mpal6
Norm Smith Medallist
The next three games; Dogs away, Crows Home and Freo away will shape the rest of our season I think.
Crows and dogs feel winnable, Freo no so much as they are playing very good football right now.
These games are huge modifiers of our season. If we lose all three I find it hard to find a scenario where we make finals. Win 2/3 and with the games we've got coming up it's really easy to find a couple of situations where we are in.
If we find ourselves 7-3 after the Freo match with games against Carton, North (at Gabba), dogs (at Gabba), Hawks (at Gabba) and the suns still in play it's really easy to see a path to finals even if you write off the games against Port, GWS, Richmond and Geelong as losses right now.
Reckon we'll know in 3 weeks if we're a chance to genuinely launch for finals this year. Probably the biggest run of genuine 50/50 games that have the chance to shape our season.
Exciting times ahead and weird to even be talking about this.
I like our chances against teams who play with big bodies, contested footy and talls at either end. Our playing style match up well against these type of teams and if we produce for 3 quarters, we win. More confident on Adelaide and Fremantle games, even against GWS and Geelong we will compete very well in my opinion.
I still don't know whether we have a game style to counter nimble, fleet footed teams who are precise in ball movement. They usually beat us to ground ball and we get caught in fast break on the outside. So far we have lost against Essendon and Collingwood who play this style. Bulldogs and Richmond will also fall in this group.
I am looking forward to see how our coaching group evolve the game plan to counter this fast movement style - whether it means we bring certain players in for particular games, how are we getting the balance between runners and talls, are we just going to back ourselves in with 3 tall forwards (Hippy, McStay, Oscar) and a slow tallish defense (Hodge, Andrews, Walker) etc. Interesting times.