old55

Yeah but you don't have to travel for 30 minutes to get to your car on the way to Geelong and wait for 45 minutes before the car doors open and you can get inside, then wait 15 minutes getting out of the car at Geelong, 30 minutes to get your bag from the boot and 30 minutes to travel back home from your car. That’s at least an extra 2+ hours each trip. IMHO they'd be mad not to stay in Adelaide.

Selection for Sydney will be interesting, there's the starting 22 against Carlton minus Kossie. That means Howe and Windsor to debut plus Billings. We need to add two more and name a sub out of the 23. I wouldn't be adding a tall. That probably means two of Tholstrup, Woey, K.Brown or AMW, if Clarrie doesn’t play. Maybe I'm missing someone?

What are all the possible reasons why Clarrie might not play against Sydney?

Yeah, recruited our premiership captain.

I think we've got 35 fit listed players. If they all play 4 quarters that's 35 x 4 = 140 player-quarters. A full team across 7 quarters requires 22 x 7 = 154 player-quarters. We're short 14 player-quarters. We're going to need at least 4 Casey extras to make up the difference, or 14 players play 5 quarters, or they reduce it to 6 quarters and we only need 132 player-quarters and 8 players only need to play 3 quarters. I think the last solution makes most sense.

I think it's a good well thought out post @Skuit but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about "first round draft recruits"? Yes, we've got 3 from the past two years. How many do you expect to have? In total, we have 7 first round draft picks under 23yo - Pickett, Laurie, Bowey, JVR, Jefferson, Windsor and Tholstrup. That's 7 from the last 5 drafts while we've been contending for the flag. That's a pretty good harvest.

Wait, what? We're not guaranteed to win the flag and the best is only that we can win it? I want my money back!

Wow I'm amazed that the number gets smaller, it's surprising there's no 5s in there.

I think the injury "crisis" is overblown. The backline is fit and burgeoning with talent. The midfield is mostly fit, yes there's the ongoing questions about Clarrie and Gus but that was known information. Hunter has a calf injury he can't shake but Billings has arrived and Woey, Laurie and Windsor may be ready to step up. The forward line is the issue, but we knew Petty has a nasty injury that takes time to get over, TMac and BBB are questionable propositions and McAdam is known to be mercurial but injury prone. Kosi is out for a week. The only news is Fullarton's injury and who knows if he's better than Schache anyway? If we're a Fullarton injury from panic then we're not who I think we are. I think vs Sydney we can go with JVR, Schache, Fritsch, ANB, Spargo, Chandler and Laurie/Woey/Billings/Kolt. Throw in a bit of Petracca. And then someone has to make way for Kosi vs the Dogs. Sure, we don't want more forward line injuries right now but by the same token Petty, McAdam, TMac, BBB and Fullarton are not dead and some will filter back soon enough.

Today's match sim gallery doesn't load properly on the MFC Android app. Seriously, displaying a gallery of images was a solved problem 30 years ago in HTML, it's pathetic!

It's a disgrace that the gallery doesn't load properly on the MFC Android app, it's 2024!

Wow, Sandringham playing home games at Linton Street and not TBO?

The sub legitimately exists so that teams are not severely disadvantaged by an early in-game injury to a player, it makes sense, and as LDVC says - going to 5 on the IC will negate that purpose.

77-56 - I'll take 137.5% every week thanks. Gulden could not have possibly played better and Fritsch can do better - kicked 6 in the GF.

Maybe he's thinking about Callum Mills' Mad Monday shoulder injury, Buddy Franklin and Paddy McCartin retiring and the fact that we belted them with a depleted forward line up there in the last round last year.

You mean the side that we belted up there in the last round last year with a makeshift forward line? Grundy won't make that much difference and their captain Mills is out. There's reasons to be positive.

It's 4 weeks to the opening game. I'm definitely not writing off McAdam recovering over that period. JVR, Fritsch and McAdam can form a competitive set along with ANB, Spargo, Chandler, Laurie and Billings. Tholstrup may even get a debut. And there's Schache too.

Burgo would have told McAdam to run it out

Vee do not panic about pre-season injuries at Kaos, Shtarker!

That X tweet that @Demonland linked to from AFL House clearly refers to the Community Series and says it's free for club members. The Community Series is when we are playing Carlton at Princes Park, not those other matches you refer to. It's not the club being misleading, it's the AFL. https://www.afl.com.au/news/1071843/afl-confirms-fixture-for-2024-community-series-matches It's not "free" because it cost me $8.80 to secure a ticket and I guarantee it will sell-out with the small capacity at that ground and you won't be able to walk up and get in "free".

$5 to reserve a ticket at Princes Park plus $3.80 handling fee -$8.80 is some new definition of free ...

Critics of our leadership have a much better case in the QF loss to Collingwood. We lost that in the first quarter because we didn't come out "switched on". Collingwood were and we weren't. The tone was clearly set at the opening bounce when Cox jumped early, put his knees in Max's head, knocked Max over and then palmed the ball to De Goey when he came back down to the ground. It was patently obvious Cox would attack Max as he has done repeatedly in the past - we should have been ready for this and it would have been ideal if Max had aggressively attacked Cox at the opening bounce to set the tone, even if he gave away a free kick - tunneling him would have been far better than falling over. I love Max and think he's the best captain we've had in my lifetime but that was a major failure. And so it went on right up to Maynard's "statement" attack on Brayshaw. Only our magnificent and resolute defence prevented us from being 5 or 6 goals down at quarter time. We owned that match from then on but couldn't bridge the gap. Our failure to realise the importance of the moment at the start of the match was a major failure of leadership from the coaching panel and the leadership group and IMHO cost us the 2023 flag.

The reason we lost the SF to Carlton was because we kicked 5 behinds in a row when we owned the game in the last quarter, not because we didn't replace TMac with Schache or play Grundy. 9.17 in a tight competition will generally kill you.

It's the contested marks that is the difference - 2.3/match, more than 50% better than all comers.

JV came off limping earlier in the week and was back in that match sim clip dominating. Probably best to just wait see what happens ...