The penultimate weekend of the 2022 AFL season is upon us with four teams left vying for a position in the Grand Final in the last Saturday of September.
The Brisbane Lions earned another trip to Melbourne after breaking their MCG drought against Melbourne last weekend and will take on the premiership favourites Geelong on Friday night.
Collingwood kept their incredible season alive by beating Fremantle in the second Semi Final and now head to Sydney on Saturday afternoon to take on the Swans.
It has been an outstanding year of football so far and we have two cracking games of football to assess.
Our AFL Finals Week 3 Tips & Preview can be found below.
The Geelong Cats head into this Preliminary Final on the back of 14 wins in a row, having not been beaten since Round 10.
Chris Scott took a gameplan that had been successful in getting his team deep into September without ultimate success and tinkered with it.
When games got tight his team would play a possession heavy, keepings off style of football that was risky especially in a highly competitive and pressure situation such as finals.
The new style of play, that encourages his players to break the line and take the game on was in all effect when the chips were against them in the Qualifying Final against Collingwood and ultimately earned them the week off.
Brisbane has impressed and surprised many with their wins in the first two weeks of the finals series.
They took Richmond on in a high scoring and free flowing game of football at the Gabba, winning a close one but it was their win over the defending premier that was most impressive.
Up against arguably the best midfield in the competition, a number of Lions players stepped up including Daniel Rich, Jarrod Berry, Hugh McCluggae, Dayne Zorko, Eric Hipwood and Keidean Coleman.
The pressure from the Brisbane Lions has been the key and that will again need to rise against the best contested football winners in the AFL.
It was what kept Collingwood in the game against the Cats, making them look beatable for the first time in a while.
My concern is the depth of talent in the Lions list as they seem to have 3-4 players each week that do not contribute a great deal, something that is no longer the case at the Cats.
It has been an exciting and closely fought finals series so far but I think that will end this Friday night at the MCG.
It has been an incredible rise from the Collingwood Football Club in season 2020 having finished 17th last year.
No matter what happen from here, they can be happy with their season and where they are headed.
But, that is loser talk and skipper Scott Pendlebury knows how hard these things are to win and will be looking to capitalise while they have the opportunity.
The Pies have a really good mix of experienced veterans, prime midfielders and a young and hungry young brigade.
To win a premiership you must be playing your best football at the tail end of the season and that is exactly where Sydney find themselves.
They too have a really good mix of talent and it has been their pressure which has formed the baseline for their style of play.
We don’t need to go back too far for a head to head between these two sides with Sydney beating the Pies by 27 points at the SCG in round 22.
The Pies laid 53 tackles that afternoon which is down from their average of 62.8 for the season and they lost they went at just 30.8% disposal efficiency inside their forward 50 (down on 45%).
This has all the ingredients for another tightly fought, contested, pressure style of football game and my tip reflects that.