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Opinion 2018 Finals Talk

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Astro7

Astro7

Official Halftime Oranges Man
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Aug 6, 2017
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General ongoing finals banter...What are your weekly thoughts on how deep WCE can go?
Likely outcomes/team pairings of each progressive final, matchups..

Also any smokies - most predict a Tigers/Eagles GF, but who is likely to come through the pack as a roughy?
We've had the Dogs and Tigers, could it be Melbourne for example?

Will we wheel out our full-bore finals style of play?
If we make it to GF, is there any chance we get blown out of the water, whoever we play?
Or is the team fully prepared for this moment to come around again and redeem themselves?
 
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The loser of our QF plays swans/GWS in the semi on the Saturday.

The winner of that semi faces a 6 day break into the Friday night prelim against the Tigers or Hawks.

How's that for bad planning? And yet no one in the media has even picked up on it.

Winning next week is so important. I think we can do it.


My tips are:

Week 1
Tigers by 10
Dees by 35
Swans by 16
Eagles by 45

Week 2
Dees by 30 against the hawks
Pies by 1 against the swans

Week 3
Tigers by 50 against the pies
Eagles by 5 against the dees

GF
Eagles by 2 against the Tiges
Norm Smith: Willie Rioli

Best player of the finals series: McGovern
 
The top 8 could not have fallen better for us. Pies don't travel often so are probably the preferred opponent in week 1.

Tigers likely to play vs Vic teams every week so any home ground advantage is massively reduced. Maybe Swans/GWS in the prelim, but those two teams are more than capable of upsetting the tigers.

Tigers definitely deserve to be favourites, but I think their passage to the GF is very tricky compared to ours.
 

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daddy_4_eyes said:
The top 8 could not have fallen better for us. Pies don't travel often so are probably the preferred opponent in week 1.

Tigers likely to play vs Vic teams every week so any home ground advantage is massively reduced. Maybe Swans/GWS in the prelim, but those two teams are more than capable of upsetting the tigers.

Tigers definitely deserve to be favourites, but I think their passage to the GF is very tricky compared to ours.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I def think we have the "softer" side of the draw going in.

Not saying that we are a lock for the big dance, not at all. But I would be a lot cagier about taking on the Hawks next weekend than I am about Collingwood.
 
Tigers will win easy
I think. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us out in straight sets tbh
 
One thing this team has shown is a level of resilience and the ability to claw itself back into contests after shaky or terrible starts. I think if the Pies come here and jump us we will slowly peg them back in.

We missed Ryan for a large part of the year. Ryan are Rioli would terrify me as a defender, plus Cripps coming into form that I have never seen before. Couple this with Darling and Kennedy and the forward line is looking the goods. For me it's getting it out of the defensive 50 and then through the middle to some good clean looks. This is where Sheed, Masten, Shuey, Hutchings, Yeo need to step up. I'm optimistic about getting to the big dance where I think we can give the Tigers a shake. It will be tough to beat them at their home ground but anything is possible.
 
Richmond "overrated" Tigers to beat the Hawthorn squawkers
Geelong to beat Melbourne with a kick after the siren
Sydney to kick the ball backwards for an entire game and win 0.1.01 to 0.0.00
West Coast arrogant's to beat an undermanned collywobble
 
Richmond by 25 (best team all year vs a team who isnt top 4 quality imo)
Geelong by 15 (Geelong are stacked with finals experience, should prove the difference)
GWS by 8 (an almost full strength GWS after the bye, honestly they should win by more)
Eagles by 16 (home ground advantage and more recent finals experience than Collingwood)
 

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Suma Magic said:
The loser of our QF plays swans/GWS in the semi on the Saturday.

The winner of that semi faces a 6 day break into the Friday night prelim against the Tigers or Hawks.

How's that for bad planning? And yet no one in the media has even picked up on it.

Winning next week is so important. I think we can do it.


My tips are:

Week 1
Tigers by 10
Dees by 35
Swans by 16
Eagles by 45

Week 2
Dees by 30 against the hawks
Pies by 1 against the swans

Week 3
Tigers by 50 against the pies
Eagles by 5 against the dees

GF
Eagles by 2 against the Tiges
Norm Smith: Willie Rioli

Best player of the finals series: McGovern
Click to expand...
good post! Any reservations about the Dees after mauling us before?
Spange said:
One thing this team has shown is a level of resilience and the ability to claw itself back into contests after shaky or terrible starts. I think if the Pies come here and jump us we will slowly peg them back in.

We missed Ryan for a large part of the year. Ryan are Rioli would terrify me as a defender, plus Cripps coming into form that I have never seen before. Couple this with Darling and Kennedy and the forward line is looking the goods. For me it's getting it out of the defensive 50 and then through the middle to some good clean looks. This is where Sheed, Masten, Shuey, Hutchings, Yeo need to step up. I'm optimistic about getting to the big dance where I think we can give the Tigers a shake. It will be tough to beat them at their home ground but anything is possible.
Click to expand...
Agree, our maturity and ability to claw back has been a big feature this season..harder longer(?)..should serve us well in tough games ahead..
 
Id rather avoid the Tigers before the GF. I'd rather make it to the GF and come 2nd then not make it at all. I think the Tigers are the only threat in the top 4 right now.
 
liam123 said:
I wouldn’t be surprised to see us out in straight sets tbh
Click to expand...

Same. Winning week one will be very important to our aspirations. Every subsequent game will be very hard if we drop that first one.

Win it and I reckon we'll make the grand final with a good shot at the flag.

As far as I can tell, our only finals win against Collingwood was by 2 points in 1994 when we finished first and they finished 8th (back when the finals format was really dumb). Throw in the drawn final and the extra time finals loss and we have a history of nail-biters against them.

This finals series should be a cracker.
 
Astro7 said:
Any reservations about the Dees after mauling us before?
Click to expand...

If I may - that game they gad shitload to play for and we lost a key player very early. Not sure it was a mauling as such, rather a good tight contested game.

They do concern me if they got through but we'd be up for the fight I reckon
 
ep2006 said:
Richmond by 25 (best team all year vs a team who isnt top 4 quality imo)
Geelong by 15 (Geelong are stacked with finals experience, should prove the difference)
GWS by 8 (an almost full strength GWS after the bye, honestly they should win by more)
Eagles by 16 (home ground advantage and more recent finals experience than Collingwood)
Click to expand...

This this will play a factor. Collingwood haven't played finals for the past four seasons; a lot of their guys, especially in that inexperienced backline of theirs, have never played a final.

Magden - 4 games (0 finals)
Langdon - 76 (0)
Maynard - 69 (0)
Crisp - 106 (0)
Howe - 158 (0)
Oxley - 34 (0)
Murphy - 2 (0)
Appleby - 9 (0)
Moore - 54 (0)
Goldsack - 161 (13)

Wow, that just got worse and worse as i was looking up those stats. They're missing (potentially all of) Dunn, Scharenberg, Moore, Reid, Howe and Goldsack down there. I think our guys are much more talented than that group but imagine if Gov, Barrass, Schofield, Mackenzie were all inured. Of their potential ins, Goldsack would be back well within a year from an ACL and with no footy under his belt, Moore has got through 1 full game unscathed this year, and Howe has missed a couple of weeks with a bad cork.

I was 50/50 on this match but gee after looking up these stats, I cant see this patchwork backline containing our forward line - JK and JD, cripps, lecras, ryan, rioli is a scary proposition for any club, let alone a backline as depleted as Collingwoods. Shows how well they have done (albeit with an easy draw) to snag a top 4 position.

Break even, or hell, even just not get completely smashed in the middle, and we should win.
 
AndysAngels said:
This this will play a factor. Collingwood haven't played finals for the past four seasons; a lot of their guys, especially in that inexperienced backline of theirs, have never played a final.

Magden - 4 games (0 finals)
Langdon - 76 (0)
Maynard - 69 (0)
Crisp - 106 (0)
Howe - 158 (0)
Oxley - 34 (0)
Murphy - 2 (0)
Appleby - 9 (0)
Moore - 54 (0)
Goldsack - 161 (13)

Wow, that just got worse and worse as i was looking up those stats. They're missing (potentially all of) Dunn, Scharenberg, Moore, Reid, Howe and Goldsack down there. I think our guys are much more talented than that group but imagine if Gov, Barrass, Schofield, Mackenzie were all inured. Of their potential ins, Goldsack would be back well within a year from an ACL and with no footy under his belt, Moore has got through 1 full game unscathed this year, and Howe has missed a couple of weeks with a bad cork.

I was 50/50 on this match but gee after looking up these stats, I cant see this patchwork backline containing our forward line - JK and JD, cripps, lecras, ryan, rioli is a scary proposition for any club, let alone a backline as depleted as Collingwoods. Shows how well they have done (albeit with an easy draw) to snag a top 4 position.

Break even, or hell, even just not get completely smashed in the middle, and we should win.
Click to expand...
I could see the Pies being knocked out in straight sets. They only made top four because of a very easy draw and injuries have smashed them this year (like most years actually).
 

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Rowan18 said:
I could see the Pies being knocked out in straight sets. They only made top four because of a very easy draw and injuries have smashed them this year (like most years actually).
Click to expand...

The two losers of qualifying finals are both decent chances to be knocked out in straight sets...it's been that sort of year :)

Collingwood's back-line will be fine if our forwards get crap supply, so we have to break even in the midfield, or at least lose the battle narrowly.
 
woosha24 said:
Depends. Meeting the Hawks in another GF might give us Vietnam flashbacks.
Click to expand...
I think the team is much more experienced and seasoned now. 3 years ago Gov was 22, Gaff was 22, Yeo, Redden and co all 22.

West Coast's list reminds me of Richmond's last year and the year before. Pretty unknown apart from a couple that soldiered on and used their maturity to win games.
 
I want to see if Darling really fires this final series, his track record to date in finals isnt great.

When we went deep in 2015 he didn't fire a shot, culminating in that horrendous dropped mark in the grand final.

Time for Jack to attone and make us proud in 2018 and to finish off what has been a great season for him
 

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Opinion 2018 Finals Talk

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