There are two parts to this, but they both involve hard, gut-running play and a determination to take the game on.
I was ready to blast both these guys at half time. Shiel was being soundly beaten in the middle, to the point where I was actually questioning whether he was playing in the first quarter ā for the record, he had three touches.
Merrett was no better ā his three touches were nothing to write home about.
When you have these two restricted the way they were, the Bombers were lucky to be within nine points of the Crows. You can thank the poor conversion by Adelaide and the defensive efforts of Mason Redman for such a narrow margin.
Their second quarter was marginally better, but it was the third quarter that blew the game open. The run and carry of both these players was phenomenal. It was as though they had a chat with Conor McKenna and he enlightened them to the fact that no one on the Crows has the genuine explosive leg speed to catch them. I reckon it went something like this.
McKenna ā āEy fellas, fooken Crews kent be running fast. Fookin run and theyāll nary catch ye.ā
Weāve had that composure and forward efficiency every time Hooker plays forward. Iād love to see the stats on our goals per F50 entry with him forward vs not. Has been a huge factor in us scoring faster.
That got me going as well. It was like, hang on a second, weāve been winning recently with the injuries. Isnāt that proof we do have depth? And our VFL team is still winning.
Disagree. Parish came from quite wide and rolled around to behind the mark. I donāt think he was actually ever within 10m of the player. It was just plain wrong.
Joe Daniher, Orazio Fantasia, Zach Merret, Martin Gleeson, Mason Redman, Conor McKenna, Michael Hartley, Adam Saad, Andrew McGrath, Matt Guelfi, Aaron Francis, Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Darcy Parish, Mitch Brown, Dylan Clarke, Shaun McKernan, Will Snelling, Dylan Shiel, Patrick Ambrose, Jake Stringer, Kyle Langford, Brandon Zerk-Thatcher, Josh Begley, Jayden Laverde, Brayden Ham, Zac Clarke, Devon Smith, Jordan Ridley, James Stewart, Irving Mosquito, Sam Draper and Jake Long.
A: They all signed up to EFC post the 2012 season (AKA Dank/Weapon/AFaiL Disaster season). Post 2014 in italics.
Considering we only had only 3 in the side who played in that season, and there are 32 post 2012 AFL ready players on the above list (fitness aside).
Disco has built nearly all of this side in 6 years with draft sanctions and most of it in the past 4 years.
This is nothing short of incredible.
Worsfold now has a side almost unburdened by the saga suspensions (in fact a lot are here only because of the saga) which is truly his, and if you think about this current crop thatās going to move the side forward, we had no right to expect it to fire as a whole before now.
Top 8 is a difficult thing to predict isnt it? Especially with % differences potentially separating teams with the same win/loss ratios, and not just by one position on the ladder. The third placed team might have the same ratio as 6th, for example.
Predicting who is going to win by how much is nearly impossible to get right!
Will be an interesting run home, the closest in many seasons.
I did the ladder predictor as well. I have us possibly as high as 4th. If Nth beat Brisbane today and Collingwood beat Richmond next week, then Richmond beat Brisbane last round, we need to win our remaining games including Collingwood in the last round. None of those scenarios are too far fetched.