Someone help me please - what is the better result for us in this game???
Someone help me please - what is the better result for us in this game???
Depends whether you want to maximise upside opportunity or minimise downside risk. If you are confident that the Swans can (will) win all three of their remaining games - which includes beating Collingwood next week - a win to Collingwood over Melbourne opens up the chance of us finishing second. That would still need Melbourne to lose one more game of its remaining two (they play Carlton, at the MCG but with Carlton desperately needing one more win this year to assure itself of finals, and then Brisbane at the Gabba) or would require the Swans to win our remaining games by such a margin that we make up around 5% in percentage. That's not impossible but not likely either, given our last two games are against very good (Pies) to decent (St Kilda) opposition.
If Melbourne beat Collingwood, it almost certainly puts second place out of reach, but possibly leaves open the possibility of a top four finish even if we lose to St Kilda in the final round, but do beat the Pies next week. I haven't gone back to the ladder predictor to work out how likely that is.
I also wonder if we would rather play the Pies coming off a win or a loss?
I think a loss would burst their bubble. And point to how we might beat them next week.
Overall, we can finish 2nd on the ladder, if Melbourne and Collingwood each lose one game more than we do in the final three weeks, and Fremantle doesn't win more games than we do.
Lots of possibilities, but in summary, if the Pies win against Melbourne, we can finish 2nd on the ladder (if we win our final three and overtake Melbourne's percentage, which will take a hit if they lose tonight). If Melbourne wins vs the Pies, we could still finish 2nd if we win our final three games (which includes overtaking the Pies by percentage) and Melbourne loses to Carlton or Brisbane in the last two rounds.
If we were to drop our game vs the Pies (but win vs North and the Saints)5, then we probably would prefer if Melbourne wins tonight as we will finish 3rd still if the Pies beat Carlton, and Fremantle don't get three wins. But if the Pies beat Melbourne tonight and we lose to the Pies as well, then we are are fighting for 4th or 5th with Melbourne (depending on the Dockers results).
So overall, I think we want the Pies to win, and then we need to take care of our final three games.
To top it all off, we play the very last game of the regular season, so we will know then if we need to beat St Kilda and by how much, to secure 2nd or 3rd spot.
Edit: I hadn't refreshed the page before posting, and I see now that Liz has pretty much already said everything that I said!
It's very difficult to change a decades-long ingrained behavior, so I think I'll stick with hoping the Pies lose :-)
Either way i hope it is a cracking match, Collingwood have been very entertaining recently.
Collingwood will be up for a fight next week, and St Kilda are playing really well tonight. Can't take our final three games for granted at all.
If we lose to Collingwood, the only way we finish top 4 is if:
- Freo lose to either West Coast or GWS
- Brisbane lose next week to St Kilda
- Melbourne lose next week to Carlton.
Naturally, none of those are likely.
Yeah, but if we only need one of those things to happen it's not so bad. Would be a different story if we needed them all to happen.
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well supported in logic and argument than others. -Douglas Adams, author (11 Mar 1952-2001)
Looking at the full ladder we have the 2nd highest Points For (1902) with Brisbane topping at 2009. Have the 4th lowest Points Against (1492) behind Melbourne 1352, Freo 1370 & Geelong 1383. We are matching Geelong in regards to all round performance who have equal 3rd highest Points For 1896 (along with Richmond).
Collingwood is amazingly 2nd on the Ladder with lowest percentage in the top 8 with 106.3%. Even the Bulldogs in 10th spot have a higher percentage (107.9%).
2022 AFL Ladder - Zero Hanger
Bookmarks