Agreed. Keep learning the craft boys, do the best job you can do and everything else it take care of itself.
2019 will be a better year, providing we learn and get it right this year.
We need a couple of our young blokes to come through or pick up a couple of goldies in the draft.
High picks are only good if the culture of your side is good.
Carlton have access year on year to the top of the draft but they just can’t seem to achieve anything of note.
We have had to build our list the hard way and I feel like we are starting to put together a list that is both talented and hungry.
Unfortunately it was the more experienced players on our list that let us down early in the season but the younger guys have been mostly impressive.
I hope we finish off the year as strong as possible even if that means we miss out on the 8 by percentage.
We need to set the standard for next year and try and remain attractive to free agents.
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Nifty little calculator. I have us 9th on percentage. Need to win one of the last two games to get in. This week and against hawthorn are huge. Alternatively Saints do us a favour in the last round and beat North. But they are pathetic and would rather tank for the draft pick then win the last game I think.
I reckon we beat the pies now that Treloar is sidelined.
The reason I’m so intense about this finals issue, it goes back to the 1998 Marshmallow match against North Melbourne.
Talk about humiliation. After that match our club had every reason to wollow in defeat, feel sorry for itself, and come back the following year and do the same thing again.
Having listened to Robert Shaw, he said Sheedy became obsessed and furious after that match. He decided that we would be the toughest, most ruthless side in the competition. The rest is history. Sheedy learnt, had the drive & made the hard changes.
Every single one of our finals losses over the last 10 years was humiliating. Every single time, the club felt sorry for itself after the match. It never identified and learnt from that finals match, about what it had to become to be a successful Finals team.
We buried our heads in the sand every single time, and continued on our merry path towards mediocrity. We never made hard decisions, we only ever hoped the following year we could do it better.
After the first 8 weeks of this season, I don’t trust that we can be the club to learn from another finals belting.
Unless we can learn from the finals and make the necessary tough decisions, I’d rather finish the season with a lot of confidence and form for next year.
Edit: the biggest lesson we can learn as a club this season, is how to front up, put in the same intensity and mind set every single week, and beat our opponent regardless of where they sit on the ladder. That is our biggest undoing as a club. If we can learn this in 2018, we will be a top 4 club in 2019.
Then We get a second chance, and we give ourselves an opportunity to go deep into finals. That should be our learning goal.
So many assumptions, Particularly as mentioned that no other teams will have sudden form slumps, run out of steam, be struck by injuries to key players.
If I tip, as usual, that we win every match.
And tip against the flakier sides / those with a string of tough or travelling games above us -
Predictor has us 5th, missing 4th on percentage, and two games clear of 9th.
Unlikely, but far from scraping into 8th spot.
Just go as hard as you can against any team we face while playing a team for the future
Yep, and building your team rules by forcing yourself to drop one or two players each week, and rewarding one or two from the VFL with a spot.
There is little value in letting the side know who the best 22 in the coaches eyes are. Keep rotating your players through. Keeps them fresh, and hungry.
GWS1651114.2
2Geelong1570118.2
3Sydney1570114.7
4Essendon1570111.6
5Richmond1480119.7
6West Coast1480113.0
7North Melbourne1480109.9
8Collingwood1390110.3
9Hawthorn12100106.9
10Adelaide12100101.6
11Melbourne11110113.1
12Port Adelaide11110104.0
13Fremantle913088.9
14Western Bulldogs913084.4
15Gold Coast715075.3
16St Kilda615178.9
17Brisbane Lions220083.6
18Carlton220073.4
Sydney were also 6-7 after rd 14 last year.
They lost one more game on run home to finish 6th.
Clearly considered much stronger team though and had Buddy up and running also, demolished some sides in latter half of year to help %. Freo by 100.
We are very much up against it. Just have to keep winning and hope some other teams falter.
Never forget the when sides “Peak” and when they run out of gas scenarios in these equations either … 
Have we trained up hard early and will come home with a wet sail, while others now wilt??
Lot’s of possibilities from here on out.
North! I hope!
As long as we beat North, Coll, Haw and kick Port out of the Top 4 in the last round, I reckon I’ll be satisfied regardless of Ladder finish.
You’d think at least13 wins would be needed to make the 8 this year due to Blues, Saints, Lions and Suns inability to win games this year. 7.5wins between them
Boils down to: just possible; a real long shot; fun to think about.
It essentially requires us to “click” into being one of the better sides in the league in the back half of the year, and achieve something like Sydney’s run from last year. It’s not very different to how I’d have rated our chances of being top 4 at the start of the year.
Stepping back, I always thought this year could be a “step back before going forward” year because we needed to rebuild our midfield. We stepped back further than I thought we would as a) midfield woes led to a collapse in confidence, exacerbated I think by some bad losses occurring as we had a series of short turnarounds, which hurt our ability to snap out of the funk; and b) our forward line falling apart, due to Hooker being needed elsewhere and Joey’s injury.
The good news is we are now looking pretty good while playing a Mitch Brown / Shaun McKernan / Mark Baguley forwardline, which at the start of the year I would have seen as a doomsday scenario.
That suggests to me that the rebuild of the midfield is underway, and if things go okay, even to the point where we finish 9 or 10, I think next year (assuming we can then add our preferred forward line back in) starts to look pretty good.
So back to topic - I’ll see a 9 or 10 finish from here as a great sign for next year. Some of the footy stats sites show us as a 4% chance for 8th, with a small percentage for 6 or 7th meaning we have a 5 or 6% chance of making finals. That seems about right. But if we win the next two it will be something much more real.
Has a bit of the tigers in 2015 about it if we make it.
That’ll be fun then. 
I’m not sure we really know what that is anymore.
Daniher back in… certainly.
But Hooker seems really set in defense. Stewart can’t get a game at the moment. Fantasia has moved further up the ground. Green isn’t setting the world alight.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we take a step back this offseason and rebuild our forwardline again. Defense looks strong (possibly overly so), and midfield looks promising.
After watching Tigers tonight and their supreme toughness game style and skill it is depressing
if you watch very closely Nankervis is so strong and does so much damage
Also the umpires allow Richmond to play this super physical aggressive game
I would hate to see how many free kicks would be given against us if we played the same way as the Tigers
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Did the ladder with us losing a couple, and some minor upsets amongst various teams, not all in contention for the finals. The thing is that while we play a lot of teams from the top of the ladder in the run home, so do they. Obviously we need to win, and by mine 13 wins (7 more) could get us a spot in the eight. The interesting part of course is that in the next 9 games, only two of them are against teams that aren’t in contention for a finals spot. If we do fall into the eight it would be on the back of wins against most of the teams in there in the run to the finals. We might not just be there making up numbers, but a genuine chance of actually winning a final.
I was just checking out the Cat’s draw and it’s not an easy run home for them.