That is… very disappointing.
Doesn’t get any finer a margin than that. Fk it.
Need to re-watch the whole season: “oh look, just lost the home final there”…
In other games, the Pies put in a mere modicum of work to win 23-4 over Geelong.
Ladder at the end of Saturday:
| Team | Games | Points | For | Against | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pies | 14 | 56 | 704 | 237 | 297% |
| Cats | 14 | 40 | 570 | 327 | 174% |
| Port | 13 | 40 | 552 | 411 | 134% |
| Casey | 14 | 32 | 641 | 411 | 156% |
| Essendon | 14 | 32 | 524 | 336 | 156% |
| Footscray | 14 | 28 | 424 | 558 | 76% |
| Saints | 13 | 24 | 448 | 419 | 107% |
| Fark Carlton | 13 | 20 | 394 | 532 | 74% |
| North | 13 | 20 | 368 | 559 | 66% |
| Hawks | 13 | 16 | 448 | 487 | 92% |
| Willy | 13 | 10 | 226 | 531 | 43% |
| Darebin | 14 | 6 | 235 | 726 | 32% |
- Port beat or draw Box Hill to get to second.
- Saints win to displace Footscray from sixth.
- Hopefully Willy farks Carlton.
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A non-muddy portion of the ground:
Sad to see Dicker’s hair back to moderately conventional colour(s). Lennox (right) helps with the tackle.
As ever, DJR reporting much appreciated, also colour from your sidekicks.
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Ashley-Cooper drives us forward.
Fair old colour clash in that pic. Black red and white for both teams.
A different ladder has Casey conceding one less point and us scoring one less. Either way… pfffft!
I’ve improved most of the earlier images. And here come the finals-bounds girls!
Tall timber!
Oi! Did I give you permission to film me?
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Whatever happened to Stephanie Hird and Michaela Long?
We’re experimenting with our talls, and not before time. We’ve spent most of the year with one big forward (Clifford) with cameos from Stepnell or Nalder forward. Last week Tara Slender teamed with Clifford and Nalder/Stepnell largely interchanged off the bench.
This week we dropped Stepnell and (finally) brought in Gillard. We also played Crook forward early, for the first time. Gillard and Nalder largely swapped the ruck off the bench, until late in the third quarter when Nalder went forward and immediately goaled. In the last quarter we played one forward and one ruck, with Crook going back.
We can debate the best players for each role, but two talls (or at least “strongs”, as Frew was) has worked best for us.
I still don’t know if Slender got suspended or got omitted. I liked what I saw last week (she was certainly more natural forward than Crook was this week).
It will likely be situational whether we go with three talls down back in finals (Ahrens, Lennox, Crook). All of them are mobile, even in sloppy conditions like today.
Some individual comments:
- Prespakis played forward for most of the first three quarters before going mid and particularly standing out in the last quarter. She might find it a tad harder running through opponents at this level, but jeez she had a lot of big physical and creative moments. More midfield time next week, please.
- Davies! Improved six trillion percent this year. Early this year: getting destroyed in sprints to the ball, and few tricks. Today she kicked three goals and continues to develop as a legit creative forward threat. Took two great CLUNKs today as well.
- Crook was a bit of a gangly giraffe forward today. Kicked the first goal, looked set to rip the game apart in the first quarter, then… diminished.
- Great conditions for Yassir today (not that she’s a slouch outside the pack and the mud; is a low accurate kick) and she did well as a full-time mid. As just noted in the 2021 squad thread, might be the best small player (160cm) available for AFLW drafting this year.
- Ahrens returned and was fantastic at CHB.
- The ruck contest was decent (their rucks were about twice as wide and deep as ours) but it tilted our way as the game went on.
- When Dicker gets it, she is dangerous.
- Nanscawen Ugle Barba busy as always.
- Their ground is safe but awful. Their player selection looked on first glance to be much more suited to a bog than ours (but when you only look at the bodies of Ugle or Nanscawen you would not realise how much they can scrap). On a normal ground we’d very likely have a home final next week.
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Gillard and Prespakis get their first win with us.
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AFLW stat, but relevant (Ahrens):
