titan_uranus

I've been posting about this all week, probably ad nauseum. It's not unfair. Unless we do a 34-game season where everyone plays everyone else home and away, every single model that is proposed is unfair. Even a 17-game season is unfair - some will get, say, Fremantle in Perth, others will get them at their home ground. The 17-5 idea that gets bandied around creates different problems. Do we really want the last five weeks to be full of meaningless low-quality games involving the bottom 6 playing each other? Then there's tanking - why finish 6th after 17 games when you'll cop the five sides above you again when you could finish 7th and cop the five sides below you instead? It's a bad idea for varying reasons. The AFL tries to get it right by making good sides from one year play each other more often than not the next year. The obviously problem is that they don't have a crystal ball and so don't know what will happen the following year. For us, we were given Collingwood and Fremantle and they got much better. It's wrong to complain about Geelong getting North and West Coast twice. But it's right to point out that their fixture has ended up being easier than ours. So too Sydney and Richmond. Particularly in the second half of the season. So when you hear someone in the media say "Melbourne have only just been going in the second half of the year", or you see one of those "from Round 15" ladders, remember that as the fixture turned out, we had a much tougher second half of the season than everyone else.

Possibly. The opposite is probably more accurate - lose week 1, we don’t win the flag. Would mean we have to beat Bris/Rich, then Geel/Coll, then Syd/Geel/Coll, all in a row.

You're right. I have no idea what I was thinking. Collingwood losing would have put Brisbane 5th.

The dream result would have been for Collingwood and Carlton to draw. Would have meant Geelong v Fremantle, Collingwood v Carlton and Brisbane v Richmond were the other games. Which in turn would have meant that the winner of Melb v Sydney would have gone into a prelim to play the loser of Geelong v Fremantle or the winner of Collingwood v Carlton. Edit: none of the above is true. Collingwood losing would have been better.

The OP has Geelong winning the first final. But has Sydney out in straight sets. Surely not.

The byes finished in Round 14, so everyone played 9 games from Round 15 to Round 23. Of those 9 games, 6 of ours were against finalists, and we went 3-3. Compare that with everyone else: Melbourne: 6 games, 3-3 Bulldogs: 5 games, 1-4 Fremantle: 4 games, 1-1-2 Brisbane: 4 games, 1-3 Geelong: 3 games, 3-0 Richmond: 3 games, 1-1-1 Sydney: 3 games, 3-0 Collingwood: 2 games, 1-1 Geelong and Sydney the only others with winning records, but they played half the number we did. It perhaps shouldn't be too surprising that the four finalists sitting at the bottom of that list are the four considered to have been in the best post-bye form: Geelong, Collingwood, Sydney and Richmond.

So a reminder that with the Dogs replacing Carlton in the finals, we had 4 double-up games against the top 8. By comparison, the Dogs had 3, Geelong, Sydney, Collingwood, Fremantle and Brisbane all had 1, and Richmond had 0. We finished 2nd despite playing literally half our season against finalists (11 games against the 7 other finalists, 11 games against the bottom 10). Fair effort IMO. On the flipside, 5 of the 7 finalists (i.e. all bar Richmond and Brisbane) beat us this year. Which is funny given they'll be our semi final opponents should we lose to Sydney. But otherwise, our QF and, if we make it, our PF opponent and likely our GF opponent will have had a win over us.

The First Crack just showed some more incredibly damning footage for Carlton fans. Curnow has the ball at half forward in a set play after a mark just before the Elliot go ahead goal. He has Durdin all on his own on the 50, but ignores him and goes deep where they turn it over. But that wasn't really the problem. The problem was somehow behind Curnow Carlton were outnumbered. Collingwood had Elliot and Ginnivan free. So on the turnover, Carlton were out of position and outnumbered. Elliot kicked the goal, game over. As they pointed out on the TV, that sort of thing just doesn't happen with sides like us or Geelong. For us, we never would have sent extra numbers into our forward 50 to try to score, and May and Lever behind the ball would have been marshalling the troops.

The 12-day rule is actually an 11-day rule - you're allowed to play on the 12th day. You don't have to wait 12 days. The 12th day after today is next Friday.

Freo v Bulldogs is Saturday night.

Should clearly mean that the Bris/Rich v Mel/Syd semi final is the Friday night of week 2. Should also mean the Mel/Syd prelim is the Saturday of week 3.

So we know we don't leave the G. We know that we play Sydney first up. You'd imagine we'll play Richmond if we lose, as I reckon Brisbane are cooked. And if we win, you'd expect us to get Collingwood (although would love it to be Fremantle - would mean they've either knocked out Collingwood or Geelong!). We should have a first week fixture by now. There were plenty of permutations for the match ups but they could have been worked through before the round finished, surely.

It won't happen, but do we want St Kilda to win? I don't want to play Collingwood at all, but if we have to play them I suppose a QF is better than a PF.

Sydney needs to score 32 points in 11 minutes to pass us (whilst holding St Kilda scoreless).

St Kilda won't win this. But that goal means Sydney now needs to score a minimum of 34 points from here to pass us, and that assumes St Kilda doesn't score again. For every point St Kilda scores that 34-point target increases.

Correct. If St Kilda kicks one goal, Sydney would need another 7 points on top of those 27.

Technically they can't confirm anything yet because St Kilda could theoretically still win and change the match ups entirely. But I'd assume from here it will be: Thursday - Fremantle v Dogs Friday - Geelong v Collingwood Saturday afternoon - Brisbane v Richmond Saturday night - Melbourne v Sydney or Sydney v Melbourne Keeps the breaks between the EF winners and QF losers close.

If Geelong v Collingwood is the Friday night, we'll be the Saturday night. They'll put the Fremantle v Dogs game on the Thursday night so that the winner of that has an 8-day break into the semi final the following Friday night. Meanwhile the loser of our game will get a 7-day break into the winner of Brisbane v Richmond, also on Saturday. If we were the Thursday, the loser of our game would either get a 9-day break into a Saturday semi (which would mean the winner of Brisbane v Richmond gets a 6-day break into a Friday semi), or an 8-day break into a Friday semi where Brisbane v Richmond winner gets a 5-day break.

Yes. But Sydney isn't about to do a Carlton. They aren't losing from here.

Swans need 27 more points if St Kilda doesn't score. 99-49 will do it.

The Dogs should be blown off the park by any of the other 7 sides in the top 8. Their win over us is the only time they've played well since Round 9. Post-bye they beat Hawthorn twice, GWS twice, St Kilda and us. But I fear they'll reset over the bye and Fremantle will do a Carlton and [censored] the bed. On current form Brisbane will lose to Richmond.

If we have to cop them, the QF is the best time. If they make a PF, I want nothing to do with it.

McCreery kicking one from 50 on the boundary, when Curnow missed twice from 20m, is just sickening.

if they choke in the QF and Collingwood makes the prelim, they'll get the loser of us/Sydney or Richmond. That's the "hard" prelim. The "easy" prelim is the other side, which we'll get if we can beat Sydney next week. We'll get the Geelong/Collingwood loser or the Fremantle/Dogs winner. I'd take a prelim at the G against any of those sides, except Collingwood.

The one difference between Geelong and the rest of the comp is that I don't see Geelong coughing up a 25 point fourth quarter lead to Collingwood. They are flaky in finals of course, but still.