titan_uranus

How is that our best case scenario? If we make it from here (and I'm with you that it's looking unlikely), we're almost certainly going to have to beat Geelong in Geelong, Adelaide in Adelaide, West Coast in Perth or Sydney. Get a win (or two) out of those in our run home and our form would have to be alright.

No doubt about that. The stats are doing a good job of showing the pros and cons of the style Goodwin has us playing - when we are on, we score heavily and the ball hardly goes into our opponent's forward 50. But when we're off, teams use the space we deliberately leave out the back to their advantage and find it too easy to score when they do get it inside their 50. When we think about how to improve our defence overall, the debate has to be much broader than simply looking at the back six.

Presumably our inside 50 count against is much lower than 2017 too, @Skuit?

We should 100% be getting out of Darwin, even if it means a home game at Etihad. The Etihad home game thing will disappear eventually, either when the current contractual requirement for a minimum number of games there ends, or when the interstate clubs pressure the AFL into getting more games at the G given the GF deal that's been done.

Good on him, hope he tears Carlton apart.

Every time anyone (myself included) does a ladder predictor exercise, the thing that is commonly missing is the occasional upset win where a rubbish side knocks over a top 8 side. Just last week Essendon beat West Coast in a game possibly no one thought Essendon could win. Brisbane's 56-point win over Hawthorn remains one of the biggest WTF moments of the season. Those sorts of results are going to occur again in the run home. We might be victim to one, given everyone is simply assuming we get to 12 wins on the back of St Kilda, Fremantle, the Dogs and GC. But, of course, it only takes one or two of those sorts of upsets to the sides around us to make it that much easier for us to get in if we can get to 13. If we miss finals, it is almost certainly going to come down to our inability to take our contested possession and clearance focused game plan and make it work against high pressure sides with a number back. Not some key forward getting a hold of us.

Everyone is frothing over Collingwood. They've beaten Carlton (twice), St Kilda, Brisbane, Fremantle, the Dogs, Essendon, Adelaide and us. We've beaten Carlton, St Kilda, Brisbane, GC, the Dogs, Essendon, Adelaide and North. But the narrative at the moment is "Melbourne can't beat anyone good" whilst "Collingwood is more dangerous than Richmond". If we're no good then they have no wins against anyone good. At least we've beaten North!

Winning all 3 is essentially necessary to make finals. It won’t change the perception that we’re a pretender, we just need the wins. But if we can win all three, we still have three chances to beat a better side (Geelong, WC, Sydney).

The final against Fremantle in 2006 was played on a Friday night. Other than that, you're right, we haven't played an interstate Friday night game since that 2003 game.

I’d agree with the OP if the subject was Vince. Lewis is providing far more right now than Vince. Maybe that says more about Vince than Lewis.

@Demonland, @Nasher - help? This thread deserves an update!

Win this week and we’ll have won 5 in a row for the first time since 2006 (rounds 10-15).

Love this thread, Skuit. Out of interest, where are you getting these stats from?

Happy bump.

Quite an incredible thing to have happened. The team has had a "win at all costs" attitude for a while now and something bad (not necessarily this bad, though) was always going to happen. Possibly the most galling part about all this is Smith's reaction. He seemed to think that by fronting up to the media and apologising, that would make it all better. I suspect he genuinely thought at that press conference that it was something he could push behind him and people would forget about, hence his comment about not standing down (and the way he said it). Smith's career is over, I can't see how he can come back from this - will anyone look at him the same, captain or not, again? Warner breeds the "win at all costs" mentality and isn't any help to the side. Lyon, i think, is the same. CA needs to properly work out who was involved. Any player who was involved should be stood down and, possibly, sacked/never selected again. Lehmann should resign before he gets sacked (if he knew, then he knew. If he didn't know, he should have). For the fourth Test, Smith, Bancroft and Warner mustn't play, nor should Starc, Hazlewood or Lyon unless it can be determined they had no role to play. Fly over replacements, put up a competitive and legal fight, then once it is all over a proper assessment needs to take place. New captain, new coach, new leadership model.

Neither OMac nor Frost showed enough this year for any of us to be 100% convinced. I'm much more positive about OMac than, say, STMJ, but I still accept that he isn't anything certain. Bringing Lever in will likely make his job much, much easier. It also allows us to do one, and maybe both, of two things: play TMac forward (his best football in 2017 was, in my view undoubtedly, as a forward); and release Hibberd, who spent too much time this year being forced to play as the third tall. Until a quality midfielder becomes available, this is a nothing argument. There isn't currently a midfielder available who promises what Lever promises. Besides which, I think if we bring Lever in and can release Hibberd further up the ground that will assist with part of our current midfield problem. That said, I don't believe Lever is worth two first round draft picks. I think Adelaide is posturing, and fair enough too, but if that becomes the true asking price I wouldn't pay it.

I feel like this thread has reached the point where people don't want Lever because STMJ wants him.

Watching him closely tonight. Playing really, really well so far. Exciting.

This is the most interesting post on this thread.

Regardless of what you think of Lever (he's one of the competition's genuine stars) and of OMac (he's far, far better than STMJ claims and he's much improved on last year), if Lever wants to play for us then, provided we don't jeopardise our ability to retain our core talent over the next 5 years, we do that deal.

We're also +3 in the W-L record for the first time since 2006. We won 6 in a row in 2006. We won 7 in a row in 2000 (and 1998) if you include the two finals wins. Otherwise, we last won 7 home and away games in a row in 1990 (ended up 8 in a row with the first final win). I've just looked through this. Jones debuted in Round 17, 2006. He's missed 6 games since then, including last night. We'd lost them all until last night. That means until last night we hadn't won a game without Nathan Jones playing since before he debuted (which was Round 15, 2006 (we beat Richmond on a Friday night).

Yep. Snaps a 9-game losing streak vs West Coast, a 9-game losing streak vs West Coast at Domain, and a 17-game losing streak at Domain in general.

We won three in a row last year - Gold Coast, Hawthorn, Port Adelaide. That was clearly too much for us as we then proceeded to lose to Carlton.

After three Tests and two days of hard work to put ourselves in with a chance to win a series in India, or at least draw it, one bad day of cricket means it's all over. Getting bowled out for just 127 in well under a day is a brutal way to end what has otherwise been a strong series. The Saha-Jadeja partnership gave India a lot of confidence in circumstances where, if Renshaw had held that catch, they might have been all out by stumps last night 50 runs behind. Finally, if we're going to drop an in-form Khawaja from the series to play a "specialist" in S Marsh (who played, what, one innings of note in four Tests?), we should be dropping Warner the next time. Literally one decent innings from him all series.

One we can break on Sunday - a win will mean we have two more wins than losses. That hasn't happened since the end of the 2006 season. I believe we were in the 8 after Round 1, 2015 when we beat Gold Coast. Other than that, not since Round 14 2011.