Three teams you DON’T want to play against.

Three teams you DON’T want to play against.

We are heading into the stretch run of the AFL season and, with just two wins separating second and 13th. Given that, this isn’t a season where teams can necessarily afford to be jostling for position this early into the finals race.

With that being said, the closeness of the competition means that the top teams don’t necessarily have the comfort of knowing they’re better than the teams they’re going to come up against.

However there are some teams that, if you’re in the top-6, you’d prefer not to see in that first week. That’s what this list is for.

The criteria for the list is simple: every team outside of the top-6 is eligible.

This is a list of the teams the so-called elites don’t want to play.

Onto the list.

1. GWS

GWS have done a She’s the Man. They’ve been an elite team masquerading as a mediocre one. But after consecutive wins against Carlton and Richmond, the Giants look like they’re ready to come with a wet sail like they did in 2023.

They have their pressure game going again as they’re the third best team over the last five weeks at scoring from the forward half. They have also kicked 18 goals combined from stoppage in the last fortnight, clearly their best two week stretch for the year.

Most impressively they kicked 11 goals from stoppage against Carlton, easily the most the Blues have conceded this year, in a blitz that must have even the very best team quaking in their boots.

This is a team with elite talent on every single line of the field, especially with Sam Taylor expected back inside a month. In defence, outside of Taylor, they also have Buckley and Idun with Whitfield providing dash. In the middle it’s a constellation of stars headlined by the resurgent, though possibly injured, Stephen Coniglio alongside players like Tom Green, Josh Kelly, Callan Ward and more recently Toby Bedford who has added a real speed element (prior to getting suspended for a perfect tackle).

The forward line is the masterpiece, though. Led by Jesse Hogan and Toby Greene, they also employ the services of the other best half forward in football Brent Daniels, alongside complimentary pieces and freak athletes like Aaron Cadman, Jake Ricciardi and Harvey Thomas.

If you cop this team in the first week of the finals, you’d better hope you’re up to date with your donations.

2. Western Bulldogs

In a season that is replete with Jekyll and Hyde teams, the Bulldogs are the most of both. They have won games this season against GWS, Carlton and Fremantle but lost to Hawthorn and went life and death with North Melbourne.

The premiership indicators tell us that, in the stats that matter, the Bulldogs are among the very best teams in the AFL at the stats that tend to lend themselves toward premiership success.

Their win against Carlton last week with key position players like Aaron Naughton and Liam Jones out was stirring.

Naughton and Jones will be back soon and with their stoppage dominance, greater than the sum of its parts defence, and at times dominant forward line, this team is a problem.

If they get Naughton and Ugle-Hagan working that high/low game that they did so effectively early in the season, the size of the problem will increase by an order of magnitude. The forward line with the two key forwards and Darcy surrounded by truly excellent smaller players like Ryhlee West, Cody Weightman and then the collection of players who rotate through there makes this team a nightmare in a final.

They become Freddie Kreuger when you consider that in conjunction with a midfield led by the game’s best player, Marcus Bontempelli.

But it’s more than a one man show for one the best clearance and ball control teams in footy with experienced players having excellent seasons like Adam Treloar and Tom Liberatore, as well as younger players who have added an inside out quality that they lacked outside of Bontempelli like Rhyley Sanders and Ed Richards.

Given the way that ball control has come back into vogue against the elite, high pressure teams in recent weeks, the Bulldogs might just have the recipe to play spoiler come September.

This Bulldogs team is like the fighter who rises and falls to his level of competition. A bit of a late-career Jon Jones, without all the crimes.

If they’re playing an elite team, they’ll play elite footy. If they’re playing a poor one, chances are their footy will follow.

Only good teams play in finals. You don’t want to play these blokes.

3. Collingwood

Remember in Die Hard when Karl gets beaten up and hanged by John McClane in an all-timer of a fistfight.

Then the Nakatomi building blows up, presumably while Karl is still dead from being hanged.

And yet, despite being both hanged and blown up, Karl shows up at the bottom of the now destroyed Nakatomi building, not dead and still intent on revenge for his brother – who dd not get Karl’s tiger blood genes.

He’s limping, covered in blood, but still breathing.

That’s Collingwood.

They’re not playing well, having lost their last three straight. They’re consistently losing the territory battle, losing metreage and inside 50s while also generally getting killed around the ball.

Even their bread-and-butter last year, scoring from the defensive half with their missile style rebound into a forward line that generally only plays three forwards isn’t working.

Last year they were the top team at scoring from the back half and they rode it to a premiership. This year they’re 14th.

Even though they have improved to third over the last five weeks, it has been at the expense of everything else.

Also, over the last the past five, Pies below 0 in scores from the front half and from stoppage differentials. Even with the excellence from the back half, they’re 2-3 in that stretch.

Only scoring from the back half is a hard way to make a living.

And the injuries. Holy moly the injuries. As soon as they get one back, another one goes down.

But if they make it, and they still can sitting 12th but only a game out of the eight, I wouldn’t want to see them staggering toward me.

What if they still have some of that magic left in them? I wouldn’t want to be the team that has to find out.

 

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