Carlton Supporters Club

So if we had zero injuries last year, we should have won the flag ?

Count me as skeptical.

From the Hun, 31 July 2017:

And from Ed himself:

You could have saved yourself some time and just studied the first minute 

It looks like Martin threw an elbow back after Ed tackled him to the ground.  Pretty innocuous, but that’s all it takes.

Interesting, the team with the new era small forward line and single marking target wants Tom Lynch!

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

i think 16 out of 18 teams would like Lynch, maybe not WCE and Sydney...

No doubt, but I've just spent three days reading and responding to posts from Kruddler that tell me teams like Nthmond are trending towards small fast forward structures leaving Weitering types nobody to play on. More the fool me!

The Dogs comparison is perfectly valid.

At any rate, there are people on here who will tell you that the Tigers are major league plonkers, and even their best 22 is barely good enough to finish 9th. And here we are discussing injuries.

Bullcrap.

Not that good and Major League Plonkers is absolutely not the same thing.

Also, teams with a good run with zero injuries do tend to do pretty well in the season proper (and by extension the finals).  You could even argue that it was the difference between Adelaide losing the flag last year, as they had quite a few start to drop off torwards the end of the year, including question marks on Rory Sloane and Eddie Betts.

As for the Doggies, your assertion regarding their run with injuries was false.  They survived the season with many injuries but come finals football, it was widely reported that the new bye round made the difference between them being able to get their better players back from injury with another week off to recover and then compete better.

remember when the crows played the Giants in the qualifying final??  Rory Sloane had to undergo a fitness test to play that game.  Eddie had also had his appendix removed a couple of weeks earlier too.  The Tigers most recent injury before that happend months earlier with a freak incident hurting Riewoldts eye at training.

Finally, the other teams in the finals also each had a major injury to at least one key player during the finals series.  The Tigers had NONE.

I think our newly found 'outside' speed, courtesy of SPS, Dow, Mullett, the two Jarrods, Lang will catch many teams off guard this year - get a 5+ goal lead in Q1 and any decent team is pretty hard to claw back.....

Opposition speedsters won't stroll out of our defence if we have mids capable and prepared to chase them down.

It made a bigger difference to their run all season. Continuity with a core, large group got them across the line in several close encounters....builds confidence etc etc.

If they lose Dusty to injury for a decent period, for example, how will they go then? 

Dusty was probably the stand out player in the comp last year... He was significantly better than previous years.

Congratulations to him... hopefully come rd 1 he gets smashed into the MCG turf and breaks a collarbone.