Sydney_Demon

Projecting out our current average game score of 89 points produces a total of 2,047 points across 23 games. A 30 point loss would equate to a 1.5% loss of percentage! Let's forget Geelong as their draw against Sydney means percentage is irrelevent, but St Kilda, Essendon, Western Bulldogs are currently 20% below us. Looking at it another way, those sides are currently 200-250 points differential below Melbourne. All these teams get 2 games against WCE, Hathorn or North but so do Melbourne. Adelaide are closest to Melbourne in percentage but only get 1 game against the bottom 3 sides coming home. I'n not quite so confident that we'll end 17-6 but even allowing 2 losses 15-8 will definitely be Top 4 with our likely season-end percentage of 120%+. I agree with your assessment of WB, but am predicting Essendon finishing 12-11 and missing the 8 on percentage. Can't see WB or Essendon finishing with more than 14 wins and if Melbourne only manage 4 of 7 we will finish above them on percentage. I have Geelong finishing 13-9-1. I really can't see them winning 6 of 7. They have a very tough run home. It's a pity Sydney didn't beat them when they should have becuse from 8-8 Geelong definitely couldn't have finished with more than 14 wins. Disagree entirely about the difference between finishing 4th or 5th. We beat Collingwood pre-bye and we finish 4th and there's every chance we play them in a qualifying at the MCG. Even if we lose that we get a Home Semi likely against the 5th best team. Finish 5th and firstly we need to win against the 8th team which every chance is a Victorian team, then we get an away semi which could be in Adelaide or Brisbane. I agree. Shouldn't be worse than that.

OK, I admit it's easy to post this after pretty much all the results went our way on the weekend but I'm confident we will finish Top 4. I have us losing one game for the rest of the H&A and doing the AFL ladder predictor finishing 2 games and percentage clear of the Bulldogs in 5th place. So even if we lose 2 or 3 games more we should finish 4th (importantly none of the games Melbourne play for the rest of the season are 8 point games in the sense of competing for Top 4). We do play Brisbane next week & Adelaide in Round 19 but B are already in the Top 4 and highly likely yo stay there and Ae are too far back. We don't play Western Bulldogs, Essendon, Geelong or St Kilda again. And not forgetting Fritsch. Importantly nearly all these injuries have happened at key points of games and have contributed to those individuial game losses. Does anyone care what SEN 'experts' think? No. We will rightly start favourites in all our remaining games at this stage. I calculate if we win only 4 of 7 we'll still finish 4th because all our competition will finish with no more than 14 wins. All have much inferior percentages. @WheeloRatings still has us a a 69.4% chance of Top 4 despite the GWS loss, with a predicted 14.8 wins with the Bulldogs next with 13.1 wins. https://www.wheeloratings.com/afl_simulations.html

Disappointing that WCE couldn't hang on against the Saints but hopefully this is the start of some competitive performances from them. Melbourne can't rely on other results to get a decent ladder position but we don't need WCE gifting percentage to our opponents either.

So you thought the player's efforts were poor today. Did Goodwin say he was impressed with our skills? If he said that you'd be right in qwuerying the comment.

Yes, great thinking. We are losing games because we're not connecting up forward. You give the players a rocket and that apparently suddenly means the connection happens, Seriously! What evidence is there of complacency? If anything I think it's the opposite. Everyone's trying so hard but that's creating a cluttered game ansd no space for our forwards to operate in.

Makes a pleasant change 😀

FFS, Melbourne did finish 2nd on the ladder pre-2022 Finals. Melbourne weren't dismissive today, poorly skilled yes, but we dominated contested ball and every other stat except the scoreboard. We beat Collingwood 2 games ago and are missing our best player.

I disagree. GWS played about as well as they are capable of today and defended brilliantly. Melbourne's opponents, almost without exception (apart from maybe the Sydney game) have been up for it. I do agree with you though about other teams taking advantage of our mistakes. Ridiculous comment IMV. The effort was there today. If they were laughing and played like they didn't care that would have been different. Check his site after he's updated for this week and I guess you'll find out 😀 Faie enough. I hate losing games like that when every stat shows we should have won, but I guess I'd save the putrid classification for games where our effort has been below par, which it wasn't today. Well, they didn't find a way to win against us pre-bye! 😀 Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned that. Apparently according to a number of posts here Melbourne have been total rubbish ever since the 2021 GF!

Give us all a break. We finished 2nd on the ladder after H&A in 2022. We went out in straight sets because we had a number of players banged up and couldn't run finals games out. Today's result was incredibly disappointing because it was entirely due to skills errors. We're still every chance of making Top 4. Writing on the wall at the start of the 3rd? We lost after a GWS goal with 3 minutes left. If you're embarrassed by Melbourne I suggest you start suppoerting another team. No loss to me at least. I agree about the disadvantage of us needing to play in NT for financial reasons. I've posted on this before but I'm so tired of us losing home ground advantage by playing an interstate team every year in Alice Springs. These opponents should be playing us on the MCG. Similarly, if we play Geelong once it's always at Kardinia Park whilst bigger teams never play there. It's all about money, at the expense of fixture fairness. Clearly you've never watched Casey play because if you did you'd know Jefferson is nowhere near ready. I agree there needs to be some changes. Clearly Clarry would be in if fit but we didn't lose because of our midfield. We lost because of poor skills execution. It wasn't a putrid performance, Incredibly disapointing when you lose games that all the stats show you should be winning, but putrid is unfair. The effort was there, but not the execution.

A bit of MFCSS coming out here I suspect! My daughter sent me a text last night. Coldest June day in Sydney in 15 years. I'm part of a Kirribilli Walking Group that meets Thursday mornings at 7. A little bit brisk today 😀 @WheeloRatings You're now predicting a 2 point loss. We need to get this game happening before it gets any worse! Looks like @binman was on the money. Charlie wasn't dropped. He's just having his load managed. I have mixed feelings. I would love to have seen Taj playing, but wouldn't like to have him debuting as sub.

Doing it tough picket 🍴🍷

I prefer @WheeloRatings. He has us winning by a comfortable 1.3 points 😀: https://www.wheeloratings.com/afl_match_previews.html

Well, it is Geelong's home game (why we usually play Geelong only once and it's always their home game is a question worth asking), so if it was at the MCG we'd have to give up another home game & Geelong would have to get one somewhere else. Not sure what the solstice has to do with anything. The last time the Geelong sunset was before 7:20 was 31/3 and that was only because of daylight saving!

I would have thought Oscar McDonald was a better option. There was surprise when West Coast Eagles, desperately short of fit players, decided not to pursue him at the recent mid-season draft.

Surprised at your view that Tommo is better than Petty. I accept Tommo was great against Collingwood but was ordinary one-on-one the previous week against Mackay. Interesting theory for tonight. With Tomlinson coming into the side my conclusion was that Melbourne had given up on the idea of 2 key backs, and instead had reverted to 3. At face value it would seen strange to revert to 2 for the Geelong game with Hawkins, Cameron & Rohan as opposition although with wet weather predicted.... I guess all will be revealed tonight. So Smith back, Petty forward. Smith I think would be a good match-up for Cameron athletically but can lose contact on occasion (do you remember him as a match-up for Charle Cameron?) and has been playing forward all season for Casey. Not Brayshaw, Petty or Smith? Lots of options. I hope they choose the right one 😀

I don't really understand why you'd basically drop a player from the 22 to make them sub? Unless it's all about load magement for JJ & Spargo. But that's a funny way to handle loads given you have a limited idea how much time you're going to play someone as sub. I agree with you but the alternative is Spargo as sub which I also think is strange (see above).

Now this is the conspiracy theory to replace all conspiracy theories! West Coast, like Sydney & Geelong, have a history of staying near the top of the ladder and having continuing success despite the lack of access to higher draft picks. As recently as the end of Round 19 2021 they were 7th on the ladder but then went on to lose their last 4 games (successfully tanking to miss the finals, finish 9th and then secure Pick 14 in the 2021 draft). Since then they have been dreadful due almost entirely to their failure to get anything resembling an AFL side on the park. You're suggesting they didn't do a proper pre-season in 2022 to start their process after just missing the 8 in 2021? Seriously? I suppose then they deliberately set out to injure their players in 2022 & 2023? Why does a club tank? Logically to get good draft picks and return to the top of the ladder. So why would you lock away players past their best on multi-year deals which ties up list spots & money that could be spent on drafting players to help you return to the top of the ladder. Sending away players for surgery when they could play on under duress? Teams that can't make the 8 do this all the time for obvious reasons (have the surgery, start the recovery process, you can't make the 8 this year but it positions you as well as possible for next season). This is not unique to West Coast. No doubt West Coast have made major mistakes in giving contracts to veterans who are not part of their future success. I would also agree there must be more to their incredible run of injuries than just bad luck. Incredibly poor injury management. Also, notwithstanding their injury woes, some of their performances have been pathetic. They are fortunate that their fans turn up to games regardless of how poor they are going. Some of their attitudes reek of arrogance. But none of this is evidence of a strategy to finish down the ladder to improve future draft picks.

So is the theory that Petty is coming in to play back because of match-ups specific to Geelong, but next week Petty goes forward replacing Smith and Tomlinson comes in to replace Petty down back?

Most of the criticisms I think were directed at the unfairness of Tommo being dropped but not necessarily looking at equally unpaltable alternatives (like the unfairness of Smith being dropped, or Petty staying out of the side for another week and coming back via Casey). The swap of Spargo for JJ is an interesting one. Is it part of a possible longer term strategy, part-warning to other small forwards (Kosi, Chin), squad mentality, reward for JJ/Taj, all of the preceding?

Thanks for that. I was thinking that if you're being coutious about a head-knock you don't play at all but if it's part of the conditioning process at a lower-intensity level I guess it makes sense. Thinking slightly longer-term it will be interesting to see how they re-integrate Bowey & Oliver (& Spargo?) back into the team. JJ back to sub, Woewodin out of the 23 (I'm hoping he's sub tonight), but still 2 more players to be dropped/rotated out of the side. I'd also love to see Howes, Laurie, and 1 or 2 others given an opportunity sometime later in 2023.

Apart from Hibbo these players are all contracted until 2024 so that can't be part of the consideration in Cal Thomey's cap space comment.

Bowey's best 22 imo. They name a range of players in the emergencies to cover all positions so my take at worst is that he's not best 23 rather than 26. I can only think they're being extra cautious following the concussion and wanted to give JJ a full game. Dropping 2 small forwards to accomodate Bowey may have been a stretch. I's be surprised if he played for Casey because that would throw my extra-cautious theory out the window (but I've been wrong lots of times before 😀).

Woewodin will be sub surely tonight and hopefully he gets some decent game time for his debut! On that basis he won't be playing for Casey or maybe on limited game time.

I agree it's a difficult one. Essentially though we need to accomodate Bowey, Oliver & Petty in the team somehow. Maybe the club is just being ultra-cautious. Earlier in the season they left Spargo out for an extra week following a concussion. It seems to me we have an abundance of half-bank flankers in the side and playing 3 talls in the backline plus Salem & Hibberd makes it difficult to accomodate everyone. Again, maybe they thought it was time to select JJ in the starting team and this was the way to do it. Who do we drop for Oliver when he (eventually!) comes back?

I agree that there were some strange selection choices for this game. I thought Melbourne were committed, at least for the short-to-medium term, to playing Petty up forward so on that basis it made sense to bring Petty in for Smith. Maybe they have changed their view and now believe Smith is a better option up forward. Or is it just for one week given likely rain and Geelong's 3-pronged attack? I can't really understand the outrage at Tommo being dropped. I agree he had a great game against Collingwood but looking back just one week was totally outplayed by Harry Mackay. The argument presented following the Carlton game was that Tommo was important to our structure and freed up Jake Lever. I agree with that but for me it's a no-brainer. You would always pick Petty ahead of Tomlinson and Petty had to come back in. Petty is a better player than Tomlinson and will provide the same structural support to our defence. If Petty had come in for Smith the same argument would have applied. Would Smith have deserved to be dropped? Petty had to come on for someone. For me the strange one is Bowey not coming straight back in. They've dropped Spargo but replaced him with JJ which is reasonable but they had to find a spot for Bowey. He's definitely in our best 22 and was over his concussion concerns apparently. And he's not evenly listed as a possible sub?? I'm assuming Woewodin will be sub. BBB being named as an emergency seem strange. He didn't play against Collingwood VFL despite not being listed as injured and yet now he's a potential in against Geelong. Strange.