I don’t understand where this sort of negativity comes from.
A lot of things would have to go significantly wrong for us to be bottom 4.
There are plenty of reasons to believe we’ll be far better than last season.
Our forward line is the only serious doubt imo, but we had no problems scoring last season and there is a good chance our forward line will be better than last year.
This is probably accurate… both are equally long odds.
Top four talk worries me slightly (but doesn’t scare me). Top six is where we should be this year. Top eight relaxes me. Outside of that. deep depression.
Remember we’re all a year on and a young side gaining experience and belief under Truck and co. And had a good pre-season so far.
I know Alex was likely being facetious but conversely a lot of things would have to go significantly right for us to finish top 4. Both results are about as unlikely as each other I’d have thought.
We’ve all had that supporting this club in the last decade. That may be the main reason we aren’t hyping this group of players more.
Diabolical forwardline and a defence that is still relatively green and undermanned.
Midfield has a lot of grunt but not a lot of polish.
If things go well I reckon we could genuinely be vying for a top 4 spot. Maybe jones takes the next step or Stringer has an AA year off no preseason. Who knows, the forwardline will make or break our season I reckon. If the team loses confidence after some losses however I reckon it could go on a death spiral.
I am not as sold on our midfield as many others until I see a seismic change in how it delivers the ball inside 50 and works defensively.
they’re not gonna spiral, the group’s too invested and resilient for that now.
They’ll keep plugging away and if the forward line is a dysfunctional shitshow then the efforts of the mids and backs will likely just keep us in the mid table hunt that we were last year.
But if we can find something a bit more effective up forward and be slightly better in defending the ground then we’ll make some gains.
Our midfield is top 6, unfortunately our bookends are still weak and that will aee us anywhere from 7-13.
Our back half is not weak but it’s still developing.
Weaknesses are clearly the forward line and whole ground defence to protect the back six better.
Decent argument, but in my opinion, footy doesn’t work like maths. The sum of the parts doesn’t equal the whole, and therefore comparing them that way does not give a true comparative representation.
In other words - a team’s production and subsequent success or lack of it, may not be truly calculated by the individual qualities of its parts.
i am not as worried about our forward line as others
i think we’ve proved we can kick scores even with names missing up there. how we execute is far more important than the names up there.
we really, really need a fit stringer and walls though. that helps massively
I agree entirely just looking purely at a head to head/player against player selection scenario, where I’d see our blokes fitting into their sides in comparable positions.
Which we dont have. Jones is coming off a limited preseason too.
I just dont see the forwards clicking this year and think it may very well be our downfall, but who knows.
If we score more points than the other team each week, then we will win ALL weeks.
Stringer’s pre-season is an almost carbon copy of last year. Uninterrupted for most of it (in fact I think he did more this year), miss the last ~4 weeks prior to the season starting. He’s not gonna be in poor shape and I’d be surprised if it took him too long to get into the season given the significant change in his fitness base over the last 18mths.
*unless he’s completely shot and doesn’t play at all.
Yep. Second half of the year the back line held up well overall so you’d hope they’d be better again with a bit of experience, a more accountable two way midfield and the Rance factor.
I think we can push for top 4 and give the finals a shake, but admit I would be happy this year making the 8, winning a prelim and knocking off a couple of top 4 teams along the way.
Top 4 seems a huge call really based on our fwd line talls IMO
But as we did see with Brisbane in 2019 who rocketed up the ladder from 15th to 2nd, they probably didn’t have what would be seen as the most potent kpf line up based around:
McStay, Hipwood (4th yr) and OMac fwd/ruck
They obviously had a firing Charlie Cameron up fwd also and had landed superstar Lachie Neale also for 2019 driving things from midfield
….
Wright is a better fwd than OMac (‘19 / 21 games, 10 goals)
Jones hopefully might be able to equal Hipwood’s output (‘ 19 / 23games, 35goals)
As for McStay (‘19/ 24 games, 21 goals) - one of Francis/Baldwin/Hurley we need to fill that role
Walla can certainly have Cameron like impact when up and about. We need him fit and firing. Cameron had a huge season though (‘19 / 24 games, 57 goals)
What we have that Brisbane didn’t have similar of use Stringer, they were using Lincoln McCarthy is a similar type role. Who is still a very useful fwd (‘19/ 24 games, 20 goals) but he’s no Stringer.
Everything just clicked for Brisbane in 2019, you could see they were starting to be a lot more competitive end of 2018 without quite getting the wins but it all came together following year
mcgrath will honestly change our ball movement from half back massively. his vision when the play is ahead of him is very, very good
It’s a worry, but I’m not sure it’s a bigger worry than it was this time last year. I mean, Jones hadn’t played a game, Hooker was still a defender at this stage, 2MP was nothing but blind hope, Stringer wasn’t ready for round 1. It’s really only Tippa that’s the big difference this year.
I think we managed to conjure up a surprising amount of goals last year, and I feel we have more potential options this year.
But yes, without both Tippa and Stringer, it’s gonna be hard work to kick winning scores.
I thought our defense was pretty damn good last year anyway.
Adding McGrath and Kelly seems to completely round it out.