are the only real contenders at the moment.

They’ll do nothing this year unless they fix that up. 3 weeks in a row conceding 100pts and they allowed Geelong to score 62% of forward entries. That’s bottom 4 defending.

Thought our second half was very good. Geez we're defending well at the moment. If we can defend like that against the Cats and the Blues I’m confident we can win. The wheel is going to turn for Petty I think and we really uncovered a gem with Disco. Also, I’m pretty happy with my prediction pre-game if I don’t say so myself!

Melbourne beating Melbourne tonight. Absolute horrid turnovers resulting in direct Richmond goals.

Need more from our mids. Trac has started poorly, a couple of poor turn overs from Oliver too.

I've got a sneaky suspicion that we'll start off slow and the Tigers might even be winning at half time. I know we had a bad loss to Brisbanne, but they would've been really disappointed in their effort against West Coast so I think they'll come out firing. We'll overtake them in the second half and win by about 30 points.

Grimes stiffens them up a fair bit. Grimes, Vlastuin and Broad are still very handy so we'll need to be smart about our forward entries.

I’m not taking anything out of this Geelong win. The Lions are terrible in the wet. Result could be completely different if it was dry.

Yze will be filthy with that effort even with the injuries. The Tigers also troubled us in that practice game. I think we’ll win but they won’t be a pushover. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes us a half or even 3qtrs to shake them.

Can’t see anyone getting near him really. English has had a really poor start, Briggs has dropped off, Grundy hasn’t done much since opening round. There’s no real challenger except maybe Marshall if he gets going.

Or that we were just beaten by a better team? They have basically had our measure since the ‘22 Semi final (won 3 of the last 4 and could easily be 4-0 if not for a miracle comeback).

You do know Richmond have lost like 4-5 of their best players since that game? Some people are tipping West Coast to beat them tomorrow.

Brisbane have our measure and have proven the last 3 times we’ve played them that they can move the ball easily through our team defence. I’d like to know what the panel think of how we can combat this if we play them in the finals. I don't think it’s as simple as winning more clearance and taking territory. Their ability to transition deep out of our defence (especially via kick-ins) through to their forward half was ultra impressive and I don’t know if we have an answer to that.

If we lose to Richmond then we’re not achieving anything this year. The point I was trying to make is that there’s no point putting any weight to a win against Richmond. The games against the Cats and the Blues will be our next audit.

No we won’t. Richmond have an injury list as long as the Nile. We'll find out against Geelong and Carlton.

Stood up in the ‘22 SF for them. Since belting them at the GABBA in rnd 23 2022 they’ve had our measure.

It wasn’t just our mids, it was our whole team defence. Our system got dismantled.

I actually don’t think we have a game style that can beat Brisbane. They sliced through us like they did last year at the MCG but this time they went on with it. We barely adjusted to close down space and they ran us off our legs with all those uncontested marks. If we play them in the finals, Goodwin will need to be completely prepared for this as this uncontested game will torch us again.

Not our year. In 2021 we beat all contenders. We’re just pretenders this year.

Defensive transition is just diabolical.

Absolutely smashed in the coaches box - David King

Game over. We look shot

Should never have played Oliver. Liability with that finger injury. I can see a 5+ goal loss coming our way.