Forum topic

Our VFL side has a bye this week so I figured it's a good opportunity to look back at our season so far and look ahead to our run home. 

 Firstly, I'm quite happy to have broken last year's win record before the halfway point of the season. With the losses of players like Fordham, Stoddart, Lambert, Kai Owens, and the failure to lure back Brodie McLaughlin, what little talk I was hearing about Frankston during the pre-season was generally speculation on how poor we would be. While we've lost plenty of talent, there's no denying we've unearthed some solid recruits. Milne and Grey have been excellent for us, Gown hasn't had quite the impact in front of goal that I was hoping for but he shows promise. It's unfortunate that long-term injuries have hit some of our key players, because a fully fit Frankston team could make any team wary. Even with George Grey (one of our most important players this season) out for a significant chunk of the year, we've still done well at sticking to our game plan and executing well. 

Unfortunately some cracks have started to show as the season progressed. With the exception of our loss to Williamstown in Round 1, all of our losses so far have been frustrating encounters. Getting thrashed by Geelong in our first outing against a reserves side was not a great look for the club, but at least we followed it up by good wins against GWS and Sydney. But now we're coming off three straight losses; an ordinary performance against Southport, a narrow loss to Sandringham in a game we should have won, and an admirable effort against Werribee where we failed to capitalise on our chances (without getting into the atrocious umpiring.) Aside from Williamstown and Sandringham, these have been convincing losses. Losing to Southport and Werribee is something I was prepared for, but if we want to be taken seriously as a fringe chance for the finals then we need to be making a contest of these games. 

Looking ahead, this is our run home: 

- Brisbane (Away)

- Gold Coast (Home)

- Collingwood (Home)

- Northern Bullants (Away)

- Casey (Home)

- Coburg (Away)

- Port Melbourne (Home)

- Footscray (Home) 

Quite a lot of these games are going to be very hard to tip. Brisbane and Gold Coast aren't dominating this year but have found their way into the finals mix again. Collingwood and Casey are quite poor this year, I regard those as games we should be winning. Bullants, Coburg, and Port have all had inconsistent form, but have also shown they can be competitive on a good day. Preston and Coburg are still in the bottom 4 with 2 wins each, but on their home turf could present as danger games. Port also seem to be slowly clicking properly so it's hard to say what shape they'll be in by Round 19. Footscray, I struggle to see us beating. 

So where does that leave us? Quite a few of these games look winnable, and you'd expect us to notch at least a few more wins before the season ends, so barring some horrific drop in form we should expect to be around 8 or 9 wins at least. But I don't see a finals berth happening without at least 11 wins, potentially 12. So we need to win 6 of our remaining 10 games to snag a wildcard spot, 7 if we want to avoid the wildcard round entirely. 10-8 might see us sneak in, if we have a good percentage. Unfortunately these heavy losing margins so far will make that difficult. 

What is especially important is what happens post-season. Can we get the bulk of these players back on board for another year or will they depart for local footy or rival clubs? We need stability and a good internal culture that makes players want to stay, otherwise it will be a struggle to even make finals.