Clarko has given us a structure that makes it hard to recover if we lose a lot of clearances, so Martin out for them and JOM in for us is massive. If we can prevent their runners from running it inside their forward 50 too often, a tall defence isn't so bad against Richmond. They tend to do a lot of kick-and-hope entries, so if we can stop those balls hitting the ground and hand it quickly to Sicily (or even Frost who seems to like to move the ball quickly out of defensive 50) we might be ok.
On the other hand, if we get smacked in the midfield again like we did last week, I can see this getting uglier than the Geelong scoreline. I reckon our midfield stack up pretty well given the outs and ins for each team, so fingers crossed.
We seemed to have been somewhat unlucky with copping the hardest part of our draw early. With Mitchell and Patton not having been on the park consistently for a very long time, it would have been nice to have some easy games early while they got up to speed. I reckon we'll be looking much better late in the season (which always seems to be the case with us these days). With Mitchell and Patton getting games under their belt, and Impy not far away, I think we have a lot of upside. The question is can we grab enough games in this period to be close enough to have a decent shot at finals by the end of the year. The answer in the odd numbered years appears to have been no lately, but this is an even year, and we haven't missed finals in an even year since 2006 I believe!
In fact since 2006, we've only missed out on top 4 (after H&A) once in an even year, and that was 10 years ago (ok, so I've chosen a period where we were largely dominant no matter what the year, but it's my story, and I'm sticking to it!).
On the other hand, if we get smacked in the midfield again like we did last week, I can see this getting uglier than the Geelong scoreline. I reckon our midfield stack up pretty well given the outs and ins for each team, so fingers crossed.
We seemed to have been somewhat unlucky with copping the hardest part of our draw early. With Mitchell and Patton not having been on the park consistently for a very long time, it would have been nice to have some easy games early while they got up to speed. I reckon we'll be looking much better late in the season (which always seems to be the case with us these days). With Mitchell and Patton getting games under their belt, and Impy not far away, I think we have a lot of upside. The question is can we grab enough games in this period to be close enough to have a decent shot at finals by the end of the year. The answer in the odd numbered years appears to have been no lately, but this is an even year, and we haven't missed finals in an even year since 2006 I believe!
In fact since 2006, we've only missed out on top 4 (after H&A) once in an even year, and that was 10 years ago (ok, so I've chosen a period where we were largely dominant no matter what the year, but it's my story, and I'm sticking to it!).
