titan_uranus

Big call for your first post. And by "big" I mean "crap".

Well then why did he sign with us in the first place?

I do not understand the obsession with Smith. Smith's not a footballer and Naughton is. Naughton would obliterate him IMO. May is deceptively quick (his spoil on Elliot I think it was, where he closed down out of nowhere, was an example of this) and good enough in the air to take Naughton. Our backline has prospered from the unit gelling together. Smith brings the opposite of that.

This week is huge. If we win and West Coast wins, we'll be a game and percentage clear of the Dogs and they'll only have four games left. Which means for every win we get in our last 5, they need 2 more wins to pass us. And they have Geelong and West Coast still to come. Which gives us a great chance to ensure we've got the Dogs covered. Would absolutely love Gold Coast to get over Carlton this Friday.

Gold Coast cop Richmond with four extra days' rest, then they have to back up on a 4-day break when Carlton has two extra days. Tough stuff. Tom Lynch is a bit of a dog.

Correct: if Carlton beat GC they'll remain one game behind us if we win, and will draw level with us if we lose (and we don't have a game in hand over them as they've had a bye).

Yes, or even better provide a clip of the incident.

Rubbish, if anything that performance was better than the scoreline suggested. They got on top for 10 minutes in the first quarter and scored 5 goals. For the rest of the game, general play and scoring was even. And though it may be semantics, I don't consider a 27-point loss to West Coast in Perth "falling apart", not at all. If we win all of our remaining games, the best side we'll have beaten will be St Kilda (unless GWS or Collingwood get their act together and go on a run). So we won't have fixed the problem you're currently complaining of, which is beating the best sides.

Did anyone see either of these occur? I feel like sometimes these just come up out of nowhere.

I don't really mind what the win count is if we make the top 8 (it could yet be 9 wins). We've only fallen apart once all year (Port). We were within a bees' proverbial of beating both Geelong and Brisbane. And as to your final line, I give you Collingwood in 2018. 15 wins, 14 of which were against the bottom 10. A 1-7 record against the top 8 (worse than us that year).

I think Bruce will come back. They didn't have a second ruck yesterday, rucking Dunkley and Macrae at times. There was a report English rolled his ankle. If he's not 100% fit, they're taking a big risk rucking him and some midfielders against Preuss or, worse for them, Gawn.

Agree. I don't think OMac is the reason Lever/May got better, and I don't think Tomlinson has anything to do with their ongoing improvement. Both OMac and Tomlinson have played similar roles in our defensive set up. I thought OMac was good for his first few games but then poor. I think Tomlinson has done OK, but not great. In other words, neither has done well and we have room for improvement with that position on the ground.

I think that's probably right. If we lose both it's not curtains, but it will require us to either belt some sides to get to 9-8 with a huge percentage and hope that's enough to squeeze into 8th, or win out in our final four games to get to 10-7. We can win all four of Fremantle, Sydney, GWS and Essendon, but each one is a banana peel in some way.

Yes that's right, we need more context. But we know this week that Oliver had 20, Viney 17 and Petracca 16. So we know that Brayshaw was used in a proportionately high amount of centre bounces. I'd love to see the same figures for the North and Adelaide games.

Essendon are garbage. They've got Hawthorn, us, and the top 4 in their remaining fixture. The would have to improve tenfold to make the finals from here with that fixture. St Kilda, the Dogs, GWS, Collingwood and us are battling for the three spots at 5-8. St Kilda the clear frontrunner given they'll be 8-4 after today, but they still have to play us, Brisbane, West Coast and GWS. Carlton a smoky to challenge.

On the one hand, Adelaide are appalling so the Dogs look better than maybe they really are. On the other hand, our recent form is a result of beating Adelaide and North. The Dogs have a quality midfield (Bont, Macrae, Libba, Dunkley, Hunter) and with Naughton up forward (and likely Bruce to return next week) we will be in trouble if we don't match them, at the least, in clearances.

I want the Dogs to lose as many games as possible, but if they lose today you can imagine the heat (external and internal) that will be put on them to rebound vs us. So, if they're going to win, a close win where they play poorly but feel relieved to have won might be the best result. It appears this is correct, the distinction being whether the free is as the player kicked the ball (in which case it's not downfield, it's at the spot of the free) or if it is after the player kicked it (in which case it's downfield). The issue, though, is rule says that the free is taken "where the football is at the time". When Brayshaw hit him, the ball had gone maybe halfway to where it ended up. It hadn't yet gone OOF. So, technically, this rule says the ball should have been returned to somewhere around the 80m mark. IMO, the rule in this situation should be that Docherty gets the ball back to repeat his kick. His kick wasn't affected by Brayshaw, so he stuffed it up himself, but the free kick undoes that mistake.

Spargo's sideways kick on half-forward which was a turnover and resulted in a Collingwood goal was bad as well. However, Lever and Spargo played their roles generally very well. I'm still not convinced on Harmes but he's part of our back six and our back six is playing well as a unit. @A F with this many centre bounce attendances I think the FD has clearly made the change. I'm excited to see us continue trying this over the next few weeks. I hope and think it is going to work.

No. It's not happening. Honestly, I reckon we're more likely to finish bottom 4 than top 4.

Agree re: the manner of the win. I think that might be the most pleasing aspect of the performance. We won by 10 goals despite not dominating in the ruck, in CPs, in clearances and inside 50s (I presume also we didn't dominate time in forward half). Hopefully the players are now feeling confident in our ability to compete even when we're not on top in our "one wood" areas. Also agree re: Lever. The 2-3 errors he made were bad and noticeable but overall the way he, May, Hibberd, Salem and Lockhart are setting up behind the ball is a key reason why, the Port game aside, we've been tough to score against since we left VIctoria. Interesting. Would love to know the figures for Petracca, Viney and Oliver for comparison's sake. @A F - do you think 73% is about right for Brayshaw? Last night gives me confidence we can get the balance right with the four of them.

I agree on our consistency. The Adelaide and North games were hard to get a read on because of how poor they both were. Today, we were on top of Collingwood from the outset. Wasn't just us running over the top late. We were strong from the start. The Port game is the only bad game we've played since the Richmond game, and neither the Richmond nor Geelong games were terrible. However, the fact that we failed to pick up either of the Geelong or Brisbane games means we don't have much choice but to back this up again vs the Dogs and likely again the week after vs St Kilda. If we go 0-2, we'll then need to win all four of our final games to get to 10 wins. If we can even go 1-1 the next fortnight, that then lets us go 3-1 in the final four to make it to 10 and play finals. These are two big tests for us. The Dogs might make me seem silly tomorrow when they play Adelaide but IMO they're better than their recent formline suggests. When they get going they're hard to stop. And we all know we stink against St Kilda when they're average, let alone when they're in the top 4.

Debate raging on Twitter right now about whether the free should have been downfield or not. The kick went OOF so Carlton wasn't in possession of it when the free was committed. I'm not sure, but I think the ball should have gone back to Docherty. The free wasn't there, and the downfield may have been an error as well. Could have huge ramifications for the finals run home for both Fremantle and Carlton.

Carlton's win moves them up to 11th, just one win behind us (but 23%). Their run home is GC, Collingwood, GWS, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane. Makes this Friday night's GC v Carlton game huge, although GC will be going in off a 4-day break compared to Carlton's 6. If Carlton win that, they'll be 6-6 with a flagging Collingwood, possibly done GWS, then two bottom four sides. Don't panic...but Carlton's season is far from done.

You'd be spewing if you're a Fremantle supporter. Taberner rightly called for deliberate. Then what appears to be a TERRIBLE downfield free for late contact. Then Newnes nails it from 50 on the boundary after the siren.

Tonight was our first look at a proper balance of Oliver, Viney, Petracca and Brayshaw. It worked, IMO. Evidence to support the argument that our best 22 can feature all four. Might be telling that we went with Petracca in the forward line and the other three in the middle for the opening bounce.