The eight after eight rounds

John Wren · Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 11:29 pm

iirc, history tells us that the top eight after round eight invariably forms the final eight. there is usually an exception or two. the top eight for now is:

freo
eagles
sydney
gws
collingwood
adelaide
hawthorn
welfare.

richmond can move to eighth if they beat port and welfare loses to the dees tomorrow. geelong and north sit on 4 wins, the same as the hawks and welfare. richmond, essendon and port are next on three wins. two of those can move to four wins.

without assessing each teams fixture it will be interesting to see how it all pans out and how much the eight changes. this year, i think it will only take 12 wins to make the final eight and percentage will be the differentiator.

[/list]

AN_Inkling · Joined: 06 Oct 2007

There's no chance the 8 remains unchanged this year. A lot of difficult games have been front loaded for the better teams and this imbalance has skewed the landscape. I think the Pies, Giants, Dogs and possibly Eagles will all miss.

Dave The Man · Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 11:35 pm

We are the Top Vic Side Shocked

We are no Certainties to make the 8

mackasmatt · Joined: 19 Dec 2007 Location: Perth, WA

Let's talk after games against North, Melb and GWS.

John Wren · Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 11:45 pm

think positive · Side By Side Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere

I'll take that!

Tannin · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 1:11 am

watt price tully · Joined: 15 May 2007

Tannin · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 1:14 am

Tannin · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 1:27 am

I can't see the Woggles and GWS maintaining the rage for the whole season. Pencil them in in the 5-8 category. Hawthorn will improve. Collingwood and Adelaide are natural 5-8 finishers at this stage of their development. Don't really care who sneaks into 8th - it seldom matters past the first week anyway.

This means that there is a spot in the top 4 sitting there vacant, waiting for one of four clubs to fill it: us, Adelaide, WCE and GWS. I don't think we are good enough. On the other hand, I don't really think the Crows or the Woggles are good enough either, and GWS certainly ain't - so we are an outside chance. Essentially, we have to finish above Adelaide and West Coast. If we can do that, we are looking at a double chance finals campaign. Nice!

Most likely, we will finish about 6th, which (by the way) is about where I saw us during the pre-season, maybe one place higher, with Adelaide and WCE above us.

But are we discounting Footscray and Geelong already? Seems a bit rash to me.

PS: if we can't pull our fingers out and start beating the Richmonds of this comp nine times out of ten, making the finals becomes irrelevant, we'd only be making up the numbers.

John Wren · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 8:48 am

John Wren · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 8:51 am

DT · Joined: 06 May 2007

RudeBoy · Joined: 28 Nov 2005

Given our hard second half of the season, I think we need to win our next 3 games against Kangas, Dees and Giants, to make the 8. If we can go to the break at 8/3, then we can afford to lose 6 of our last 11 games and still make the finals.

Assuming we don't suffer injuries to key players, we should actually be in better shape later in the season with possible inclusions of Greenwood, Scharenberg, Moore, Freeman and Reid. Last year our season was ruined by injuries - which may still happen of course - but with a bit of luck, we could well find our team getting better by late in the season.

jackcass · Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Location: Bendigo

Still maintain we're a 5-12 side but ladder position and finals this year irrelevent. Would actually prefer a finish in the 7-12 bracket as it would again provide us with a softer draw going into 2016.