Of course we’ll drop a pre-season game. Premiership hangover!
I am confident we will make it and if anyone thinks that confidence will affect what happens then they have serious problems with superstition. The way the draw sets up ,if we don’t make it then it won’t really matter because we would need to be worse than deserving, and worse than having any capability of doing September damage. We can beat anybody, and I’d like to imagine the tendency to inconsistency should reduce as this team gets up towards a (when u think about it a very low) tally of 20 real games together. It’s one reason why I think selection has been pretty conservative, leading to dummy spits on the team selection threads. Consistency likes relatively consistent personnel. Hence calls for begley, laverde immediately, ambrose after a week in vfl, frang etc don’t convince me. Not to say none might happen, but don’t expect a lot of experimentation, I reckon.
If there’s good weather in September then I think our game plan is fine. Dogs banged it apart with kamikaze handball, and while they did have some inside strength, that’s not what got them through.
Comment on zaka is interesting. He is in rare form but for me seems to be running very freely. Not sure if he’s dropped a couple of kegs, or was carrying a niggle, but in a few sprints for a loose ball he was first to it a number of times against the saints, and the centre square set up went to him quite a few times - belcho did well and zaka didn’t let him down. And I reckon saints did try tag him with Stevens at times - and it didn’t work. Hopefully his better running will make it harder to tag him out, and if someone does, it’ll be up to the others to step up - it’s not like last year now, in terms of personnel who can carry the load.
I don’t get what’s so hard to understand. North and Brisbane are the two worst sides in the game. It’s completely unacceptable to lose to either. Pies at the G is always a harder game and they are better than both north and Brisbane and the saints are a pretty similar placed side to us.
We 100% need to beat north to show the supporters the team learnt from having a mental explosion against Brisbane. Hell, we need to win every fkn game really but it’s important we put in a good showing against a rubbish opposition, which north is
If anyone had asked me in January whether I’d be happy if we were in contention for the finals late in July, my answer would have been ‘Happy? I’d be ■■■■■■■ delirious’
It is one thing to hope for a win, even expect a win, another thing to keep shifting the goal posts on what you (plural) think is an acceptable performance. I think my post makes it clear people expected a result, got it, then said it wasn’t enough and moved the goal posts.
It is great to want to win every game, it is great to have expectations, but just because a side may be the “worst” in any given year doesn’t mean they are not capable of winning a game here or there. We did last year when no one thought we would.
I[quote=“Alan_Noonan_10, post:135, topic:10975, full:true”]
I get the feeling that quite a few of you lot will be satisfied if we do blow the opportunities. Just because you’re a bunch of flogs.
But then, we beat North and you’ll all be back here saying “I knew we’d beat that lot, but we’ll lose to the Dogs…for sure”
Rinse and repeat, until we do lose one.
Biggest worry for me is that some of the commentators are analysing the way we play and by extension, so are opposition coaching staffs. On The Couch reckon coaches will start tagging Zaka because he’s the one getting us started.
That’s what we’ve got to get through, and that’s nothing to do with Essington.
For me, I reckon we’ll drop one of next year’s pre-season games.
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Hmm if they are actually saying that it is rubbish analysis. Zaharakis is one of several that can hurt you when we are on song, but the vast majority of our scoring is generated from half back through the more dynamic players on the list.
I think they are just excited because they know that he can be successfully tagged and if someone tags him they can say I told you so.
All the nobb jockeys on TV at the moment who used to whinge in 2005 about tagging stopping us from seeing the great ball players are suddenly super excited about hard tags again. I think it’s because they don’t understand the complexity of modern defensive structures well enough but need to sound like they know what they are talking about.
I think the problem is that some supporters are too scared to let themselves get emotionally invested. It’s much safer to plan for a loss and be right than it is to allow yourself to believe we can win and then have that dream shattered.
Then again, in this situation the odds are stacked against us as the idea of winning 6 or 7 of the last 8 is far removed from our form line this year. Even IF we have an 80% chance of winning each of our 5 easy matches, that suggests we are likely to lose 1 of them, and if you believe that then you shouldn’t be expecting to beat Adelaide.
Personally, i believe we are a better side now than we were earlier in the year, and we are capable of going on a winning streak just like other teams have done before us this year, it’s just we didnt start it until a bit later than the rest.
I will choose to believe that until it’s torn away from me, at which point I will hold my head high and say I was wrong, delusional, whatever, but at least i enjoyed the season for as long as was mathematically possible.
I don’t think that happens in that order, if any numpties on Fox Footy are bringing it up now, other coaches will have spotted it weeks ago. Most AFL sides have a person who’s job is specifically to go through tapes and pull apart what the upcoming opponent is doing.
