HOPE your confidence is well-founded, K. Rich and likeminded Talbot followers.
Remember all the talk on this thread in March-April about "how we can't wait for the season to start".
Don't recall that ?? Scroll back and few dozen pages and refresh the memory.
Now the brown and gold boys could see the Exit sign in just a few short weeks and we've been playing only three, short months.
Still, it's still only mid-August and that could be avoided. But it's pretty well folklore now that a club has to finish Top Three (in AFL Top Four) to be any chance in a finals series.

Not forgetting, of course, Adelaide finished sixth one season back there in the 90s and still took out the AFL flag. On the same scale of things, Golden Square made it through from the elim. final in 2001 and beat Sandhurst in that season's Bendigo F.L. grand final when the Hurst lost the unloseable grannie