Smells like 1997

[snajik]

The performances of the last three weeks have cast doubt on my belief that we have the ability to finish top 4 again this year. With 12 games down and 10 to go, we will need to win a bare minimum of 5 of these 10 just to make the eight. Winning five would probably put us 7th or 8th with an away elimination final. Our remaining opponents IMHO fall into the following categories.

Wins: Essendon and Carlton. Lose either of these (and we almost lost both games first time around) we won't make the finals, nor would we deserve to.

Probable victories: Richmond, Fremantle and Brisbane (all at home)

Tough: Port, Geelong and Melbourne (all away games)

Probable defeats: Adelaide and West Coast

We would need to beat all five sides in the first two groups just to make the eight, and possibly at three from the second two groups as well to figure in top four calculations. Drop a game in either of the first two groups and we are in serious trouble.

[cruiser]

I agree. 12 wins will be the minimum required to make the final 8. To make the top 4, I think that the only games we can afford to lose are Adelaide and West Coast plus one other.

[swans_premiers]

We will beat atleast one of Adel/WC. Wouldn't be surprised if we defeated both then lost the following week.

[SimonH]

Sydney can get to 14:8 but will struggle to do better than that. Either all of the 'top 5' you listed and 2 out of 5 of the bottom set or (equally likely with Sydney's unpredictable form) 4 and 3, would be a good realistic result.

Of course, if you were playing the odds then we would go into only the Geelong game out of the bottom 5 as (slight) favourites (if all games were played this week obviously), and so a punter would bank on us making 13:9. Which is highly unlikely to cut it. So in that sense, I suppose Sydney is already up against it.

14 wins would have us odds-on to scramble into the top 4, but only just. In roughly 5 out of 11 years since the AFL became a 16-team comp, a team has hit 14 wins and not made the top 4 (albeit one of them was 2003 when Freo missed out only b/c they had crap percentage).

It'll be a tight squeeze, so very important that we really (continue to) put teams away when we win. We have 6% or so on Melbourne and St Kilda, but at this stage that's only roughly 50 points, which is very little. If we could (this week! please!) really bury another opposition a la Richmond, that would be what you could call a '6 point game', i.e. one that would make it very hard for Melbourne or Freo (if they record a more moderate result) to catch our percentage, giving us the wood on them if we wind up on the same number of wins at the end of the year.

[swantastic]

Last year we were 7 and 5,ye have little faith.Gee i forgot ,who did win the flag last year?