Great Northern Summer

You must be on the Mernda or Hurstbridge line train! Not the case with the Sandy line!

The bloke that played 90% of his career with us but is now a die-hard Collingwood supporter?

He was the football coach when I was at school back in the day. The bloke loves himself. He hasn’t changed in 24 years. Tota f-l-o-g.

GWS you mean

I actually think the winners this weekend will play off in the GF. The winners being Melbourne and GWS.

We ran Collingwood off its feet because we didn’t have heaps of talls. We had more agile players that could grunt run. Reminder, we win that game if we kick even remotely straight. Let Carlton go super tall, don’t fall into the trap of having to select a team to match them. Stick to our strengths, we will out run them.

Couple of things: - We've played a hell of a lot of games in the wet this season. The Gawn/Grundy combo has not worked at all in the wet. It looked promising in the pre-season and early part of the season. Given it's expected to be warm and dry on Friday night, perhaps there is hope after all and it's worth another crack. - Whilst we are all a little (ok, very) down about our loss last week, taking a glass half full approach, it might end up working out. GWS are a mile ahead of the comp on key stats over the past 12 week and have won at 11 different venues this season, which is some sort of record. I totally expect them to knock over a depleted Port on Saturday night to set up an encounter against Collingwood the following week. All else being equal, I would tip them to beat Collingwood too. This means if we can get through this Friday night, Collingwood could be out of the finals before us. Playing GWS in the GF compared to the PF would be a massive advantage to us, as this would mean GWS would have been on the road for four consecutive weeks compared to three, which might be the difference between them being at the top of their game and being slightly off it.

was always going to be picked this week

So Martin gets his suspension downgraded to one game. Ah well, it won't make a difference this season. He'll be ready to play Round 1 against Richmond!

He hasn't played a competitive game in almost two months. Surely we can't bring him back in because of that?

The podcast was brilliant this week, thank you. It's got me thinking a bit about our game plan, the external (and our internal) criticism of it, and what we should be doing going forward. Basically, we aren't an overly skillful team. Nor are we quick. We are a contested team full of beasts and players prepared to put their heads over the ball and get physical (within the rules). You can't flip your game - compare our skills to GWS (arguably the most skillful side). Our list has been built this way; because, according to those running the club, it's the best Premiership model. Can't argue with this, given our flag in 2021 and even Richmond in 2017. Our 2018 list and game plan resembled the 2023 Collingwood and we all know that was flawed. As a result, given our list, we play a total territory game, despite the fact it looks ugly, unconventional and counter-productive at times. The consequences of adopting some of the 'expert' views that we should pinpoint passes into the forward 50 (especially with tons of defenders back there) is flawed. Reason being, if we botch up our entry, which is more likely than likely given our list (few elite kickers), the opposition will have the ball 30-40 metres from our goal compared to say 10 metres away. This would position them really well to kick goals on the turnover. I presume Goodwin would have instructed the side on Thursday to stick to our strategy, even though it didn't appear to be working, because the alternative was too big of a risk with goals likely to go back the other way. A few months ago, we changed our game plan a bit, around the time we had some close wins against the Lions and Crows. This game plan was far more pleasing on the eye. We were experimenting. It enabled us to conclude that it was flawed. Although it resulted in higher scores for us, it did the same for the opposition. In those games, we conceded (or almost conceded) 100. We were very lucky to get out of jail against the Lions. They looked incredible for almost all of that game. If we played that same game plan again against the Lions (in a Preliminary Final), we have zero chance of winning! Leave aside the majority of the first quarter on Thursday, and our terrible goal kicking (hello Langdon, Pickett and McDonald), the game was almost fully played on our terms. If we play this way again, we keep the opposition to around 60, we win 9 times out of 10. Goodwin is keeping faith with this game plan and knows it's our best chance of winning.

Martin was never getting off anyway. A reduction to one week his best bet.

jobs for the boys!

Ex-Collingwood player trying to look after his own. Makes me sick the number of Collingwood people standing up for the thug. Buckley comes to mind. What would he be saying if Maynard played for another team? And all of the Collingwood 'friendlies' - a fair portion of the media that have been sucking up to Collingwood for the past 12 months and continue to do so.

I hope what i'm about to say makes sense! Because Collingwood had so few inside 50s and we had the ball in our forward half for the majority of the game without scoring goals (thereby resetting field positions with the 6-6-6 rule), it basically meant most of the time when we did go inside 50, it was already crowded and tons of opposition players were ready to spoil, with very little space/room to find a spare player by lowering the eyes. A more conventional game where the opposition has more of the ball in their half will enable us to transition easier and get it down to our forwards in one-on-one situations, or on the lead, rather than an overcrowded forward line. So whilst we had a crazy number of inside 50s on Thursday, most of them were repeat entries without space to do anything productive with, and high-level pressure applied because the Collingwood players were already there and not using their petrol tickets going back and forward on the field. That being said, Carlton are a far better contest/clearance team. They will have far more inside 50s than Collingwood. As long as our backline holds up well, we can score far more from transition and make life easier for our forwards in one-out positions.

The team that had Pick 2 wasted an even more valuable pick!

I reckon GWS will get through to the GF. Very confident.

I think the point of the previous post was to suggest the Brisbane v Port games didn't have finals intensity, so when Brisbane come up against us (hopefully) in the PF, they won't have adjusted to the pressure

Re-read my post again. We aren’t picking a bloke solely to play as a 5-10 minute-a-quarter relief ruckman when that’s all they can do. So yes, Schache or TMac will be that relief ruckman, just like Van Rooyen has been.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I suspect they won’t bring Grundy back in. I just don’t reckon Goody will drop TMac after one game. They’ll replace Van Rooyen with Turner or Schache (Schache was preferred more recently against Hawthorn and only played half a quarter as sub from memory). Grundy can only play one position, the position that is not available and won’t be made available through any readjustment. I think the club is happy for Grundy to be looking elsewhere and the disconnect from both parties is probably already final.

Correct

Under the current Final 8 system (since 2000), happened in: 2003 - Lions 2005 - Swans 2006 - Eagles 2015 - Hawks 2020 - Tigers

Spot on! Or better still, we will be playing the Semi Final next Friday night and the Preliminary Final the following Saturday twilight if we make it - both time slots regardless of who our opposition is.

Of course he hasn’t but two of them will be forced. Salem hasn’t done anything useful for months. McDonald was nowhere near the level required. Same for Laurie.

We genuinely could have had Taylor Walker if we offered him a multi-year deal at the end of last year. The club clearly didn’t want to go near him because of the racial incident that happened last year. If we had him, we’d win the flag. Agree, we need to get creative with the use of our good draft picks. We don’t fix this forward line issue up, then we butcher this window we are in. There are already a heap of teams on the up that will challenge for finals spots next season and could do damage very quickly (ie Adelaide), which worries me that we’re genuinely wasting our opportunity which may be over before we know it.