The Soaring

In a nutshell here are my AFL season 2007 predictions:

Ladder:

West Coast
Sydney
Fremantle
Bulldogs
Adelaide
Melbourne
St Kilda
Port Adelaide
—-
Hawthorn
Collingwood
Richmond
Geelong
Carlton
Brisbane
Kangaroos
Essendon

Call me lazy but ladder just seems to look right. The West Coast Eagles at the top and Essendon at the bottom. You’d love to see another Eagles and Swans Grand Final and I don’t have sufficient conviction to pull another team out of the pack (to play us there), so Sydney it is.

No doubt they will be good again in 2007. I think the Bulldogs will be better than 06 with Collingwood, Adelaide and St Kilda beginning to wane in their form.

In the bottom half of the ladder, Hawthorn and Port Adelaide you suspect will be improvers but by how much, it’s hard to say. Either could make the finals. The rest are a raffle; no one realistically takes note of pre-season form and so the bottom of the ladder may not be too far altered from last year.

I think Fremantle also are better placed this year than any to have tilt at it. They’ve recruited as though its 2007 or bust, so I will not be surprised to see them go at least a couple of weeks into the finals.

Realistically how well will we go without Cousins? On paper you’d say his loss weakens our team considerably. And it does. But there is something about our side that knows it can rise above adversity; we’ve done in before and we will do it again. Whether there is enough there to take off the flag back-to-back is yet to be seen.

EDIT 30/3/07: I left Collingwood off my initial ladder. Freudian slip? All fixed now.