Lucifers Hero

Where do you keep hearing this? Max said they loaded up during the bye but there has been nothing other than DL conjecture to support that loading has continued. I think the 'looking slow' has as much to do with decision making and confidence as it does to 'fatigue'. Our ball movement just isn't as sharp as it was earlier in the year. There are many reasons why players look fatigued: injury, soreness, youth, lost confidence leading to slow reaction times, opp tactics to interfere with ball movement, a long season etc etc. Having said that, I agree with posters saying 'managing' players, particularly those that are young, sore or 'tired' should have happened in recent games. By 'managing' I mean rested from games not just reduced game time. Whatever, the reason for our ball movement going off, lets hope we get our zip back very soon.

He has 'blinked first' with with selections, is rolling the dice and flirting with his system. Will be interesting to see if his selection gambles pay off. In a way I'm surprised that he has left changes to his fwd set up this late as the trend was there before the Sydney game exposed by Dees and Cats. Bedazzled by their big wins over Eagles and North perhaps.

100 pts it often a de facto cut-off point when AFL score comparisons are made in the media/AFL for high/low scoring trends. That aside, my post was highlighting the drop off in their fwd line performance both in terms of high scores ie > 100 and conversion in the most recent games. To make the comparison clearer: In the first 10 games bulldogs kicked 100 or more in 6 of their 10 games. They won 9 of those 10 games and in each win they had positive conversion: more goals than points. As per my post, since then they have kicked >100 in one of 7 games and positive conversion in two of those 7 games. In the first 10 games they had 3 scores of 90+ and they have 3 since so no change there. Interestingly, it is the last game we played which changed their scoring momentum. Coincidence? I don't fear their fwd line or their back line. Tipping us to win.

Apology. On first reading it didn't sound so. Time for to get another espresso!

Isn't that what my post shows? Altho I wouldn't say 'crap', more that they are not as dangerous as it is lauded to be; at least not vs better teams and not in the last part of the season.

For their supposed dangerous fwd line, the Bulldogs have had kicking yips with more points than goals. Last few months form line: vs Dees they kicked 8.11.59 for a L vs Freo they kicked 13.15.93 for a W vs Geelong they kicked 11.12.78 for a L. vs Eagles they kicked 13.20.98 for a W. vs North they kicked 16.12.108 for a W. vs Syd they kicked 8.12.60 for a L. vs GCS they kicked 14.6.90 for a W Those aren't like the very high scores of early in the season, with just one game over 100pts. Vs top 8 sides they have kicked 59, 78, 98 and 60 and lost 3 of those games of which two were at Marvel. If their weakness is supposedly defence Bevo must also be worried with the fwd line's inability to score well vs the 'better' teams and imv the evidence shows it isn't as dangerous as many believe. We have every reason to be confident of a win this week.

Some bulldogs fans think Schache will play in defence. We are taller and more experienced this time with Brown instead of Weideman so the idea makes sense but I doubt that Schache is a good choice. Given he has played only one or two games this year it is hard to see him influencing things in defence or as a fwd. In defence I would think our fwds could run off him and leave him exposed. As a fwd and maybe a negating player It would be low risk for Lever to play off him. This may sound harsh I don't think he has the nous nor the motivation to stick to a role. Even so, Beveridge clearly has a plan, be it a late change or rolling the dice some more.

Teams in an hour. Any known changes?

It looked like you were laying the groundwork for another political bashing so I felt it important to not take the bait and play it with a straight bat. That aside, Vics and in particular in Melbourne we have learnt the hard way, having endured 185 days of lockdown so are more accepting of the need to follow the rules! 6 months of on/off stress!

A person can be infectious without symptoms so are innocently 'out and about' within the allowed restrictions. Or it could be because too many are flouting the rules and or not taking symptoms seriously..

Bad news: 26 new local cases. Good news: all connected to known clusters. Round 19 can go ahead as currently scheduled. After that it becomes a juggling act for the AFL. Whichever way the cards fall we are well placed with few injuries. We have had little disruption to players (a lot to fans and club's $) in that players spent about 10 days in Sydney in the May lockdown. If we have to go to Qld then directly to WA I reckon we can take it in our stride and cover any player who can't play in either or both states for family/personal reasons.

This game will be interesting tactically. Last time we cut Libba out and "blocked the corridor" with Lever going hoarse from shouting it so often. If they got the ball fwd it forced them out to the boundaries so had to take more difficult shots. We learnt that lesson from the Adelaide loss. Both tactics caught the Bulldogs by surprise. Bulldogs would have learnt plenty from the Hawks game where they made May and Lever accountable, shut down Salem making it harder for us to attack down Langdon's wing. In doing so they weakened our defensive and attacking weapons but not to the point of getting a big score or a win. Bulldgos rested Libba last week. They will be ready with counter measures for him and for the blocked corridor tactic. And, we will learn plenty from their game vs GCS in which they were average. While winning in recent times they aren't playing great football. I saw vision that showed they hunt the ball in packs leaving themselves exposed on the outside. I would really like to see Brayshaw back on the wing and we regain the extra defensive layer when he and Langdon roll back to reinforce our defence around the 50m arc. It will be fascinating to watch how it pans out. i think we will win.

Yes they would but lets wait and see what happens with covid and travel. If it turns out to be GC:WA:Home then various options come to mind: a player goes to GC and flies back so 1-3 days away, missing the Eagles game. Skip the GC game, go straight Melb:Perth and be away for 8-9 days. The club could, probably would, help provide extra support for the young mums eg home nursing care or whatever is needed and player not miss any games. I suspect if we win this week the decisions will be a bit easier.

Bad news: 22 new local cases. Good news: all connected to known clusters. A few days ago I thought that if we play Darwin we would then fly straight to Perth and quarantine there for the required week. Given today's numbers there is almost zero chance of playing in Darwin. The club's view yesterday: how-covid-could-impact-demons-in-coming-weeks “We haven’t been told anything official yet, but based off what other teams in a similar situation have had to do, all things being equal you’d imagine that we’ll go to the Gold Coast next week,” McPherson said on The Talking Points. “Play up there then most probably fly across to Perth, quarantine for seven days, then play the Eagles before returning.” “If guys’ priorities are to stay home, with young families or whatever reason, we certainly won’t stand in the way of that and we’ll be fully supportive,” McPherson said". Depending what the Qld quarantine requirements are time away could be anything from 10 to 14 days. The players most likely to be affected are Lever, TMac who both have toddlers and new born babes and maybe Jack V as his bub is still young. Today's numbers may be enough for Qld and WA to further tighten the borders so who knows, we might get lucky and all teams move to Victoria....

Excellent post. Each point spot on. The most realistic and unbiased/constructive assessment I've seen of our recent performances and the issues before us..

One would hope so. One would think they would play as many of the first time games as soon as possible in 2021. Instead they are about to push out two games where clubs have not played each other (Dees vs GCS and WBD vs Crows) for double ups this weekend. So, I don't hold out much hope of them doing what is sensible next year.

Still think Ess should play GCS in Darwin in rnd 22. Instead they get a holiday on the sunshine coast. Meanwhile our games get switched around and we will probably go to Darwin then Perth. (If that happens hopefully we fly from Darwin to Perth and chill out in a resort there).

Awesome performance by the Swans: last minute outs, 3 players played full games the previous day, were about 7 goals down and still stormed to a great win vs a team who had a lot more to play for. No wonder Longmire was emotional with how his team lift like they did. Will be hard to beat in the finals.

The Run Home: Note: AFL has said the draw won't change for covid but the schedule of games will. I don't think the last 3 can make finals due to their draw and % but have left them in the analysis for this week. Richmond is highlighted as the most likely to get into the 8. As much as I would hate a rampaging Richmond in the finals, I would ? if Ess make it. Sydney were awesome yesterday. If we make the top 4 I really hope they don't. The future is in our hands. We have the hardest draw. If we continue the pattern of beat the good sides and play poorly/lose to the bottom sides we stay in top 2. That draw may just come in handy!

Again you accuse me of 'revisionism' and being 'unfair'. Like last time my views (which have been far from pessimistic) have been consistent all year. Can't be bothered looking for them for you. And I'm optimistic for finals but I don't accept the premise that because we beat top 8 teams before we will beat them again. "Feel free to argue we'll lose to the Bulldogs, West Coast or Geelong in the run home, but don't do it by undermining our strong wins against every single top 8 side we've played this year" . That is taking more than poetic licence with my post. You have a strange idea of 'undermining'. If you want to believe we will beat all the top 8 teams again, go ahead.

Switching round 19 and 20 games still has a few border closure and exemption issues. Just let us play GCS next week in Qld!! If Brisb can come and go to Melb to play the Hawks next week then we can come and go to Qld to play GCS. Have a horrible feeling the AFL is hell bent on us playing in Darwin.

So you really think if we had played two top 8 sounds in a row we would have beaten them? Hmmm, I'm not buying the 'we beat top 8 sides but not the lower sides' pattern will continue or continue into finals. A closer look at some of our early wins shows: Geelong were missing Rohan, Dangerfield, Higgins, Smith and Cameron. And Geelong by their own admission hadn't twigged to the impact of the new 'stand the mark' rules. Bulldogs were missing Dunkley and adjusting to their first week without Treloar in the middle. They won't fall for the 'tag Libba out of the game trick' again. Richmond were missing too many players to list here. Dusty and someone else went off injured during the game. And like Geelong they hadn't twiigged to the impact of the new 'stand the mark' rules We were missing Weideman and Brown for but our selections since suggest they weren't missed. So anyone thinking because we beat the top 8 sides in the H&A games we will do so the next time we play or in the finals is in for a rude shock. We wont have to wait to finals to find out as we play Bulldogs, Eagles and Cats in the next few weeks.

We haven't won 3 games in a row since round round 9. We haven't won 2 games in a row since round 12. Regardless of where we end up in the 8 we need to get our act together if we want to go deep into the finals. At some stage we will need to win at least two in a row to make it to the big dance.

A very good article from Jack Niall on the fixture the-show-will-go-on "Forget the idea of a hiatus, or the Delta-inflicted version of a rain delay that forces them from the field for a week or two. Forget the concept of bringing forward the pre-finals bye". "No, if the AFL has its way - and Delta doesn’t finally pin them in a tackle nastier than Shane Mumford’s - the show will go on, without delay". And on a positive note: "No one at the AFL has a clue what will happen with crowds, but it is hard to see the grand final leaving the MCG if they can manage even half capacity this season".

I'm optimistic enough to think we will stay in the top 4. If we do I would much rather play Port than Sydney in the first final. If we don't, well it is a lottery.