Whoever makes the most of their chances at the Dome will win, simple as that.
A Kouta/Campo less Carlton midfield was absolutely killed today by a superior Melbourne midfield, that resulted in more scoring shots to Melbourne, but no-one to kick it to, after Neitz got a hiding from Livo. 80% of Melbourne's goals ended up coming from lucky free kicks or pure lucky off the ground goals, mostly from Robertson.
Carlton had 2 leading forwards who barely dropped anything all day, and Melbourne had no-one to play on them.
Huge questions remain as to whether or not Eade's flooding game can work under the pressure of TD, and against arguably the best rebounding defence in the league in the form of Lappin, Houlihan and Thornton.
Match-ups wise, I expect Rawlings to go to Fev, given he has quite a good record on him, and not quite sure who will take Whitnall. Whitnall plays too far up the ground, and spends the last 5 minutes of every quarter as a loose man in the backline, and can't see Eade wanting to take Harris that far up the ground, but if he goes for it, then certainly a match up the Blues will want. I'd say Hargraves but not sure if he can match Whitnall in the air. If I were Rodney Eade, I would be tempted to play Rohan Smith on him, exploit Whitnall for pace, having him continually move up forward, and making Whitnall play moreso down back than ever, taking one more big bloke out of Carlton's 50 and giving the flood that much more of a threat.
One thing I have noticed is that we sorely lack the 3rd tall as vacated by Fisher and Archie, which has been covered up by Whitnall marking everything and Fev covering more ground towards the wings than normal, but given the defensive game of Eade, that would be quickly nixxed, hence the need for Carlos, or even Prenda to be stationed as our 3rd tall.
Another thought though, whoever wins, you'd hope the Kangas get up, seeing as both the Kangaroos and the Eagles have a MUCH higher aggregate than the Dogs or Blues, and an Eagles win would see them play the GF at Subi. Hardly the ideal preparation to start the year.
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