Expectations for 2025

[Dark Sharks]

You'd think after selling our top end draft pick to add mature players like Baker (who wasn't cheap) and Owies...

The days of being totally uncompetitive in games needs to be put in the bin. As others have said, the floor has been raised. We should be aiming for 6+ wins at the absolute minumum, but more importantly should be in every contest and resemble something of an AFL quality football team and not just traffic cones, like this years games against Bulldogs, Cats, Adelaide, Hawks, Saints, Blues, Magpies etc etc etc.

Any loss over 10 goals should be considered a real failure IMO. Loser fatigue is real, and we can't afford to keep going as is.


Barrass leaving isn't going to help. I feel like that's being glossed over a fair bit. Hedwards is injury prone and still hasn't proven a great deal, Bazzo is a basket case at times (understandable), and then there's old boy McGovern, who's probably due to be injured again right about now.

Can definitely see teams getting a hold of us in defense, as well as our lacklustre midfield.



J.Williams, Ginbey, Reid, plus hopefully Hewett, Hall and some other new draftees should keep us coming back.

 

[KERRPOW]

**** me this sport has some long pre seasons

Hmmm, dont they break for a few weeks over christmas also

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Darling is gone. No one to raise one arm?

 

[Keys]

Last game was August 24 and the official return date is November 25 so that’s a 3 month break (less 2 weeks for the young guys)

As noted above, they also get 3 weeks over Christmas from December 18 to January 7 (come back on the 7th)

So 3 months off, back for a little over 3 weeks then another 3 weeks off - an overall period of 136 days and they’re back in official training mode for 24 of those days (They don’t train on every one of those 24 days either)

Official preseason games are late February / early March so there’s 7-8 weeks of training there (there’s a mandatory 4 day break during this time also). Opening round was about a week later then R1 the week after that

So a block of just over 2 months after the Christmas break until the season proper starts

It’s not as long a preseason as some might think, particularly for a club that will be trying to learn a totally new game plan