Stu

I went to find the exact same gif! 😂

Wouldn’t that be delicious! We recruited Jackson with pick 3, trade him to Freo and get pick 3 back along with pick 15 last year, and probably pick 23/24 this year! 🤌

GWS are playing a style that will start to kill them in about 2-3 weeks. They’re essentially playing like the Italian national soccer team and parking the bus. The problem is that it requires covering a lot of ground to do it. Rebounding from D50 and getting back to cover D50 is going to cause burnout. I’m confident they’ll start to lose some games by big margins by round 21/22.

I’ve watched the GF replay so many times that I feel like I know this guy personally.

It’s certainly how I took it, listening to the audio of the interview (I dictated it to post here). To me, Yze was implying that they will risk top 4 to make sure we’re fresh for finals. We went a little too hard to guarantee top 4 last year and burnt ourselves out. He goes on to say later that even with a top 2 spot we fell out in straight sets, but Brisbane who finished 5th made the prelim. I don’t think it means we haven’t been loading mid-season in previous years. More that it’s being done with less focus on winning individual games, and keeping players fresh and primed in September.

This could probably go in about 3 or 4 other threads, but I thought it was relevant to Grundy's omission/management/dumping/divorce/separation. Given that he had a low fitness base due to his long-term injury last year, I imagine what is stated below has probably impacted him a lot more than others (although you could see Max looked laboured in the Saints game as well). This is taken verbatim from an interview with Adam Yze taken earlier this week. The question was framed around the media's general perception that our position in 4th is really tenuous: "We're really mindful of the way we finished last year. We really struggled and ran out of gas late last year. We feel this year in the end our goal was to make top 4, it always is. We finished in the top 4 last year and went out in straight sets, just by losing a lot of momentum and a lot of gas by the end of the year. We're really mindful of that. We had three really solid weeks of training - we had three 10-day breaks in a row. We were able to get a fair bit of training into our players, which we haven't had the opportunity to do that before (during this season). Our fitness staff set a really strong plan, and a really clear plan on getting an advantage with those three 10-day breaks in a row. It was like a little mini pre-season, they got a bit more volume... we're hoping that will give us a bit of a spike later in the year, so we don't have the same issues as last year."

I meant it literally, like the cliche that the performance is more important than the result. But now that I think about it I do just want the win, and hopefully one that is convincing!

I have nothing new to add but want to reiterate how critical a good performance is this week. It will be build momentum and confidence leading into a run of winnable games at the G. I agree with @binman that the FD also sees it this way and will give the team the best chance to win the match like we did against the Pies.

Hey guys, I'm up to minute 48 so my apologies if this gets covered a bit further on. To keep any disappointment in check @Demonland - remember that the style the Saints employ softens the impact key-outs or in-game injuries have. If the game was played at the 'G and the Demons didn't just play their second wet-weather game in a row, I'm sure we would have won by 6-8 goals by running them off their feet. It's also important to remember that for most of the last quarter they weren't really threatening to kick a goal. It was only after they got a little momentum with about 5-6 minutes left did they start to look likely. Which goes to what @george_on_the_outer was saying - Lyon sets up his teams so that they have a sniff for as long as possible. I think Goodwin coached really well to win the game, while also controlling the tempo to limit fatigue on our players. One thing I'm really happy with this year is that we're winning games through adopting different strategies. Last year we either won or lost playing 'our' way. We've won games attacking aggressively, by playing defensive forwards (Petty vs McCartin in Round 3), playing slow, defensive football (vs Carlton), playing an aggressive forward half press (vs Pies), and playing a rebounding game (vs Saints). Hopefully we can start to put it all together over the next 7 weeks in the lead up to the finals.

Watching this game, I can really see us giving the pies serious trouble in the finals. Like us, there forward line is their weakest link. If you rob them of fast ball movement, they will absolutely struggle to score.

Yes!! I actually feel bad for being sad when I see him get up sore from a contest and then just run it off 😅

It’s also been well publicised that the decision on Hinkley’s contract will be made in August. He may we’ll have set out the plan this year to get as many wins in the H&A season as possible, and take a gamble on the finals, to sure up his contract.

Well said!

I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t think anyone would say our forward footy over the past 6 weeks has been good. The debate comes down to - how much is this a planned temporary change, how easily it can be rectified, and what it means for our season.

I believe the FD's logic is this: Our players are more fatigued than earlier in the year, so rather than kick to an open forward line where the ball may sling shot back out, requiring our players to sprint back into defence, they slow down to allow our players to get back and either; Take a contested mark Kick a crumbing goal from the marking contest, or Create a stoppage (or several) in the F50 You're right in that it exacerbates our poor kicking - it typically puts players under more pressure when having a shot in open play or puts them at sharp angles for set shots. IF the game style change is due to fatigue and protecting players during the 'second act' of the season, the FD knows they risk losing games because it highlights the lists deficiencies. But they likely see that as acceptable in order to protect players from burnout and injury that an end-to-end game might cause at this time of the year. We will know in about 4-6 weeks whether the game plan change we've seen for the past 6 rounds was a short-term change to accommodate the challenges of the middle part of the season, or if the FD lost it's nerve and reverted to a 'safe' style. We're 2-4 since the Port game, having lost by 4, 7, 15, and 2, and beaten the league leaders during that time. If the players are playing poorly, and/or the game style is terrible - it won't take much for us to turn games into wins, given how close we've been despite how terrible it may seem.

The Italian National Team would be proud of that effort by GWS - a big ol' park the bus and get them on the rebound. I know it doesn't help us, but I HATE when teams do that. We lost that game, GWS didn't win it. Kick just a few of those opportunities we had and the game would have been over at 3/4 time given the rain.

Not just loading... power loading...

An amazing effort to get to 65,000 after and so close to our 2022 figure.

Neither - just need to rename the pod to the 'Tigerland Podcast' 😆 It makes you all sound like some of the regulars who hang out at my location train station here in Moe!

I’m going to give this a try simply because you and Binman already talk quite quickly, so I might get a laugh from the sound of “Amphetamine Andy” and “Buzzing Binman”.

I just finished the podcast at normal speed @Demonland it was great content - I didn’t have a solid block of time where I could listen to it in one sitting, so i broke it up into a few sittings. It was excellent coverage of the other contenders and their runs home. I like to use the squiggle ladder predictor every few weeks, just to gauge how some teams might rise or fall with the uneven “fixture”.

The last time we had a 10 day break, we flogged the Lions by 10 goals. Goody might be confident of a similar result this time around!