At the break of Gawn

I completely understand the gravity of this. Feels like our chances have taken a massive hit

Any budding meteorologists here know what tonight’s weather will be? Seems like a small chance of shower but I wonder if it’ll be dewy again?

They turned things around mainly via their defence. In the last 6 weeks last year their defence was ranked in the top 3 and their ground ball game was off the charts. People bang on about Carlton’s offensive game but it’s actually when they focus on defence it’s where their game goes to the next level.

I’ve just got a feeling (completely illogical) that we’ll get rolled tonight in the second half or last quarter. Is Carlton really that bad to lose 3 in a row or potentially 4? Because I can’t see them beating Sydney at the SCG next week. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel we’ll start well but Carlton will get some momentum and will be hard to stop. Curnow is probably due to kick some on May, while McKay is in ripping form. Their midfield has had a better year so far than our’s and if they get some territory dominance we might struggle to transition out. If we’re going to win, we’ll need to at least break even in clearance and contested possessions, while we’ll need Petty, JVR and Turner to mark well ahead of the ball.

Not necessarily. We made something like 5 changes from OR to round 1. McGovern and Martin are both handy ins, however, I reckon one of Carlton’s biggest oversight is persisting with Pittonet. Since bringing Pitto they’ve gone 1 and 3. They were 4-0 with TDK as sole ruck. Blues supporters have been banging on about getting McGovern back to sure up their defence, but it’s clearly a system issue. Their defence is bottom 6.

Hi @binman In the podcast you mentioned that scores from the back half were less important and that front half scoring from turn-over was becoming more important. According to Daniel Hoyne, 5 of the last 6 premiers were no.1 in scores from the back half. The only one not number 1? Melbourne in 2021. We should be concentrating more on this rather than scores in the front half/territory game which have been a bit of a fallacy for us. Note, Carlton are terrible at scoring from the back half which is why once Collingwood won the territory, Carlton struggled to score.

I’d be really surprised if they bring Martin straight back in considering his history. He’s as good a chance to be subbed off in the first qtr.

I was having a look at the fixture and I find it hard to see how Sydney doesn’t finish on top. They’ve got the easiest fixture from now on by far. As it stands, they don’t have one away game against a top 4 side apart from the Giants, and only two away games against top 8 sides (Port and Essendon).

How bloody good!!! That Fritsch goal was insane. One of the best I’ve seen to seal a match in years!

They’re going through the middle too easily now. Rohan coming on for them has had a big impact

Chin looking like a candidate to be replaced by McAdam if he doesn’t do much more tonight and next Thursday.

Trac being tagged really hurts us because Oliver just isn’t at the same level at the minute. If he was, the opposition would be tagging Oliver instead who handles it far better.

Feels like an almost game for us. clean up some of the disposals in the front half and we’ll run over the top.

I actually think Scott has made a blunder here. Parfitt has been great for them and no O’Connor clearly means they’re not going to tag Oliver or Petracca. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rohan is the sub.

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.