Hopeful Jelly wrote:whufc wrote:Im still very confident that if my dogs have our key players on the park we will have the Eagles measure. While they played alot better than us and deserved their GF win last year, over the whole season we were a fair bit ahead of the pack.
Let the super modern day rivalry continue.
I agree - pound for pound I think the Dogs are still the best team and I was surprised that they aren't favourites despite last year's result.
In my opinion we had our best 21 in that grand final team (excluding maybe Rowntree, but I couldn't choose a player that should have missed out in front of him). Sure we had injuries during the season and needed to regularly use players 22-30 on our list, but I just can't see us having the same fortune 2 years in a row with no/minimal injuries during finals.
Agree HJ and whufc, it was our turn to have things go our way, and only a fit Rowntree the only player we were missing, while the Dogs were the ones with the injury worries. Even then we dominated or broke even for probably 80% of the game, and still only just snuck over the line.
Don't think there has been "hype" as such, but certainly warm favouritism, and I can't quite understand why. We've lost 3 second-tier players who played vital team roles, and one who was starting to become a first-tier player (Allmond). Our recruits are a mixed bag that could go either way. Shirley two years out of SANFL and 30; Eddy, AFL delistings are often a risk; Chris Kane perhaps 15-21st player, Harding untried. The only one I'm really expecting big things of is Sumner. So, I guess I don't see our side as quite as strong as last year. Having said that, the belief we can now do it, might be worth something too.