Do the losses really carry more weight. All three of them?
i. Richmond played out of their skins for a quarter. They are good for about 5 of those quarters a year, and we copped one. The rest of the game we had their measure.
ii. The Hawks smashed us in Tassie. Add Freo to the pile.
iii. The Eagles came out hungrier in a game they needed to win, and got a significant assist from the umps. Again, for three quarters we had their measure.
We are a workman-like team, with a few stars, and a couple of holes. We're not as good as Hawthorn, and there are a few teams whose best might be better than ours. But I'd back our style in September to put us in a good place. The Bullies and West Coast play some attacking footy, but we'd rightly start favourites to beat them in September. Remember, Port and Sydney were favoured ahead of us this year, and both, for different reasons, have fallen away this year. Meanwhile, we win a couple more games, and we have the best possible ride to the GF.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love if we had a bit more attacking flair, but who would you add to the starting 22 that could provide it? Morabito and Simpson would have been some icing on the cake, but they didn't come up. Instead we have D Pearce playing on the outside spraying the ball all over the park. We have C Pearce and Mzungu running around being handy, but adding all the explosiveness of a wet tissue.
Our forward conversion is a bit average, but our best big forward is 68 years old, Chris Mayne seems alergic to kicking goals and has never regained his 2013 form, and Ballas was down this year, and now missing. We try and talk ourselves into Tabs and A Pearce, but really, they're not exactly putting fear into the hearts of the opposition. Only Sonny is a legit A-grader in the forward line, so if you think you have a better system to eek out goals, I'd love to hear it.
You could try to open the game up a bit, but we are a yard short for pace. Do you really want a shoot out with teams that are quicker than us?
We're doing as well as could reasonable be expected.