They are so far ahead of the rest of the competition, it is scary
Who can challenge them next year?
West Coast are gone, they will slip, but if they get three picks in the top 20 might be challenging again in a couple of years
Sydney will be lucky to make the eight and IMHO they won't, years of topping up will come back to bite them big time, at least they managed a premiership before their slide
Collingwood are building and while they went very close to Geelong in the prelim and played a fantastic game they have too many old players who are on the way out and Geelong are easliy a class above them
North, I expect to bottom out with this year having been a one off and their finals form was a better refelection of where they are at
Hawthorn are quickly becoming the most likely challengers but even they are at least two years away from being a serious premiership contender imho
Port Adelaide, played above themselves all year, got lucky with a lot of close wins and quite frankly ended up as the second best team mainly due to there being noone else seriously challenging
Adelaide nup
Bulldogs, Brad Johnston a forwardline does not make, they do not have any quality tall forwards and so are just making up the numbers again
St.Kilda..............pffft, if anyone is deluded into thinking that Geelong would be seriously worried by us then you are fair dinkum living in cloud cuckoo land
Poor recruiting, list mismanagement and short sighted buffoonery by Grant Thomas has put this football club back three years and the mess that he left behind will take years to put right
We need to recruit wisely and be prepared to make some tough decisions
Our list is fundamentally flawed, lacks toughness, lacks pace and falls away very quickly in the bottom half of our best 22
Geelong on the other hand still have Hawkins coming through who will be the next Lockett of the competition and he would have got a game yesterday for any other of the 15 clubs in the AFL
Egan ( injured ) the AA CHB, Travis Varcou lightning quick, Mark Blake great ruck prospect all didn't play yesterday and there are also a few others who would walk into most other AFL teams, but Geelong can't even fit them in to their best 22
Anyone thinking that all we need is a good run with injuries is delusional
Geelong have toughness, pace and skill, three things that we lack
WE need some quality young players coming through and we have precious few, poor recruiting and mismanagement has seen to that
Hopefully Armitage will step up next year, Watts might grab his opportunity with Gehrig retired, Ferguson might get more of a go etc...etc...
BUT this still does not address our achilles heel
WE are SLOW, we don't have leg speed, in fact we are almost the slowest team in the AFL and after having been mollycoddled for over five years by the previous coach our players have developed too many bad habits and are are mentally weak and soft
Perhaps Kleenex can become a major sponsor
We need to rebuild quickly, but Geelong are so far ahead of the competition I fear that the next time they will be seriously challenged won't be until 2009 and hopefully by then it will be by us, but we need to make every post a winner for that to happen
We are so far off the pace it isn't funny, our list is currently cactus in terms of us being a serious premiership contender
I've read one delusional poster on here claim that we have an outstanding list
...pfft, maybe three years ago in relative terms to the rest of the competition, but things change very quickly in the AFL, and if you stand still by recruiting poorly, you will eventually get pantsedOne thing that won't change from this year to the next is that Geelong will be premiers again in 2008
Geelong waited 44 years for this premiership it will only be 52 weeks for their next one
FAIR DINKUM
try it some time, you might just get a clue, although I won't be holding my breath
