titan_uranus

I spoke too soon... Richmond appear to be totally and utterly cooked. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of [censored]s (although the beneficiary being Collingwood isn't exactly ideal).

Assuming Richmond and West Coast finish this round in the 8, here's the top 8's record vs the top 8: Melbourne - 6-0 Sydney - 5-2 Geelong - 5-3 Bulldogs - 4-4 Brisbane - 3-4 West Coast - 2-4 Port - 2-5 Richmond - 1-6

Games played outside Victoria by the end of this week: Hawthorn - 3 (plus four in Launceston) Carlton - 4 Collingwood - 4 Geelong - 4 Bulldogs - 4 (plus Geelong) North - 4 (plus four in Hobart) Richmond - 5 St Kilda - 5 Melbourne - 6 Essendon - 7 (plus Geelong) Not only have Carlton and Hawthorn had the least travel so far, they also have the least travel to come, with each only having one more game away from home (Hawthorn has a game in Launceston too but that's their choice). Meanwhile we still have two road trips plus Geelong, which will leave us equal with Essendon for most trips this year.

There's simply no choice at this point but for the NSW clubs to stay in Victoria. Sydney's only drawn to have two home games left anyway, having had one of them flipped earlier in the year. Three straight games at Marvel in Rounds 20-22. The key will be whether the AFL can get the players' families down here to be with them.

The Dogs' run home: GC (away), Adelaide, us, Essendon, Hawthorn, Port. Our run home: Hawthorn, GC (Darwin), them, West Coast (away), Adelaide, Geelong (in Geelong).

Many pundits would have said before this round that the Dogs and Brisbane were the two best sides in it. It's funny what one loss can do (see, eg, our loss last week). Don't forget the Dogs have five best 22 players injured. We, Brisbane, Geelong and Sydney have barely five players missing combined.

Bulldogs' percentage down to 141.5 (down by 6.1%). Still 11.6% above us but the gap was 19.1% before this Round, so between the two results we've shaved a third of the gap off.

Our final against them in 2018 drew more than 90,000. GMHBA holds like 30,000. There's no way they can be allowed to play a final against us down there.

Don't forget Sydney is at full strength but the Dogs are missing Naughton, Treloar, Dunkley, Martin and Gardner. Sydney are a bit like us. They play their best football against good sides. Assuming Richmond and West Coast win and return/stay in the 8, they'll have a 5-2 record against the top 8 but a 5-4 record against the bottom 10.

Correct. Brisbane is probably the only other side to have had as charmed a run with injuries this season as us. To be fair to us, we've already copped one season-ending injury to a key position player who, to that point, was in strong form and was a vital part of our line up.

With Brisbane's loss tonight, it's now a lot more possible for us to lose to both the Dogs and Geelong and yet still finish 3rd (but with Geelong 2nd), or even 2nd if Geelong drops just one more game (e.g. to Richmond at the G or Fremantle in Perth).

They came into this game 11th on the ladder at 7-8 with a percentage of 83.7%. People lost their [censored] at us losing to GWS who went into last week 6-7-1 with a percentage of 96.2%. Since their opening month their wins were over Richmond at its lowest ebb, Hawthorn, North, Collingwood and the Gold Coast. Adelaide had more wins over top 8 sides going into this round. Despite winning their last three games they still have the fourth-worst percentage in the competition. Agreed. Their run home doesn't offer many easy wins either: Port, West Coast in Perth, Carlton, Sydney, Geelong in Geelong and Fremantle. 11-11 might be the cut-off this year, given how flat the 7-13 region on the ladder is. But with St Kilda's bottom four percentage they'll likely need to be 12-10 to ensure they pass sides like Essendon and Richmond, whose percentages are over 100%, and even Fremantle at 97% is 10% in front. As good as their win tonight was, if they can't beat West Coast in Perth or Geelong in Geelong they probably have to run the table with the rest, which means 4-0 against Port, Carlton, Sydney and Fremantle. Possible, but not probable.

Did Tom Morris say this? If so, that surely is a response to being in Darwin the week before. We don't want to be on a six-day break going into a massive game vs the Dogs. But we'll be losing out financially as a result. Didn't we decide we wanted out of Darwin?

PS: to all those who repeatedly say "good sides don't lose to bad sides", take note of tonight's result.

I hate St Kilda, but that'll do us nicely. Brisbane just shed 5.7% and are now 0.9% behind us. We're now two games and 0.9% clear of them with six to play. For all their good football, their wins away from the Gabba have been against North, Adelaide and Collingwood (all bottom 4), as well as Carlton and Gold Coast. They still have to play Hawthorn, Richmond and Fremantle away from the Gabba. Our destiny is in our hands, but this impacts us hugely.

This is a bad result for us overall, unless we’re getting paid by the AFL or NT to allow it to happen. There’s nothing good about playing in Darwin as the away side, and particularly not the week before a home game against the Dogs that we surely want to be the Friday night. Sure, it could be a Saturday night to give us an extra day, but that’s a loss for us given it’s our home game. It also mucks with planning, for the club and for MFC members who had planned to go to GC, the game only being two weeks away. This game could have been GC’s home game against Essendon in Round 21. Essendon have no other travel this year, we still have Perth and Geelong to come after Darwin. Happy for our NT fans but otherwise hate this news.

The myth is that he has toughness that others don't have or that the side lacks. We don't need him running around throwing his weight at opposition players. We're now a top 4 side, not a challenger trying to rough up the best. Harmes' ball use last night was bad, I agree. The question is whether Harmes is worthy of that spot or whether someone else could do better. If we are looking at someone else, I'd offer Jones (once he's fit again), Sparrow and Melksham as players who can do more with the time on the ground that we're giving Harmes, all before I'd offer vandenBerg.

AFL TV commentary is at an all time low. Former AFL players get paid presumably decent bucks to sit in front of a screen (rarely these days are they actually at the ground) and say a whole bunch of stuff that is either incorrect, unhelpful, meaningless, annoying or stupid. There are precious few play-by-play commentators who are any good. Jason Bennett is, IMO, the hands down best in the business, but Channel 7 criminally underuse him. Nigel Carmody's good. On Fox, Adam Papalia is their best, Huddo's OK and Brenton Speed is quite good too, but again he and Papalia get underused. There pretty much aren't any other good play-play-play commentators. Some of the rest are disgustingly bad - BT and McLachlan on 7 and Eddie, Dwayne and Mark Howard on Fox all make the viewing experience markedly worse. There aren't many good special commentators going around: 7's got Hodge, Leppitsch, Daisy Pearce and Bartel in its stable. But despite having those people ready to go, it continually rolls out Wayne Carey, Matthew Richardson, Jobe Watson and Cameron Ling. Richo's the worst special commentator on TV and that's saying something. Adds zero value, everything he says is either a cliche, meaningless or unnecessary. Wayne Carey's not very bright, Cameron Ling's downright annoying, and Jobe thinks he's being smart but in reality says not much. Fox has almost no good special commentators. David King is OTT on the stats and hyperbole, Garry starts sentences but doesn't always know how to finish them, Dunstall and Brown are OK but pretty one-note, Healy's past it and Jordan Lewis is the better version of Jobe Watson. Nick Riewoldt and Nick Dal Santo aren't bad. But the worst, hands down, is Dermott. The stuff he says is embarrassingly stupid. The fact that Fox pay him to sit in front of a TV and say the things he says is an indictment on the industry. tl;dr - I detest most AFL TV commentators.

That may be true, but Demonland myth number 28 is that vandenBerg brings some mythical level of "toughness" that only he can provide. We're not lacking for toughness. vandenBerg should not be getting a game unless he's learnt how to be involved on offence, and that requires an ability to get the ball and then an ability to use it. Contrary to your post, I don't think "sometimes" is the correct answer to the question "is his ball use a worry". The answer to that question is "regularly", and that is a major drawback for a player who doesn't get a lot of it and who otherwise doesn't do much other than lay tackles and bump.

I chuckled. "Fern frond" and "miniature poodle" were lol-worthy.

Squad wise, I'd expect to see Gawn, Petracca, Oliver, May, Lever and Salem. Unless Fritsch, TMac, Pickett or Langdon fly home over the final six games I don't think they'll make the squad. As to the 22, if the season ended now I'd have Gawn, May, Lever and Salem in it, and then probably one of Petracca and Oliver - whilst both are deserving, there are a stack of midfielders in AA form this year and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Oliver misses out (given the media love Trac).

Yep, this was our 5th Thursday night game - none of them have been ANZAC Eve, actually. Previous Thursday night games: Round 1 1997 vs North Melbourne (win) Round 6 2011 vs West Coast (loss) Round 4 2019 vs Sydney (win) Round 9 2020 vs Port (loss)

Here's one for our next game. We haven't won two games against Hawthorn in the same season since 1994. 10 times since we've played them twice in one season and lost at least once. (Meanwhile we've won our last four against Hawthorn, going back to the 2018 SF. It took us 13 years to win our previous four games against Hawthorn!).

Brisbane's game was moved from the Gabba to Metricon, which helps St Kilda. Geelong often drop a rubbish game, although they already did in Round 1 to Adelaide. Still, I can see arguments for any of these three sides to pull of an upset. Any help us, but St Kilda helps us most - get Brisbane the [censored] away from top 2, please.

Of all the umpiring we've seen this year I didn't think last night's was anywhere near the worst. Yes they made some errors but if you're expecting flawless umpiring you're watching the wrong sport. The 50m penalty for Pickett against Jonas in the second quarter was a decision that, had the shoe been on the other foot, Demonland would have erupted over.