Where will we finish in 2025?

[Elixuh]

Neale
Dunkley
McCluggage
Ashcroft
Rayner
Ashcroft

Berry, Bailey, Fletcher on the wings

I just don't see a reality where that midfield doesn't make the top 8, and realistically it is a top 2-3 midfield in the comp. It would be one thing if we had a poor backline and forward line, but we don't. Our biggest pain point is how will we cover a ruck/forward.

Yes, I oversimplified the loss of Joe, but realistically we will plan and execute a strategy that will cover for him.

Injuries could curtail our chances, but if we are discussing this hypothetical in the sense that our best 23 will be available, then I really don't see this group falling off a cliff and not making the 8. There's just too much talent and too many guys who missed out that the other boys will want to get a premiership medal.

Not having 5 potentially best 23 players out with injury for the vast majority of the season will assist us next year. And with the depth we found this year we won't need the remaining 4 to immediately take off coming off ACLs.

 

[Nunez]

Not having 5 potentially best 23 players out with injury for the vast majority of the season will assist us next year. And with the depth we found this year we won't need the remaining 4 to immediately take off coming off ACLs.

And Levi Ashcroft.

And Sam Marshall.

And Big Daddy Gallop.

 

[Elixuh]

And Levi Ashcroft.

And Sam Marshall.

And Big Daddy Gallop.

 

[Nunez]

Great film.

 

[Nathan Barley]

Seems a few posters want to jinx our 2025 season

No injuries?

 

[Nunez]

Seems a few posters want to jinx our 2025 season

No injuries?

Just balancing out PattyKwasagun

 

[fugitive]

Still find it surreal that we actually did it when virtually all of us on this board believed that Fagan couldn’t get us all the way to the top. Crazier to think that we won the flag by winning 3 finals in a row on the road when we couldn’t do it from top 2 for so many years. I think if we had lost two GF’s in a row, our belief would have dropped in 2025 but having won now, the boys would be craving to taste the ultimate again.

 

[Nunez]

Still find it surreal that we actually did it when virtually all of us on this board believed that Fagan couldn’t get us all the way to the top. Crazier to think that we won the flag by winning 3 finals in a row on the road when we couldn’t do it from top 2 for so many years. I think if we had lost two GF’s in a row, our belief would have dropped in 2025 but having won now, the boys would be craving to taste the ultimate again.

Do it for:

Oscar
Linc
Darcy
Tom
Levi
Kiddy

That is all the motivation they need.

 

[Sproj]

Still find it surreal that we actually did it when virtually all of us on this board believed that Fagan couldn’t get us all the way to the top. Crazier to think that we won the flag by winning 3 finals in a row on the road when we couldn’t do it from top 2 for so many years. I think if we had lost two GF’s in a row, our belief would have dropped in 2025 but having won now, the boys would be craving to taste the ultimate again.

This is why you have to fear for Sydney. Two losses in three years would be tough to come back from but two absolute floggings? Oof

 

[fugitive]

Hard to say how they will respond but I watched a Nick Riewoldt GF preview on Listnr and he mentioned that the St Kilda players definitely lost the belief after the 09/10 losses and never recovered so yeah making a GF is very very tough in modern footy so you don’t wan’t to be letting them slip.

This is why you have to fear for Sydney. Two losses in three years would be tough to come back from but two absolute floggings? Oof

 

[Macca180]

Top 4

Lets hope the hunger remains

 

[irel]

Still find it surreal that we actually did it when virtually all of us on this board believed that Fagan couldn’t get us all the way to the top. Crazier to think that we won the flag by winning 3 finals in a row on the road when we couldn’t do it from top 2 for so many years. I think if we had lost two GF’s in a row, our belief would have dropped in 2025 but having won now, the boys would be craving to taste the ultimate again.

Huh?

 

[dlanod]

Huh?

Yeah - to be clear, "most vocal" is not the same as "virtually everyone".

 

[M Malice]

 

[Section 5]

View attachment 2163575

Would love to win the McClelland Trophy.
Unfortunately, that means we won't win the GF

 

[McIvor]

 

[martinson]

6th of March . Geez that's not that far away. I wonder how much rotation we'll go with this year if our list is reasonably healthy and we're winning enough games.

 

[Grasshopper17]

I'm keen to see the strategic developments the game takes in 2025. I forecast a year ago that we would see a lot more of the defensive forward role, and by the end of the season I think pretty much every team had a go-to lock-down defensive forward. Some did a better job than others, fortunately ours did an amazing job by and large, in a role I earmarked for Cal way back in July 2023.

One of the key trends we saw emerge throughout 2024 was what essentially amounts to a reversal of the Malthouse full ground press first implemented in and around 2010 at Collingwood. Depending on who was talking, it was described as a lengthening of the field, or a disconnect, where a key forward would almost completely decouple himself from the rest of the team's setup.

Geelong front ran this trend early in the season during their 7 game winning streak, Hawthorn jumped on board midseason, and we finally got into the swing of things, altho it took until September to finally nail it.

Up to that point we lurched violently between looking sensational ball-in-hand and getting opened up alarmingly easily. In hindsight I guess it was a steep learning curve for a group which really had only learnt and known the "control" style of game, and hadn't really shown in preseason any real signs of seeking to introduce any other styles of play.

So I reckon we are going to see more teams adopt this style of play where they essentially completely open up the middle of the ground by committing as many numbers as they can into "cheating" positions forward of the ball. Almost back to the future in a way, with forwards playing as, well, forwards. Who'd have thought!

What I'm really interested to see is how teams combat this in a defensive sense. I posted a year ago about how it should be possible to move the ball from one end to the other completely unimpeded. We're not there yet but we've moved there faster than what I thought at the time.

I think ultimately, the end game is we're going to see teams from a defensive standpoint almost completely do away with a mid-ground zone defence. Wherever possible, teams are going to commit maximum numbers to the source to use pressure to cut off any forward thrust before it even starts. Failing that, the next chance you will get to thwart a scoring opportunity will be in the defensive 50. So it will be a mix of on ball pressure with basically some defensive flooding, with not much in between.

Possibly we already started moving that way late in the season. We were #1 or #2 for inside 50 differentials for most of the season, but at times were quite leaky when it got inside our defensive 50. But come finals, we had the same number of entries as Carlton, 7 more than GWS, 7 LESS than Geelong, and only 2 more than Sydney. We were just way more efficient with our inside 50s or, perhaps more accurately, exceptionally stingy whenever we conceded inside 50s against.

Unlike our new and improved ball movement, this is something we definitely worked on in preseason. I noticed even in the intra club matches we were very good at getting someone (often Frog) into a goalkeeper like position, and I hadn't really seen our guys do that so regularly or reliably before. I guess we compromised on it at stages during the season in an attempt to get our malfunctioning attack back up and running.

Maybe from our point of view, I'm keen to see how well we are able to meld together our contrasting methods of ball movement. I think our kick-mark (control) method will remain our bedrock. It can probably be improved further, and will probably need to be in order to reduce the regularity with which we are forced to kick long down the line, particularly if we play smaller in our forward line.

But I'm looking forward to see how we're able to sprinkle in some of the magic dust (chaos) we saw in the finals. I don't think the team will look to attack with a split personality of playing kick-mark for a half and then all guns blazing for a half, like we did against say Geelong in the Prelim. Think more McCluggage's kick to Frog to set up our first goal in the Grand Final. Or Charlie's goal from the pocket in the first quarter. Both patient build ups, before we saw an opportunity and exploded forward to take advantage of it. Kind of a "slow, sloow, slooow ok GO" approach.

I think overall the game is in reasonable shape. It's not perfect; there's a handful of rules I'd change, and they're none of the ones the AFL is talking about changing, to the surprise of nobody. But hopefully we see some more adventurous footy and another uptick in scoring.