So, there was a lot of noise pre-season about how good the start to our fixture was and I thought it might be time for a quick review.
Here’s our first ten opponents, the result, and their current ladder position
R1 - Roos - Big Win - 14th
R2 - suns - close loss - 17th
R3 - Saints - close win - 11th
R4 - slime - close loss - 5th
R5 - giants - win - 3rd
R6 - Dogs - win - 13th
R7 - Crows - loss - 7th
R8 - tigers - loss - 4th
R9 - dons - loss - 12th
R10 - snoil- close win - 6th
First off, losses to The Suns (during their brief run of form) and the dons (we just sucked so bad that day, and looked like every criticism of Ross Lyon had come perfectly true) sucked hard, and make things hard.
The wins against the Snoil and Giants show some promise.
What strikes me is that after 10 rounds we’ve played 5 current top 8 teams, and 5 current bottom 10 teams. With us sitting at 8th.
Here’s our coming opponents and their current ladder positions:
R11 - Pies - 2nd
R12 - BYE
R13 - Port - 10th
R14 - Dees - 16th
R15 - Blues - 18th
R16 - Slime - 5th
R17 - Hawks - 9th
R18 - Swans - 15th
R19 - Dogs - 13th
R20 - Pussies - 1st
R21 - Saints - 11th
R22 - Dons - 12th
R23 - Port - 10th
Now that looks like a juicy run home to me. We’ve had 5 games against current top 8ers in the first 10 rounds, but we have only 3 more for the next 12 games.
Even if we lose both games to port, the derby, the cats game and the hawks game, that still has us ending the season with 12 wins. I’m figuring we may win one of those, but will probably lose two others that we ought to win and end on 11 wins and play finals.
So, is playing finals a pass mark? What does a pass mark mean?
Most here feel that Lyon needs to go regardless of this year’s result. If we finished top four and went deep into the finals there would still be many here saying: “the players did it in spite of Lyon, we would have won the premiership with this talent if we had a decent coach”. So I don’t think this year’s results really affect our thinking there. For mine, Lyon can stay if I see multiple games this year where Freo play attacking football and move the ball quickly and dangersously for four quarters, regardless of results, but that’s just me.
I’d just like to see these boys playing finals, and it feels possible this year.
