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Reported in the news on the radio 30,000 Freo supporters in Melbourne.

Jeez day after the first ever dockers gf and hardly a post made,,,,weird.

Heres a question. Will Ross Lyons game style ever be good enough to win a flag?

Mate this was discussed on ABC offsides today! Whatley and the rest felt, that it was not going to win him one, his teams never kick enough goals,,,the missed goals was put to Whatley and he said even with that , he still felt the game was played on Hawthorns terms, I'm inclined to agree with him,,,apart from kicking 1 goal in an entire half which is woefull, they got to within 3 points in a 15 min period , but Hawthorn still had their measure, your never going to win a GF without kicking plenty of goals.

Bazza wrote: Mate this was discussed on ABC offsides today! Whatley and the rest felt, that it was not going to win him one, his teams never kick enough goals,,,the missed goals was put to Whatley and he said even with that , he still felt the game was played on Hawthorns terms, I'm inclined to agree with him,,,apart from kicking 1 goal in an entire half which is woefull, they got to within 3 points in a 15 min period , but Hawthorn still had their measure, your never going to win a GF without kicking plenty of goals.

AHH fair nuff Bazza. I have always thought similar. IF it did i would worry, as that style does NOTHING for the things MOST of us love about our great game. Also it is very taxing mentally and physically on the players as well. Thing is does Lyon have another plan?
Its so close to the Saints its scary.

Pav/Riewoldt
Baker/Crowley
Milne/Ballentyne
Johnson/Goddard
Zac Dawson/Zac Dawson ( ideal Lyon player, i refuse to csll him a footballer).

Yep very true,,,,they also talked about freo future with ageing stars like pav and sand I,,next season will probably be their last.

It is a very taxing style, and if a side like the Hawks can work around it then others will catch on. I felt the HAwks sort of counter acted it, and it put Freo off. The advantage was that Hawthorn would be more capable of scoring when the time was right.

Mayne, Ballantyne & Clarke were very poor I thought. Well beaten and Freo's kicking for goal was appalling. Fyfe was quite good, so was Mzungu. But the Hawks just had that bit of polish & poise when it mattered.

There will be a few more sides stepping up next year so the challenge will be on for the Hawks & Freo to raise the bar. For the record I don't think the hawks will miss Buddy as much as everyone thinks. Roughhead a more versatile commodity for them. They will be strong again regardless .

I think the Dockers have shown that they have good depth as they finished 3rd on the ladder without having many of their key experienced players for much of the season. I think they need to use the 'Mitch Clark' war chest and secure another mature tall forward to take the pressure off Pavlich. Some examples of players who would be very useful I think.....Jesse White is an option, Ben Reid from Collingwood, Staker from Brisbane, Gumbleton from Essendon, Buddy of course or perhaps Gunston from Hawthorn, Hansen or Black from North Melbourne, Mark Le Cras from West Coast, Westoff from Port Adelaide. This is a wish list and many of these players will not be available to the Dockers because they have signed contracts with their clubs, but I think that Freo have to be aggressive here because as good as Ross Lyons defensive strategy is, they also need to have attacking options so that they can get higher scores on the board in order to take the next step and win a flag. They will have to be prepared to lose some midfielders perhaps to get a ready made key forward like this.

The other key 'recruit' who hopefully will come into play is Anthony Morabito. Fingers crossed that he can get back and play some footy in 2014.

I wonder why people say that the dorks can't win a GF by playing the way they do. Sydney play/ed very unattractive footy and have a couple of flags to show for it??

Had to have a little smile this am when I picked up the paper. For the last 3 or 4 weeks, the papers have been filled with nothing but dockers - fair enough, they were heading to the finals. It wasn't all that long ago that their supporters and the WCE hater's brigade were whining about the papers being filled with Eagles news. I thought, 'where is all the whinging now'? Come on boys, surely you can raise a whine about the papers being filled with Freo news??