so if we get more wins than last year you'll be happy - good for you.
personally i'll settle for closing the gap against the best - a far more important benchmark for a young developing team, because maturity and experience inevitably bring more wins if you have the talent demonstrated by competitiveness against the best.
What's the point of being better against the top 8 sides when you don't make finals because you keep getting stitched up by mid range battlers?
We've fallen behind the Melbourne's, St Kilda's, Port Adelaide's, and are little better than 50/50 with the Carltons and Richmond's. Throw in Essendon with a full list into the mix and a Suns with a healthy list and we have our hands full contending next year especially in light of the fact we seem to pick and choose when we are going to bring the intensity and mindset required for us to be a competitive side especially in light of our appalling skill level and dogs breakfast of a game plan.
The fact that other bottom 8 sides have also pinched wins over the finals bound sides this year seems to suggest that other sides are also closing the gap with the best (or that top 8 sides do have off days as well) and are already superior to us given our own struggles with them. Where does that leave us?
Finals are far from a fait accompli next year and given that we've already missed the finals for 3 consecutive years with no visible improvement on tangibles like wins/losses and ladder position in any year I'd say we'd want to hit the ground absolutely running at round 1 next year or it'll get ugly quickly (if our drastically dropping membership and crowd numbers aren't evidence enough of the supporter dissatisfaction with our mythical "mini re-build").