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He also went off just before half time in the Round 9 game versus Hawthorn with a toe injury (he has bad luck with his feet!). He'd had six marks and 2 goals in the first half before getting injured. The commentators were lamenting that he just started to look like he understood where to lead and what to do before going down. He returned to the backline after he came back into the side (although he was subbed in 2-3 games with a range of injuries), and was then moved forward against Richmond in Round 20. I'm confident that if he is given a clean run at 8-10 games as a forward without injury, within a few rounds he'll be performing more consistently. I think he can average 1.5 goals a game and 6-8 marks a game which would be great given our other forward talent.

The Cats will have a season like the many between 2011 and 2022. Scott is a fantastic coach and will move the chess pieces each round to get the needed wins. Their list management is also first class. But their stars are just too old. They’ll be 5-0 after next week but could easily be 6-4 or 5-5 after round 10. Scott will get them 13-15 wins this year but they’ll be shown up in finals. He’s buying time to reinvigorate the team with some free agency pick ups to have another crack. Here’s to hoping they can’t get any before Cameron, Dangerfield, and Hawkins retire.

That was a very professional win. Paced ourselves well considering the 5-day break. Two have played three interstate games against teams who finished 3rd, 8th, and 9th last year after 5 games and sitting 4-1 is fantastic. Another win against the Lions in 7 days and we reach our bye 6-1, with the chance to refresh and hit the middle of the season with momentum!

I would really love to see Jake with a premiership medallion around his neck on the last Saturday in September this year. He could retire knowing he helped will the team to the holy grail with his dedication and persistence.

With a normal 5-day break during the season, teams need to consider the next run of games. Thankfully for us, we have this game, then the Lions 7 days later, followed by a 13-day break into the Tigers game. It means we can be especially light on the track this week and not worry about long term fitness, given the larger break from our bye after round 5. @Bendigo_Demon’s insight about how light todays session was, makes me think the players will look pretty fresh on Thursday come the first bounce.

Winning this game and being 4-1 after three interstate games would be amazing. It leaves just four interstate games (excl. Alice Springs) for the remaining 18 rounds and one of those is against WCE 😊

They showed a stat on "On The Couch" that Port had allowed their opponents to score 50% of the time it went into Ports D50, which is pretty terrible for a team wanting to be Top 4. Luckily they've played the worst team in the league, and another that is likely to be bottom 6 (if not bottom 4) this year. If we get solid Inside 50 numbers, I can see us kicking a score they won't be able to defend.

From discussion recently about Goodwin's coaching style - is he a good strategist and planner but not a good gameday tactician, if plan A doesn't work there's no plan B etc, it raised a thought in my mind. I wanted to see how many times over the past three seasons where we were well out of games and knew we would lose well before the final siren. This is somewhat subjective but the parameters I used to determine when this occurred were: If we were four goals down by the halfway point of the last quarter. I also included games where the score was slightly closer (around 20/21 points down) at the same mark, but momentum and scoring was very much with the other team Probably not surprising to @binman, even though we lost 21 games over that period, there was only 5 games that met the above parameters: Fremantle, Round 11 2022 (May was subbed early with concussion, TMac was injured in the warmup, Petracca had the flu, and others were missing due to COVID) Sydney, Qualifying Final 2022 Brisbane, Round 2 2023 (Max went down early with a knee injury, and while we got within 10 points after the lights came back on, we deserved to lose by 40 points) Essendon, Round 5 2023 (Gather round) Sydney, Round 0 2024 Essentially, if Goodwin only has a Plan A, it either works or goes pretty close to working 72 times out of 77. P.S. I meant to add to this the game plan and tactics thread but I was having issues with the search function loading any results.

In the Kings Birthday game last year we showed teams that if you can get the ball outside of the contest you can outnumber the pies on the rebound. They throw a lot of players at the contest to win the ball back, but if they lose and the team can clear it, they're off. The aura Collingwood had meant that teams sometimes panicked when they had the overlap / outnumber going, and would often rush a kick either giving the ball straight back or allowing the Pies players to spoil, tackle etc. Further, last year teams statistically had their worst scoring accuracy against the Pies. It was an uncanny stat that almost all teams worst goalkicking performance came against Collingwood. This meant that when teams got momentum they weren't capitalising, giving the Pies a sniff. The confidence they had from all the close wins and comebacks meant they never lost belief. Conversely teams started to tighten up when they were 3 or 4 goals up half way through the last quarter fearing a Pies comeback. Now that teams have worked out how to pull apart Collingwood's game plan, the aura has started to fall and it is having the opposite compounding effect where the Collingwood players are feeling the pressure and making mistakes. The scrutiny premiers face the following season is intense, and I'm even more proud of the 10-0 start we had in 2022 in retrospect.

Pies play Saints next week and then Brisbane at the Gabba. Will likely be 1-3 and maybe even 0-4… what’s the emoji for pure glee?

When you’re the premiers but also seem to bring out the yips in every single team you play… last year they were clearly the 1st ranked team for opponents inaccuracy in front of goal. I’m hoping that eventually turns and they start losing more games that they deserve to.

Is there a scenario where they bring in Brown and Fullarton? Fullarton to play Ruck to give Gawn a rest and to ensure we have two tall forwards at all times? Or is that too tall? So for me, that would be Pickett, Hore, Brown, and Fullarton in for Bowey, Tomlinson, Schache and Laurie. If Lobb, Naughton, and JUH are proving too tall we could look to play Max behind the ball more and use Fullarton in the ruck forward of centre.

It’s important to remember that the injury that interrupted the last few weeks of pre-season was a toe injury in his other foot to the one he injured last year. His injured foot has been good to go for a while now and has held up throughout the rehab period for his more recent toe injury.

It really highlights how easily people are swayed by media sentiment. The bookies would be loving it.