titan_uranus

That argument is not convincing at all. We had 11 games against eventual finalists. Richmond had 7, Collingwood, Geelong and Sydney all had 8. Despite that, we finished 2nd. So even if our 10-0 start was just "soft kills", we had fewer of those opportunities than everyone else in the top 8 and finished above all of them except Geelong.

Chargers, Bucs, Colts

Surprised this has been up for two hours without a "talk is cheap" post.

The AFL can't control the strength of the run home schedule, as they can't know which sides are going to be good. But they can control travel and short breaks. It's ludicrous that we had six straight games at different venues, inclusive of back-to-back six day breaks. No side should have that, ever.

If you want to take that approach, Collingwood should have missed finals. All sides had close games which could have gone either way.

We also need to stop dismissing the draw as irrelevant. There’s nothing unfair about it. Under the current system, the AFL has no choice but to base it on the prior year’s results. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to note that from Round 11 onwards our draw was brutal. It’s an important piece of the overall puzzle. Of those 12 games, 11 of them were against sides in finals contention, and that we didn’t have a proper bye, and that we had six weeks in a row at different venues, and with multiple road trips and comparatively few games in Melbourne. No let up. So that factors in to our sore/injured players, whether we could/should have rested players, the pressure we faced weekly, etc.

Maybe. But he's also the journalist who said Carey and Stevens "came to blows", then had Carey say he didn't touch Stevens, then had to say "the dictionary defines "come to blows" as including stern words". He dominates trade radio and associated media. He will be saying a hell of a lot over the next few weeks. It won't all be right.

I'm disappointed, but neither surprised nor angry. Let's just get the best possible haul for him and move on.

This is fair, although Port, Essendon and GWS were all poor in the first half of the year. The main fixture issue is that we faced almost exclusively good sides from Round 11-23. There was no break in that period where we had North or West Coast or a cooked side. Adelaide was the only side we played in that period who wasn't in finals contention at the time. Those two figures for Brisbane and Sydney are huge. Our opposition's pressure is out of our control. Yet we regularly saw opponents reach season-high ratings against us. Teams continually found ways to get themselves up when playing us. We were drained, I reckon. We copped huge pressure almost every week; Brisbane in Rounds 15 and 23 might be the only times our opponent was short of intense?

You can't just put players out and see what nibbles come back. How do you think Salem will feel when he finds out? And he will sure as [censored[ find out. It's destabilising.

Gawn, Oliver and Viney pretty harsh to be the first three discarded!

The quote of mine in the middle post is correct. There is no evidence to support your argument that we lost those mid-season games because we were loading. It is possible we were loading, and it just didn’t work. But there is no evidence to support that argument because there is no evidence we were loading. All you have is your views on industry practice and the assumption you have drawn that we must have done it as a result. You might be right. But I don’t believe there is any evidence you are actually right, and us not running out games well late in the year does not support your argument.

No we didn’t. The majority of our MCG games were pre-bye (9 of our first 13 were at the G, then 3 of our last 9 prior to finals, or 5 of our last 11 including finals). We played at the G two times from Rounds 16-23.

Round 1 vs the Dogs, we were in front early, then behind by 24-odd in the second quarter but won by 26. Round 2 vs GC we built a 16 point lead early then pushed it out to 23 before two late Suns goals. Round 3 vs Essendon we built a 20 point lead early then won by 29. Round 5 vs GWS we jumped out to a 26 point lead then won by 67. Round 6 vs Richmond we had a 14 point lead early, fell behind, then won by 22. Round 9 vs St Kilda we got out to 48 points up, they fought back, but we won by 38. Round 10 vs WC, 35 up at quarter time became a 74 point win. Round 11 vs North a 20 point half time lead became a 47 point win. Round 15 vs Brisbane we went from 6 down at quarter time to a 64 point win. Round 20 vs Fremantle we were 32 up in the second and won by 46. Round 23 vs Brisbane was a 10-12 goal margin for the second half.

Impressive side, considering it’s 3 players short!

I agree. There is no evidence to support the argument that we lost those mid-season games because we were loading. Other than corroborative evidence from the club, which doesn't exist and didn't exist at the time, the only evidence that could have supported it was displaying superior fitness in the last 6-odd weeks of the season. That didn't happen. As such, IMO there is no basis to continue to run this argument.

Spot on. There is NO SUBSTANCE to this Pickett thing. Kane Cornes said this on radio yesterday morning (Crunch Time). He threw it out there, Sam Edmund asked him to clarify, and he conceded he had no inside information but that the two SA clubs would love to have him. In other words, he's made this up to start a fire. Why would he do that, you ask? Well, he's a Port Adelaide man. And he is a regular on Trade Radio, which stirs [censored] up on a daily basis to fill 8 hours of airwaves a day talking about pretty much every single player on every single list. This is A-grade tripe.

Then leave Petty in defence. Petty's played all bar 5 minutes this year as a defender after playing all of last year (when in the side) as a defender and winning a flag doing it. If he has the ability to be flung forward in a game for a surprise or changed tactic, fine, but let's perhaps try the natural forward as a forward and the established defender as a defender before we flip them around.

Here's a stat for you. We had an 11 point lead, or more, in all 24 games this year. I wonder if: that's ever happened before; and if so, whether the last side to do it failed to make a prelim. Could be a good question for Swamp on Twitter.

Everyone disagrees with you, so you're right? Presumably if everyone had agreed with you, you'd have been wrong? FWIW, I don't think we have a widespread cultural problem. As I posted yesterday somewhere else, I think our season ended the way it did for a number of reasons, not just one as this thread suggests. I think the issues here are largely summed up by a group of players who struggled to find the inner motivation to gut run, chase, tackle, repeat lead, etc. when faced with a brutal fixture, opponents treating their games against us as finals each week, less stability, and drop offs in form from the bottom 6-10 players (who, unsurprisingly, provide the pressure/running a lot more than the cream on top - players like ANB, Sparrow, Spargo, Hunt, Rivers).

Do we really ask for those early season MCG games? I wish we wouldn't. At least, not to the extent we had them this year. I'd much rather see us get the majority of our road trips out of the way in the first half of the season (no matter the difficulty of the opponents).

It's telling as to their horrendous list management, not so much to his ability. They want him off their books because they don't have a choice - they can keep paying him, and he can probably come back and play good football for them, but given Cameron/Cox, that won't help them as much as moving him on and getting in the mids they're targeting to help replace Pendlebury, Sidebottom and Adams who are all ageing. That's not to say Grundy's a lock to be an A-grader next year, and I agree that we shouldn't be falling over ourselves to pay for him. No matter what the motivation, if Collingwood want him off their list, we have the upper hand in the negotiations.

JVR's just put in a year of playing good footy for Casey as a forward. After all that, we're going to flip in into the backline? Not sure about that.

Injury/fitness wise, I believe only four players played all 24 games for us: Petracca, Brayshaw, Spargo and Fritsch. Last year we had 10: Oliver, Petracca, Gawn, Brayshaw, ANB, Lever, Rivers, Jordon, Pickett, Spargo. We weren't beset with long-term injuries as badly as some other sides, but we had much less stability in our 22 this year than we did last year, and with a coach/FD who want us to be stable and predictable for one another, I reckon that really hurt us.

Fixture-wise, I'm hopeful of the following: Travel being spread out through the season - I don't want three road trips in the first 14 games and then four road trips plus a Geelong game in the last 8 games Home games being spread out through the season - I don't want 10 of our first 14 games at the MCG but then only 2 of the last 8 Tough games being spread out - I don't want 2 of our first 10 games to be against finalists (and the two worst ones at that), but then 10 of our last 12 games being against finalists