Roll up, roll up folks, come one come all.
Team lists are now sorted and so the only confounding factors remaining in determining the ladder are pre season injuries, in season injuries and of course what bullshit rule change goalpost shifting the AFL will do. Well, those and how well the teams actually play.
Anyway, thing is, most things should be settled enough for us now to have a crack at doing predictions.
Also, I'm not going to hide the fact that I do these so I can shutdown all the whingeing, negative, cry baby, sookies and dumb arses we have on here. You see, if the crows are as crap as they say, then they'll have to predict them to go poorly, so then they lack credibility if we go well, if they predict they'll go well, how can they say we're so crap? Some I have noticed will avoid doing predictions, so they can always have their post hoc correctness, we can always just look up these threads (I'll do two others) and call them out on it. Ahh, I love predictions and taking it to the real world.
So, without further ado, I better provide some of my own predictions about the ladder
I think crows will finish top four. We should have finished top four this year, when no one really expected us to, coming from having all sorts of issues. We should go as good again if not better, some of the competition will likely have faded ie hawks and geelong, whilst we blooded players, are young and gaining experience, had some really important attributes (speed and ball use in hampton, menzel, seed and knight) sitting in the stands a lot. We recruited to fix this weakness as well. For once we go in with a settled coaching lineup. Main concern is really our lack of experience, battle hardening and finals hardening. I would not rule Adelaide out of finishing top, big call I know, but in a coupla weeks when I get some time, I'll go thru some data which I reckon can show why that's a decent call.
Other top four contenders
Sydney, GWS, WB*
*depends if they take performance enhancers and get a ride from AFL HQ this year or not
I thought I would come up with 5 or 6 additional top four contenders but there isn't really a lot to like outside of the ones named above.
I think Hawks and Geelong will drop with loss of experience, WC without Nic Nat will not go as well, though they're probably the next cab off the rank. Kangaroos will drop. Next best after WC is probably a couple out of Saints, Melb, Port and more speculatively, Collingwood, Freo, GC, Ess and Richmond.
The middle of the ladder will likely be the droppers such as Hawks and Geelong plus the speculatives for the top 8 listed above.
The bottom of the ladder will be Bris, Carlton, Kangaroos, with possible guest appearances, if a lot of things go wrong, by Richmond, GC and maybe Freo.
Team lists are now sorted and so the only confounding factors remaining in determining the ladder are pre season injuries, in season injuries and of course what bullshit rule change goalpost shifting the AFL will do. Well, those and how well the teams actually play.
Anyway, thing is, most things should be settled enough for us now to have a crack at doing predictions.
Also, I'm not going to hide the fact that I do these so I can shutdown all the whingeing, negative, cry baby, sookies and dumb arses we have on here. You see, if the crows are as crap as they say, then they'll have to predict them to go poorly, so then they lack credibility if we go well, if they predict they'll go well, how can they say we're so crap? Some I have noticed will avoid doing predictions, so they can always have their post hoc correctness, we can always just look up these threads (I'll do two others) and call them out on it. Ahh, I love predictions and taking it to the real world.
So, without further ado, I better provide some of my own predictions about the ladder
I think crows will finish top four. We should have finished top four this year, when no one really expected us to, coming from having all sorts of issues. We should go as good again if not better, some of the competition will likely have faded ie hawks and geelong, whilst we blooded players, are young and gaining experience, had some really important attributes (speed and ball use in hampton, menzel, seed and knight) sitting in the stands a lot. We recruited to fix this weakness as well. For once we go in with a settled coaching lineup. Main concern is really our lack of experience, battle hardening and finals hardening. I would not rule Adelaide out of finishing top, big call I know, but in a coupla weeks when I get some time, I'll go thru some data which I reckon can show why that's a decent call.
Other top four contenders
Sydney, GWS, WB*
*depends if they take performance enhancers and get a ride from AFL HQ this year or not
I thought I would come up with 5 or 6 additional top four contenders but there isn't really a lot to like outside of the ones named above.
I think Hawks and Geelong will drop with loss of experience, WC without Nic Nat will not go as well, though they're probably the next cab off the rank. Kangaroos will drop. Next best after WC is probably a couple out of Saints, Melb, Port and more speculatively, Collingwood, Freo, GC, Ess and Richmond.
The middle of the ladder will likely be the droppers such as Hawks and Geelong plus the speculatives for the top 8 listed above.
The bottom of the ladder will be Bris, Carlton, Kangaroos, with possible guest appearances, if a lot of things go wrong, by Richmond, GC and maybe Freo.
