Stu

Cheering after Miers scores....

If that is the case they may end up peaking too late. You’ve got to time the tampering just right to be at optimum fitness while also training the least on prelim weekend. If you time it right you’re both the fittest and least sore and tired you’ve been all season. But it’s quite common athletes time their run too late and peak after their event finishes. I feel it’s too late in the year to get much benefit for the risk of heavy legs in September.

😂 the sacrificial lamb selection strategy. “Ok JJ, you’re in this week, but next week you’re back to the scoobies for Clarry”.

I loved this summary from The Mongrel Punt (the bolded section made me laugh): ---------------- Now, what do we have here? A maring forward that genuinely looks like he wants the footy and leaps at it like he owns it! That’s what we have, and he has come from the forwards’ graveyard to do it. The Dees have a bit of a history with turning defenders into gun forwards, with the Coleman Medal-winning efforts of David Neitz, after playing in defence for several years, the standout. However, with six goals from Harrison Petty, the Dees may have found the best way to solve their key forward issues in 2023. Petty returned six goals in a dominant display, playing against a Richmond defence that, on paper, should have been able to make life very tough for him. He took four contested grabs and made every post a winner, not missing as he powered the Melbourne forward line home with two of the Dees’ six last quarter goals. He was aided by the continued development of Jacob van Rooyen, who genuinely looks like a power forward these days. I mentioned Petty’s contested marking, and whilst JvR had only the one contested grab, one of his biggest assets is that he has no fear when attacking the footy. He hits packs like they shot his dog or something, determined to either mark the footy, or make sure there is carnage left in his wake. When you add in the resurgent Jake Melksham, suddenly, this forward setup that was perceived as a problem started to look very menacing. If they can maintain the rage as they head toward September, regaining Bayley Fritsch on the even of finals might just make this group a nightmare to match up on.

He also mentioned how over the past three seasons, Tomlinson is (I think) 3rd for negating defensive one-on-one's (e.g., his opponent didn't win it), and 5th for winning defensive one-on-one's. It shows that when he can keep up with his opponent, he is a great defender.

This is awesome! Is it just me or have the lions gotten some favourable games tonight that have kept them in it?

When we consider that it’s small percentages that make the difference in AFL, playing high stakes, tough games in the final rounds can drain teams. How the Pies play, and how McRae seems to have them playing to the final minute, means they’re likely to be stretched even further to “get it done”. I think McRae will learn a valuable lesson in squad management and season planning come the end of September.

We had one game plan last year, and teams figured us out. We will see if the Pies game plan is good enough. They really don’t have anything else if plan A doesn’t work. While it might frustrate some fans, I love that Goodwin has tried many different line ups and strategies. Opposition coaches can’t know how we will approach the game.

Watching the Pies players continue with manic football in the last minute only confirms for me that they risk burning out before the end of September. I don’t care how fit they are, how they play and the number of games they’ve needed to play to the death, means they’ve spent a lot of energy to this point in the season.

It was a great result in the end. Pies win which keeps our top 2 chances alive, and two contenders just batter into each other for 120 minutes. I felt this way about Sydney last year, and I feel much the same about Collingwood this year - you've got to reserve some of the teams emotional energy for September. If you have to dig into the emotional reserves to get you over the line too many times in the regular season, you'll be burnt out by the last Saturday in September. I can't help but feel the more neutral crowd and long season will come back to haunt the Pies on that day, if they make it.

I've said it a few times - Collingwood will be spent by the time the Grand Final is played. It's really 'brave' that they keep coming back, but they've spent so much energy this year playing games where they have to strain every muscle and sinew to win!

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.