What are reasonable expectations for next year?

[Kaiser Powser]

Yea, but many of those threads are full of comments which dont make sense.

Fact is, these contracts are up at the end of this year:

Mark Bolton
Kepler Bradley
Scott Camporeale
Richard Cole
Ricky dyson
Chris Heffernan
James Hird
Mark Johnson
Sam Lonergan
Andrew Lovett
Nathan Lovett-Murray
jay Neagle
Damien Peverill
Adam Ramanauskas
Andrew Welsh

How many of these definitively are in our best team?

NLM, Lovett, Welsh. At worst, the rest effect our depth (many of which will be kept anyway, some are obvious keeps and simply, you cant get rid of 15.)

Which is my point - the club has effectively "swept" through the list as it is. Youth has replaced much of the old.

Simple, axe the first half, keep the second half, ironically MJ is in the middle, toss a coin.

 

[Minglis]

Spoon-14th. The new coach will rip the guts out of whats left.

And lets be honest. Take Sir James out of 07 and wede have been tanking for a priority pick.

 

[Pevers-Legend]

I'm actually starting to realise what opposition supporters mean when we overrate James Hird.

I love James Hird, but his form when he came back from injury was sub-par.
Whilst he still had the ability to do the sublime, he also made monumental errors.

His foot skills let him down, he had a kicking effectiveness was down around 60%.

His experience and aura will be missed, but don't confuse that with his output. He wasn't our best player, in the first half that was Scott Lucas, with Watson and Davey not far behind. In the second half it was McVeigh who stepped up to the plate and in the last couple of weeks Matty Lloyd took his game to another level. And over the course of the year it was probably Dustin Fletcher.

Will we miss James Hird, of course we will. He's the best footballer we've had in the modern era. But he wasn't our best player in 2007, others have already began to step up to fill the void.

And don't confuse our loss ration once he got injured in the geelong game. He helped drag and inspire us over the line in those close ones.

But all is not lost - a new coach - an actual gameplan built on players playing as a team and things will improve.

 

[OzBomber]

I expect Lloyd to have a brilliant season kicking 70-90 and Lucas to kick 60-70 and we just miss out on the finals in the final game of the season.

 

[Longy413]

And don't confuse our loss ration once he got injured in the geelong game. He helped drag and inspire us over the line in those close ones.

But all is not lost - a new coach - an actual gameplan built on players playing as a team and things will improve.

And if you were going to credit Hird for all of that you'd be taking a lot away from Davey and McVeigh in particular.

We lost our share of close games with Hird in the side too.

 

[ManWithNoName]

Re: What are resonable excpectaions for next year?

Top 8.

 

[NathanS]

Some experienced players won't be on the list next year. And A lot of the players coming through are still very young, so I can't expect finals in 2008. Especially with a new coach - it takes time for that coaches 'philosophy' to become entrenched in the team culture. I think we'll go backwards in 2008. Of course it'd be nice if I'm wrong.