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With four rounds remaining before the AFL finals, it’s the time of year when footy fans start saying, ‘if only we won that game and what if the ball didn’t hit the post, we would certainly be in the finals’ and ‘how did we lose to the bottom teams?’
It’s also the time when supporters might even have to do the unthinkable and barrack for an opposition team they hate.
As the saying goes, desperate times require desperate measures, and that happens when an opposition side you hate are facing a team you need to lose. Just think of Collingwood fans getting behind Carlton, who are playing the Gold Coast this week – a side vying with the Magpies for one of the last spots in the top eight.
Collingwood still have their own destiny in their control with that Port Adelaide victory on the weekend putting them back in the eight for the time being, but they play the Eagles this week and will drop out of the eight again if they lose and the Suns win.
For the third time this season Adelaide lost a match they were expected to win, when West Coast beat them in an old fashioned shoot-out, and they can add that disappointment to the narrow losses to bottom six clubs. Melbourne and Carlton as ones that could cost them dearly in the next month.
Their remaining four matches pit them against Brisbane away, Richmond, who are storming into contention at Adelaide Oval, North Melbourne and St Kilda.
They would start favourites against both the Lions and Saints, but on form that means very little and the other two are 50/50 propositions at best. If they win all four they will make it, but they seem too inconsistent for that, so they might need some outside help.
It could come from the Suns, who finally won without Gary Ablett and made it seven victories from nine at home at Carrara this season. But there are still doubts over their ability to win regularly on the road and they have two matches at Docklands against the Blues as outlined earlier and Essendon.
Gold Coast has the most inferior percentage of all 12 sides in contention to play finals, including West Coast and Richmond, who have won two less games. So they will probably need three wins from their last four to make their finals debut with 13 victories.
They may rue the losses in consecutive weeks to the Lions and the Bulldogs as the difference between playing in September and starting their holidays.
Essendon has a reasonable draw to end the home-and-away season as they play no team in the eight, but three of them are still in the mix to make it. The Bombers sit in seventh spot at the moment, and meet Richmond at the MCG, West Coast and Gold Coast at Docklands and then arch enemy Carlton in Round 23.
How would it be that the Bombers have to beat the Blues just to be part of the finals? Carlton would love nothing better than to keep them out.
If it gets to that, Essendon will only have themsleves to blame after losing to St Kilda in Round 5 and a one-point loss to Melbourne in Round 13 when they had double the number of inside 50 forward entries.
The Tigers are finally coming good after promising so much last year in making the finals for the first time in 12 years. They were expected to push for the top four in 2014, but after 13 rounds had just three victories.
They have now won five in a row and are hanging onto that September dream by a thread. If they get in by keeping the winning streak going, they will need results to go their way and will take us back to Fitzroy, who won their last six in 1984, and Melbourne, who did the same in 1987.
To be honest, the Tigers don’t deserve to be in the eight but it is a marathon and they are peaking at the right time and the other clubs haven’t shut the door on them.
The Eagles’ percentage after big thumpings at the start of the year has ensured that if they could start stringing wins together it would keep them in touch, and finally it clicked against the Crows.
The key now is to find some consistency and dent Collingwood and Essendon’s prospects in the next fortnight, and then beat Melbourne and the Suns. That’s obviously easier said than done considering they have been so inconsistent.
If they miss out by a game, but have a better percentage, they could look on that nail-biting Round 6 defeat to Carlton as the one that got away after dominating large periods of the game.
We always have these senarios at this time of year and we always say that should have happened or that cost us, as all fans lament lost opportunities.
We love these talking points in the game though, instead of a certain off-field issue at Essendon!
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