I'm with you Jezza, on the topic of youth. A recent article by a Russell Jackson bags Freo and predicts they will slide to 7th to 9th this season. He takes a dig at their aging list as part of his reasoning. The fact is, it took Hawthorn to knock Freo out of the 2015 season and the Hawks average age of players in that Prelim was about half a year older than Freo's.
Do some people need to rewatch our finals series again, because from what I saw, it was our youth that were responsible for some of our most costly turnovers.
If the Bulldogs beat Freo this weekend, I think it will be more to do with the fact that Freo are missing some of their experienced players (eg. Johno, Sandi). In 2015 when the Bulldogs gave us a shake, it wasn't their young ("superstar") players that stood up, it was their more experienced players. That is, not Bontempelli, not Stringer, but it was Dickson, Murphy, Dahlhaus and Crameri.
This match, the Bulldogs have the additions of experienced defenders in Suckling and Morris.
They also have their quality (but young) mids MaCrae and Liberatore, who were missing last year, but I think they will struggle against our bigger bodied mids.
I think Mundy's influence on our drive out of half back is going to be key to our success in this game and I do hope Sutcliffe (as named) plays more centre than down back. I've felt he struggled down back in 2015 (eg. Dickson last year).
EDIT: Last year Sutcliffe scared me when put in a contested situation. I thought I was frequently seeing him have easy goals kicked against him. The stats back this up. He is 186cm (same height as Ibbo) and has only taken 3 contested marks in his career ... far worse than even smaller Freo players. His contested possession stats aren't much better.
