Preview Who will finish higher - Melbourne, Western Bulldogs, St Kilda or Hawthorn

Who will finish higher?

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Verdun said:
Trav 20 said: ↑
It seems that St Kilda had an unhealthy reliance on the footballing equivalent of geriatrics in 2017. Riewoldt 34 and both Montagna and Dempster 33.

They'll keep you competitive, but also keep you around the middle of the ladder in 'no man's land'.

So the question is have you drafted well enough or had access to enough premium talent to ever seriously challenge ?





Wow - these 2 posts sum up a lot about the posters and not much else, totally of topic, fragile and adding nothing.

'Who will finish higher Melbourne, Western Bulldogs, St Kilda or Hawthorn' that is the topic. Why not open another thread where you can make cheap shots at other teams and their supporters.

I believe all teams are unproven, only team in the mix for the top 4 is Melbourne (list is more developed and talented than the others), other three Saints included all have more significant questions:

- Dogs will they get over their internal strife and do they have a forward line that can kick enough goals
- Saints have expectation from within, reliant on continued development and a couple of players to really step up, midfield / outside run
- Hawks .....O'Meara and the list unproven
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It was a genuine question, i.e. did you bottom out for long enough.

But having now looked at the ladder I suppose you did. 2013 - 16, 2014 - 18, and 2015 - 14.

Unfortunately, some of the picks during those years have been injury prone, plus there's Freeman. It's not easy to quickly bounce back up the ladder and you need a bit of luck along the way and I'm not sure you've had much of that.
 
joop said:
Those 15 premiership players aren’t at that quality anymore though, have gone backwards 2 years in a row.
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15 premiership players are unproven?

Read that back to yourself.
 

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Dez! said:
He didn't say though, you twisted his words.

He said they aren't the same level of players they were in the Premiership years.
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Whether they are at “that level” is subjective and I don’t care for arguing it.

My post was regarding being unproven, which they clearly are.
 
Abasi said:
Whether they are at “that level” is subjective and I don’t care for arguing it.

My post was regarding being unproven, which they clearly are.
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It’s not subjective at all. Premiers > our in straight sets > missing finals.

You’re 15 premiership players are PROVEN to no longer be premiership quality, fact.
 
joop said:
It’s not subjective at all. Premiers > our in straight sets > missing finals.

You’re 15 premiership players are PROVEN to no longer be premiership quality, fact.
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LOL. Ok.
 
Richo83 said:
Richmond has 22 premiership players, but many people have Richmond finishing from first to twelfth, so questions about how these players will back up after losing a number of stars is fair.
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Yes, the question is perfectly fair. What is unfair is assuming we'll repeat the first 4 rounds of the season instead of the last 18 rounds. We replaced
S.Mitchell and Lewis with T.Mitchell and O'Meara. Some adjustment lag was inevitable, especially when one of the replacements hadn't played for 2 years. We also had some stars down on form, probably having trouble finding reasons to motivate themselves after 3 or 4 GF medals already under their belts. Those factors combined for our worst start to the season I can remember. A horrible 4 rounds of football. We then put together 18 weeks of football that while not without blemish, had the season been judged on those alone, we would have finished 7th on the ladder. In fact the 18 round form ladder has exactly the same top 8 (albeit in different order) to the 22 round one, except that Hawthorn was in and West Coast dropped out.

Yet we have a bunch of people predicting Hawthorn will finish bottom 8, and some bottom 4. In what insane world is your form for 4 games 22 games ago a better indicator of where you are at than your form for the last 18 games? I can see the argument if we'd started with a run of 18 games that had us sitting 7th on the ladder, and then dropped down after losing our last 4 in a row by unflattering margins, but that isn't what happened. I can also see the argument if we'd cherry picked a few random games spread out of the year and said "without those uncharacteristic losses we'd have made the 8". The 4 games that cost us finals were all played in a block that is the most distant possible from the start of the 2018 season. Those 18 games were also without some injured players with very obvious talent. Some of those players will hopefully contribute to the side in a positive way during the season. We'll have some older heads back in defence to help cover for Hodge's marshalling of the kids last year.

Anyway, nothing new in this post in terms of excuses, but I think considering that Hawthorn's form for the last 18 consecutive rounds was better than all the other teams mentioned is a point worth considering. We don't need to improve other than the amount to keep the form gap between and the rest of those trying to jump into the 8. Everyone else needs to improve just to catch up, and then improve again to get past any extra improvement we make from injury returns and more games into young players like Sicily, Hardwick and Burton. In fact, based on this rant, I think I'll change my vote back from Melbourne to Hawthorn :)
 
I think it's more that it's questionable whether they'll be the same players without the group of hawks stars there. There are doubts they can be the same player they were in 2013 given a chunk of the midfield has retired, so the rest have to prove that they can take the role of their stars and be able to make finals. They're not the first sporting team to fade into the wilderness once a group of stars retire.
 
joop said:
It’s not subjective at all. Premiers > our in straight sets > missing finals.

You’re 15 premiership players are PROVEN to no longer be premiership quality, fact.
Click to expand...

Last I looked premierships are won by teams not individuals, and certainly not 15 individuals. I think you mean the team is no longer proven premiership quality, which it certainly hasn't been - results speak for themselves. I'm pretty sure if Richmond was given the choice there are a number of Hawthorn premiership players they'd have been happy to slot into their list last year.
 

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hk89 said:
Anyway, nothing new in this post in terms of excuses, but I think considering that Hawthorn's form for the last 18 consecutive rounds was better than all the other teams mentioned is a point worth considering.
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Richmond went 11-7 after round four, Hawthorn went 10-1-7, so that's false.

It's true that Hawthorn's new kids could replace the retired stars, and the premiership players could play as well as when they were in their premiership years, but there's question marks. For me, the midfield has gotten weaker, with Lewis, Mitchell and Hodge gone. This raises questions over whether the remaining forwards and backmen will play as good. They might, but like Brisbane did in the mid 00s, they may also tumble down the ladder never to return.
 
Richo83 said:
Richmond went 11-7 after round four, Hawthorn went 10-1-7, so that's false.
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Please re-read my post. I said "all the other teams mentioned". Is Richmond one of the teams being discussed in the title of this thread? None of the Saints, Bulldogs or Melbourne is in the top 8 form ladder from the last 18 rounds. Hawthorn is, so what I said is definitely not false. We were only 7th on that form ladder, so clearly 6 other teams not the topic of this thread had a better last 18 rounds than us.

It's true that Hawthorn's new kids could replace the retired stars, and the premiership players could play as well as when they were in their premiership years, but there's question marks. For me, the midfield has gotten weaker, with Lewis, Mitchell and Hodge gone. This raises questions over whether the remaining forwards and backmen will play as good. They might, but like Brisbane did in the mid 00s, they may also tumble down the ladder never to return.
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I don't think the topic of this thread is "Is the Hawthorn 2018 team going to be as good as the Hawthorn 2015 team". It is whether hawthorn 2018 can finish higher than Melbourne, Saints, Dogs in 2018. On recent form (i.e. last 18 rounds), we are starting with an advantage. If Hawthorn 2018 could be argued to be anywhere near as good as Hawthorn 2015, then I think the discussion should be moved to a thread titled "Can Hawthorn win the 2018 premiership". But that isn't the topic here.
 
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Richo83 said:
Richmond went 11-7 after round four, Hawthorn went 10-1-7, so that's false.
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And just another point on this. While I wasn't comparing to Richmond, but rather the 3 other teams in the thread title, it is interesting that after our shocking 4 rounds at the start of the season, in the remaining games Hawthorn was only Ryan Burton's punch away from having an identical win-loss record to the premiers (although to be fair our % was a good way behind the Tigers over those 18 rounds).
 
hk89 said:
And just another point on this. While I wasn't comparing to Richmond, but rather the 3 other teams in the thread title, it is interesting that after our shocking 4 rounds at the start of the season, in the remaining games Hawthorn was only Ryan Burton's punch away from having an identical win-loss record to the premiers (although to be fair our % was a good way behind the Tigers over those 18 rounds).
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Or a straight Smith kick from having a better record
 
joop said:
Lol, so which of the 15 premiership players is a better player today than when they were a premiership player?
McEvoy?
......
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He would be the only one last year that played up to or better than the level he played at during the premiership seasons.

The majority of our senior players were disappointing last year but I will bet that some of them at least will be better this year.
 
joop said:
Lol, so which of the 15 premiership players is a better player today than when they were a premiership player?
McEvoy?
......
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The “LOL. Ok” was I regards to your “your premiership players aren’t at that level anymore”, because we haven’t won a flag for two years...like it’s something I should be upset about.
 
Abasi said:
Yes, the premiership drought has been unbearable.
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it's beyond a joke now, one grand final off after four years in a row was a novelty, but two was heading into I might have to socialise with people that like other clubs territory

think I might write a strongly worded letter to Jeff about it
 
Gralin said:
it's beyond a joke now, one grand final off after four years in a row was a novelty, but two was heading into I might have to socialise with people that like other clubs territory

think I might write a strongly worded letter to Jeff about it
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THE PRESIDENT MUST ACT!
 
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