praha

Interstate teams have home ground advantage on account of the crowd and noise. Adelaide Oval and Optus Stadium aren't difficult to play. GMHBA is literally designed to Geelong's advantage. They are the only professional team in the world with an actual *playing field* advantage given how ground stadiums vary here, but there's is as if it was drawn up free hand on a blackboard.

They've managed their list well and bring in solid talent in the 23-25+ year old range. This means more matured bodies with more experience and capacity to go a full season and deep into finals. On top of that, they train and play 8+ games a year on a stadium that is far away different and worse than any other ground in the league. The WA and SA teams have a home ground advantage from the crowds. Brisbane probably from the humidity. Sydney is also tough to beat at the SCG but it's not "formidable". Geelong's home ground advantage is *literally* lies in the fact they're the only team that knows how to best play a really, really bad ground. The far wing is a dead straight line from flank to flank. How the AFL allowed this even with a redevelopment is truly beyond me. On top of this it's a super narrow ground so if you go down the flank and wing from the pocket it's a flip of the coin if you kick it to a contest or out on the full. It's a training run for them. On average based on this century they are guaranteed at least 5 wins a year playing there. That's halfway to finals.

typically crowds tends to pick up towards the end of the year for finals conmtenders. 75k-80k definitely likely especially if Pies win this week. AFL members is pretty much already sold out. Same for vs Carlton in two weeks.

This is really spectacular defending. Hope we can hold.

WEIDDDDDDD.

Sparrow kicks it to the hole and Weid is no where. He has to be done.

How in the [censored] did they get that.

Hi. You new here? Tuesday we wear pink.

Argh. Quintessential easy goal for Walters.

Melksham been good.

Ooof never seen Trac so verbally [censored] before.

You can already sense how this game is going to go. After the siren kick for a goal for Freo from a free kick.

White noise from brain dead Freo supporters.

I rate Frederick but if he and Walters cut loose tonight I'll lose it.

Should have been a free to Fritsch there. No whistle. Lucky he kicked the goal.

Frederick running rampant.

May having a real mare. We looked real good and now we look just as we have for the past 8 weeks. Amazing how quickly we revert to this.

Two players ignored a free Weid in the F50.

Lever won't be the only one rolling his ankle on this primary school ground

80% of the time Lever and May's kicking is reliable 100% of the time.

The hyper-fixation on Melbourne's performance at the moment is weird. On Fox Footy they were analysing "defensive breakdowns" of when the Bulldogs kicked goals last week. I mean how else do teams ever kick goals if not for some level of defensive breakdown? We're being picked on now.

Freo and WC are going to inadvertently overlook a lot of genuine talent if their entire recruitment strategy is to try and poach West Australians from Victoria. Seriously, [censored] off.

Friday night and a lot of interest in the match means any place with a TV will have it on. I like Transport, The Duke, and Kicks, all in the CBD.

Hey! I'm not susceptible.

Imagine how much the narrative has swayed. We went from Jackson staying, to Jackson going, to Brayshaw staying, to Brayshaw going, to Brayshaw ACTUALLY staying, and now suddenly the media is hinting that Jackson could still stay... We should have learnt after the Dusty fiasco in 2017. No one really knows outside of the player themselves and almost always, anything in the media is mostly planted news tidbits to fuel the negotiation.