Bring-Back-Powell

There are some appallingly double standards that Lachie Whitfield and Idun are free to play today and next week. It’s easy to throw the book at kids and no names who were involved in the skits but when it comes to a star player like Whitfield who should know far better, the AFL didn’t have the knackers to suspend him

Great point re: Turner capable of playing back. As Hawthorn have shown with Sicily, versatility in-game is key and the likes of Petty and Disco can be switched either end in game.

I suspect Collingwood will finish top 2 this year given their recruits and injured players returning, and therefore won’t finish lower than GWS.

On the Sunday Footy Show this morning Green suggested it was very line ball about his availability for our game. Hopefully their bye in round 2 might discourage the Giants from playing him next week, but he’s certainly a chance.

Fair point about tempering expectations with Turner. If he’s just the third tall forward that will provide a cameo or 2, who’s the second? Jefferson isn’t ready, Johnson might just be VFL standard despite an encouraging practice match and, well I can’t think of anyone else. This is where I predict Petty will be a forward as the season evolves.

I was hoping Turner would take control and rip up the match sim yesterday. I don’t recall one training report over summer which Turner was commended, he unfortunately spent at least 2 weeks in rehab and finally his practice match series was very underwhelming aside from 4 goals across the two sets of junk time. jVR desperately needs another key forward to help him out this year, and I’m not sure Disco is that man to start the year. With that being said, he’s a tremendous set shot at goal, possibly our best, so he certainly has something to offer the team.

Thanks for the excellent reports guys. Sounds like Chandler’s lifted his game from last week. He’s going to play an important role next week IMO.

I don’t disagree with this. The question you need to ask is whether a classy winger/half back flanker or a power forward that can partner up with JVR is more important to our list evolution.

Thanks for this. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but I like the expected score stat. Sometimes the final score doesn’t tell the full story - for example you’ve got some teams winning games due to the opposition’s inaccuracy rather than the winning team’s general dominance. Another example was GWS winning a bunch of games last year on unsustainable accuracy, only to lose both finals. Not surprised we lost to North and Port (round 3) on expected score. We all left the North game that night feeling in a sour mood feeling as though we lost. The Port win at Adelaide Oval we couldn’t miss if we tried. Surprised we lost to Essendon on excepted score. Felt like we were far the better team on the night, and did hold a 7 goal lead before Essendon’s junk time goals. The Carlton game - Carlton had 6.0 by quarter time in the wet with many of their goals being from difficult areas. Had they of been 3.3 at quarter time, we likely win that game as we got better the night went on. Lastly, the Dogs loss at Marvel could’ve been an absolute massacre based on X score.

For Sunday's game, how do you go from potentially 70mm of rain to potentially just 5mm of rain in the space of 24 hours. I was leveraging off GWS slogging it out in heavy conditions in preparation for our game next weekend, but now it looks like it could be a dry game

That's a really good question and I'd be keen to know as well. The Port game in round 3 was definitely one we got away with on expected scores. Whilst the GWS and Carlton losses I'd say we would've won on expected scores. Maybe even the Collingwood loss on Kings Bday as they were nailing everything and we couldn't hit the side of the barn.

Aside from Whateley's Poindexter like voice, he's a decent commentator and Huddo's one of the best in the business. Apparently BT's not doing Friday night footy anymore. Al Nicholson has taken over. Reckon his constant errors and calling players by the wrong name has caught up with him. Be interesting if he's still calling the GF this year.

Agree with all of this. Amazing that the AFL took advantage of a cyclone to program everyone into a wild card weekend going forward. I'm sure there were tons of viable options to play the GC/Dons game prior to round 24.

Unfortunately Green’s actually now a chance to return to for our game according to their injury report, but Hogan appears very unlikely. I had a feeling the time line of a round 3 return for Green was a bit over exaggerated.

Neitz kicked 24 goals in 4 games around the time of those highlights. That is just plain sick.

I think this is the soft launching pad towards a wild card weekend from next year, to get people used to football again in the weekend prior to finals. I know the thought of a wild card upsets and angers people greatly, but I think this is where we are heading. 7 v 10 and 8 v 9. Essentially the top 8 will become the top 6 in terms of having a genuine crack at the flag, which is fine.

An idea would be for Gold Coast and Essendon to: 1) play Port and Carlton respectively on Thursday and/or Friday night of round 24. 2) then play each other in the postponed game on the following Wednesday night - 10 days before the Saturday of week 1 finals. 3) ensure either or both teams (GC and Essendon) play on the Saturday of week 1 finals to ensure they have a 10 day break into finals - should one or both of them qualify for finals.

My only reservation about Collingwood beating GWS is that the away teams last year struggled with the Sydney humidity in opening round last year - particularly us against Sydney.

Hopefully GWS play in heavy rain on Sunday so they're a bit tired for our game. A fair bit or rain is forecasted for Sunday. In round 1 2021 St Kilda went up to GWS and beat them in extremely wet conditions. We were able to beat St Kilda (when Uncle Dan let us attend games that year) the following week so hoping history repeats itself with GWS.

That’s a great sign. We scored 90 points vs Freo which is going to win you a game of footy far more often than not in modern day footy, whereby scores are lower than yesteryear. For example last year, in 7 of our 12 losses the opposition didn’t kick 90 points. Sounds obvious but it’s so important that we apply scoreboard pressure. None of this scoring 50 points nonsense against Port and going down by 2 points because we let the opposition off the hook.

Without downplaying his BOG performance last week I’d suggest he may be referring to some of his defensive efforts. The Shai Bolton example when we conceded a goal with 10 seconds left before quarter time and the video showed Oliver in no man’s land. Otherwise very exciting signs ahead!

Billings has kicked 131 behinds in his career so I don’t think he’s all of a sudden going to have a 15.2 kind of season. Unfortunately what you see is what you get and in all probabilities he’s going to miss a reasonably elementary shot from 40 mtrs out. From round 20 onwards and into the two pre seasons games he’s otherwise been a good contributor and provides a good wing option, and can use the ball going inside 50. An example was this was the Port win last year where he kicked the ball from the wing area and found one of our forwards that was surrounded by 2 Port defenders. It was “thread of needle” stuff and showed what he’s capable of.

I’ll wait till the teams come out on Thursday 13 March to be absolutely certain Hogan’s missing.

GWS/Pies hard to tip considering the Giant outs. But last year taught us that the NSW teams are more favoured by the extreme humidity of early March.

Apparently Hogan jammed his finger in the toilet of the club’s bus according to GWS Bigfooty forum.