Some key factors to know heading into this weekends game.........

1) Judd tore it up last year - he is not playing
2) JUDD TORE IT UP LAST YEAR - HE IS NOT PLAYING!!!
3) JUDD TORE IT UP LAST YEAR - HE IS NOT PLAYING THIS TIME AROUND!!!!

Clearly, that's worth saying three times because it's easilly the most important factor going into this game.

4) in the first qtr, we spplied good hard presure and played man on man footy.......but more importantly, we had forwards! Even though Troy Longmuier did nuthing, he took presure of Fevola by keeping himself in the goal square with his man leaving space for Fev to 'Do his thing!'

5) Waite was not best on ground by any strecth, but he was the most important. He was tough at the contests, good with the tackles and set us up by just going for the ball, even if he didn't win possesion - he would bring the ball to ground and stoped the Eagles deadly free-flowing fast running style of football. As we all know, Waite wont be playing tomorrow.

6) Walker was sound against Judd, but the Eagles are at their best when they give Judd's opponent the opportunity to go for the ball.............a clever tactic because it gives them a tease, they leave their man (judd) and before you know it, somebody else has gotten to the ball first and has dished it out to an oppenent-less Judd. Brilliant coaching and a great way around the dreaded 'Taggers'! With Judd out..................Kerr will be the one who will fill the void.

7) We all know what happend in the third quater and most of us have probably tried to forget it. But why did it happen......? Well for one reason, Prendagast was used in the ruck AGAINST DEAN COX which i just cannot figure out.
But more importantly............we started to flood. and it was a disgracefull flood too. One of the worst we've ever done.

Dennis coached well to half time - VERY WELL - but when the Eagles kicked three quick goals after half time and destroyed our 10 point lead, we paniced. We Flooded. And it cost us the game.

After half time, the Eagles kicked 15 Goals to our 1......................yet inside 50's were really not that bad.

An important moment that pretty much summed up the match was 14.5min to go in the final quater.
Lappin with a quick intercept gets it to a BOLTING Jarred Waite who stops dead in his track in confusion and get's tackled. Eagles win a free kick, which results in a goal.
Why did he stop........................? Because he looked up ahead and realised that he had nothing to kick too.......Nothing at all. He hadn't even got to the centre of the ground! Nothing at all!

STOP THE FLOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

15 goals Vs 1 Goal says it all!

8 ) The Eagles moved it quickly through the corridor - whilst we kicked it along the wing!

After half time, we only moved it through the centre on 3 occasions. THREE!
Once, resulted in a point & once resulted in a goal (our only goal after half time!)

9) Our defense, despite the score, held up quite well. They have a nothing forward line. The real danger comes when their multiple goal scorers are their midfield.
Judd got 2
Cousins got 3

10) Last time, we ran out of legs. We just didn't have the pace to go with them. Sporn/Prenda/Teauge/Houlihan........all of them were clearly beaten by speed.
This time around, we have bolters in Simpson & Murphy. Good to see in the paper today Pagan giving Simpson a licence to run free - hopefully he'll do the same to Murphy & Walker as well.
Murphy can kick a goal from 50 on the run quite well too - saw him do that a few times last year.


So, in summary:-
-If French & McLaren can match it with Cox
-Bannister can tag Kerr to some effect.
-Walker, Murphy & Simpson can run it through the corrider
& -We Dont Flood..................................

Then i can see us being Competitive.

Good luck boys! I believe in you!


Oh............one more note..................

The Hit-outs last time around make an interesting point too.....

West Coast - 45
Carlton - 18.

Ruck team was Bryan & Prenda.

_________________
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit"
- Aristotle

like i said last week when someone said similar things about port adelaide it only means we'll lose by less than 10 goals. except this time we're versing west coast which means all signs point to a loss of loss than say 80 points.

**GOLD**

at least we're allowed to imagine how a miracle will unfold for us to win we even work out strategies as to how we can do this pity denis cant