At the break of Gawn

Giants can absolutely beat the Pies. They won’t care at all about the crowd. They’re used to never having it on their side.

We’re ranked 16th or something with ball in hand. That’s the coach

This. Need to improve our forward half and get distance on our opponents like we did in ‘21.

Yes, absolutely it was wasted. We will go into 2024 as the most under pressure team with the chokers tag (and probably Goodwin as coach) a long with the Dogs and Bevo. Call me crazy, but going into 2021 we were the team with the most pressure coming into the year and Goodwin was the most under pressure coach. Maybe this time we’ll make the right changes and storm through September in 2024?

I know Binman will bang on about how accuracy cost us, and it’s true, but do you think the FD needs to rebalance our contest/defence mantra? We averaged something like 65pts the last 5 weeks. Surely 2024 has to be a focus on scoring.

He’s probably our most consistent finals player. He was amazing. If we had won that, the media would have been talking about his performance all week. I only wish he was 5 years younger.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over that Viney turn over. I’ve watched it 4 times already and I can’t understand it. He wasn’t even under pressure. I’ll have nightmares about that for years. If he had kicked it on the full, got caught holding the ball, a million other things and I think we would have held up. I just can’t believe it.

I don’t want hear about contest and defence next year. We’re way over kilter in our focus on contest and defence. Not just with our game plan but also our list management strategy. All our salary cap is tied up in midfield and defence players. 2024 focus needs to be scoring and ball movement. If we’re not averaging 100pts per game over the last 6 weeks before finals then we’ll see another straight sets exit again. Funnily enough, stone cold Jennings is doing wonders at GWS this year, while someone like Leppitsch would be an amazing get. I think Stafford and Yze will go this year.

I know we lost with our bad kicking for goal, but Viney’s turn over to Weitering will go down as one of the worst turnovers I’ve ever seen in a big game. It completely killed us when we had all our players on that side. You just can’t coach for that.

The chokers tag is bad but it’s not as bad as a 57 year drought hanging over your head. The thing that pisses me off the most is that none of us supporters will have any optimism for next year until we win a final (particularly our first if we finish top 4). The H&A season will seem pointless until Sept where the real test will begin. David King bangs on about it all the time but health is your best list. It’s no surprise that the teams left (excluding Port who’ll probably lose tomorrow) have a complete list to choose from. But overall it’s a wasted season. We learnt from last year by timing our run this time and we looked to do it. We looked so perfectly positioned but then we failed to execute on the big stage. This isn’t Essendon 1999 levels but it’s bloody close.

That’s broken me. Just wanted to see a finals win at the MCG and we couldn’t ice it. People will say the Grundy trade didn’t work because of Gawn’s ruck dominance but Gawn didn’t hold up his end of the bargain in the forward line all season. It was shown again when he missed two easy shots. I’m off AFL Media until the Grand final. Can’t stand the Voss love in when Carlton was cooked we had them and we couldn’t shut the door. The roar at the end was deafening. Saw a few young supporters crying. Umpiring was a disgrace too.

I hope this doesn't come back to bite me, but if we win, I'm definitely going to find some replay of the Blues radio to listen to the next day 😂

My tip is that Schache will be the sub. Provides coverage for Gawn and is a better forward than Grundy. Unless we can't mark anything in our forward 50, I suspect he'll get subbed in late. Maybe even for Gawn if we're 5 goals up.

Think he needs to. I don't think we can carry him with just 0-1 goals.

Goals from centre clearance is my biggest worry with Carlton. If we negate that to only 1 or 2 from the whole night then I think we'll win.

I'm not overly familiar with Tmac's injury, bit Fritch's was an impact injury (hard to do much to prevent) and Petty's was pretty much impact as well since how McKay landed on him. I think the injuries have just been unlucky. Same area of the ground and at the same time of the year.

Getting a bit more nervous now. We lost to the team that finished 1st by 7 pts. Blues almost lost to the team that finished 8th. Surely we cover the Blues tonight?

I'm sure we'll cross the bridge if it happens, but if we go out in straight sets tonight, I'm predicting quite a few wholesale changes with our offence, potentially even a new forwards coach over the off-season. I don't think anyone can stomach another year of problems with our forward half.

I'm not as excited about tonight as I was last week. Mainly because I'm still a bit annoyed that we're again fighting to avoid straight sets. Having said that, I'm actually more confident on a win tonight as compared to last week which I thought was 50-50. There was a level of unknown about the Pies last week because they had been in poor form but they had that big win against Essendon and then the bye. Carlton played their grand final last week. They're not going as well as a lot of people think, and majority of their streak was against bottom 6 sides. Apart from Weitering, their defence is no where near as talented as Collingwood's. Martin and McKay are also big loss for them. The last thing I'll say is, really good teams don't just fall to 16th on the ladder and lose 7-8 in a row mid season. Carlton have gone on a hot streak, but deep down we all know they're not winning the flag this year. We're a better side, we've been in the 8 all year and top 4 for most of it. Dees by 22 I think it'll be 90-68.

I just noticed that last year between our two finals losses we made no team changes between the QF loss and the SF loss. Hopefully a bit change (albeit two forced) will yield a result.

They played a game at Marvel together and got belted by Marshall.

Thinking about this a bit more, Carlton are poor once the ball gets on the outside. My thinking is that we’ll try and get the ball into space and run in and behind their defenders. The Carlton defence plays back shoulder, you need to beat them with a bit of speed and mobility. Maybe Goody was inspired by Longmire’s decision to sub Amarti and go small which led to the Swans almost running over the top? Either way, I think Schache needs to be sub to give us some insurance in case Gawn goes down or if we’re getting out marked badly down in our forward 50.

Fascinated to see who the sub will be. Can’t see it being Grundy.

Yikes. So when Tmac is rucking we have no tall forwards.

He's payed in finals, and played a huge negating role on Alir in the 2021 prelim for the Dogs. He was one of their best that night. People calling for Turner to play as forward (which isn't happening now anyway) is insane. Surely we don't go with Grundy either which didn't work last time against Carlton. The coaching staff gave up after a half.