10 games are done, 7 to go to complete the H&A season. We are 2 points off 8th place with a game in hand.
Remaining games (Ladder position end of round 11):
Port Adelaide (1st)
Geelong (3rd)
West Coast (4th)
St Kilda (5th)
Richmond (6th)
Melbourne (9th)
Hawthorn (15th)
We are on 5 wins and a draw. 9 wins and a draw might give us a sneaky chance of squeezing in to 8th spot. We need to win 4 out of the 7 games, as a minimum.
If we beat Melbourne and Hawthorn (both have a way better midfield than us - so no guarantee), that would mean we need to beat 2 top 8 sides.
I can’t see us beating Port, West Coast or Richmond, we have zero chance of this. We have to beat St Kilda and Geelong, they are the sides which are gettable.
Finals looks shot. That GWS game is the killer. Let’s hope for a miracle.
What you should have done @reincarnated, is stipulate that it is a general thread about all teams and their changing fortunes of making the Finals, Top 4 etc…
Put a small paragraph in BOLD stating that it’s not a bash Essendon thread.
Unfortunately I had no luck with this request last year
We should have beat fark Carlton, gws and gc and needed 2 more wins. But we didn’t because we’re hot garbage.
We’ve had a wretched run with injuries this year but equally we drank plenty of our own bath water after knocking off the pies.
Getting our forward line back would help but the balance of our midfield is terrible and we carry far too many guys with glaring deficiencies in their games. The core of the problem is that we just make too many errors. Skill errors, fumbles, poor decisions with the ball, poor decisions without the ball.
NO. Lets play some of the youngsters and get game time into them. Rather than waste our time. We are NOT finals material. Even if we get JoeDan, Ambrose, Hooker, Hurley, Heppell, Zacka, Fantasia, Mozzie, there are NO guarantees we’ll play finals. It would take more than a miracle with some of the bad habits we’ve adopted. Yes I know we’ve had lots of injuries so has everyone else. We were lucky to get away with a draw last night, our first half was terrible. We won’t get away with doing that against Port, West Coke, Richmond, Geelong, St. Kilda, we might have a show against Melbourne and Hawthorn who are mediocre and up and down like we are.
Unless of course, the footy gods smile upon, and the umpies do the same. The AFL seldom smiles so don’t expect anything from them.
That really doesn’t sound like a high bar to make finals. People are talking about this like it is mission impossible. I’d rather us get in having some wins against top 8 teams vs only beating those below us. If we are good enough we will make it. We probably won’t.
