FreeTK
Premiership Player
- Oct 2, 2019
- 4,781
- 8,822
- AFL Club
- West Coast
- Banned
- #51
And if we are 3-3 after 6 rounds in 2021 and off to play Geelong in Geelong we are going into round 8 at 3-4. Meaning to finish top 2 (to almost guarantee it you need 17 wins) we would have to finish at worst 14-1 from there on in. I'm saying we won't win the premiership if we don't finish top 2.
Just on the 2019 finish do you think that maybe a large part of the reason why we lost those end of season games is we might have run out of gas coming back from 3-3?
I'd love to sit here and think we're a shot at the premiership next year but the truth is we have a lot of things to rectify in one off season to get there, most likely need conditions suiting us perfectly all the way through finals, need an exceptional injury run through the midfield and our key core of older players to drop off significantly less than any youngsters improve us. Not only this but we need to greatly fix the speed at which we're moving out of defence, particularly from behinds, our ground ball differential and the connection from our midfield to our half forward line. Oh and if the second half of 2020 taught us anything it's that Yeo being fully fit is crucial to our chances.
We also have to do this with a significant reduction in coaching and support staff.
It's a hard ask, we are a shot and i would love nothing more than to see Nicnat and Shep win a flag but at this stage even with a reasonably favourable fixture (which could easily change to unfavourable at any stage due to covid and or the AFL now being able to change up dates and times of games on the fly) we are much more likely to a H+A finishing position like this year and if we have any sort of significant reduction in output from senior players and or Nic to not be able to play as well as last season we are just as likely to finish outside the 8 as we are to win the flag.
I don't disagree with anything in your post. I was purely saying that if we are 5-2 by beating Gold Coast, Fremantle and 3 of Geelong/Port/Collingwood/Bulldogs in the opening 7 rounds, then that would put us in very good stead, and with our remaining fixture we would easily finish with a 17-5 or 18-4 record and finish top 2.
I think 5-2 is a bit overly optimistic. I think 4-3 is probably more realistic, and from that point we can still really springboard in to the later part of the season.
5-2 is not a necessity in order to win the flag, and I personally don't think we lost those games in 2019 due to our so-so start to the year.
Our draw is heavily lopsided. It is a pretty easy run home to be honest. Only danger games after round 7 are Richmond, Collingwood and Brisbane, and we won't lose all 3.
Even if we finish 4-3 we could still very likely finish top 2/4.