Watson11

LOL. I was reading the paper today and Ladbrokes are saying all the money is coming in on Hawthorn which I found interesting.... I didn't realise it was from Dees supporters!

I'm not too fussed with all the hype. This is what finals are about. The other big focus is the media are pretty much saying the cup is Richmonds to lose so that is fine with me as well. I think one J Lewis would be earning his paypacket in spades at the moment. The stuff you hear dribbling out about what he has done the last few weeks has been brilliant.

Agree. But if we continue to defend well and pressure well inside 50 we should win even if we kick badly. But it will be stressful if we don't kick straight and give Hawthorn an opportunity, as anything can happen when a team gets their tail up. The dryer it is Friday night the better it is for us. If we get through this week I'm actually looking forward to how we go in the following day game(s) if it is dry. All of our huge wins with good conversion have been dry games, including WCE in Perth. We have big contested possessions advantages over hawks, WCE, and richmond (almost +20) and are ranked 3rd for clearances versus 11th, 13th, and 17th, so will get lots of opportunities, which is why I hope we have dry weather as it helps our inside 50s and forwards. Go dees.

12min 10s

Disagree. He is down on confidence but his "awful" games are mostly good. When you are on the footy field for 2 hours you're going to make mistakes, especially in finals. 15 possessions, 6 tackles, 3 inside 50 tackles, 2 goal assists (most for a D), 3 1%ers etc is not awful. Judd could have put a package together for any player to make them look bad. Brayshaw, Harmes and Oliver were brilliant but had more clangers than Petracca. The stats that take everything into account had him ranked 20 or 24 out of the 44 who played.

I was on level 1 and thought the grand stand was going to collapse. If you look at the vision after NJs goal the camera's (despite the latest anti-shake technology) were shaking all over the place due to how much the entire stadium was rocking. It was insane. Hoping for similar this week.

One week at a time. Warm and sunny predicted for this Friday. If we make it, a nice dry Perth September day would be ideal. We seem to kick straight when it is warm and dry, but can be a bit all over the place when wet and dewy!

Maybe I should have been clearer. We didn’t play well offensively for large parts of the game. 4 qtr defensive effort though.

Yep. Even last time we dominated inside 50s in the first half but couldn’t convert and couldn’t hold the ball in, and every time it went down their end they kicked a goal. We should have been 10 goals in front at half time! Our mids are so much better both ways at the moment. Stop the defensive transition and I think we can win by 10 goals.

Agree. It is on our terms. The only test for us is can we continue to pressure inside 50, and shut down the transition out. If we do that like the last few weeks we will win no matter what our goal kicking accuracy is, and win easily if we are better around goals. That was what was so good against Geelong. We didn’t play that well for a large part of the game, but unlike earlier in the season our bad quarters we pretty much halved.

Gawn can tap it anywhere and our contested ball is so clean that every team needs to look at ways to counteract us. The predictable thing is for Geelong to drop one or more players back into our forward 50 to counter our centre clearances. From Geelongs perspective they would be backing that they can crowd our i50 and kick their way out of defense. If Scott does that then the game is totally on our terms and if our f50 stoppages are good and pressure is on and we run hard to close down rebound out of our f50 (like we did with GWS), then we would win. The last quarter last time against Geelong was a shootout. I suspect Geelong will not want to risk a shoot out unless they find themselves behind. But if I was Scott, I think that is probably the best chance they would have to win. I don't think he'll risk it though.

"The origins of Melbourne's long-awaited finals return stem from Jim Stynes becoming the club's president a decade ago, according to his successor Don McLardy" Stynes loved the club, was a great man, and did great things re debt reduction but the reality is when he became president the debt was $5m before being wiped, but by 2013 the debt was $8.1m, and we finished second bottom with a percentage of 54%. If PJ/Roos/Bartlett had not been put in place in 2013 no one from the pre 2013 would be able to take any credit for the origins of anything. I think that says it all really.

I’ve seen enough games where his leads are ignored. The Port game was the worst. And if the instruction was to get the ball 0-30m and central then that would explain why he stays home too much and ends up competing for pack marks which is not his game (unless one on one).

I can't remember which thread it was on but our forward structure and entries according to the poster was based on statistics on goalkicking etc, and that the goalkicking efficiency was really good from 0-30m and central, but statistically drops off further out and on the angles. The implication was that the players had been coached to aim to get the ball to players in a better position, hence were probably ignoring the leads that were further out so as to kick to the hot spot, not taking shots from 45-50m and trying to pass off quickly etc. This seems to have been fixed and modified the last couple of weeks. Kind of like basketball, it's like Goodwin etc was always trying to get the high percentage layup, whereas now we are hitting the leads and making some 3 pointers which makes the layups harder to defend as well. I'm really confident that if we continue to play how we have the last 2 weeks with our inside 50s we will be really hard to beat. So onto Hogan with the more recent game style, we will be even better if we have really quick players in our forward 50 who can get 5m on a lead. Hogan is ideally made for this style because of his speed, endurance, strength etc I wouldn't trade him for mids, draft picks etc and am really keen to see us use him better next year.

That is true but we have also been good at lowering the eyes for the last 2 weeks. If we had done that all season we would have finished top of the ladder.

I thought he was in our top 3, not fastest in the afl. But either way he is super quick and unique in the afl being 100kg, good one on one, good skills (very few changers). I’ll say it again that we don’t use his speed yet. The number of times he has 5m on his direct opponent and we kick long was embarrassing for most of this year. Probably leads to his frustration at times that he needs to work on. I wouldn’t trade him even for Cerra and 2 first round picks unless he wants to go.

....and the brilliant little chip kick to AVB?

Agree. Freo and Lyon are career suicide for any key forward.

OK. Reminds me of Riewoldt in attitude at the same age and Josh Kennedy in kicking style. Out of Hogan, Riewoldt, and Kennedy who would have the best accuracy stats? ... Hogan 65.2%, Kennedy 64.7%, Riewoldt 62.8%

Tmac would also be fair. I think Hogan has more upside. He reminds me of Jack Riewoldt at the same age in attitude but a better athlete.

If the question is for the next 5 years then my list is Gawn, Oliver, Viney, Lever, and Hogan. They are what clubs build a list around (if we can keep them all fit and on the park). But the club imo has buolt a list that can still be really, really good if one or more of the above players are injured, as has been the case for 4 of them for large parts of 2017 and 2018

Port have been a joke and underachieving footy club ever since Hinkley let Cornes get to 300 games and then retire mid 2015 season to become a fireman! Clueless commentator.

I hope the players get social media training and are told to stay a long way away from demonland. If any of them naively come here looking for ego boosts they'll end up on the psychologists couch. I'm in the no way trade Hogan camp unless he wants out. 100kg power forwards, who can run at 34km/hr and do a 2km time trial in 6mins, along with his natural skills are unique. His lower output against the better teams has been largely due to us butchering the ball going inside 50. We are improving our inside 50 delivery and he'll be a superstar for us.

I'd like Harmes to go to Ablett. He'd nullify him and slaughter him when we win the ball.

Garlett isn't coming back after 0 tackles against Sydney.