Cut the crap. There's two games left in the season, both are winnable if Freo actually turn up to play.
First of all, let's get rid of this Friday night "bogey" crap. It's just a bunch of hooey. Each time we got sucked into the occassion and played a wet weather scrappy style of football like most teams do when they get sucked into the occassion. We need to focus on the footy and the game plans.
St.Kilda. They've got 3 key defenders out (Penny, Hudghton & Fisher), Gherig is battling a thumb injury. It's at Subi. Not matter how bad our defence is (and lets not delude ourselves, Our defence is pretty dodgey, mainly because of the youngsters and the key lack of a key position defender) it should be able to hold Gherig, Milne, Riewoldt and Koschitzke if our midfield can win a bit of contested footy and help out the defence. McPharlin, Pavlich and Farmer should be able to stretch their defence with Medhurst given an opportunity to play a good game.
Two problems that we must, and I repeat MUST overcome on Friday night:
1) Not getting sucked in by the hype of a Friday night game, it's pathetic how we play when we get sucked in instead of focusing on the game and the plan
2) Midfield HAS to stand up, find the footy, hold their defence and actually get some godam contested footy. It was problem our main problem in the derby. Our midfielders were too afraid to get the ball and too afraid to lay some hits. Grow some balls boys!
Then it's Port's turn. Port, no matter what Porthos, PPWA, PAFC2004 or all the other Port trolls say they are beatable and we can beat them. Infact I'll go as far as saying we should beat them. Tredrae vs Pavlich, Pavlich on his current form but Tredrae should be able to beat whoever we put on him. Our midfield and Ruck is better than theirs but the fact that we've lacked that fire and we get intimidated away from home that we tend to choke.
And what's with Connolly saying he's not focusing on finals and the 'F' word. That's a load of crap. Every team HAS to be aiming towards winning a premiership each year. And if they can't get a premiership at least be trying to make finals to keep that hope alive.
The Fact of the matter is we need to play like we did against St.Kilda last season in Round 22 when it was our season on the line. Though we lost we played a league or two above what we were playing the whole season. A finals like style of game. Our season IS on the line. Should our guys fail we'll be ridiculed like you won't believe. We need to play like our lives depended on it.