Ted Lasso

I think there will still be a clear focus on winning, knowing we've got the pre finals bye as well. for example if we "Rested" a player, they would miss a round, then the finals bye, and then if we won the QF they'd miss another week. i think we'd be looking for continuity as much as possible. Honestly i'd almost prefer to lose the QF because i think missing 2 games in quick succession has seemed to throw teams off at times

This could be the most important game in our recent history, because winning would lock in top spot, with 2 weeks to go, but it would also break a trend of us losing to teams we're expected to beat, when the whips are cracking and hurting our overall season at the very pointy end

I can't see our boys actually considering West Coast a bad team, and i expect us to come out really hard and put them away early. the way this year has been going we will beat WCE and Geelong and lose to the Crows

I agree with you, i think even just the look of the incident itself is enough that they'll have to suspend him. i'm not expecting anything too crazy but i think best case he might be back for the Cats game

Hang on.... West Coast supporters can talk!?

we're good enough to beat Geelong in Geelong. or anyone, anywhere for that matter, i don't think any team should hold any fear for us. especially if we get the next 3 weeks right

Stupid Stupid thing to do by the Vice captain when the team is trying to find form and continuity heading into a finals run, especially when he himself isn't in great form and needs to string games together. Will get weeks, deserves them, and should feel like he may have cost himself a spot in a top 4 team because with any luck James Jordan will come in and lock in his spot.

we won by 98 points and showed real improvement in the areas we wanted to improve. No forced changes. we need to build momentum from here, we've got 3 weeks to find our best footy and give ourselves a real shot at a premiership

I said to a mate that he's kidding himself if he doesn't think the AFL has a say in which teams seriously contend and which don't. i have no doubt the Umpires have been instructed to look after the dogs in some way, shape or form. but for me it's the fact they're allowed to throw the ball openly.

Wowee. this all comes back on one bloke with an Ego comparable to Donald Trump and it's going to take the Hawks a long time to recover. they'll lose players this off season for sure. and they had better options to coach than Sam Mitchell in my opinion, they've totally blown this.

I'd put it right up there with digging up a 2 month old post to prove the point that guesses are just that. guesses.

It's difficult for me to watch that game and think, this wasn't umpire bias? they were hot on the trigger to give the Dogs free's but loathed to pay them the other way. I know others won't agree with me but i genuinely do doubt the integrity of the game at times.

It's a really funny one, because i come away thinking we shouldn't feel like the Dogs are a better side than us. i think they got a lot of help from the umpires, but also our goal kicking. we can't win the flag if we can't finish our work. I think we did more than enough to win the game, we just missed a few to many chances, and lapsed into old habits a few to many times. the two things i think we need to fix heading into finals are 1. We need more reward for Gawns dominance, if you're winning hitouts like that. we need to be scoring off them. 2. our goal kicking. we are shooting ourselves in the face

Potentially yeah, and certainly not blaming him, he's exploded as a player and deserves a serious pay packed. it's always hard to know what the offer from the current team is, players do sometimes get miffed if it's a lot lower than what the other team offers

Based on the fact he's not committed to staying, all his reported contract demands are top end salary wise, and he's a W.A boy, he may like his teammates, but it's obvious he's about maximising his value, and teams will make big offers.

Gut feel is Bolten will go to whoever offers him the most money. which probably rules us out right away. i'd imagine a team like Freo might offer good $$$ and a swap might occur including Cerra back to the Tigers.

Players regularly say they want to stay and then leave, i'm certaintly not ruling it out as a possibilty, i've just not heard anything personally about Maynard leaving, not sure if the regular high rep Demonlanders have heard anything?

Anyone else rather see Harmes in for Viney and Vanders hold his spot? gives us Grunt but can also be more damaging around the ground.

Definitely, they love when multiple players get drawn into the contest and they can have numbers on the outside with time and space, but we held our players out and didn't give them that, and it seemed to totally throw them. it's why i'm not sure if their game plan will stack up in finals, because they don't look like the same team under any sort of pressure, the Swans tore them a new one.

Seems they have some concerns about if Martin will be back at all this year, and personally i think they'll find it really hard to win the flag without him and Treloar, but not impossible. I'll be really interested to see if we try to tag Libba again or if we change things up against them. it's going to be a really simple equation for us though, if we bring our pressure and we're on defensively, we should be able to shut down their ball movement.

The Dogs have dropped off significantly since their early season form, and while most would point to Dunkley/Treloar as being reasons, i personally think it's Stef Martin. he was really giving them a big edge in the middle, and allowing English to stretch backlines, but English while talented, probably isn't in the top 6-7 ruckman in the comp, so they probably don't get first use quite as much as they did with Martin, and that's where they were really killing teams, out of stoppages. I think we will beat them again, but it'll be a tight contest. if we are at our best i'd say we win by 3 goals and it does really put us in a strong position for top 2 with games against the Suns, Crows, Eagles and Cats to come. we should win minimum 3 of those.

Absolutely! i am not against the idea of trading one or both of Viney/Brayshaw if it meant getting in some outside class to balance the overall midfield, however i also think the current midfield group is good enough to win the premiership

Outside Spargo, we seem to have reverted to our bomb it long and hope plan which is a Our midfield group is fine, the issues you're mentioning are highlighted because of a poor game, but they weren't the cause of the poor game. The MFC is really simple, when we bring our effort, pressure, intensity we're the best side in the comp, when we don't, any side can beat us. it's impossible to do that every single week though, no team has ever managed it, what we have to do as a side though is bridge the gap between our best and worst, if we had been 10% better when we're off, we could potentially be looking at still being undefeated. and the beautiful thing is, we still have not been genuinely outplayed, when we've been anywhere near our best, that's the nice thing. all the other sides have.

Doggies haven't been playing well, so happy for us to beat them and then lock ourselves into top 2. Bring it on.

see early this year i would have agreed, but he's not got his touch back yet, so he's too fumbly, it'll get better in time, but god we need to bounce back hard next week.