What's all this commotion about the SCG surface? It shouldn’t be a problem for our beloved Freo Dockers as we’ve been skating on thin ice for thirty years! Time to Restump Podcast the shifting sands show against the Swannies.

It’s a sad time having to accept Sonny Walters on the big stage is no more. We all knew it was coming, but while the decision to call it a day hadn't been made, we were able to live in hope. Our denial dwelling has now been extinguished and the reality of it, we must live in.

However, let's not mourn his football passing, but rather be grateful he existed in our era. As we all know, the game is bigger than the individual, so the show must go on.

Sunday, we meet the Swans for the 2nd time this season and, for some reason, it makes me a little nervous. We should’ve beaten them back in round 2 but we found a way to avoid carrying the heavy 4-point burden.

The reality is we are a much better football team now than we were then, so we shouldn't be fearful. Like last week against the Saints, we need some retribution, albeit with more of a 4 points primary objective.

Worryingly though, the Bloods are on the improve. It feels they're finding their way back to that hard combative tough to beat familiar Swans outfit and, on top of that, they've won 13 of 20 encounters against us at the SCG.

Ruckman Brodie Grundy has recaptured his top form recently and both Errol Gulden and Tom Papley now have gotten a few games under their belts. It just feels like we’re getting Sydney a few weeks too late. However, we do need a genuine challenge superior to North, Essendon and St Kilda to provide us an update of where we are.

Horses for courses might exclude the ground conditions because we’re recalling captain Pearce and running with Darcy on the slippery deck. We cannot cotton wool them forever, especially when we're one of the nine teams desperately trying to squeeze into eight spots.

With the Dogs winning last night it leaves us in 7th, in front of the Suns in 8th who are playing Essendon, and the Giants in 9th up against West Coast. Both should win comfortably so the pressure is on and it'll leave us in a precarious position if we’re unable to skate past the Swannies.

Enough of the short pointed written stuff. Time to get out the ice pick and break the game down further. So, if the chilly gap between now and Sunday morning needs some purple warmth, don the beanie, ear muffs and gloves, pull on the freshly sharpened bladed skating boots and join us for a session on the conversational preview pod rink.

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Most of us will forever love Rosco. However, while difficult and precarious at times, it was pretty pleasing to enter the Optus Stadium safari park Sunday and take down a big game Lyon. Time to Restump Podcast the successful hunting expedition.

It is still both traumatic and reassuring to revisit our previous encounter against Rosco and his Saintly pride. While we were largely our own worst enemy on the day, they brutally ripped us to shreds in what was an unwatchable massacre. However, fast forward eight weeks and we righted the wrongs and made amends.

Do the subsequent positives, including the retributive win yesterday, outweigh the negatives of that fateful day eight weeks ago? Did we need the mindset realignment mauling? We'll never know but going into yesterday, I'm not sure we'd have been on the end of a five-game winning streak had we not suffered that troubling experience. The great man did take us to a grand final… did our former coach inadvertently do us another favour?

In or beyond the football world everyone at some stage in their lives has to take their beneficial beating. Our core group took theirs eight weeks back. It was a humiliating and embarrassing belting on the big stage that put the climactic cap on some catastrophic form.

The depths of despair are often where the healing begins and change is born, but it takes some sort of catalytic event to arrive at the arena of realisation. It’s evident by the reported hard spoken truths, the subsequent soul searching and the carrying of energising scars since, that the previous Saints game was our season defining moment of mortality. Yesterday’s performance only put an exclamation point on it.

The team we were eight weeks back to the team we have been since is unrecognisable. We’re not in the top echelon yet, but we’re a different unit, a more psychologically pro-active collective exuding energised initiative. We’re now a group of personal responsibility taking, team-oriented and driven individuals.

We've now arrived at the end of the rare period in which we made hay while the home ground sun shone. In a recent era, within this season, the thought of vital wins would have rendered us jittery, robbing us of maximising the benefit from the advantageous run of home ground games. But while it has been a great yield, the harvest is far from complete.

While our hopes of hitting back and securing 4 points of retribution were realised, the victory was more important for bigger fish to fry reasons. We’re sitting in 6th but we’ve got three teams breathing down our necks, Gold Coast have a game in hand and we’re all but occupying the equal lowest percentage of the top 9 teams. Clearly there is still plenty of work to be done, but you get the feeling we're up for the challenge.

Time for a further chat about the actual game on the pod in more depth... thankfully not the despair level depth! So, for whatever reason, if your ears have recently done you wrong and you’re looking for revenge on them, our nonsensical purple noise is a fitting retributive punishment.

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So productively in sync and inseparable are Serong and Jackson, they’re starting to morph into one Calukeb Jacksong entity! Time to Restump Podcast the dispatching of the Dons.

A combined 56 possessions, 48 hitouts, 17 clearances, 18 score involvements, over 1,000 metres gained and 5 goals neat from Serong and Jackson! Coles and Woolworths are screaming, “What about that duopoly!”

Let’s just get all the prefacing out of the way early. Yes, it was Essendon, yes, we were expected to win comfortably, yes, they’re battling and yes, Vigo Visantini was their sole ruck on debut.

With that been said and now subconsciously considered, Thursday was a job satisfactorily and entertainingly done.

Despite the first quarter midfield dominance of the Dons, the result really was never in doubt. Was it perfect? Absolutely not. Are we better than that display? Maybe in patches and on occasions, but taking into account the last 5 weeks of form, we’re probably a 4th to 9th type of team at the moment.

Did our rare as hens teeth accurate kicking make us appear more overall dominant than we truly were? The second and third quarters we piled on 10 goals 1 to the Bomber’s 4 goals 6. On paper, at least, they’re the same opportunities.

Anyway, focusing on the underlying possible realities isn’t necessarily fun, so let’s talk about Luke Jackson instead. Remember back to those days when there were those who were angry at the club for spending up on what Jackson cost us, suggesting he was overrated? Those crazy dazey times!

His ruckwork was one thing, but his fourth midfielder traits somehow astonishingly continue to increase. And not enough fuss has been made about his 3 goals! They weren’t gimmes or marks in the goal square, they were from long range and or under pressure on the run.

And the other member of Calukeb Jacksong, did he have a day out or what? When Caleb Serong, not exactly known for his accuracy, hit that goal from the boundary… it was put the glasses down, this game is done.

Elsewhere, Corey Wagner’s stock continues to rise after another super polished performance, clamping down on Zac Merret. He attended a career high 17 of the 29 centre bounces.

Jordie Clark must be an All-Australian lock and Luke Ryan was back to his mopping up everything best.

On top of kicking goals and clunking grabs, Josh Treacy hunts opponents down. He literally corals, confuses and catches them. Shai Bolton has simply made us a much better team and Freddy could have had a big day out.

Where are we all on Nat Fyfe? It is just his first true game back, but he attended just 5 centre bounces and had little to no impact up forward. Jojo stands by his hard call but the Chief is keeping the faith and extending the hand of opportunity. There is something about September that tells me we’ll be thankful for a Fyfe!

The Darcy conversation will only escalate. Have we done the right by him, throwing him to the Max Gawn and Toby Nankervis type wolves and then resting him against a debutant? Is there more to the resting story than we’re being told? We kneed to know!

We ticked the box that needed ticking, we made another 4-point deposit in the September action bank and we got some entertainment along the way. Let’s rinse and repeat!

The game does seem like it was long ago, but it was too entertaining not to dig conversationally deeper. So, bring your language luggage, grab your purple talking twigs and join us in the conversing corner as we all bang on about the banishment of the Bombers.

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