Lucifers Hero

Looking at the injury lists, top 8 teams are in pretty good shape. https://www.afl.com.au/matches/injury-list Ignoring the 'Test' players for the top 4 contenders: Brisbane: Hipwood, Raynor out for the season. They have had time to rejig their line up/play to contend. Geelong: Stewart out for the season. Tuohy 1-2 weeks. Duncan 1-3 weeks. No prefinals bye hurts them. Can they stay in contention long enough to get the latter two back. Melbourne: Hunt 3-4 weeks. We will cover him. Hope we stay in contention long enough to get him back. Port: Jones 1-2 weeks, Hartlett 2-3 weeks. Can cover them. Bulldogs: Bruce an Mc Clean out for the season. Have other problems besides injuries. Ess, Syd, GWS are also in good shape re injuries.

I choose any ground where the opps have to endure at least the same quarantine requirements and flight times we do. The most onerous quarantine, in order are: WA, SA, Qld, Tas. The first 3 take players away from their families for 4 -10 days and over the last month our players have had enough of that with all the 1/state flights/quarantine they have endured. Tassie is straight FIFO so no quarantine before/after the game. Note even if we play Port in Vic our players and families still have to quarantine for 3/4 days before the game and iirc a few days after but not sure of the latter. Without detailing all the quarantine permutations, I'm going for Brisbane at GMHBA. Otherwise, any team in Tassie. Players need to have a say and it may be a time to conserve their energy and minimise possible family stress, especially with the onerous restrictions we currently have here.

A long bow by conspiracy theorists as almost no person in the media even had us in the 8 let alone sitting top @ round 22. As an aside, anyone else regularly checking the ladder to see it is really true that we are on top Such joy, with much promise to come.

I noticed it after it was too late to edit my post.

My observations: Our first crushing win. Our fwd line was excellent: While opps were paying close attention to Fritsch in the 1st qtr, Brown had 1 vs 1, got good separation and kicked 2.1. When opps paid more attention to him, Fritsch had 1 vs 1, got off the leash and kicked 7.0!! His separation from Kelly was helped by Kelly being almost concussed earlier in the game but that does not diminish his excellent leading and his goal kicking was brilliant. Fritsch isn't leading to the pockets. Most of his marks/kicks were a fair way from the boundary and closer to goal. Hence his accuracy. Delivery to the fwd line was vastly improved. Our final quarter defence was a masterclass in how to defend a lead. At one stage Lever was waving players to the boundary to ensure his kick to the pack would go out rather than come back. Not only did we keep the opp score down to 1.1 we managed to kick 4.1. Brilliant defence. We've learnt from poor 4th qtr defense vs Crows, Hawks and Eagles. Goodwin said before the game that what he wanted to see was improvement in our defensive mechanisms. He would have been rapt with the last quarter. We have now rested: Viney, TMac, Hibberd and May without missing a beat. Their replacements have enabled us to have a good look at alternative players/structures should the need arise. Our whole team clicked yesterday. Great rehearsal for the month ahead. Just wish I and the rest of DL's and fans could be there to see it.

AFL has had plenty of chances to play recent Vic games at the G but hasn't done so which makes me sceptical of Ch &'s reporting. Why now would be my question of Ch 7. Anyway, can't see Geelong agreeing to this. Unless they have a wink-wing, nudge-nudge agreement with the AFL to play Home finals at GMHBA.

Fox quoting Ralph /afl-2021-grand-final-venue-optus-stadium-victoria Article says (not attributed to anyone) "It’s unclear whether the bye would be moved to the week between the semi-finals and preliminary finals, to allow all teams to quarantine in Western Australia for seven day". Someone is 'spitballing'. Anyone with half a brain would see that means the two top 4 teams that win in the first week of finals would miss two weeks of play: the semi final week and the bye week. Can't see it happening that way.

It can go down as 'hamstring awareness' or some other vague 'injury'. With Walker out it makes sense for May to be out and with O'Brien out we are more than well covered for talls. I like that if players have a niggle they get a rest esp with no bye likely.

I think the issue is with/without crowds rather than crowd numbers. I was outlining how GMHBA or (Mars Stadium) could host finals with crowds even if Marvel and MCG cannot.

Thanks. I somehow lost the speadsheet I usually use so had to reconstruct the whole thing. Missed some small details. Will correct on next update.

Geelong region is not in lockdown so the government could allow some crowds there as they could at Ballarat if the Bulldogs get a home final and ask for it there, outside of metro melb. Both would be attractive to the AFL, especially if Port is one of the opponents and SA relax the restrictions to the border to Victoria in the next few weeks. The government allowed a small crowd at GMHBA vs Bulldogs when Melb was in lockdown. Fair chance that Bulldogs supporters live outside of metro melb (or snuck out). Very vote catching to allow finals in Geelong or Ballarat. Doubt the goverment gives two hoots about us. A possible senario: we finish top 2 and scheduled to play Geelong and no crowds in Melb. Lets choose Ballarat! and vice versa if we play Bulldogs, choose GMHBA!! So if we can't have Marvel or MCG lets not give the Vic team a Home ground advantage. Lets hope we finish top 2 and at least have some say in venue.

I had discounted the probability of Port beating Bulldogs as their recent form, while winning hasn't been really convincing. But then again neither have the Bulldogs last two losses. Very glad that game is before ours so that we know the result. As an aside, this is one time a 6 day break might help us. We have had our 5 day break so the AFL can't schedule our game on Friday night to be before the Port/Bulldogs game.

Not a lot of incentive for Adelaide to win and go from draft pick 2 to pick 4 or 5 and push out later round picks. Walker did most of the damage last time and he is out. Lever and co won't fall for the same trap again - he will make sure we 'block the corridor'! Keep their small fwds under control and we will win. And hopefully, we have learnt how to defend a lead in the last minutes of a game. Hawthorn gave a masterclass in that yesterday.

Bulldogs lost two winnable games: Essendon and Hawks so it opened the door for Port to go top 2. But Port aren't there yet. If we beat the Crows, their top 2 chance is all but gone.

Update for J. Smith one year extension, As the club is in list management mode, I wouldn't be surprised to see a flurry of contract renewals in the next month or so. Hopefully, some of the 2022 OOC players sign early extensions especially Jackson and Petty.

That is because none of the potential finalists have the G as their home ground (unless Richmond make it). Other clubs know the advantage we would have at the G. Having said that it would be awful to not have a crowd especially for the GF. Imagine the players doing a lap of honour to piped faux crowd noises. Shivering at the thought.

As that was part of your response to a post by me, I would like to say I'm definitely not one of those . There are several posts earlier in this thread where I said I was willing to go into quarantine in another state, travel to SA for a few weeks prior to entering WA. Its been 20 years since we made a GF. Who knows if we will even play in one next year or the year after. It could be another 20 years before we play in one. And, I have vivid memories of 2018 prelim then crashing in 2019. I don't expect a crash to happen again but I'm not relying on future years for a GF appearance I will do almost anything to get to a Demon 2021 GF regardless of where it is.

Projecting your experience onto Petracca's 'family elders' and by implication other Italian immigrants was not appropriate.

This almost makes me cry. I am Australian born of Italian parents who grew up in an anglo part of Melbourne. I can't talk to their 'copping it of course' (your words) but I never, ever heard parents or family denigrate any other group, anglo or otherwise. There was a great deal of mutual respect in the community. Most of the racism came from school and the schoolyard which sadly is when the damage is inflicted on the very young and the wounds and scars reside to be triggered in the years to come. Not sure where you get your information from. Best not to generalise.

Do you mean by his family elders or to his family elders. Not being pedantic but they are quite different. Its hard to imagine family elders showing racism to their own kind.

While talking of AFL360. They asked Petracca (who was on via zoom with Eddie) for comments. Just loved how he spoke so warmly of sharing house with Kozzie and Bedford and condemned the perpetrators of racism. Showed real empathy. While nothing compares to what our indigenous people have to endure, with his name and background I would think Petracca has experienced a bit of racism in his time as well.

Better hope it isn't WA. McCowan has said he doesn't 'expect' many attendees from interstate. 'Expect' or 'allow' - yes I'm being cynical. He is capable of the dastardly when it comes to borders eg a flimsy reason to backdate 14 day quarantine for arrivals from eg Victoria. Any border clampdown will give him a lot more seats to sell to corporates and locals.

Seeing Eddie's hurt was distressing and heart breaking. He looked and sounded near breaking point. I was devastated to here our player was the much loved and lovable Kozzie. Can't imagine what the racism does to someone so young and in the infancy of being in the public eye and his career. I would think that senior indigenous players in May and his uncle Nev will get around him big time and pass on a few tips on how to deal with the ignorant.

I agree to some extent. I will cut the players a fair bit of slack 🙂 in that Eagles were kicking with the wind and we were probably trying to avoid injuries from restarting after a long cool down and many hours in planes/on tarmacs etc. But Goodwin felt the need to comment on it. And many could see where we fell short in the last 15 minutes. Umpires or no, there are many defensive things we can do to close down a game and defend a lead. I would like to be confident that we can do it in finals.

I noticed that. I wasn't been critical just drawing attention to Goodwin's comment as it hadn't come up in the discussion. Your comment and those of @DeeSpencerand @titan_uranus elaborate on my point that we didn't do enough to close down the game and that our end game strategies need work if we are to defend leads in the dying stages of games in finals.