Even though we got beat, I thought we looked better than our previous 4 matches. Not playing finals quality football but still higher quality than what we've dished up so far this season. We'll hopefully continue to improve but I still see us as an 8-12 side because we fall away so badly after our top 8 or so players.
We look so much better with Weightman in the team, particularly as he can actually be relied upon to kick straight. The defensive approach and effort looks slightly better, but it's difficult to know because I think we played another couple of middling teams - at least in terms of ball movement - the past two weeks.
The thing is we have English, who might be the best-performed ruck this year so far, and Bont, who might be the best clearance player so far, and are still struggling to score (albeit we have had two weather affected games the past couple of weeks). Outside of Weightman, the team kicked four goals on Saturday, which is pretty damning. We also haven't really had any injuries to critical players, whereas most decent teams are dealing with multiple injuries and still performing better. Bombers don't have a KPF, Pies don't have a ruck, Sydney don't have a KPD and Saints are missing their equivalent of Bont and Naughton and are still performing well.
We'll probably still beat a few bottom teams comfortably when we dominate contest/clearance/territory game, but I don't see how we match up against the best 4-6 teams in the comp. Likely we'll end up putting a run of wins together to stay in contention, but probably finish with around 10-11 wins and in no-man's land again.