titan_uranus

11 players played every game. Consistency helps. But they also had the depth to cover for McInerney, Coleman and McCarthy (plus Gardiner and Doedee). Fantastic list management and fitness. Not a coincidence. For Sydney, when the going got tough they fell apart and you’d think the scars of 2022 has something to do with that. Their tall forwards are barely better than ours and they couldn’t compete aerially against Brisbane’s defence.

The story no one spoke about all year IMO was Grundy’s poor form.

Amazing from Brisbane. Disgraceful from Sydney. Mental scars for sure. Probably my favourite out of everything was Darcy Fort. Won the ruck IMO but as soon as the siren sound he went straight to McInerney.

They also mentioned we’re one of a few clubs targeting Peatling.

I called the club last week to ask when they go on sale. They told me 1 October. They also said that was because of AFL rules or something, but other clubs seem to have their 2025 packages for sale already.

Eagles, Chiefs, Bills

If we took Parfitt and he struggled next year, as he does most years, SONS would bemoan it as another Hunter/Billings style acquisition. If Geelong were truly ruthless they wouldn’t be holding onto Stanley and Duncan.

This is the only explanation. It happened last year when they gave Horne-Francis votes when they must have meant Bergman. No one in their right mind thought N Daicos was the third best player on KB. He was closer to third worst.

Yep. @WheeloRatings's currently got him at a reasonable likelihood of passing 40 votes (the record is 36 IIRC).

There are always funny little quirks of voting but honestly, Daicos getting a vote on King's Birthday is right up there.

Soldo’s better than Campbell, and is only leaving Port to get more game time. He isn’t coming here to sit behind Gawn. No one who can play regular game time as the number 1 ruck is coming here. We are in the market for ruckmen who are prepared to play VFL most of the year but be ready to play full games as the number 1 ruck if required. Darcy Fort is this player for Brisbane and is going to get to play in a GF this week as a result. Campbell’s not amazing at all and there may be better options ultimately available but he’s the sort of option we’re looking for.

It’s the same issue with Owies too, albeit he’d cost a lot less than Stringer. We were 13th for average tackles inside 50 this year. Funnily enough though, Sydney was 15th.

He’s worn four straight finals losses and still has a better finals record than Scott. For the record, of current coaches with at least 10 finals, he also has a better finals record than Hinkley and Lyon, and after next week will be equal with the loser of Fagan and Longmire. But he will trail the winner of Fagan/Longmire (who will have only passed him this year), as well as Hardwick and Clarkson (both over 60%) and Beveridge (53%).

Well, there is at least one. Finals W/L - Goodwin is 50%, Scott’s 46.67%.

They’ve done very well to cover their three best 23 injuries (Coleman, Doedee, McCarthy - I’m not sure Gardiner is best 23). But whilst they’ve had those injuries, they’ve also had a great run with the rest of the list. They have 11 players who have played every game this year, and I think a few others have only missed 1-2 games.

Essendon and GWS made the finals in 2021, and the Dogs obviously were the Dogs that year. They might have been "shock" losses, but the "shock" was because of how good we were, not because they were awful sides. We beat Adelaide by 41 points in that game, not sure how "meh" that was. But regardless, FFS Sydney lost in Round 21 this year by 112 points to the side they just beat in the prelim and are now the favourites in the Grand Final. Premiers can have bad games in the second half of the season without it being a sign of a problem or trend. At any rate, last year Collingwood played their two worst games of the year, both at the G, in the final five weeks (losing to Carlton and Hawthorn). Didn't stop them. Looking for ways to suggest we might not have won finals at the G in 2021 is a bit like how you have in the past used the phrase "rent-a-crowds" - it undermines our achievement.

I'm fairly confident if we'd made a prelim in 2022 or 2023 but lost it, the line would be "we failed to even make a Grand Final". The bar is always set differently on here for Goody as compared to any other coach. No [censored]. I said that in the post. We all know that we failed in 2022-23. The question for you is how much worse is that failure than Geelong winning just one final, and not even qualifying in the other year, in their two post-flag seasons. Remembering, too, that Collingwood didn't make the finals at all this year. I reckon Goody would be criticised on here if he had Scott's prelim final record of 3-6, which is 2-6 since the 2011 flag.

Sweet lord what game were you watching last night.

Why is this so triggering to so many? Chris Scott is one of the greatest coaches of all time. That is impacted to some extent by Geelong being extremely well run off field and having an inherent competitive advantage by being in a regional town where a lower cost of living means players can take lower wages to help “beat” the salary cap. Doesn’t make Goodwin any better or worse.

Fagan and Hinkley have never won a flag, whilst Longmire is 1-4 in Grand Finals. If Goody had their records, he’d be criticised for it - the same way he’s criticised for the last two years’ of finals failure (how many on here bite back the moment someone says we finished top 4 those two seasons?). Also you go on to acknowledge that we overperformed this year - doesn’t that show you that Goody can indeed coach when things go against him?

These are separate things. We all want the true MCG GF experience. We all want the GF parade and the day itself (and prelim weekend too). I get the sense though that many cannot separate that desire from the 2021 flag being in lockdown and so start saying things like “it was a fluke” or “we hit a purple patch in the finals” (neither of which are remotely true - we finished 1st with a 17-1-4 record and beat every other club at least once except Collingwood), or that we wouldn’t have won it in a “normal” season, or whatever. Any such commentary IMO cheapens the flag and IMO is unwarranted. As for the argument that we might/would not have won it at if the finals were at the G, yes it’s true that in 2022-23 we flopped four times over, but I’d argue that in 2021 we were fitter and healthier, and in the best form going into September of those three years, and didn’t have any baggage or expectation as we did in 2022-23. I’m confident that we’d have won it anywhere that year. Obviously we’ll never know.

Agree with the majority sentiment on here - Grundy was awful last night and has been mediocre, at best, for most of the season. His inability to compete with Sweet was one of the only things which kept Port in the game through the middle two quarters. It must be tough for Taylor Adams to be missing out when he was in better form than Grundy but can’t get into their stacked midfield. Don’t get me wrong, I like Grundy as a person and I really respect how he handled himself from Collingwood to us and then to Sydney in 13 months. If he wins a flag, good on him. But there’s not a shred of me which wishes we didn’t trade him - he’s in no better form than he was when we dropped him last year.

Right. So do we refrain from criticising Goodwin for coaching issues when we know there is a coaching group? Or Taylor if there are drafting issues when we know he doesn’t make decisions on draft picks in a vacuum? That others share responsibility for list management doesn’t shield Lamb from criticism for list management issues, given he’s the manager.

If he were in line for the B&F perhaps the club would have made more of an effort to move the B&F? (Not a rhetorical question, a genuine one - when was the date first announced?)