Originally Posted by
Sedat
If you look at every premiership team in the last 20 years (probably longer), there is always a sprinkling of role-players and fringe types who share the dais with the superstars - save for the worst 8 minute patch in our club history, the likes of Hannan, Roarke Smith, Schache, and one-legged pensioner Stef Martin would have premiership medals.
Like any team, we need our superstars in peak form in order to be a high quality finals team - when Naughts and English don't fire, or if Bont or Libba is quelled and kept quiet, we lose more often than not, same as any club really.
The more interesting question is if our game plan in 2023 is amenable to future success. This game changes quickly, and I hope Bevo is nimble enough to understand and adjust accordingly. I thought we made adjustments in our defensive profile from R3-10 to make sure we contend at the business end this year, but the ease with which we are being scored against in the last 3 weeks is a concern. We ae being sliced open, which has been a consistent theme of this team since 2019 when we notionally started contending again after our mini-rebuild post GF. The last 3 weeks aren't a surprise - my worry is that rounds 3-10 are the outlier and we still don't have that consistent defensive capability to defend the entire ground off turnover nailed down.