That said the best time to play Richmond is in the first half of the season. We can be hot and cold and we're not wound up until after the bye. I'm confident that we will handle Melbourne if we meet them in the finals. Our best is too good for anyone as we have proven over the past 4 years. Hopefully we can be at or near our best when it counts.
This would be my argument too, but it’s an appeal to the past as a prediction for the future.
Melbourne’s argument for the now has a lot of substance. They’ve got a core group of young, talented players who grew up together (like we did), under a long running coaching regime (Roos / Goodwin).
Their best player is just entering his prime and has signed long-term, while most of our best players are over 30.
They have the entire AFL world giving them disrespect even when they’re on top of the ladder (we know how that feels) and a very hungry supporter base on their last breath of hope (that’s how we felt on these forums during those 5 straight wins to start 2017)
Their players have been on a fairly consistent, upward trajectory for most of the past 7 years, not quite as good as us, but it’s a similar type of trend
Their players look very hungry, while we’ve been up and down this year after winning the 3 flags by 2020 that we planned for 10 years in advance
Our match vs them, their younger stars were the alphas and we didn’t do anything about it... I really hated seeing this, it was similar to Brisbane‘s young team last year.
2016 was an aberration for us in that we missed the finals. But we were there before and returned back in 2017. We were under the radar because during the off season we went feral. Focus on footy were making us a laughing stock and the all the media pundits piled into Dimma. But we had runs and experience on the board.
Melbourne:
2015 13th
2016 11th
2017 9th
2018 5th
2019 17th
2020 9th
Melbourne's aberration was 2018. I'm not convinced they are any deal yet, let alone the real deal. And history would show that teams needs some finals experience before cracking the big one. I reckon they are one mildly exertive pre-season camp away from falling apart again.
I hope you’re right, but I’m not sure their 2018 was an aberration. They’re on top now (with a young core), so I think 2019 may have been the aberration that sparked change. For 2020, well imagine if we went into lockdown in 2017? Melbourne‘s 7-year upward journey has had a single dip before shooting to the top.
Because of the dip, they shifted philosophy. Goodwin is now speaking like Dimma, regularly talking about connection, team defence, and total buy-in of roles. It’s a departure from the old Melbourne culture.
Are they still prone to crumble? Is it fair to expect? Role-oriented teams with excellent team defence are harder to break IMO, especially when they’re already battle hardened to media criticism after ~7 years together as a core group. Geelong expected us to crumble in 2017. Instead, they got Dusty’s fend off in the 3rd...
I’m hoping Melbourne finish on top and their players become full of themselves like Adelaide did in 2017 and Port did in 2020. Their club psychology from the top down is an A+ in my eyes right now. We’ll need to tap into something deep to overcome them.
