Pre Match. Pies v. Swans. - all comments please.

[3rd degree]

[RudeBoy]

Ramsay is a definite starter, but I think Sinclair will also play, based on his pre-season form.

[CarringbushCigar]

If Sinclair plays ahead of Ramsay Langdon or Marley there should be an AFL Integrity Investigation.
Either that or I have seriously lost the plot.

Regardless of Stinkers presence at the SCG the Pies look to be an amazing betting opportunity.

If you line up Sydney's likely 22 with ours, it should be clear we will win by the length of the Hume Highway.

They have lost from their back line: Richards, Shaw, McVeigh
forward line: Reid, Rohan, Goodes
around the middle: Pyke, Jetta, Bird

They have gained not much and Kennedy and Jack to me don't look 100% fit.

I think we could win by 60+ if we are fair dinkum about being ruthless when on top.
The bookmakers have us at 2.40ish to win this match.
Even if Buddy kicks 8 and the umpires are on the take thats still good value.

Collingwood by 5 goals hard held.

[Warbler]

Given the form of Gault & Moore , is Cloke still in our best 22 ?

I have lost patience with his kicking for goal .

GO PIES

[RudeBoy]

[Pies4shaw]

Moore has played 9 AFL games, kicked 5 goals in one (against Footscray, who play no-one much over Blair's height in their backline) and 4 in the other 8. He averages 3 marks, 5 kicks and 4 handballs a game. He looks like a fantastic prospect but he's some way off emerging as a genuine star key forward.

Gault has played 4 games over 2 years and kicked 4 goals. He is also some way off emerging as a genuine star forward, key or otherwise.

Meanwhile, Cloke was on career-record pace at the half-way mark of 2015 (when, as you will recall, Collingwood was 8 wins and 3 losses), having kicked 31 goals in the first 11 games of last season (compare with 2011, when he kicked 69 from 25 games). He played only 6 of the last 11 games of 2015 and his form fell away with injury. Even so, he still averaged 2 goals per game over the 2015 season - by comparison, he only averaged 1.6 in 2010 and the team went alright that year.

Cloke certainly needs support - the main symptom of Collingwood's progressive decline since 2011 has been the progressive loss of other goal-scoring options up forward. Consider the losses of Krak, Leigh Brown, Jolly, Dawes, Ball, Wellingham, Thomas and Beams (who, between them, kicked 166 goals in 2011 or, if you prefer, almost 60% as many goals as the entire Collingwood team managed in 2015) and the much-reduced scoring output from Swan, Pendlebury and Sidebottom occasioned by their changes in roles as the midfield ranks thinned and the defensive rebound was traded out of the Club during the rebuild. Of the direct positional-replacements for the significant goal-scoring players Collingwood has lost, only White, Elliott and Crisp are contributing at about the 2011 level of the players they replaced.

In 2011, Cloke kicked 69 goals - but the real story of the goal-kicking change since that time has been the loss of a comparative wealth of assistance and alternatives. Putting Cloke aside, there were 11 other players in the 2011 Collingwood team who kicked more than 15 goals (of whom 8 kicked more than 20). By contrast, in 2015, Elliott and Cloke managed 69 between them and only 6 other players reached 15 goals. Elliott's output in 2015 matched Krak's in 2011. Of the other 6 apart from Cloke and Elliott, only Fasolo, White and Crisp contributed more goals in 2015 than they did in 2011 (for the reasons that Fas was a first-year player in 2011 and White and Crisp were not then at Collingwood), while Blair, Swan and Pendlebury kicked only 55 goals between them, compared with 82 from the three of them in 2011.

Unless Cloke breaks a leg and sprouts alligator arms in the night, or has a genuinely startling loss of form, his position as one of the first 5 picked is under little threat for 2016.

[npalm]

^ Well argued. Agree totally.

I wasn't familiar with the term alligator arms'. Had to google it. Basically it's the NFL equivalent of ducking the head.

Found this prime example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9fBBDYrbkk

[WarrenerraW]

We'll romp home. We're the third quarter specialists now.

[3rd degree]

SCG has been a hard ground to win at I think we should get former spiritual adviser Mark Orchard to come in and give us a pep talk!

[neil]

[HAL]

Tell me a story.

[cityslick1]

Quoting prior season stats for young & developing players like Moore and Gault is even more pointless than Cloke's stats from 5 years ago..
Both look ready to mix it up at senior level, and cause back lines some serious headaches. Both 200cm, agile, can mark and kick goals. With them there, Cloke is even more dangerous operating out of half forward, and drifting close to goal to kick a couple a game.
He def plays, but there is still room for 2 other tall, key forwards, to play closer to goal.

& Cox is now officially ahead of White for a spot up forward, and would be elevated in a heartbeat, if one of our other talls goes down... IMO

[woftam]

We got this. Pretty confident we will triumph in Sydney & then beat the Tigers in round 2.

[melliot]

I missed the start of the SEN interview with Ted Richards this morning. But he is under an injury cloud and hasn't played a praccy game.

Sounded like he was likely to miss R1 to me.

[Woods]

Seriously doubt whether Cloke will be selected for Rnd1.

He's had all preseason to get his goal kicking right and his most recent performance has been woeful.

Citing performance stats from years ago as a basis for selection now only convinces the sentimental. May as well find some scripture from the Old Testament to justify his selection.

Stop living in the past, people. It is 2016. Embrace it.

Based on Cloke's demonstrated recent performance he is no where near worthy of selection.