With Brisbane likely to take Melbournes spot in the 8, Freo, Port and Richmond are jostling for the other place in September.
The ladder currently looks like-
6th- saint kilda 36 points 117.5%
7th- Melbourne 36 103.6%
8th- richmond 36 94.5%
9th- Brisbane 32 114%
10th- port Adel. 30 91.7%
11th- Freo 28 101.7%.
Richmond can gaurantee a spot in September by winning 4 of their final 6 games and finishing with 13 wins, but with a tough draw this will be difficult. 12 wins should get them to the finals but a poor % may see them miss out. 11 wins and they will almost certainly miss out. Port have a tough run. They have struggled away from AAMI, and only have 3 more games at home, including a showdown. To get to 12 wins Freo can only drop 1 more game, which means we need to beat Melbourne, Richmond and the resurgent Saints at Subi and the pies away. We would also need to win the derby or beat port away in round 22 to make the finals. We could possibly make the finals with 11 wins, but we would have to rely on richmond and Melbourne to only win 2 more games and port to win no more than 3 of their final 6 games.
My gut feeling is that we will finish one win short. If we had won against saint kilda, wet toast or adelaide we would be likely to play in September. But losing those 3 close games means that all the cards have to fall into place for us in the last 6 weeks because I can't see us winning 5 of our last 6 considering how erratic our form has been this year.