Analysis Making the Top 4 and building to a flag. 4TH is IRRELEVANT, MAKE IT TOP 3

[Steve Dore]

I'm confused. Is he saying port adelaide are top 4 certainties? Like in football? At AFL level?

The way I read it he is saying our list is definitely good enough to challenge for top four next season we just need a half competent coach.

 

[edgie]

We've only drafted 3 All Australians since 2000 - Boak, Gray and Wingard.

Off the top of my head Schulz (trade in) and Jonas also made the 40 man squad too, any others?


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[RussellEbertHandball]

Off the top of my head Schulz (trade in) and Jonas also made the 40 man squad too, any others?


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Ryder as a trade in was All Oz in 2017. Pittard made the All Oz squad of 40 in 2016.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

We've only drafted 3 All Australians post 2000 national draft - Boak, Gray and Wingard.

Edited slightly for clarity as 2000 draft, we drafted Kornes and Shaun.

LOL starting with the 2001 superdraft where Geelong drafted 4 All Oz players, Bartel, Kelly, Johnson and Ablett, they have drafted 11 inc Mackie, Egan, Selwood, Hawkins, Taylor, Stewart and Kelly. Plus traded in AA players in Dangerfield and Ottens and lots of AA 40 squad players.

 

[edgie]

Ryder as a trade in was All Oz in 2017. Pittard made the All Oz squad of 40 in 2016.

So only one AA recruited under Kens watch and it was a traded in established big name player?


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[GremioPower]

Edited slightly for clarity as 2000 draft, we drafted Kornes and Shaun.

LOL starting with the 2001 superdraft where Geelong drafted 4 All Oz players, Bartel, Kelly, Johnson and Ablett, they have drafted 11 inc Mackie, Egan, Selwood, Hawkins, Taylor, Stewart and Kelly. Plus traded in AA players in Dangerfield and Ottens and lots of AA 40 squad players.

Is there a Victorian bias for the All Australian squad?

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Is there a Victorian bias for the All Australian squad?

Yes. But that is partly because 8 of the 10 selectors are based in Melbourne.

So they see more Victorians play live in the flesh, and you tend to remember great bits of play you see live in the flesh longer than great bits of play you see on TV.

 

[Steve Dore]

Is there a Victorian bias for the All Australian squad?

The AFL is just the expanded VFL so there is a Victorian bias to some degree in everything they do. The fact that in a national competition the non-Victorian clubs are referred to as being "interstate" is a bit of a giveaway.

 

[Schulzenfest]

So only one AA recruited under Kens watch and it was a traded in established big name player?


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Who never had a good season again and was given away basically for free two years later.

 

[Scholz Supremacy]

Not one Top 4 finish this decade

 

[rocket18]

…..
I don’t think the previous list was actually good. It had no depth, which is what a lot of list analysts said the problem with it was.

The list we have now has a couple of holes but if you think about it, the following played less than three quarters of the season:

Wines
Dixon
Watts
Hartlett
Ebert
Burton

And we were a 1 point GWS loss away from playing finals, even with the North Melbourne debacle. Those guys play the majority of the season, and we win at least two more games. We aren’t that bad, and we are getting better.

Haven't you been saying for the last four years how "just you wait till next year, once we have Ryder/Hartlett, Broady back we will be unstoppable. All we need to do is kick an extra 10m each time and the flag is ours for the taking"

Now you are saying the list wasn't good enough.

 

[Janus]

Haven't you been saying for the last four years how "just you wait till next year, once we have Ryder/Hartlett, Broady back we will be unstoppable. All we need to do is kick an extra 10m each time and the flag is ours for the taking"

Now you are saying the list wasn't good enough.

There's a difference between 'best 22' and 'the list'.

The best 22 fluctuates every year, depending on form and fitness. At the time I spoke about players like Hartlett, Ryder and Broadbent, they were most definitely still in our best 22.

The list is the 45 players on the playing list.

One statement is about how our best 22 can match it with anyone in the league - and it could back then. The problem was that without our best players, the soft underbelly and the lack of depth in the team was exposed. When we had our best players on the park, we did okay. When they were missing, the lack of development meant the team struggled.

Don't worry, you'll know soon enough what this is like.

 

[charcolechaddy]

We are shit, everything Ken has done in the past four years , shit.

**** off Ken that’s the story.

 

[Pear1870]

We are shit, everything Ken has done in the past four years , shit.

fu** off Ken that’s the story.

I understand you may want to be subtly reflective but its OK to express how you really feel if you want.
.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Rucci this morning on SEN-SA

MICHELANGELO RUCCI on SEN SA Breakfast (23/10/19)

Michelangelo Rucci joins Kane and Hayesy every morning on SEN SA.

player.whooshkaa.com

Hayes reads out a question from a listener that finishes with - there are salary cap issues - and Rooch says;

"Yes well they're not paying 100% of the salary cap and we know
they're taking a fair bit of what they don't pay because you can bank
forward 4 years (sic - its 3), but their intent is to rebuild this squad
and make it an under 23 squad. To make it the best under 23 squad
that there is the AFL, and when the financial position is better, they
can then dip back into where they haven't used the salary cap and
maybe make a very big play in the free agency market. But it's all
conditional on Port Adelaide becoming financially strong."

If Rooch got this Under 23 idea from Davies and/or Cripps then I'm doubling down on 2025 as the next opening for us to seriously challenge for a flag.

 

[Enviable Tradition]

Rucci this morning on SEN-SA

MICHELANGELO RUCCI on SEN SA Breakfast (23/10/19)

Michelangelo Rucci joins Kane and Hayesy every morning on SEN SA.

player.whooshkaa.com

Hayes reads out a question from a listener that finishes with - there are salary cap issues - and Rooch says;

"Yes well they're not paying 100% of the salary cap and we know
they're taking a fair bit of what they don't pay because you can bank
forward 4 years (sic - its 3), but their intent is to rebuild this squad
and make it an under 23 squad. To make it the best under 23 squad
that there is the AFL, and when the financial position is better, they
can then dip back into where they haven't used the salary cap and
maybe make a very big play in the free agency market. But it's all
conditional on Port Adelaide becoming financially strong."

If Rooch got this Under 23 idea from Davies and/or Cripps then I'm doubling down on 2025 as the next opening for us to seriously challenge for a flag.

Yaaay. We MIGHT come good in 5 years. How exciting.

If that is true then 2020 we should be playing ALL the kids, delisting Sam Gray, Westhoff, Rockliff, Mayes and Sutcliffe and aiming to get as high a draft picks as possible.

 

[Janus]

Rucci this morning on SEN-SA

MICHELANGELO RUCCI on SEN SA Breakfast (23/10/19)

Michelangelo Rucci joins Kane and Hayesy every morning on SEN SA.

player.whooshkaa.com

Hayes reads out a question from a listener that finishes with - there are salary cap issues - and Rooch says;

"Yes well they're not paying 100% of the salary cap and we know
they're taking a fair bit of what they don't pay because you can bank
forward 4 years (sic - its 3), but their intent is to rebuild this squad
and make it an under 23 squad. To make it the best under 23 squad
that there is the AFL, and when the financial position is better, they
can then dip back into where they haven't used the salary cap and
maybe make a very big play in the free agency market. But it's all
conditional on Port Adelaide becoming financially strong."

If Rooch got this Under 23 idea from Davies and/or Cripps then I'm doubling down on 2025 as the next opening for us to seriously challenge for a flag.

And then we go and re-sign Sutcliffe and Westhoff after trading Howard. Which makes zero sense in that context.

Rucci is just guessing. And we wouldn’t have re-signed Amon (24) and Byrne-Jones (24) for three years if the plan was to make it an U23 team. This idea goes against everything that Cripps spoke about the team’s projected improvement over the next few years.

We have to pay 95% of the salary cap regardless, and if we’ve got the best U23 team in the country, most of the extra money will go into retaining those players, not making a splash in FA. And we’ve been under the cap for three years already.

I reckon you’ll find it’s more that we want to have the best group of U23s in the league than a team of the best U23s. Getting Lukosius and Hately next year will go a long way to making that a reality.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Someone else is gunning for a flag in 2025.





The Tassie push for a team has changed from 2025 to 2023. I hadn't read that but noticed this change in the profile/header picture of the Tasmain AFL Team twitter acount.

Tasmanian AFL Team (@TasAFLteam) | Twitter

The latest Tweets from Tasmanian AFL Team (@TasAFLteam). Join up: https://t.co/oXSZfD0Jdw // Keep up to date: @uws_tassie // Follow the team: @TasmaniaDevils_ // This is an unofficial account. Swansea, Tasmania

twitter.com

 

[Janus]

I'm reading Meditations on the Tarot at the moment and the first chapter is on the Magician - the one who creates change in his world by his thought. I thought you might find this interesting, because it applies to winning a premiership (or any successful endeavour, really).

"Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

Concentration without effort is the transposition of the directing centre of the brain to the rhythmic system —from the domain of the mind and imagination to that of morality and the will. Concentration without effort — that is to say where there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart — is the state of consciousness (i.e. thought, imagination, feeling and will) of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and the muscles of the body. It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought.

The changing of work, which is duty, into play, is effected as a consequence of the presence of the "zone of perpetual silence", where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play...He who finds silence in the solitude of concentration without effort, is never alone. He never bears alone the weights that he has to carry; the forces of heaven, the forces from on high, are there taking part from now on."

Desires of any kind are the anathema of success. It's when you let go of conscious passion and allow unconscious will to take over that victory is achieved, because it's in the will that we find joy in the work. The football field needs to become a place where work is transformed into play...where the players have fun through the prism of doing their job.

 

[Enviable Tradition]

I'm reading Meditations on the Tarot at the moment and the first chapter is on the Magician - the one who creates change in his world by his thought. I thought you might find this interesting, because it applies to winning a premiership (or any successful endeavour, really).

"Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

Concentration without effort is the transposition of the directing centre of the brain to the rhythmic system —from the domain of the mind and imagination to that of morality and the will. Concentration without effort — that is to say where there is nothing to suppress and where contemplation becomes as natural as breathing and the beating of the heart — is the state of consciousness (i.e. thought, imagination, feeling and will) of perfect calm, accompanied by the complete relaxation of the nerves and the muscles of the body. It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought.

The changing of work, which is duty, into play, is effected as a consequence of the presence of the "zone of perpetual silence", where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play...He who finds silence in the solitude of concentration without effort, is never alone. He never bears alone the weights that he has to carry; the forces of heaven, the forces from on high, are there taking part from now on."

Desires of any kind are the anathema of success. It's when you let go of conscious passion and allow unconscious will to take over that victory is achieved, because it's in the will that we find joy in the work. The football field needs to become a place where work is transformed into play...where the players have fun through the prism of doing their job.

You know what's fun? Winning premierships.

Football without passion. FFS.

Ollie focused on having fun last off season. How did that work out for us?

Success leaves clues. I have never heard a successful football team tall about taking the passion out of it.

On SM-G960F using
BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Janus]

You know what's fun? Winning premierships.

Football without passion. FFS.

Ollie focused on having fun last off season. How did that work out for us?

Success leaves clues. I have never heard a successful football team tall about taking the passion out of it.

On SM-G960F using
BigFooty.com mobile app

It’s not about taking the passion out of it. It’s about not letting the passion be the conscious factor for success. That’s how you make sure you are consistent.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

I mentioned this in the OP back in September 2008 so I thought I should update 11 years worth of stats on the eve of 2020 season.

A least one team from outside the top 8 has made the top FOUR the next year by end of minor round every season except for 4 times and in one of those 4 years one team from outside the top 8 made a Preliminary final North 10th in 2013 to a PF in 2014, so lets call it 3 times.

Over the last few years a few sides who finished Top 4 after 22 games didn't play in the Preliminary Final.

2001 Port 3rd lost 2 finals finished 5th.

2007 WCE 3rd lost 2 finals (SF in overtime) finished 5th.

2014 Gee 3rd and Freo 4th lose 2 finals.
2015 Syd 4th lose 2 finals.
2016 Haw lose 2 finals.

2018 Haw 4th lose 2 finals. 2019 Bris 2nd lose 2 finals.

1994: Richmond (9th) finished 3rd in 1995
1995: Sydney (12th) finished 1st in 1996
1996: Adelaide (12th), St.Kilda (10th) and Bulldogs (15th) finished 4th, 1st, and 3rd in 1997
1997: Melbourne (16th) finished 4th in 1998
1998: Brisbane (16th) finished 3rd in 1999
1999: Melbourne (14th) finished 3rd in 2000
2000: Port (14th) finished 3rd in 2001, Richmond (9th) finished 4th in 2001
2001: Collingwood (9th) finished 4th in 2002.
2002: Sydney (11th) finished 4th in 2003
2003: Geelong (12th) finished 4th in 2004, St.Kilda (11th) finished 3rd in 2004.
2004: Adelaide (12th) finished 1st in 2005
2005: Fremantle (10th) finished 3rd in 2006
2006: Geelong (10th), Port (12th) and North (14th) finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th in 2007.
2007: Western Bulldogs(13th) and St Kilda (9th) finished 3rd and 4th on the ladder in 2008.
2008: None - Collingwood go from 8th to 4th in 2009
2009: None - same 4 teams as 2009 make up top 4 in 2010 Coll, Gee, Saints, Dogs
2010: West Coast 16th to 4th in 2011
2011: Adelaide 14th to 2nd in 2012
2012: None - Fremantle 7th to 3rd and then a GF in 2013
2013: None - same 4 Syd,Haw,Gee,Freo, but Gee + Freo lose 2 finals, and North 10th 2013 to PF in 2014
2014: West Coast 9th to 2nd in 2015
2015: GWS 11th to 4th in 2016
2016: Richmond 13th to 3rd after 22 games then Premiers in 2017
2017: Collingwood 13th to 3rd after 22 games to GF in 2018
2018: Brisbane 15th to 2nd after 22 games, but lost both finals in 2019
Edit
2019: Port 10th to 1st after 17 game 2020 covid season, lost PF
2020: Melbourne 9th to 1st and won 2021 Flag
2021: Collingwood 17th to 4th, lost PF in 2022


At least one team from the top 8 has dropped out to finish in the BOTTOM FOUR every year until GC and GWS were introduce. First 4 years with new teams there was no example of this. Since then its been 3 out of 4 years.

1995: - Haw 6th in 1994 to bottom 4
1996: - Foots 5th in 1995 to bottom 4
1997: - Ess 6th in 1996 to bottom 4, Haw 8th in 1996 to bottom 4
1998: - Bris 8th in 1997 to bottom 4
1999: - Adel 5th in 1998 to bottom 4, Melb 4th in 1998 to bottom 4
2000: - WCE 5th in 1999 to bottom 4, Port 7th in 1999 to bottom 4
2001: - Kang 4th in 2000 to bottom 4
2002: - Carl 5th in 2001 to bottom 4, Rich 4th in 2001 to bottom 4
2003: - Melb 6th in 2002 to bottom 4
2004: - Coll 2nd in 2003 to bottom 4
2005: - Ess 8th in 2004 to bottom 4
2006: - Kang 5th in 2005 to bottom 4
2007: - Melb 7th in 2006 to bottom 4, WB 8th in 2006 to bottom 4
2008: - Port 2nd in 2007 to bottom 4, WCE 3rd in 2007 to bottom 4
2009: - North 7th in 2008 to bottom 4
2010: - Brisbane 6th in 2009 to bottom 4, Essendon 8th in 2009 to bottom 4
2011: - None GC enter biggest drop is Bulldogs 4th in 2010 to 10th
2012: - None GWS enter and 2 new teams bottom 2 Carlt 5th to 10th and Ess 8th to 11th in
2013: - None
2014: - None
2015: - None
2016: - Freo minor premiers and 3rd in 2015 to 16th
2017: - North 8th in 2016 to 15th
2018: - None - Port 5th in 2017 to 10th was biggest drop
2019: - Melbourne 5th but made a PF in 2018 but 17th in 2019, Syd 6th 2018 15th 2019
Edit
2020: - None GWS 6th but make GF in 2019 end up 10th in 2020 was biggest drop
2021: - Collingwood 8th but made a SF in 2020 but 17th in 2021
2022: - GWS 7th in 2020 to 16th

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

This is the year where finishing Top 4 wont necessarily help you get a flag.

Top 2 still has a massive advantage, provided you can play the QF at home and win that and play a PF at home, but at this stage no one knows for sure where finals games and even GF, will be guaranteed to be played.

2016 WB were able to win 15 games of the first 21 games and were 7th and the top side had won 16. Anyone of the top 7 sides could have finished top 4 if the results went the right way in the last round. Never been a season like that before and might not be another one like that for another 50 years.

This year there might again only be 1 game difference between 1st and 7th or even 8th and a side might have 5 games in a row in their home hub and win them all get on a roll finish 7th or 8th and win all their finals.

This is the flag to pinch against all the accepted norms.

 

[gbear]

This is the year where finishing Top 4 wont necessarily help you get a flag.

Top 2 still has a massive advantage, provided you can play the QF at home and win that and play a PF at home, but at this stage no one knows for sure where finals games and even GF, will be guaranteed to be played.

2016 WB were able to win 15 games of the first 21 games and were 7th and the top side had won 16. Anyone of the top 7 sides could have finished top 4 if the results went the right way in the last round. Never been a season like that before and might not be another one like that for another 50 years.

This year there might again only be 1 game difference between 1st and 7th or even 8th and a side might have 5 games in a row in their home hub and win them all get on a roll finish 7th or 8th and win all their finals.

This is the flag to pinch against all the accepted norms.

First step achieved with a top 2 spot secured.

 

[AFC AFeederClub]

i woudl still rather plat Geelong in the 1st Final even though they smashed us, i think they are easily beaten if you win it at the coal face and Tom Hawkins should never kick a bag against any team if the pressure from the mdifield is right