It’s time for the third and final part of this year’s Look Ahead.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, every team gets a set up question about a key for their 2025 dreams…
But it has a pure on-field focus. Nothing about potential player movement, off-field gossip; it’s strictly about what happens on the grass.
The goal here isn’t necessarily to lay down the law, as such. It’s more of a plan to introduce topics to watch, creating a space where we’re all watching and learning, as mentioned in this year’s introduction piece laying out 2025 plans.
This year the Look Ahead is divided into three parts with six teams each day. Except for Part 2, which didn’t have North Melbourne for obvious name-of-the-blog related reasons.
The final part starts with Port Adelaide and finishes with the Western Bulldogs.
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The Patreon is up and running once again for 2025, which you can find right here. The three tiers are much the same as previous years, with refined features for the top two.
In addition to Patreon, you can find me on Twitter – and also Bluesky, where vibes are much more pleasant and there’s much less hate. It’s nice.
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Port Adelaide: Will their ball movement revamp be successful?
All pre-season, the messaging from Alberton has been about their change in ball movement.
Their change in personnel perhaps forced their hand a little bit, but the writing had been on the wall for a while before that anyway.
The necessary focus on a more mobile forward line – even more so now with Todd Marshall’s Achilles injury – should mean their best ball users add more variety to the offence. As covered in last year’s Finals Dossier, the ball movement has been same-same; for better and worse.
Get the shift right this year and it leads to a more sustainable way to score against the best teams. Get it wrong and it’s asking a lot of the team defence to stand up in the face of constant turnovers.
Richmond: Which area is the first foundation piece of their game style?
For me, the most fascinating part of a scorched earth rebuild is what the coaching staff pick to implement as their first structural priority.
In theory, it dictates a team’s development for the next two to three years – sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
Will it be defence first? Offence first? Or maybe something within each of those two things, like transition ball movement?
Then how does Adem Yze set his team up in a way to continue bedding down that part of the plan while compensating for inevitable deficiencies elsewhere?
If the initial plan ends up looking too ambitious early on, is the choice to double down, or refine and retool?
The scoreboard during the year isn’t the fun part of the first step in a scorched earth rebuild, but watching smaller things get figured out on the fly is.
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For those who missed the start of season announcement, you can find it here. And the schedule between now and the start of the season is…
| Post | Patreon access | Public access |
| General 2025 announcement | Live | Live |
| Over/under win total | Live | Live |
| Look Ahead, Part 1 | Live | Live |
| Look Ahead, Part 2 | Live | Live |
| Look Ahead, Part 3 | Live | 21st Feb |
| NMFC Match Sim Analysis | 23rd Feb | |
| The Notebook, Match Sim | 24th Feb | 25th Feb |
| Continuity Rankings | 26th Feb | 27th Feb |
| NMFC v West Coast Analysis | 2nd Mar | |
| The Notebook, Pre-Season | 3rd Mar | 4th Mar |
| Team Tiers, Version 1 | 5th Mar | 6th Mar |
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St Kilda: How will the midfield mix complement Steele and Macrae?
This is getting a bit niche, but how midfield archetypes combine in a trio are endlessly fascinating to me.
To that point, obviously Jack Steele and Jack Macrae are point one and two in St Kilda’s midfield. In theory, if you’re looking for a well-rounded group as the first-string rotation, it limits the third player to a line breaking type.
Otherwise it’s a bit same-same and relatively easy to game plan against for opponents. It looked like Mattaes Phillipou was to be that person until injury wiped out his start to the season. Maybe Jack Sinclair ends up being the option, at least in the short term.
But there’s also the possibility of St Kilda happily going one-paced on-ball and allowing all their run and carry on the outside to break lines, given there’s definitely no shortage of options in those areas.
The choice they make will have a domino effect on other areas.
Sydney: Which path will they choose under a new coach?
On one hand, everything was pretty good for most of last year.
On the other hand, last year finished like … that.
The best organisations – sporting teams or otherwise – put both success and failure into its proper context rather than over celebrating the former and hand waving the latter.
From a Sydney perspective, it means figuring out how much weight to put on the Grand Final versus the season leading up.
Against Brisbane, they were sliced up around the ball with a dreadful display in every respect, then everything spiralled from there. How much of it was down to structural issues which need to be fixed, compared to an off day at the worst time?
For most of the year, it was Sydney slicing up opponents. Is more stock is placed in that instead? Weight of numbers over the season instead of just one day?
Dean Cox stepping up to take the reins will lead to changes here and there; already Tom McCartin is playing forward although it appears to only be short term while Logan McDonald recovers from injury.
It’s a swirl of moving parts that’ll only crystalise once the fun of a new season wears off.
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The Create Your Own Depth Chart feature is now part of the List Management suite, all on the $5 tier for Patreon subscribers:
You can subscribe to the Patreon for 2025 right here. The three tiers are much the same as previous years, with refined features for the top two.
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West Coast: How will the midfield aggression change?
A new coach brings a new game style, as we saw glimpses of in their match sim v Richmond.
But the part I’m most interested in watching is how it changes the midfield’s approach. As detailed a few times on The Shinboner over the last year or two, and particularly on the ABC here, it was basically Russian Roulette over the latter stages of the Adam Simpson era.
That’ll inevitably change under Andrew McQualter – particularly with Elliott Yeo’s injury forcing another body in there – but how? And which approach will they choose to take?
Western Bulldogs: What depth can they uncover/how much impact will it have?
The last team can have a two-part question. A feature of the Bulldogs under Luke Beveridge has been uncovering just enough contributing depth to get by, alongside their top end talent.
It’s going to be needed early in the season after their injury run. Adam Treloar, Liam Jones, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan (personal), Cody Weightman all out to start the year, plus a couple more getting to the start line after managed pre-seasons; suddenly the starting 22 looks a bit iffy.
After their season opener against North Melbourne, the next month is capital-b Brutal: Collingwood, Carlton, Fremantle away, Brisbane in Gather Round.
To get through it and tread water until the cavalry returns, it’ll either have to be the remaining stars going supernova, or the likes of Harvey Gallagher taking another step forward, Sam Davidson contributing immediately, and Riley Garcia repaying the faith after signing a three-year contract.
The margin for error has nearly vanished and the vultures want to start circling.