Prediction Changes v WCE elimination final

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

We are going to get absolutely obliterated if we don't pick a tall to help Boyd.

To be fair we've persisted with the extra tall for seven weeks now and our completions have still been rat shit - arguably even worse. Cordy just isn't contributing enough as a forward. His involvements are mostly good but in my opinion there aren't enough of them to justify picking him (as a forward) over another capable of moving through the middle, particularly with a few 90% fit guys likely to be risked out of necessity.

At this point I'm more comfortable going a bit smaller and more mobile. It's a risk, sure, but we're underdogs for a reason - largely because the footy we've put out in the second half of the season just hasn't been good enough. In an ideal world we're capable of going taller but imo that shouldn't take precedence over naming the best players we can.

 

[Fultons]

I must be the only one on this forum who does not want any players coming back around the 80% mark. It just doesn't work. Go with what your got, have faith in them.

I'm thinking even if the 5 are picked expect a couple of late withdrawals.

Sorry but disagree. There will be plenty of players across all teams playing hurt in finals. All this weeks potential ins are also quality:Libba at 80%=better than a depth player at 100%. Champions play on hybrid vigour.

 

[BRWB]

If fit I'd pick Campbell and Rough as ruck is one of our few areas of dominance - we should exploit it.

Underdone players, poor form, dysfunctional fwd line against a defence that just smashed the best fwd line, and the worst one on one KPDs in the league v the Coleman medalist.

I'm fully expecting a thumping.

Hoping for a win - who knows.

 

[Dogsman16]

To be fair we've persisted with the extra tall for seven weeks now and our completions have still been rat shit - arguably even worse. Cordy just isn't contributing enough as a forward. His involvements are mostly good but in my opinion there aren't enough of them to justify picking him (as a forward) over another capable of moving through the middle, particularly with a few 90% fit guys likely to be risked out of necessity.

At this point I'm more comfortable going a bit smaller and more mobile. It's a risk, sure, but we're underdogs for a reason - largely because the footy we've put out in the second half of the season just hasn't been good enough. In an ideal world we're capable of going taller but imo that shouldn't take precedence over naming the best players we can.

I think our completions have been severely affected by the loss of personnel in the middle of the ground. We've had far less control of the pill than we would have liked and its cost us.

And I think Bev recognises that it's better to play a makeshift key forward than have no pure key forward at all. To be fair to Cordy, Liberatore, Wallis and Macrae have all been injured since he came back in and we haven't had the midfield dominance we had in the first half of the season.

I think the best plan we can come up with though is to simply drop Roberts and bring in Campbell for Cordy, to make sure we win the midfield battle and to get a contested marking option up forward.

Make no mistake about it when the heat is on in finals how many times did we bomb it in against Adelaide last year. We need to pick the right personnel to adjust to that, and most importantly bring the ball to ground and out of the hands of McGovern and Barass. Stringer and Dickson will be shut out of the game if the WCE defenders start intercepting at will.

 

[frenchconnection]

I've been wanting to say this but too superstitious . Thinking back to round one 2015....

Mind you, we had Murphy and Crameri then

Second edit: And Wallis - he's the one we miss right now

Wasn't that game played in Melbourne though. Think it's been 10 years since the Bullies have managed to win against the Eagles (or Freo ?) at Subi.

 

[Dogs Rule]

Wasn't that game played in Melbourne though. Think it's been 10 years since the Bullies have managed to win against the Eagles (or Freo ?) at Subi.

Time to break the drought then don't you think?

All the pressure on the Eagles, so would hate your team to choke in front of the home crowd.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

I think our completions have been severely affected by the loss of personnel in the middle of the ground. We've had far less control of the pill than we would have liked and its cost us.

And I think Bev recognises that it's better to play a makeshift key forward than have no pure key forward at all. To be fair to Cordy, Liberatore, Wallis and Macrae have all been injured since he came back in and we haven't had the midfield dominance we had in the first half of the season.

I think the best plan we can come up with though is to simply drop Roberts and bring in Campbell for Cordy, to make sure we win the midfield battle and to get a contested marking option up forward.

Make no mistake about it when the heat is on in finals how many times did we bomb it in against Adelaide last year. We need to pick the right personnel to adjust to that, and most importantly bring the ball to ground and out of the hands of McGovern and Barass. Stringer and Dickson will be shut out of the game if the WCE defenders start intercepting at will.

We haven't had the midfield dominance, no, but that isn't going to change all of a sudden. We're still missing Wallis; we're still carrying a few inconsistent guys through there (Dunkley/Jong); and Stevens is still wildly out of form. Additionally, imo anybody expecting Libba to be anywhere even remotely close to 100% is dreaming. More likely we carry him in the forward line with bursts through the middle, just as we did in his return against the Saints. Macrae is likely to be fit but could be lacking touch after weeks out of match play. We will hopefully see somewhat of an upturn in the midfield with these guys back but I don't think we can expect it to just go back to how it was at the start of the year. As such, Cordy will be playing under many of the same conditions that he has been for five? weeks now.

Campbell makes me nervous because of how little footy he has played in, what, 8 weeks? Even Macrae's been out for significantly less time (plus has been able to run). Happy to see him come in if the coaches think he's ready, though.

Also, let's be honest, we lost to Adelaide because we couldn't kick straight, not because we bombed it in. Every team has silly entries at times and while we could have been a bit cleaner, we still had ample opportunity to ice that match.

 

[doggies ftw]

I think our completions have been severely affected by the loss of personnel in the middle of the ground. We've had far less control of the pill than we would have liked and its cost us.

And I think Bev recognises that it's better to play a makeshift key forward than have no pure key forward at all. To be fair to Cordy, Liberatore, Wallis and Macrae have all been injured since he came back in and we haven't had the midfield dominance we had in the first half of the season.

I think the best plan we can come up with though is to simply drop Roberts and bring in Campbell for Cordy, to make sure we win the midfield battle and to get a contested marking option up forward.

Make no mistake about it when the heat is on in finals how many times did we bomb it in against Adelaide last year. We need to pick the right personnel to adjust to that, and most importantly bring the ball to ground and out of the hands of McGovern and Barass. Stringer and Dickson will be shut out of the game if the WCE defenders start intercepting at will.

Campbell, Rough and Boyd all in is an absolute no brainer in my mind. Will be very disappointed if it doesn't happen.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

Campbell, Rough and Boyd all in is an absolute no brainer in my mind. Will be very disappointed if it doesn't happen.

I think it has been made clear throughout the course of the year that in the eyes of the coaches these three (plus Minson) are fighting for two spots in the side. Campbell ankle, so Boyd starts the season. Campbell plays VFL until Boyd does his shoulder, then returns to AFL level. Boyd plays VFL until Campbell does his foot. We go with Red for a week, then Boyd is brought back to play alongside him, with Rough in the ruck. Availability has played a part but we haven't gone with the three of these guys at all this year. I find it hard to believe we'd do it in an elimination final.

I know a lot of people view the Rough/Campbell/Boyd trio as workable (and I've advocated it numerous times this year, too), but I think it's abundantly clear that the coaches don't. The fact that Campbell is seemingly on his way out the door doesn't give me much hope that this isn't the case, either.

 

[LondonBulldog]

Sorry but disagree. There will be plenty of players across all teams playing hurt in finals. All this weeks potential ins are also quality:Libba at 80%=better than a depth player at 100%. Champions play on hybrid vigour.

That may be true but you run the risk of the players either re-inuring the problem spot or clearly being hampered and then being players down on the bench.

Players playing with niggles is fine, yet rushing back from surgery, I'm not sold on.

Yet I'll be cheering the 22 who take the field as hard as ever on Thursday, supper excited.

 

[fred cook]

Terry Moody works at Melbourne Airport maybe he can be our spy to see who is flying out

 

[Zgope1]

If fit I'd pick Campbell and Rough as ruck is one of our few areas of dominance - we should exploit it.

Underdone players, poor form, dysfunctional fwd line against a defence that just smashed the best fwd line, and the worst one on one KPDs in the league v the Coleman medalist.

I'm fully expecting a thumping.

Hoping for a win - who knows.

The best defence v best forward line thing comes down to this- their last two games they've had the better entries and they've created a stack of dirty ball for their opponents.

Hawthorn were stuck shuffling deck chairs with no Stratton, meant they were more hard pressed to put Hodge on the ball to do his typical disrupt everything show and change the stoppage tide. Also important to note Nic Nat played the important meat of that game and it looked different afterward.

Adelaide played a pathetically cooked Sam Jacobs and let's be honest apart from Sloane their midfield just isn't there yet. They're a game style scoring team. They score in transition and love space. Wce were extremely good to disrupt this and cause a whole stack of filthy entries and gave Eddie no space at all.

We're a different proposition- we have a huge bunch of guys that can disrupt stoppage dominance (tbf two have question marks (lib and jm)). We have brilliance in congestion that can create cleaner entries (Bont and ?Libba?) and guys like Stringer that can create scores from 100m out and draw crowds that open space for others.

Obviously it's possible that guys like Jack and Libba play like ghosts, but I'd be tipping that to be managed by giving them largely rotational roles.

What's sad about us is our inability to kick the clean ball inside 50. But at least our ins and outs will somewhat address that. Go back through our years highlights- Libba's kicking forward of centre has been missed.


Kicking out of defence will be interesting as well. We're a really good transition team, it's underrated imo.

A lot will hinge on how guys like JJ, Daniel and Biggs run through the space that Sucklings range provides.

 

[Doggy]

According to the afl website, if WC beat us they play hawthorn or geelong in perth

 

[gangsta deluxe]

According to the afl website, if WC beat us they play hawthorn or geelong in perth

Sounds fair.

 

[Doggy]

Sounds fair.

Yet assuming adelaide win and gws lose gws gets a home final..

Ummmm ok?

 

[Dogs Rule]

According to the afl website, if WC beat us they play hawthorn or geelong in perth

So what would be the point of finishing top 4 then?

Sixth get two home finals and third or fourth get one or none in the case of Geelong.

 

[Nath09]

So what would be the point of finishing top 4 then?

Sixth get two home finals and third or fourth get one or none in the case of Geelong.

Double chance?

 

[timtamWB]

According to the afl website, if WC beat us they play hawthorn or geelong in perth

That's not how it's ever worked. Loser of the qualifying gets a home game against the winner of the elimination.

They're either wrong or the AFL are just being ****ing morons. Again. For the 12th time this week.

 

[frenchconnection]

Time to break the drought then don't you think?

All the pressure on the Eagles, so would hate your team to choke in front of the home crowd.

We have already had our choke this year on home soil - against Adelaide earlier in the year. Fortunately we returned the favour when playing at Adelaide Oval round 23!! I know there's no guarantee - just hope it's a good game. Maybe the record of a team winning the flag outside the top 4 will happen this year also

 

[RookiePick]

According to the afl website, if WC beat us they play hawthorn or geelong in perth

The winner of our match plays the loser of the Geel/Hawks game on their track - most likely the MCG but the Cat's might be able to make a case for it being at Kardinya Park if they lose to Hawthorn. The AFL site has been riddled with errors lately.

Top 4 guarantees you at least 1 home final QF, SF or Prelim one way or another.

 

[Doggy]

We have already had our choke this year on home soil - against Adelaide earlier in the year. Fortunately we returned the favour when playing at Adelaide Oval round 23!! I know there's no guarantee - just hope it's a good game. Maybe the record of a team winning the flag outside the top 4 will happen this year also

Doubt it

 

[Doggy]

The winner of our match plays the loser of the Geel/Hawks game on their track - most likely the MCG but the Cat's might be able to make a case for it being at Kardinya Park if they lose to Hawthorn. The AFL site has been riddled with errors lately.

Top 4 guarantees you at least 1 home final QF, SF or Prelim one way or another.

That is how i understand it but the finals predictor says otherwise

 

[Dogs Rule]

Doubt it

Hawks, Swans, Cats and repeat. Some of my mates and I'm sure many others are sick of it and don't care who it is, but they want someone different to win it. It's actually turning some away from the game.

Back to business, I'm looking forward to seeing Libba in a final and JJ.

 

[Rookie]

OUT: Minson Cordy Williams Stevens Hrovat
IN: Roughead Stringer Wood Liberatore Macrae

One of Hrovat and Stevens hold their spot if Libba doesn't get up. Or maybe Campbell.

Biggs Roberts Morris
Johannisen Wood Moyd
Macrae Bontempelli Hunter
Dunkley Stringer Daniel
Smith Boyd Dickson
Roughead Liberatore Dahlhaus
Jong Picken Hamling Suckling

 

[Snarls Barkley]

I would be disappointed if McLean wasn't brought back in. I thought the only reason he was dropped for the Fremantle game was to try and get him two VFL games as match preparation for the AFL finals. Easily in our best 22.