titan_uranus

GWS looks like us at our worst. Tonnes of inside 50s but cannot score, and conceding far too easily out the back. Sydney winning is a great result for us if we are genuine about our finals chances.

Possibly, where costs were allocated at normal capacity levels. Maybe not, if we can reduce costs given we know only a limited number of people can attend.

My preference is for Preuss to come in and play 1st ruck, with TMac playing the second tall forward role. There should be 1-2 other changes around the ground (e.g. Viney/Lockhart/OMac may come in, vandenBerg/Harmes/Tomlinson may go out) but it's the way we structurally respond to not having Jackson or Gawn that is critical IMO.

The optimistic outlook says that, not only do we get reasonable vaccine progress, but we continue to learn from new outbreaks and get better at suppressing outbreaks where needed. If we can get 20,000 people into Optus Stadium by July 2020, I'm optimistic we can get a similar amount, if not more, into the MCG by March 2021.

It stinks in general, but the least of the options. To maintain our structure as much as possible, it should be Preuss.

That's awful news about Jackson on a number of levels. There are a number of options, all of which stink: Brown replaces Jackson, TMac stays 1st ruck and we use Weideman/Brown/Tomlinson as the relief rucks; Preuss replaces Jackson and plays 1st ruck, with TMac taking Jackson's spot in the forward line and relief ruck; OMac replaces Jackson and takes Tomlinson's defensive spot, Tomlinson then takes TMac's spot in the ruck and TMac takes Jackson's spot. Whatever we do, I want us to try to maintain our forward structure first and foremost. Collingwood set up very well behind the ball. We can't try our luck with replacing Jackson with a mid/small forward and leaving Weideman as the sole key forward. Whether it's Brown or TMac, someone has to play as the second tall forward.

Certainly I don't think I'm getting ahead of myself by talking about our finals chances or formline. More that I'm looking at other teams' runs home which are irrelevant if we don't win. But casting my eye over the ladder, it feels like the only sides with a realistic chance of falling out of the 8 are St Kilda, GWS and Collingwood, and the best-placed sides to take a spot, other than us, are Essendon and the Dogs. We literally play every single one of those clubs. Essentially means that if we make finals, we will have done so by beating our competitors for a spot. We won't be sneaking in based on beating lower-ranked sides in the final month.

Which, when reflecting on the Geelong and Brisbane losses, could easily be the story of our entire 2020 season.

Obviously the biggest factor in us making finals is us. On current form our best chance of getting to 10 wins would be to beat Collingwood, the Dogs and Essendon (in addition to Fremantle and Sydney, meaning we lose to both GWS and St Kilda). Winning those five in particular helps our chances quite a bit. Essendon would then need to win 5 of its other 6 (which is Port, West Coast, Richmond, Geelong and Hawthorn - I'm happy to say they won't get 5 of them). The Dogs would then need to win all 5 of their other matches (Adelaide, Fremantle, Geelong, Hawthorn, West Coast), and then would have to pass us on percentage. Collingwood would need to win 4 of its other 5 (North, Brisbane, Carlton, GC, Port - would mean they have to beat one of Brisbane/Port to pass us). So this week is huge for us - if we drop it, even though we could still get to 10, Collingwood would get to 10.5 just by beating North, Carlton and GC, so we'd likely be done trying to catch them. I'm getting way too far ahead of myself.

They've beaten Adelaide, Fremantle, Sydney, North and Collingwood. Still yet to play Port, West Coast, Richmond and Geelong. If we're worried about making the top 8, we should be more worried about the 8 sides currently in it, or the Dogs (who have 5 wins and are still yet to play Adelaide, North, Hawthorn and Fremantle.

If it were Melbourne we'd be livid. He clearly didn't have the distance and in trying to overkick it hooked it. Needed to take 10-20 seconds off but then ensure it at least reached the goalsquare. King should have kicked his earlier shot though. In terms of our competition with Essendon for a finals spot, that's a bad result given we had them covered by 20%. But it's a good result in our competition with Gold Coast, given they're closer to us on percentage. Essendon still have to play Port, Richmond, West Coast and Geelong, along with St Kilda, Hawthorn and us. If they lose the four harder games, they'd have to win the other three just to get to 8.5 wins. I'm not sure they can win any of those harder four, and indeed I'm not even sure they can compete with St Kilda.

Huh?

I can find reports suggesting he had a sore knee after the Adelaide game. None from before. Yes he said he put his hand up to play. What he also said was that the club took medical advice. You may well have a good source to suggest he was told to sit out and he chose not to. But I don't, and you didn't mention that last post. Based on what I've read, I'm comfortable with what happened. If it turns out he was told to sit out and decided not to, that's different, but again, not a reason to complain about the PCL.

@Lord Nev how we do know he went into the Adelaide game with "an already sore knee"? PCL injuries are ruck/contact injuries, are they not? If so, how does McHenry's turd-esque blocks off the ball have anything to do with it? From what I can see, the medical evidence prior to the Adelaide game suggested playing was unlikely to make the injury any worse, so they chose to play him. He then copped a completely unrelated knee injury. Linking the decision to the knee injury isn't right, IMO. I'm with @DeeSpencer on this one. And as to your allegation that it was a captain's call, I'm not sure I agree. His quote: “Between me, you and everyone else that’s watching the coverage, I did sort tear something up in my shoulder region,” Gawn told Fox Footy post-game. “So I had to sort of be careful and get as much advice as possible. “We went to different people and got Darren Burgess (to) call all over the world trying to find people that have had the injury. “It came to a decision that I could probably play. I trained relatively well on the day before the game and I was able to get out there. “The first half, it did take me a while. At times I thought: ‘Why did I put my hand up?’ But I was able to get into it towards the end.” I assume you're leaning on the "why did I put my hand up" bit? Do you think that the club wouldn't have asked Gawn for his input as to whether he felt fit to play? Based on those quotes, I think it's clear that the club took medical advice on the nature of the injury, and included Gawn's own views in making a decision. I'm not sure you've got enough to suggest Gawn made some sort of captain's call that overrode some advice to do otherwise.

Essendon probably wish they hadn't delisted him given their injuries. I'm surprised he didn't get a game when we were struggling during the Geelong/Richmond period, but I'm not sure kicking goals in a sub-VFL-level reserves game is a sign he should be playing seniors.

It's not. He doesn't get sucked into the contest and helps stretch our opponents' defence both at stoppages and in general play by making sure he's wide enough to be useful without being too far away.

We almost certainly cannot afford Papley, in terms of picks or in terms of salary cap. He's been leading the Coleman medal despite being a small forward playing for a bottom 4 side. He is quality and it's highly likely another club will have more to offer him/Sydney.

We played at 7 different venues in our first 9 games, and with Cairns on the list, we will have played at 9 different venues, at least, in our 17 matches this season. St Kilda, by comparison? 5 venues so far, a 6th to come. Adelaide? 3 venues.

I think what was coming to mind was him reacting to beating us in Round 23 2017 to stop us making finals. Was it Howe, rather than Dunn, who had a crack about playing in front of empty stadiums or something like that?

It's so hard to say from watching on TV, but I'd pretty confidently bet that teams are zoning in a way to try cut out 45-degree kicks. It would align with what I'm seeing from us, with our players on the mark always wheeling around to the side to cut off the 45-degree kick and force the kicker to go down the line. I also wonder whether the predominant grounds teams are playing on this year (Optus, Adelaide, Metricon, the Gabba) are conducive to this or not (e.g. do they have wider/narrower wings?).

Don't go too overboard with Fremantle. They struggled to put Hawthorn away all night. Hawthorn are a bottom 4 side. I'm not suggesting we're a lock to beat anyone in our run home, but I'd continue to consider that Fremantle, away from Perth (and the crowd), will be a winnable game.

The criticism of drafting is nothing new on Demonland, it's just (thankfully) been less common the last few years. Criticising draft picks is usually done with hindsight: e.g. we stuffed up taking Scully because he left after two years, or we stuffed up taking Pickett because Georgiadis kicked some goals the other week. It's almost never done with foresight, or based on rational evidence available at the time of the decision. To the extent that posters subsequently criticise the pick, it's often because they had a subjective personal view of some other player they wanted us to pick, then see that player play well, and immediately say "I was right, we should have picked that other guy I wanted". Provided that the players we take are, with a body of evidence behind them, reasonably capable of being taken with the pick we use, and they fill some sort of need on our list, most of Taylor's job is too difficult to assess. He only gets them in the door. Goodwin, Mahony, Gawn, our players and our culture take over from there, and if we don't mentor, develop, train, lead and support those players as best we can, how can we then blame Taylor for bringing them in?

So that will be our 8th home game. In the final 4 rounds we'll have either one or no home games. Those final four opponents will be GWS, Essendon, Fremantle and Sydney. Essendon has already played all of them, GWS will have played all of them by the time we get there (assuming they stay in Perth and play Fremantle in Round 14) too. So we may not end up in a hub with those clubs all in one city together. We could therefore find ourselves moving around even more.

Tom Browne is genuinely a terrible journalist, just terrible.

Like you, I never really liked Dunn when he was here. Faux aggression, inconsistency, and a tendency to only play well in contract years. He's taken swipes at the club since then: might indicate his true feelings towards us, but I don't rate that sort of behaviour all the same. In response to those who suggest we made a mistake by trading him: you're wrong IMO. He was not fulfilling any sort of potential here. Plenty of players need a change of scenery to get the most out of themselves and Dunn was one of them.