That’s a wrap on the JLT Community Series after all eighteen AFL teams made an appearance this week. Here’s my quick takes from the weekend’s action.

Cats’ star trio in Danger of collapse
Dreams of seeing Joel Selwood, Patrick Dangerfield and Gary Ablett all at the first centre bounce in Geelong’s Round 1 match against Melbourne look to be on the verge of becoming nightmares.

Ablett hasn’t appeared in either of Geelong’s preseason matches due to a hamstring injury. He’s expected to be right for Round 1, but fans are entitled to be sceptical.

Making matters much worse on Sunday though was a hamstring injury to Patrick Dangerfield, the extent of which is not yet known. He didn’t return to the field.

Some are making the early call and saying Dangerfield will definitely miss Round 1. The Cats haven’t said anything official just yet, so let’s not jump to conclusions – but he’s certainly in serious doubt.

The good news is that Mitch Duncan is there and ready to pick up some of the slack if one or more of Geelong’s holy trinity isn’t able to take to the field – 38 touches, five clearances, five inside 50s and a goal was a pretty handy effort on Sunday.

Still, this is just not really how things were meant to go. Is it too late for me to change my premiership tip?

Nic Nat or bust for woeful West Coast
It’s hard to imagine the West Coast Eagles putting in a worse performance than what we saw from them in the final game of the JLT Community Series on Sunday night.

They finished the night -115 disposals, -6 clearances, -17 contested possessions, -28 inside 50s, -31 tackles and 62 points behind on the scoreboard.

That’s just an atrocious performance no matter which way you look at it and in particular to have so little of the ball but also get mashed that badly in the tackle count is unforgivable on any month of the calendar.

There is just so little to offer in the way of excuses, too. West Coast had close to a full-strength midfield on the park – the problem is that just isn’t saying much, because the depth drops off dramatically after Luke Shuey and Andrew Gaff.

Many Eagles fans have tried to talk down the loss of two Brownlow Medallists in Matt Priddis and Sam Mitchell as being the moving on of old and slow players, but their ball-winning ability and defensive effort is exactly what West Coast lacked.

With Nic Naitanui returning via a WAFL trial match this weekend Scott Lycett was left to shoulder most of the load against Aaron Sandilands and while he was okay, he’s not on the same level as the game’s best rucks.

Maybe, just maybe, if Naitanui can be fit and firing sooner rather than later, his dynamism and talent can get this threadbare Eagles midfield to at least be competitive on a regular basis. It’s a lot to ask of a guy who has missed more than a year of football.

More likely, the Eagles are just headed for a painful year of football. A performance like this leading into the season won’t help morale, and the fact they’ll be missing Naitanui and Josh J Kennedy for the start of the season only makes things worse.

Watts on offer from Port’s new recruits
I’ve got nothing against Jack Watts but I’ve never been a particularly big fan of him either and suffice to say that when Port acquired him in October last year, I was underwhelmed.

‘Recruiting for the sake of recruiting’ is how I’d probably describe Port Adelaide’s off-season as a whole – they made a splash, certainly, but so does a bellyflop.

Tom Rockliff is yet to appear for the club having missed both preseason matches due to a minor injury, so we’ll have to reserve judgment on him until Round 1 at least.

Steven Motlop has played both matches without starring but was solid on Saturday against the Crows. Dom Barry has put himself in the conversation for Round 1.

But Watts? Well, he has kicked the biggest bag of the preseason and already captained the club (albeit in AFLX)! Okay, that comment is a bit of tongue in cheek, but I am impressed.

Watts was undoubtedly the match winner for Port at Alberton. Not only did he kick six himself but he handed off two goal assists.

However, he’s also the kind of player who is more likely to be affected by the increase in intensity between preseason and Round 1 than most.

Regardless, Port fans have reason enough to be cautiously optimistic that their new players can help them go to the next level in 2018.

They will of course skip right past that and instead be toweringly, fanatically optimistic about it instead, but that’s just what being a football fan is.

Pies pressure impresses
If you undertake a journalism course at an Australian university you’ll find that the majority of coursework is dedicated to the matter of how best to criticise Collingwood whenever you get the chance.

That’s not true (mostly), but I imagine Pies fans probably feel like it is sometimes.

Heck, even last week I felt a bit uncomfortable talking up the key forward combination of Mason Cox and Ben Reid in a game where Collingwood suffered a humiliating loss.

They kicked six between them this week – I’m feeling a lot better about it.

And while the American Pie was a headline-grabber, what actually impressed me more was the level of defensive effort that Collingwood put into their performance.

They bested the Bulldogs in the tackle count 71-44, an absolute thrashing no matter what way you look at it, and that came despite Collingwood also being +5 in the disposal count.

Take it with a grain of salt of course because it’s the preseason and sometimes opposition sides are just not going to put the effort in.

And the news after the match ended that neither of Daniel Wells nor Jamie Elliott are expected to be fit for Round 1 certainly put a damper on the celebrations.

But if the Pies can have something resembling an effective key forward pairing and also improve their team defense in 2018, then Nathan Buckley will be a happy man.

Brad Scott can survive a wooden spoon season – but should he?
It’s fair to say that from the perspective of a North Melbourne fan, the JLT Community Series hasn’t exactly been full of excitement.

There’s been a few highlights – players like Marley Williams, Ben Jacobs and Ed Vickers-Willis returned successfully from injury, and Luke Davies-Uniacke looks reasonably impressive – but they’ve been buried among two big-margin defeats.

I thought going into the series that North would probably be safe from the wooden spoon in 2018 simply because the ‘Roos are likely to be ahead of Carlton or Gold Coast, but both of those sides have shown the promise of improvement in the football they played this preseason, while North simply haven’t.

North finished 15th last year but only bettered those sides on percentage, and were still a strong spoon candidate right up until their last-round win over Brisbane.

If the Lions, Blues and Suns all take a step forward this year while North take a step back, then it’ll be very hard for the club to avoid finishing last for what would be the first time in 46 years.

However the big question is perhaps not whether North could finish last, but what it would mean for the career of Brad Scott if they do.

Were he out of contract at the end of the year he’d probably be the AFL’s No.1 under pressure coach – but instead the club saw fit to extend his contract until the end of 2020 late last year.

Despite the cringeworthy talk of finals that has come out of the club at times this preseason, those running the show are probably well aware that it looks like a lean year ahead, with the spoon a realistic possibility.

That makes it unlikely that – although heat will certainly come – Scott could be moved on. Is that the right call? We’ll need to see more football played in 2018 before that question can be answered.

Tigers in a terrific mental space
A team that has so often spent time not being in one should know all too well the value of a good mental space, and that is surely the case for the Richmond Tigers.

They’re the happiest team in football coming into 2018 – as they absolutely should be. They’ve played both their preseason matches with an infectious sort of joy you can’t help but smile at.

Don’t take that though to mean that they aren’t taking the game seriously. We’d probably let them off the hook in preseason for not bringing that same hard defence they did in finals matches last year – but they have.

Their ability to get numbers to the ball is more than a little scary and watching their game against North, you could be forgiven for thinking that Richmond had been allowed an extra fifteen or so players on the ground.

Interestingly in a survey of AFL players this week, 34 per cent tipped the Tigers as being the side who will suffer the biggest fall down the ladder this year.

You’d have to think that tip wasn’t made based on their preseason form.

Maybe sides will be less willing to be bullied when the real stuff starts – and to be fair, they’ve only done it to a gastro-stricken Essendon and one of last year’s bottom-four sides in North Melbourne.

Still, so much of footy is played between the ears. You can draft and you can trade and you can drill but there’s no easy way to replicate the good mood going around Punt Road right now.

It’s the kind of intangible that can give Richmond an edge in 2018 that no other team has.

I’ll say it again – the Dockers will play in September
I wrote on Tuesday that I’m tipping Fremantle to be 2018’s shock finalists, and after a dominant preseason performance on Sunday night, I’m sticking by it.

One of the issues in a one-sided game such as that one of course is that it can be hard to decide which team we learned more about – were Fremantle that good? Or were West Coast that bad?

My theory is that even if the opposition is that bad, you still have to be a halfway decent football team to really take advantage of it.

Fremantle made it very clear that they are going to be capable of taking a team apart when the opportunity presents itself, and that could prove crucial for finals calculations when you consider what a narrow whisker Melbourne missed by last year.

I’ll admit to being one of those people who thought Hayden Ballantyne was probably finished at AFL level, but maybe he’s not. Throw in the impressive preseason efforts of Bailey Banfield too and you’ve got the prospective of a revitalised Freo forward line on your hands.

Matt Taberner? Tick. Andrew Brayshaw? Tick. Nathan Wilson? Tick. That Lachie Neale bloke goes alright too. And let’s not forget this was done without either of the Hill brothers.

Not all of it will translate to real-season form, certainly, but Fremantle have more than enough reasons to believe they can radically improve this year.

Lions lose the unlosable, but the battle for Queensland is on
The competition’s two Queenslander sides finished at the bottom of the table last year in yet another uninspiring year of footy from the Sunshine state.

However, while their preseason hitout on Sunday wasn’t exactly champagne football, you do get the impression from both clubs that they’re ready to take a step forward.

Brisbane finished the game with +36 disposals, +5 clearances, +12 inside 50s, +8 scoring shots… if you put those numbers into a simulation, the odds of the side losing are surely one in a hundred at best.

A 4.18.42 scoreline will do that to you. To be fair, the conditions weren’t great. And it’d be a mistake to think that Queensland footy is not capable of rising this year.

Many of us have the Suns tipped for the spoon this year – I still do, though not as comfortably as before – but the way they have approached the game these past two weeks has been impressive.

Stuart Dew, in addition to having the most rhymable name in the AFL, looks set to gain many plaudits during the season for how he has reorganised the club.

Stu Dew may be new, it's true, but few would boo his coaching coup, his view's turned the Suns from poo to new before we knew, really give them a clue! It was ovedue, too.

— Josh Elliott (@JoshElliott_29) March 11, 2018

I particularly liked the story during the week that Gold Coast’s small forward group has a running bet going requiring the one who lays the least tackles each week to shout coffee. Very nifty.

On the Brisbane side of things, while they’ve gone 0-2 in the JLT Community Series, this was a performance that would’ve been really impressive if they’d been better in front of goal.

It’s actually got me a little excited to see who can come out on top on the two occasions these sides meet this year in Rounds 5 and 22. There’s been some reasonably watchable games between them.

They might both be bottom four sides this year again – or they might not. Either way, footy in Queensland looks to be headed upwards.

To be fair, there was no other direction to go in.

Improved Impey could offer plenty
It was just last week that I was asking where Hawthorn’s goals were coming from and questioning Jarman Impey’s lack of scoreboard impact in his first preseason hitout. Cleary he must have read that article and become possessed of a single-minded focus to prove me wrong.

Eighteen disposals including 12 kicks, five marks, six tackles, five inside 50s and three goals – it’s the kind of all-bases-covered stat sheet that you absolutely love to see from someone playing half-forward.

Tom Mitchell is a hard man to take down but you could make nearly half an argument to have Impey as best on ground for the Hawks on Saturday night, or at the very least in the conversation for it.

Fingers crossed that this performance proves to be a precursor of big things to come in the 2018 season for the new Hawk.

He’s got a lot of great attributes to be an excellent AFL player and unless you’ve been living under a rock all these years you’d be well aware that Hawthorn are pretty good and getting talent to bloom.

Of course, Impey’s impressive peformance and indeed every possible talking point from the night was buried under an avalanche of (totally warranted) criticism of Carlton’s extremely gray preseason strip. C’est la vie.

Can Fogarty fit in the Crows’ forward line?
Darcy Fogarty dominated the junior scene in his underage year but had something of an underwhelming under-18 season, which led to the top South Australian prospect in the pool sliding all the way to Adelaide’s first pick at No.12.

That being the case, most would not have picked him to have an immediate impact at AFL level in 2018 – but he showed on Saturday that he just might do exactly that.

Fogarty, who I highly recommend we all start calling The Fog Machine, had 14 disposals with ten kicks, eight marks, and booted three goals.

At 192cm he’s slated by some as growing into a tall midfielder role, but will likely spend the start of his career playing in the forward line.

That puts Adelaide in a very awkward position because they’ve already got Taylor Walker, Josh Jenkins, Tom Lynch and Mitch McGovern as 190cm-plus players inside 50.

They are arguably already too tall in that area of the ground – especially if you’re a card-carrying member of the Ryan Buckland Church of Smallball. Realistically, a fifth big forward is just not going to fit in.

A foot injury has delayed Walker’s preseason and just might keep him out for Round 1, which could give Fogarty a chance to debut and impress at AFL level.

At some point though the Crows will have to work out just how much height fits in their forward line. It will be a hard choice to make, but a nice problem to have.

Sam Murray shows his worth
One of the more baffling decisions at the time in last year’s trade period was Collingwood’s decision to give away their 2018 second-round pick for Sam Murray, an untested player on Sydney’s rookie list.

Most of us went racing to Google to try to work out just who this random bloke was that the Pies were about to give up a potential top 25 pick for. Collingwood fans no doubt did the same.

Then when he wasn’t even named in the side’s first preseason match, concern levels skyrocketed. Paying up for an untried player on its own is bad, worse still if they turn out to be a lemon.

However Murray’s first appearance in black and white on Saturday will have given supporters good reason to feel that the trade was not only reasonable, but perhaps a stroke of genius.

Murray finished the day with 24 disposals, 18 of them being kicks, nine marks, seven rebound 50s, five inside 50s, and a goal assist.

He looks like the kind of outside-midfield-link-up player that Collingwood desperately need to balance out what is often a turgid, meat-and-potatoes midfield.

It’s not uncommon for players of Murray’s type to excel in the preseason but struggle to have the same impact when the heat is turned up, of course.

But if the 20-year-old and can grow into that role over the course of the season and eventually get to the point of having a consistent impact at AFL level, Pies fans will have some reason to call the deal a winner.

Bold Blues set up exciting season opener
Another impressive display of attacking football against Hawthorn on Saturday night proved that Carlton’s first preseason performance was no fluke, and and a more aggressive gameplan really does appear here to stay.

Carlton go into the season with a 2-0 record in the JLT Community Series – aided by the fact that they were very accurate this week, and Hawthorn decidedly not so – and no doubt the mood around the club has got to be a very good one right now.

It’s almost a shame that they are going to open the season against a Richmond side that is in imperious form, meaning that even if they absolutely play out of their skins they’ll probably still get caned by six goals minimum.

However it’s a nice position to be in that the traditional Round 1 match between these two sides is one neutral fans can watch with real interest, this year rather than just wondering why someone else doesn’t finally get a turn.

Both sides have played watchable, engaging, joyful footy during the preseason and while the scoreline probably won’t be all that close, I’m looking forward to seeing them go head to head next Thursday.