Ted Lasso

Last year at a similar time we went into a heavy training phase, and our form dipped along with it, due to increased fatigue from the players. What i know about Selwyn Griffiths program which is admittedly very little, is that it's quite running heavy and designed to help us run teams off their feet heading into finals, similar to last year, I suspect something similar is happening and why our form has dipped slightly, combined with unavailability and injury to key players. I think this is also the cause for our reversion to Bomb it long and hope for the best demons. the coaches would never admit this publicly i don't think

i'm sure a component of Browns form is him not getting to the right spots, as well as a really poor forward structure, as well as diabolically kicks inside 50 we seem to have reverted back to the bomb it long and hope Max or Fritsch takes a screamer.

i don't personally remember a single occasion of Brown being outmarked one out, i may be wrong, but from memory the McCartins took a lot of marks in pack scenarios where blocks were provided, I think those situations speak a lot more to poor forward structure than anything else.

I would suggest really strongly that the number 1 KPI for key forwards in a team like ours is to simply not get outmarked, and the stats you've supplied really show that the other stuff is pretty close between the two, so it's a fairly easy decision to persist with the forward who doesn't get outmarked, and clearly has upside as his form returns.

The biggest difference for me LN is that even with Brown this out of form he doesn't appear to get outmarked nearly as often as SW does, which is a huge concern for him. I suspect if we're going to win the flag we will need one, but probably both of them to find some serious form heading into finals

I hope the club considers bringing in an external person like Jonothan Brown as a consultant to work with the forwards on their forward craft and spacing, it's a mess down there at the moment.

I think our defense is our strength, we can find another target but it'd pointless if we compromise that.

I have a controversial call, Tommlinson to CHF, in his underage years i rated him as a forward, due to his endurance running, i think he could play the Tmac role. I'd like to see Hibbo back in as well for another experienced head. Outs probably Mitch Brown and while he's stiff, Jayden Hunt

Being outworked all over the ground, not sure if the Swans can maintain that sort of effort. geez we are struggling to organise without May back there

Tommlinson is not an AFL standard defender. he's making a very average player look like Wayne Carey

Hearing Tommy macs injury could be worse than first though, anyone able to confirm?

Interestingly i just realized the other day that i am actually very close to my 10 year anniversary on Demonland, which is pretty incredible, means i've spent most of my adult life on here! Werridee couldn't possibly be older than 18, love their work though.

the thing with the dogs, and to an extent Richmond as well is they probably don't need to make top 4 to make a serious run at the flag. Last year the Dogs finished outside the top 4 and ended up 19 points up in the 3rd quarter of the Grand final, which may have been enough against lesser opposition. I'm certainly not counting them out as a threat if they can sneak into the 8 but it's certainly Much much harder, I think for us it's nice we will actually see our true top 4 advantage given we potentially would play 3 finals in a row at the G if we manage to win the qualifying final which would make us really tough to beat for just about anyone.

Tonights game will tell us a lot about where the Dogs are in 2022, if they beat the Cats i think it's fair to consider them a finals threat, if they don't maybe not

The painful thing is you can't even leave Weid in the side to see if he will build confidence because he just seems to get outmarked entirely too often. I rate Weid on talent but he's just not doing enough at AFL level at this stage, i suspect by the end of the season Rooey could have overtaken him as well.

Hahahaha what world do you live in? the AFL makes no secret about the fact they only care about money. there is a huge Tribunal bias towards star players compared to lesser known.. what do you think the difference is if not bums on seats?

Let me make it simple for you, all the AFL cares about is $$$$$$ and their integrity is 000000 a top of the table clash between Melbourne and Sydney makes them more $$$$$ if as many of the best players possible, are playing. the integrity of the incident and what the punishment should be, do no matter to the AFL.

Did Gary Pert run over your cat? I'd say his performance as CEO and the state the club is in, and the direction for the future is fairly self evident to anyone that isn't harboring some sort of deep personal bias against him.

Massive chance he gets off. the AFL would want Buddy playing in a blockbuster Sydney vs Melbourne game. he will be playing.

What i found interesting was Petracca wasn't right, Sparrow was struggling, getting smacked out of the middle but we didn't try Brayshaw in there at all really speaks to the value placed on the role he's playing down back. In terms of the game more broadly, and injured May and Petty makes things hard. we've never been a dominant 4 quarter team, our strengths have been defending opposition momentum and capitalising on our own. with those injuries our ability to restrict the dockers momentum was almost zero. Hats off to the dockers for being able to expose it, but at the same time we should be very confident of making it 1 all when we play them in round 20

Do we have any info on if Petty is likely to get up and play? assuming Petty is just a bit sore i'd go with Out: May, Melksham, Weideman, Bedford, Dunstan In: Tommlinson, McDonald, Langdon, Harmes, Salem Potentially Trent Rivers becomes the Sub?

well not him then, but i reckon a couple of picks and a good young player would be good.

There is so much talk about Jackson to West Coast if he did leave, personally i think he'd most likely be wanting to go to Fremantle. i think he'd want to be at a winning team and see the possibility of a Jackson/Darcy combo as having the Gawn/Jackson potential. I'm not sure what a trade would look like if he did make a request to go to Fremantle but i think personally i'd like to see us ask for as many high end picks as possible, continue building the pool of talent and really set ourselves to be competing for as long as possible. Maybe Hayden Young, and their next 2 first rounders which would likely be around pick 15 ish

I was thinking today if we had to lose one o Jackson or Brayshaw i'd nearly rather lose Jackson, as talented as he is Brayshaw has become a legitimate star and so important to our culture.

I am not in the least bit worried about this loss in the broader context of our season, in fact i think it has distinct potential to be quite positive for us. we haven't been playing that well the last few weeks IMO and had been lucky to be playing Methcoast and Norf but a real team showed us up. Petracca is clearly injured, losing May really unsettled us, i think we had the players to cover but we just didn't adjust well enough, the fact Petty is also seemingly injured didn't help. but we just got smashed out of the middle, honestly when we are going like that i'd rather see Trac in there, even if he's not 100% the Freo players will need to be consious of him and that could have allowed Oliver and Viney a bit more room to move