WXV Finals Week 1: Seoul's Dangerless Final

[Purple 77]

No one forgets the Finals Experience.

Qualifying/Elimination Finals, AFL Round 20

Home Team	Away Team	Venue	Head-to-Head
New Delhi Tigers	Dublin Destroyers	Tata Stadium	1  v  5
Seoul Magpies	Pacific Islanders	Seoul World Cup Stadium	5  v  1
New York Revolution	Rio de Janeiro Jaguars	MetLife Stadium	1  v  3
Berlin Brewers	Toronto Wolves	Berlin Olympic Stadium	4  v  2

Well, what a fine home and away season that was! The rightful minor premiers were dominant throughout, minus that weird loss against Moscow. Luckily for our premiership favourites, Moscow won't be a problem from here on in, but the only other game New Delhi lost was... against their opponents this weekend, but I'll get to that in a minute. The Tigers may only have the standard three players that average more than a 100 this year, but they have incredible 8 others than exceed 90! This is a team that is strong throughout, but may feel some absences in their forward line this week. To me, New Delhi's best win so far this year was against the team that defeated them in the last week of September last year; Rio. That day in Round 2, they scored 161 to banish any demons have held, and if they performance didn't impress, it was scoring 160+ against Pacific, 150 against Beijing, 148 against Seoul and even 163 against Toronto. But, they only scored 136 against Dublin, which was all the way back at Round 1. Over the summer, and continuing throughout the year, New Delhi have engaged in such a immense rivalry of words with the Destroyers that their performance failed to respect. Of course, the Destroyers have been such a dominant force since their premiership winning 2014 campaign and have been used as the benchmark for all up and coming teams. This year was no exception. Although more prone to a sub-standard score than they have been in the past, the Destroyers still managed to compensate for this by finishing 3rd on the points the ladder. In fact, had they played New Delhi in every round this year, the ledger would only just be in favour of the Tigers 9-8. Furthermore, all 8 of these would-be wins occurred when Dublin scored MORE than 150 points... so I guess you could say the equation is simple. If the mighty Dublin mids fire, then they will probably win the game. Given the rivalry and score power of these two teams, naturally it is my MATCH OF THE ROUND, and one that I actually think Dublin will get up in.

The Seoul Magpies have been a devastating force of brutal consistency that has started all the way back at Round 8. Averaging 151.7 ppg since, these finals newbies saw themselves finish second on the real and points ladder and more impressively, take our the 2017 World Idol. A midfield trio of Patrick Dangerfield, Josh Kelly and Clayton Oliver rendered this team almost incapable of scoring less than 140, so when your bad days are looking like that, you'll be accounting for most of the competition. This trio has played 50 out of a possible 51 games so far this year, but it appears the #1 highest averaging player will be unavailable when needed most; suspended for Seoul's first final after taking out Toronto's Matt Kreuzer. Is this team a one-man player? How will they cope with his absence in the company of such a worthy opponent? The Islanders, well, they ended up finishing about where they deserved despite scoring the 4th most amount points this season, but losing their 6 games in the manner they did was pretty unlucky. In 4 of these losses, the Islanders scored between 144-146 where two of the teams didn't qualify for finals. Led superbly and consistently well by Tom Mitchell, this team has a vast quantity of players with a large ceiling which sees it able to meet the challenge of every team in the competition. However, with only four scores above 150, can the Islanders do this for the rest of the year? Had Pacific played Seoul every week this year, they'd lead the ledger 9-8, but with only 2 of those wins occurring in the last 9 matches. Pacific have gotten lucky with Dangerfield missing out, but they need to score 150+ to win this game. And I think they just might, Dangerfield to cost Seoul IMO.

The Revolution have been fun to talk about this year; who could forget about their 'disadvantage' of having an OOP ruck and HGA against? New York sat in the top 4 for most the year but slipped out to 5th in the last week of the H&A season. But before you go ahead and label that as 'hard luck', I'll point out the reason why they've been so fun to talk about this year; they sit 11th on the points ladder. Now, this is mostly because they've had key players gone absent at varying times throughout the year, and often have to play with an OOP ruck. But their ability to win with lower scores than deemed required has been amazing, and ultimately deserves to feature in finals for this defensive style. They have shown signs late in the season that they are timing their charge quite well to do damage in the finals, but really, it all depends on the day and that goes for everyone. The reason they recruited Joel Selwood has arrived, and he'll key be in determining their success. As luck would have it, Rio finishing 8th makes this a repeat of the 2016 semi-final where Rio 'clicked' and went on to win an amazing premiership. Similar to then, Rio entered the finals race without their superstar GAJ and called upon someone else to take his place. Unfortunately, that someone is also unavailable and ever since Cripps went down, so has the Jaguars form. The first half of this year saw Rio sitting comfortably in the top few rungs of the ladder; averaging 145 ppg after Round 9. But since then, they have only managed to crack 140+ once more in a period where they averaged 133ppg. The Jaguars were ultimately a little lucky to make finals, especially compared to last year where Seoul finished 9th on 10 wins, not 8th with 9 wins like Rio have. Still, it was the work done in the first 2 months of the season that sees Rio where it is today, and they know better than anyone as to what it takes to win the premiership over the next 4 weeks. Had these two teams played every week against each other, Rio actually leads 12-5. Yet, I feel like the Revolution are the favourites here and that's really because Cripps is injured and GAJ might not get up. Rio has never needed him more. New York for me.

The moment when Jake Spencer went down mid-game, two weeks after Gawn did the same, I started to suspect this season - neigh, this whole game - was just a 'flower you' that has taken 6 years to say. During the simultaneous matches of Round 9 and 11, I declared to myself that 'yep, whether you make the finals or not is decided in the upcoming days'. I lost both those matches, and I kinda just, you know, started hating on the world again. I needed this season to validate my aggressive veteran accumulation strategy in off-season and when it looked like I wasn't going to make finals, it looked like a massive clusterflower. At that point of the season, I was 5-6 with plenty of worthy opponents to come. Thankfully, it was then that Max Gawn came back and I no longer needed to play an OOP ruck (something I never thought I would have ever had to do). Coincidentally (in the sense that it was absolutely not), I started posting some decent scores again, the first of which was against London. But it wasn't until I played Dublin that I started to believe in this season again. Going into Sunday afternoon of that match, I was going to score well but it wasn't going to be enough; the equation was too great. Enter Michael Walters. On 130-odd SC points at 3QT of the twilight game, I needed him to continue... and he did. He scored 171 that day to get me a close win over Dublin at their home ground, and I've been a believer in this season ever since. For Toronto, I gave up hope of an already unlikely chance at making finals at the end of Round 15. This team had after all finished 2nd last in the year prior, and was generally expected to take another year to challenge for finals. Oh, but what a week does for a team. At the end of Round 16, sitting at 12th with dream, all 6 teams ahead of them lost and opened the door wide open for them to sneak in the 8. Defeating Christchurch in what was effectively an elimination for both last week was enough to propel this team - only last week 12th - into 7th position and complete an impressive rebuild, all without the face of the man in front of it; Scott Pendlebury. This year is an outstanding success already, every week is just a bonus now. The exact applies to Berlin, so kindly flower off Toronto, please? Had we played each other every week this year, I would lead the ledger at 10-7, with 4 out of the last 5. If I've learned nothing else from last year, it'd be to stop typing immediately, and don't provoke the reaper.



And don't forget reserves!

There are four teams (Christchurch, Moscow, London and Beijing) who have made Reserves finals but not the seniors. What I require from you, is that you NAME YOUR BEST SENIOR 18 like you were playing finals. I will be scrutinising your best XV to determine if that is really who you would play, so as to ensure that the players available for the reserves matches are the ones that would normally be available. If I don't agree, then I will name one for you.

Home Team	Away Team	Venue
Port Morseby Iguanadons	Imperial Princes	BSP Stadium
Wellington Weta	Siberian Wolverines	AMI Stadium
Shanghai Storm	Pyongyang Chollimas	Beijing Olympic Park
Mumbai Elephants	Washington Rebellion	Wipro Stadium

[JBs-Hawks]

Witts out

[Adamant]

Pendles out
Kreuzer likely out

Oh well, at least we made it here.

[RaisyDaisy]

Witts out

They'll be praying Stanley or Luey get a call up

Pacific, Toronto and NY could all be OOP ruck this week

Pacific and Toronto - welcome to our world!

We've never beaten Rio before. Really hoping now is the time we rectify that!

[meow meow]

You can name my team this week Purple77. I wonder if you'll neglect Lester too.

[Purple 77]

You can name my team this week Purple77. I wonder if you'll neglect Lester too.

Haha, fair enough :P

Oh, it sure would be handy if Kreuzer was out :-X

[meow meow]

Gotta say I'm loving this ruck carnage. Same thing will happen next year but it doesn't need to be your club that is in the mire.

Okay that's me done talking about the value of ruck depth. For at least 2 days.

[Holz]

Gotta say I'm loving this ruck carnage. Same thing will happen next year but it doesn't need to be your club that is in the mire.

Okay that's me done talking about the value of ruck depth. For at least 2 days.

should sell your Freo line or your Dogs line.

picking up random rucks from different clubs has been proven to be a failure.

So only the team with NN should be interested in Vardy, they should also pick up Lycett.

[RaisyDaisy]

Just saw this about Sydney's training session today

"Ruckman Sam Naismith didn’t train at all and looks likely to miss."

OMG, we might have a ruck for only the 6th time this year!

COME ON HORSE! GIVE TIPPO A RUN!

[Toga]

BEIJING THUNDER:
D: S.Mayes, J.Hunt, H.Taylor, D.Howe
M: D.Zorko (C), L.Neale (VC), C.Ward, O.Wines
R: B.Grundy
F: J.Jenkins, J.Caddy, B.Hill, C.Petracca
IC: B.Ellis, K.Lambert

Emg: J.Polec, T.Jonas, D.Butler

[Holz]

Rance, Tmac, Omac, Plowman
Dmart (C), Treloar, Sloane (VC), Jones
Goldy
Jroo, Hoff, Gunston, Hawkins
Crouch, Hill

Greenwood, Weitering, Daw

really hope i dont have to make any changes to that squad.

[Holz]

                          Dublin Destroyers


                                                v

                          New Dehli Kittens

[upthemaidens]

No Ruck and Motlop didn't return.  Against Seoul with HGA, we are a slim chance.

[Adamant]

Hopper! Didn't think we'd see him again this season. :D
Kreuz named.
Pedo back.

Game on Berlin.

[RaisyDaisy]