Any training today?
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Another pre-season of development of game plan and structure, another pre-season of development into the younger demographic within the list.
The squad hasn’t lost anything of significance and has had another pre-season to hone in on the way they want to play. It flows logically that the team should improve, obviously nothing is guaranteed but anyone who takes the view that we’ll go backwards is doing it purely based on their own triggers and not in any balanced analysis of where the team is at in it’s development cycle.
Oh and I couldn’t give a ■■■■ what 5-10 other club supporters think, it’s entirely irrelevant.
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Hopefully someone as training.
Keen to hear how they all pulled up after their first real hit out
Rd 1 vs. Geelong has a 2017 Rd 1 vs. Hawthorn vibe to me.
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How to diss Norf’s entire membership.
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well played!
Pray for less round the corner long bombs.
I thought Hooker’s presence and competitiveness when the ball was coming in was great in the first two-thirds of last year. Absolutely no way does Jones take as many marks as he did without wily old Hooksy there.
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We’ll probably win 11-13 games. 11 wins could land us in 8th and lose a final to whoever finished fifth or could land us 9th or 10th. 13 wins could put us in 6th or 7th which dramatically changes the odds of winning a final.
I’m not fussed if we don’t win a final this year. What I want is to be more competitive against good sides. No 45 point losses. No goalless quarters. No one going on a 30 point in a row scoring run.
Does anyone know what numbers Tex and marto have been allocated
Nino pls
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Lol. There are legitimate queries that:
- Whether the player who was ranked #1 in the league for 9 rounds can replicate it, or be injury struck.
- Queries on our goal kicking, especially if Stringer and/or Walla aren’t available
- That on the admittedly tiny sample of one practice match there seems little improvement in team systems
- That it is incredibly common for new draftees to have second year blues.
- That due to injuries this midfield has had little time together so we don’t know if it will be greater or lesser than the sum of its parts.
- That for many years we’ve had crap injury runs, so don’t know if 2021 was an outlier or the new norm.
- We don’t really know what the planned balance of trying to win versus development will be.
- That how much other teams improve is pretty damn relevant to where we finish.
Oh, and that in 2021 we got into finals with 11 wins, and managed 1 win out of 11 against top 8 teams + Richmond. So we’ll probably need to improve just to finish 8th again!
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I could’ve discussed a number of your points, but I’ll focus on this one.
I’m calling it an outdated, or at best, overstated, myth that doesn’t seem to apply any more.
Yes there are examples these days. But invariably down to one of three things;
Injury- the Rowell syndrome
Being asked to take on a different role (typically this used to be from a flank to midfield) none of which applies to our second year players. They’re pretty much set to continue as per last year. Note Harry is technically a 3rd year player so he can’t have 2nd year blues.
The opposition working out how to nullify them. Possibly the biggest myth of all. The exemplars historically here are those who burst on the scene for only a handful of games, typically only 4 or 5, usually as small forwards, where the opponents didn’t get a good look at them in the first place, and people expect 3 games of hot form to invariably continue for a full season.
Again this doesn’t really apply to any of our players.
Say what you will about the development of youngsters these days, but I reckon it’s put the “second year blue” firmly as a cliche from the past
Yeah, so?
I expect us to improve.
Do you?
would be interesting if we went 0-3 (not i didn’t say fun, i said interesting) cos then even moreso it becomes a perception/narrative game and the tide may well turn against rutten and the " development year" line may not fly as easily to the masses as it did last year.
My prediction last year was we’d start slow and come home with a wet-sail (although finals exceeded my expectations).
This year I reckon we’ll sort of do the inverse. We’ll start red-hot (potentially top of the ladder about 8 rounds in sort of hot), fall away for 6-weeks, than hit the end of the year with some form. Should make finals, should win one.
I’m going to guess a 13-9 H/A season, finish 7th and break the drought with a demolition of whoever finishes 6th.
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We will start pretty big outsiders in our first three matches regardless of result in each.
I think it would only be in the nature of any defeats that would apply pressure to Rutten
Not big outsiders.
We’ll win at least one of our first 3.
Our season will come down to the mentality of coaches and players. Last year we were underdogs, the hunter, bottom 10 clubs thought they could push us. We were predicted to be bottom 4.
Like every other year since we haven’t won a final we’ve missed the following top 8 after making finals.
Teams likely have a different opinion of us this year and are going to want to get a scalp over us and we can’t get big heads with the outside perceived hype.
To me this a really important year for the club and it’s fabric. We can’t repeat history and miss finals again after a year of making finals. We have to continue an upward trajectory.
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