Adam The God

FWLIW, Alison O'Connor on AFL.com.au is tipping us to win this by 7 points. Interesting... https://www.afl.com.au/news/1024726/mega-preview-magpies-v-demons-the-stats-that-matter-who-wins-and-why Yet the odds are still slightly favouring Collingwood. I suspect they might come in again (as they have today) with the announcement of the teams tomorrow night.

Fascinating. I wonder if that would be unusual. The tail wagging the dog, but in a good way. Player empowerment. @Engorged Onion, from a psychological perspective, would this be a risky paradigm to set up?

That's fascinating if only to show that Whatley knows full well about player load management and even saw it with his own team last year. I no longer watch AFL media, but has he at all referenced this on 360 this year?

I reckon we'll go TMac for Melksham and Hibbo for Laurie. Not sure who plays sub out of Smith or Hibbo. They may go with Smith as sub.

Deadset ridiculous call.

IMV, it was always the plan to give him CBAs again later in the season. I've written about this multiple times now, but for the first 9 rounds, he had high CBAs for his standards, and when people were calling for him to go back in there during clearly a heavy loading phase, I was saying he'd go back in there once he started to taper. Sure enough, the last 5-6 weeks of the H&A season, he has gone back to having strategic CBAs. Small forwards don't tend to dominate finals series' but that's why it's great to have an outlet to get him involved if needed. There's been a bit of talk on Demonland about playing Kozzy deep out of the square in this QF. Will be fascinating if we try that. Pretty hard if you're winning territory and it's always in there though. 😉

Yep, I only really know what I read on here, but those two seem the most tantalising players for us IMO, outside of Reid anyway.

I'd give our natural first rounder if the fitness team sign off on his body. It's a no brainer IMV and yeah, I'd shift Grundy's wage to Lynch.

I reckon we'll have the cap space to pay it if necessary. Few guys will leave this year or go on lower money, and maybe Lynch takes a haircut as well...?

He loves hedging.

If you look at the two weaknesses when it comes to finals intensity, I know which weakness I'd prefer over the other. If you can't win contest and the team you're playing against is the best defensive team in the league, you're going to have to feast on every turnover by foot, but given the strength of the defensive system you're playing against, the odds are not in your favour. While finals pressure tends to reduce all DE.

We've spent most of 2023 illustrating that we can win in different ways. Slogs, shoot outs, slingshot contests etc. So the suggestion that we rely on May or Lever to intercept or our game falls over is nonsense. We can be utterly dominant if those two get going, but that's the 2021 model, we no longer need them intercepting to score and in fact are more about all our mids ands defenders winning intercept possessions and going back the other way. No doubt our ability to neutralise/defend ground ball contests inside defensive 50 is the biggest threat when wet weather arrives, but the opposition has to deal with the same threat. In other words, I completely agree.

Interesting that he's running off the mouth. Last time Langdon did that, they hit him.

Sorry Chook. Beat me to it.

Contest and defence falls apart in the wet? Could have fooled me.

I actually think Essendon will be an attractive team to support again if they remain equal top for premierships. It's that sort of history that helps when their current team finally becomes good again. It's the same with Carlton. My dream is that we can go level with Carlton and Essendon for flags over the life cycle of our current list (ie by the time Clarry and Trac retire). Win it this year and we're two flags behind them both.

It's irrelevant how old Gawn is. Unless he's retiring at season's end, Grundy is gone. He's too good to play back up VFL. Staggering some can't see this. We'll facilitate a trade and improve our list in another area at the expense of not being able to call on an elite ruckman if Max goes down. IMV, we've already told Grundy to explore his options, no hard feelings and told him we'll facilitate a trade. We're not going to hold him to a contract and make him play VFL for two more years. That's not how you attract other good players, and it's not the best use of TPP. Think logically here.

Fair bit of Lewis Taylor about him in that clip with a bit more explosiveness. As always, I'll back in JT and co.

I find it incredible that people continue to make these sweeping predictions of what next year will look like (or any year), and yet every year we seem to bring someone out of the VFL program 'out of nowhere' and they become best 22. I get the fun in predicting the best 22 come finals this year, but next year is a completely new slate and anything can happen. My approach is to be ready to be surprised and that's exciting in itself.

Cox like playing against us, and doesn't have the worst record. I could see him troubling us in the air. Pre Steven May, he certainly did. I hope they don't play him. I think they will though.

I don't think we'd interested. Even if the price was right. But who knows. I don't see a lot of class with him, certainly not enough to beeal into our side, but he is young.

Some might want to remember this as they venture over to the Jefferson thread.

Perkins? How will he improve us?

Which shows you how good JVR is. Will be a star when he gets in game consistency across four quarters. This is a good comparison Jack and as usual @Axis of Bob writes beautifully on Jefferson.

I reckon we'll see us innovate and continue to evolve over summer irrespective of whether we win the flag or not. The IP thing wouldn't bother us IMO.