binman

Good call.

I'm not sure of Adam's contract status, but if he is out of contract at season's end i'd be very surprised if he gets another

Great post, and you make some great points. A couple of thoughts in response: i take your points about Latrelle, but King's game plan is based on running power and simply does not work without players on every line with genuine leg speed, particularly striding speed over distance - and every player needs to have a massive tank. For that reason, i can't see Latrelle being dropped anytime soon (meaning he'll almost certainly be dropped this week!). I also think Latrelle's the future and we need to get Latrelle to that critical 50 plus games of AFL footy ASAP - i could see them playing him for the first 5 or 6 games then give him chop out and send him back to Casey to work on his craft Based on what i saw against the dogs in the VFL game i'd be very surprised if we see him before, at a minimum, round 7 or 8 - he's not ready physically and i suspect not mentally either Heat aint coming into the ide anytime soon either - i can't see him playing in the same side as Maxy, in large part because of my first point, until perhaps the last few games of the season; and then only to get some AFL games into him If AMW is good to go i reckon he' straight swap for CJ this week

Yep, agree on both counts. That said, in the first half we copped some shocking frees against us, and perhaps more significantly, frees not paid - the amount of throws, HTBs and scragging of maxy let go was infuriating.

He rucked well too I reckon

Couldn't go - was away. Just finished watching the replay. Go redleggers!

I think that's exactly what will happen, and I suspect that might be a big factor in both th selection of cross and riv being dropped. It also mean Koz can have more CBAs

Yeah, I agree it's unlikely to be pace alone. Who knows, Riv might have been given a specific role or task he didn't satisfactorily complete, or break a non negotiable team rule. Or more likely, despite having reseonable disposal numbers, King, like all AFL coaches uses bespoke data and metrics to set KPIs for specific players and inform his assessment of their performance. One such KPI would almost certainly be pressure, as evidenced by tackles (and pressure acts, one percenters etc) In other words King perhaps king and/or the coaching panel wanted to get some more pace into the side, needed to drop somone to make that happen and decided riv was that person because he didn't perform to the level required.

What he doesn't have, and nor does Rivers, is genuine leg speed. Watching Cross up close last week, he's quick, and he's also an excellent runner and super fit King's game plan is built on fitness and leg speed. I suspect that King wanted to pick the fastest team he could this week to exploit Carlton's lack of leg speed and spread. We will try, and I think succeed, to run them off their legs.

Bingo

Note to self - get past the 25 minute mark

Do you mean he doesn't use the ball pretty well and isn't a decent runner who can run and spread defensively (and offensively)?

A pod for the true believers (aka dees tragics)

In my opinion this game will come down to which team can best mitigate the other team's strengths. The blues major strengths are winning contest, contested possessions and clearances (ball winning). I can't believe I'm able to say this, but our strengths are ball use, leg speed and our running power and transition the ball quickly from D50. I reckon Cerra is significant out for them - agree he is no world beater, but he would have helped them mitigate our strengths (and their key weaknesses - their lack of leg speed and running power) because he uses the ball pretty well and is decent runner who can run and spread defensively (and offensively).

If we can shut him down, he might crack the Saads.

Thanks YA. Funny you should note your four-year-old yelling out 'go petracca' because I've been experimenting using Gemini to interrogate the wheeloratings data (my instructions were to ONLY use data from that website). At this early stage of the experiment, it throws up way, way too many hallucinations to confidently trust or use the data (though i have found it useful to explore themes and as a tool to test and/or challenge my reasoning and hypothesis about various aspects of the game) - perhaps a paid version might be more robust (in questioning why so many obvious errors, the LLM's response was there were issues reading the tables) One such hallucination, one that felt like being trolled, was in response to a prompt about comparing our player ratings between round one and round two. According to Gemini our standout player this season has been, drum roll, Christian Petracca with 31 player rating points in round one and 22.3 in round two! I'm glad Gold Coast are paying his salary.

Thanks for the feedback Demonted, appreciated. In terms of me interrupting, I'm conscious its bad habit i have and i'm working on it. In terms of tactical analysis that covers all aspect of our performance including offence, defence, contest and transition, and is 100% football focused, you could give my standalone Freo stats file pod a whirl. And as an added bonus i don't interrupt anyone coz it's just me. It's only the second one, and there won't be another one as ridiculously long or deetailed as i overprepared, (happily) got lost in the numbers and analysis, chose not to watch the time and wanted to cover all the things i had been ruminating on in my head about the game. I didn't have time to redo it, so it stands as a monument to my obsession about trying to understand game plan, method, tactics and what happened in the game - something that is particularly exciting this year as we have a new coach with a new approach. Apple PodcastsThe Stats Files Rd 02 2026Podcast Episode · Demonland Podcast · 24 March · 1hr 8min

Unfortunatley

I'm an iconoclast - rules are meant to be broken, especially my own

AMW and XL aren't competing for the same spot. We've lacked a quailty small lockdown defender since Jetts, though as pointed out to me Hibberd essentially played that role too - AMW will likely play that role, and I'm excited for what he'll bring. Noone really plays that role atm - we use our mids, HHFs, and whatever you call the role/position Langers plays to get back on defence and win contests and ground ball inside D50. I think XL is minding Bowser's spot, so not sure who AMW replaces. Ultimately, XL, as he did as a junior, will likely move from the HB into the midfield, possibly when Bowser comes back. Either way he's not coming out of the ones.

An excellent point. A bit was made of the fact that our average age was a tick over Freos. But the key difference is how many of high end talent are 24 or under and/or played less than 50 games.

My tolerance to main training was always very low - might explain the very undizzy heights i got to in my junior footy career.

Does anyone know how Disco broke his hand?

Maybe, but King has been crystal clear that's the game plan we are running with. Kentfield will help, Brodie too. I can't see Heath coming into the side anytime soon as we simply cant afford to be down a runner (though if they are going to pick him, this week wouldn't be th eworse time to do so given the Blues are dead slow). I suspect their plan was to use Kentfield as the second ruck, so the sooner he's in the better. I disagree Lindsay looks all at sea as defender, though it feels like I'm on my own on that front. Agree he's a ways off his optimal strength, he's a second year player after all, but I'm not surprised at all Kins is using him down back, and i think will continue to do so (I don't think he's competing with AMW for a spot, more XT - who IS miles off). He played a big chunk of his junior career, for Gippy power and representative sides, in the exact same role he played this season - half back flanker who pushes up the ground and is key to transition. That included one of his best representative games - an under 17s Future Stars game played on GF day where he was BOG playing as a running half back flanker. In his final year at Gippy power he predominantly played as a mid (though still went back at times), and that's where he might end up, but as highlighted by draft watchers he was an excellent defender as a junior. So its not as if he doesn't have experience in the role, and obviously King rates him as defender given that where he has selected him two weeks in a row. Watching live, and then again the replay, i thought he was excellent against the Saints - i was amazed he seemed to get no love on DL. He was our 5th highest rated player for the game and only Steele and Salo had more metres gained (and not by much). He was not nearly as good against the Dockers, but again i'm amazed at the opprobrium he's received on DL. Sure he was fumbly at times, particularly in the first quarter, and he lost a couple of key one on one contests, but he was far from the only defender to struggle - hardly surprising given the volume of D5O entries (25 in the first quarter - nuts!), the speed it was coming inside D50) and the lack of pressure on their last kick inside 50. I thought he played OK, but i rate him highly so i was conscious there might be some confirmation bias informing that assessment. So i was pleased to see his player rating supported my assessment - he scored 7.5 rating points, better than 12 of his teammates including other defenders like CJ (4.7 points), Howes (4.6 points) and Petts (-0.7 points). He was also comfortably the highest rated player of our young guns - Langford, Windsor, Kolt and Latrelle.

Gave that up years ago