Finals qualification

[Jezza]

Fly said in his presser that 14 wins is the aim to qualify for the finals.
We've got 2 wins under our belt so far, so we need another 12 wins from our next 18 games.
Can we reach the target?

[think positive]

yes. no question.

[Cam]

Depends what happens in the next 2 really.

[stoliboy]

13 should be enough.
Sometimes 12 wins + % is enough, however, our percentage is horrible.
Can we win a flag scrapping into the eight though?

[23 YIPPEE!!!]

I think we will be 4th on the ladder come say round 14
I sense may and June to be very good months for us
We are still sorting our selfs in April
Good that our fixture now is starting to become settled and a nice run of mcg games coming up
Kind of helps with routine

[What'sinaname]

Playing like we did against the Hawks - the answer is no.

Looking at the fixture, our form suggests losses to:
Port, Carlton x 2, Freo, Melbourne x 2, Cats, Swans

That's 8 losses

[David]

13 should be enough.

Sometimes 12 wins + % is enough, however, our percentage is horrible.

Can we win a flag scrapping into the eight though?

Last year Sydney made it with 12 wins and a draw, and Adelaide could have made it with 12 if they hadn’t been robbed by the score review.

Note though that that’s the only data we have so far for a 23-game season, and it may prove to have been an outlier given that the top four teams won a lot of games, leaving an unusually even spread between 5th and 13th.

I suspect McRae is talking about the number of wins we need to be certain. It is conceivable that 13 wins and poor percentage could miss out.

[What'sinaname]

Our immediate focus has to be fixing the forward line which is definitely bottom 6 in the league in terms of competency and cohesion. We rarely have any space inside F50 these days and some of it seems to come from our forwards congregating to the same spot. While some of the problem comes from what's happening further up the ground, our forwards seem to have no idea on their role.

The kick to basically the top of the goal square isn't working. We need to spread out and centre the ball to about 30m out.

[Croat Pie]

We had Port twice last year, we have them once this year.
We had Adelaide twice last year, we have them once this year.

Sydney and Hawthorn are the teams we had once last year but twice this year.

If we go by current form, and only current form, I've got wins against:

Essendon
West Coast
Adelaide
Western Bulldogs
North Melbourne
Gold Coast
Essendon
Hawthorn
Richmond

That would put us at 11 wins. Of course, we could shit the bed against anyone.

If we can pinch a couple of these below we should make finals.

Port Adelaide
Carlton
Fremantle
Melbourne
Geelong
Carlton
Sydney
Brisbane Lions
Melbourne

Anything can happen this season. We haven't started well and it's going to be very interesting to see where we are around round 10.

[David]

[Charlie Oneeye]

Those long bombs into F50 defined our play during the pre-season, and has become normal. I don't get it.

[stoliboy]

Those long bombs into F50 defined our play during the pre-season, and has become normal. I don't get it.

Like our long bombs down the wing that were constantly rebounded by the Hawks.

[Johnno75]

I think we have deliberately slowed it down a bit given all the defensive turnovers in the first 3 games. Problem with that is, well we have no key targets and Cox is really giving us nothing. I am wondering whether we can spread our players a bit when the opposition floods back so we can have a few short targets to try to get the defence to come up a bit. Even when the Hawks flooded all the way back we seemed to have just as many in there so basically bombed the ball in when we had it at around 70m from goal, no real short options.

It’s possible we may speed it up again use the corridor a little more once we get our confidence back.

[Skids]

We'll win our next 7 leading into the big freeze game against the D's.
I think the bye came at the perfect time for us.

[23 YIPPEE!!!]

Collingwood will start to click and start to kick in 2 weeks and go on a nice winning streak
I can just sense it
We have 5 weeks in Melbourne
Port game will get us going