Webber

Yep. Her last quarter against the Crows at Casey was extraordinary. She was out-jumping every opponent in the ruck, slamming it forward and allowing Tyla Hanks et al to set up quick entries for Eden Zanker. If she’d been able to play on-ball the entire quarter, I’ve no doubt we would have run all over them (almost did anyway). She scares oppos sh**less, is enormously valuable, and consistently gets underrated for it I reckon.

Sounds good. Strangely enough, I get more excited about going to Prinny Park (Ikon, shmikon!) than Casey Fields.

Yep, my glass is looking oddly fuller now, too.

I reckon Billings is one of those players, like Colin Sylvia, like Jack Watts, who has ALL the abilities required for A grade footy, except one thing - pure, CONSISTENT competitive will. It’s the most important quality in any player (Jason Taylor recruits based on it), which if married with top 10 percentile skill, creates a champion (luck with injuries notwithstanding). Can you develop that at 28 years old, in the last 20% of your physically viable career? I’m glass half empty, but I guess there’ll always be exceptions.

True. None of us know the extent of Petty’s injury, other than it being a Lisfranc disruption, which have a spectrum of severity, even for those requiring surgical stabilisation. Clinically, across epidemiological history, outcomes aren’t great. We used to call Lisfranc fracture-dislocations career killers, but things have improved a lot of recent years, and the chances of them being chronically unstable have diminished greatly. The main concern is related irritabilities and compensating behaviours in the biomechanical chain (foot, ankle, related soft tissues), along with variable responses to progressive and repeated weight-bearing - running, jumping, day on day, week after week. Personally, in relation to outcome consistency, I’d rather do my ACL. So in summary, Petty’s foot could be anything from great to not at all. The MFC know this, and are planning for the best outcome. As they should.

Once again, I’d make a case for umpiring determining the outcome of the game. Too many absolute shockers that went the Crows way. Still, we should hardly expect the W game to be better than the men’s.

I posted at halftime that the game would likely be decided by umpiring. And so it came to pass. The state of AFL umpiring is killing the game. For all the brilliant play, and players, all the work, dedication and teamwork, umpiring is simply making the game unwatchable. Congrats to Collingwood, but we’ll forever know there’s a huge, ugly umpiring asterisk hanging over this flag.

Brisbane’s defensive system (or lack of it), just can’t get their head around Collingwood’s corridor game run from transition. It’s like they’ve paid zero attention to the way Collingwood play. Then again, apart from Quaynor, Maynard and Moore, Collingwood’s defensive 6 are bog ordinary, and Bris get to score frequently from inside 50 entries. So what we have is a high-scoring GF. Anyone’s game from here I guess, but if the umps keep paying high tackle frees for Nick Daicos, that’ll get them there.

Marchons! Marchons!

Fabulous sentiments, layz.

Honestly, how good are Kate Hore and Tyla Hanks? I love watching this whole team, but something about their pure footy ability just makes me smile.

Surely you realise the forward line personnel merry-go-round and accuracy are connected. You might label it a crutch, but that doesn’t make it less than absolutely true. It’s the ‘crutch of truth’ maybe (ooh, I like that). Collingwood haven’t really had ruck issues. They’ve had at least 2 of Cameron, Cox and Frampton available all season.

Murphy aside, they had a very healthy list by finals. Are you talking Collingwood this year? Aside from Daicos, and possibly Adams now, they’ve come into finals also with a very healthy list. Still don’t think they’ll win it though. We absolutely could have won a final with what we had, which is remarkable, in fact should have, if only we’d kicked straight. It’s the sole game-day stat of significance. Turn 3 of our ‘posters’ into goals, and voila. Tweaks will happen, as they should, but there’s just no reason to go fishing for answers to questions that don’t match the plain facts. We had injuries impose on our season, and we didn’t kick straight enough for goal. 1 and 2 on the reasons list, with everything else way further down.

But it’s a relative spectrum across the clubs, layzie. Every club has greater or lesser problems with injuries across the season. Some have a dream run (which are rare), others a horror, and everything in between. I suspect we were probably mid-table for ‘games unavailable’. If we had a full fit list, we would have done better, which obviously means finishing second, or first, and gone straight to a preliminary final, and been odds on for the flag. Then the whole argument of big changes goes away. In truth, we actually did well for our injury stats. Which suggests that big change is NOT needed, and we did well at managing what could be controlled. But, of course, every club seeks to change for the better after every season, and we will. The current MFC is a very high performing club, that I think should be praised for how it managed the season, despite that we all wish it had ended better.

Never, because they’re not an excuse, they’re a reason. The ENTIRE history of footy determines it so. You can blame poor management and systems for those injuries when appropriate (not for us this year), and you can be frustrated with HOW we play, inconsistency and the average ups and downs of a season, as we all are, and none of us are immune to it, but NOTHING, and that means NOTHING determines success, W/L percentages and ladder position more than ‘games unavailable through injury’. Clubs do their absolute best to work around them - depth, ‘mirror’ players in the VFL - but it’s still the truth. It’s the most reliable indicator of relative success, bar none.

And yet a fit forward line of our best available would have seen us in the preliminary final last Thursday. THAT is what we know. Doesn’t fit your hyperbole though, I suspect.

It obviously isn’t statistically perfect, but you know what’s wildly imperfect? The eye test. It’s the first reason we have statistical analysis.

There will always be changes of course, that’s the nature of footy. But we were/are obviously so close it’s crazy. Kick straighter, we win, it’s that simple and that close. I don’t understand how people can’t see this. That’s what makes it so frustrating. And yes, @rpfc, our back half turnover and transition to score has been elite all season. Statistically. It’s not really an opinion.

Our movement from defence is elite league standard. Our forward line was as disrupted by injury as 2019, and that’s saying something. Petty, JVR, Fritsch, Melk available and together all season (along with our best smalls - Koz, Chandler), and Clarry in the middle all season to free Tracc forward, and we win this year’s flag. That was never even close to happening, sadly. It’s that simple.

Most sensible post of the night. And honest.

Which is precisely the reason Brisbane and Collingwood will contest the GF. They’ve simply had more of their list available across the season than any of the other finalists (along with GWS, who are a good shot against Port). Injury totals across the season determine ladder position. We were never going to get there with our ‘availability’ losses. Doesn’t change the fact that we choked the last 2 games, but either way, the injury factor will claim its victims.

It was actually a very messy game I reckon. Riddled with mistakes, which of course we ultimately turned into some kind of choke art form. But being as poor as you say and still being better than Carlton, apart from kicking for goal obviously, makes it something even worse. I found the whole thing pretty horrible to watch. Brisbane will be licking their lips, and would’ve had we won too.

Yep, you win for stupidest post of the year.

Not that it matters, cos we would have been thumped next week anyway, as will Carlton, but these last 2 games were the biggest choke I’ve ever seen in 5 decades. The way we kept kicking behinds just kept writing the perfect script for Carlton, who were frankly dreadful in the last half. Should have won that by 6 goals. Get ready for the ‘choke’ tag, fellow supporters.

It’s beyond ridiculous, of course. Has to be back-pedalled. In the meantime, I dare say you’ve thought about a ‘shooting stick’ - basically a walking stick with a fold-out handle you can ‘sit on’. Doesn’t qualify as a chair, albeit you could throw it on-field, as I could my prosthetic leg (don’t have one, but that’s how ridiculous this rule is).