Great Northern Summer

My unfortunate view on the difference between the Lions win in Round 23 and the finals loss. Some generalisation about our 2022: (1) We were awfully inaccurate in so many games that it cost us wins. (2) We usually dominated first quarters and sometimes first halves, but too often gave little in second halves or couldn’t run out games. This is exactly why we smashed Brisbane in Round 23 and lost the final. - We were unusually deadset accurate in the first half of our Round 23 game, nailing even the most unlikely of goals. Interestingly, the scores after half time were fairly level. We were just so far ahead the game was over. - We were typically inaccurate in the first quarter of the final. If we had have had the same accuracy as the Round 23 game, the game probably would have been over at 1/4 time. So, in a nutshell, if we weren’t deadset (and unusually) accurate in the Round 23 game, our lead at 1/2 time wokld have been much slimmer, potentially opening a door for the Lions to think they were a chance, especially how average our second halves had been (and it was nothing special either in the Round 23 game).

Grundy must just come in handy after all (to all those doubters)

So we get North Melbourne and Hawthorn twice - massive win. Both likely to finish bottom 4. Can't see how either can pull anything out to prevent that. We also have Brisbane Lions, Richmond, Sydney and Carlton twice too. Likely to all be top 8 sides, maybe even top 6. That's relatively though. Slightly better run home too in our last 5 games than this year - (r.20) Richmond), (r.21) North, (r.22) Carlton, (r.23) Hawthorn, (r.24) Sydney. The last the only potentially troubling road trip.

It shouldn't matter whose home game it is in this 'Gather Round', aside from the two unlucky teams that get drawn to play the South Australian sides. The two South Australian teams obviously get an additional home game too. This is all because they're not playing a Showdown in this round (which they really should in order to be as equitable and fair as possible). For all other 14 teams, the only difference is 7 have to wear white shorts (and potentially an alternative guernsey) and 7 home shorts and guernseys. Normal 'home game' benefits regarding member attendance doesn't apply with this round. Teams still play 11 home and 11 away games each apart from this.

Don’t be surprised if it still goes ahead. Remember some years ago Melbourne and Freo reported that the Hogan deal was dead and buried only to be suddenly reincarnated some days later…

Anthony Ingerson and Jarred Rivers applaud this!

2007 was certainly amongst the worst, but yep, two of the worst three

At worst, it comes out as a one-all draw for him. I guess the fact he won this one at the 'G in a 'normal' environment (i.e. with family allowed), he'll take it ahead of what could have been last year's one. Still thought it would have been more satisfying being part of a drought-winning team rather than a regular top 4 finisher.

Nothing he would have said would have stopped the article being printed.

If he was put on the spot, he would have been foolish to take the call. Whether he is innocent or guilty, either way, he would have been best positioned after this happened to seek legal advice about how the handle the situation. I'm sure this is exactly what he did.

Reckon we'll probably get in Caracella if Yze leaves.. he's been involved with Geelong and Richmond flags, so has some pedigree..

On Footy Classified, Wilson said that if Yze gets the job, he'll try to take Mark Williams with him... Adem - you leave to take this role with our blessing. Don't steal our resources on the way out!

My impression was the same. However, Neale actually got 29 possessions (2nd most on the field) and the highest AFL Fantasy Points on the ground (whatever that means). Still, the game was set up in the 1st half and surely with an 11 goal lead at half time, Melbourne players should have been 3/2/1 in that game.

Howe is having a howler. Great to see.

Watching the games this weekend has been awfully frustrating. We would have given Geelong a far better contest than Brisbane last night, not provided a training run. We were far more competitive against Sydney than Collingwood. Collingwood are only still in this game because of their unbelievable accuracy (bit like when they played us). Wish I wasn’t having visions of Melksham right now.

Sadly it was more bad luck that an AFL conspiracy about our rough draw. As a top six side last year, we played one team that finished 7-12 and another that finished 13-18. They just happened to be Fremantle and Collingwood, both who improved more than anyone else this year. Each of these games just happened to be played in the second half of the season too, making it a fixture from hell, given we basically played finalists in about 9 of our last 12 games. We were the hunted, everyone wanted to beat us and primed themselves for us, and we never had an easy game at all after round 10. The three teams that weren’t finalists that we played were Carlton (in the eight when we played them), Port (who had a top 8 worthy second half of season) and Crows in Adelaide (who were very competitive near the end). You can understand why we were so banged up and fatigued now - Goodwin should have been resting players and rotating good performers in from Casey. Casey has lost one game all season! This is where we failed. On the other hand, Geelong played return games against WCE (7-12th) and North (13-18th). When the fixture came out, there was nothing to suggest return games against the Fremantle/Collingwood double would be a harder task than WCE/North. The other issue is our first 10 games were almost all played against average sides. We were lazy in most of them, allowed bad habits to slip in, relying on pure talent to play one or two good quarters to win most of them. Then when we got to 10-0, coming off a premiership, we knew we had secured a finals birth and most realised something would have to go majority wrong to miss top 4 from there (god forbid we almost did). Psychologically, this made the second half of the season against quality opposition difficult, knowing there wasn’t much to play for, to dedicate that extra 10% (which every other side was doing). We need to be smarter in 2023, looking at the season as a marathon and not a sprint, and properly utilising our list rather than being loyal to fatigued bagged up players, some out of form. Game plan and regular inaccuracy also issues but I won’t turn this post into an essay on a Saturday morning.

I stand corrected by I think Yze was a Bombers fan growing up, not that it is relevant to anything.

Yep, agree. Would have expected the job was 50-50 his partway through 2021.

4.60 with Ladbrokes

Me too!!

Only if our defence has a shocker like against the Bulldogs. It shouldn’t be close at all. If we played the way we did last week without improvement we still win tonight comfortably.

Given the very sad news of the Queen’s passing, sporting events in the UK are being called off this weekend. England v South Africa at The Oval has been called off tomorrow (day 2). Today was washed out anyway. As part of the Commonweath, will this affect sport in Australia this weekend? I understand there is a 9-10 day mourning period too.

Don’t know how to break it to you, but our fixture won’t be any different should we win or lose tonight. When they design the fixture, they break teams into groups of six - 1 to 6, 7 to 12, 13 to 18. The general theory goes you play three return games against teams in your group, and one each against teams in each of the others. Given we can’t drop out of the top 6 now win or lose, it doesn’t make a difference. We have been super unlucky that the team from 7 to 12 we got twice this year was Fremantle (big improver) and from 13 to 18 was Collingwood (also big improver). That sort of luck, added to the fact all of those games against Fremantle and Collingwood were after round 10, as well as both Brisbane games (and one game each against Port and Bulldogs), meant coincidently we ended up with an enormously difficult fixture after round 10. Far more difficult than any other team, by some way.

Well we can play against Collingwood and Sydney. We would win that last Collingwood game 19 times out of 20 if it was played again. They relied on very low % shots at goal all going through, particularly in the first half, and us missing sitters, to still be in the game at half time. That score line should have been akin to our round 23 game against Brisbane at half time and there would have been no coming back. I don’t read too much into the mid-year slump either. We were 10-0. We should have beaten Sydney if it wasn’t for a few things going against us in the final 10 mins and we could have even beaten Collingwood too.

Don't forget Trent Ormond-Allen - he only missed the 1997 GF due to glandular fever!