If we can't fix things after the bye?

[SydneySainter]

Will we still be a so-called "destination" club?

We just been flogged by two teams who were in pretty suss form prior to playing us, we play this erratic "run and gun" style that turns over the ball in spades and our forward line can't buy a mark inside 50. At the moment, we look one-dimensional and bottom six at best.

That being said, if we continue to inject senior experience into the kids, develop an actual game plan and forward structure, I still think we're not far off being quite a good team in the future. But what concerns me more than not making the finals this year is our ability to attract the likes of a Fyfe, Martin or Kelly. Will they even be interested in playing for us?

Having looked at our draw after the bye, we still have to play Crows, Swans, Dockers and Port on their own dungheap. On current form, Dockers is the only potential win I can see. Swans an outside possibility due to their current form, but we haven't beaten them in a long time. Then we have Tigers & Roos twice, Suns and Eagles at home, Bombers and Dees at the G. Suns and Eagles are the only certain wins I can give us. Therefore, again based on current form, I can't see us winning any more than five at best.

Again, I stress that this is only based on current form. But should we only win a handful from here, I think it will make attracting this big fish even harder. Fyfe and Martin are free agents, but for them to come to us, we really would have to throw the kitchen sink at them and I think our long term list development will really struggle having a player on $1.25 to $1.5 mill. As for Kelly, we'd have to trade for him and with the Kangas million dollar nine year deal on the table, may again make him think twice before nominating us.

Thoughts?

[spert]

Sadly in the last two games we didn't go down fighting and it was embarrasing to watch. Can't really see how we can even maintain 9th position at the moment and we need a major turnaround in a lot of key areas to arrest this.

This should be a season of consolidation and obvious improvement over the last season, but it's looking like some kind of rust has set in from a team perspective, and the coaching group need to take the bulk of the responsibility for this, and arrest the slide.