Essendon great Matthew Lloyd has revised his top eight prediction after five rounds of the season.
In the pre-season, Lloyd named Melbourne, Brisbane, Western Bulldogs, Sydney, Port Adelaide, GWS, Essendon and Richmond as his top eight – and has now made changes to the latter four.
Replacing them are the three breakout teams of the season thus far in Fremantle, St Kilda and Carlton, as well as Geelong.
“So I’m very happy with my top four, but very embarrassed with five, six, seven and eight,” Lloyd told Sportsday.
“I don’t think any of them are going to make it.
“I had Melbourne on top, happy with that, Brisbane second, I had the Bulldogs third, and I’m not going to give up on them, I had the Swans fourth, and I’m happy with that.
“But this is where it turns ugly for me. I had Port Adelaide fifth, that is over. I had the Giants sixth, mostly like over. I had the Bombers at seventh, in big trouble and I had Richmond at eighth.
“So the four sides flying that I didn’t have in there are St Kilda, Carlton, the Dockers and then the Cats.
“So they’re the four that are going better than those other sides that I had in there.”
Lloyd explained why he initially left Geelong out of his top eight.
“I just didn’t know where the improvement was going to come from. I thought other clubs could have more growth with them with being able to access the draft,” he added.
“I’m big on improvement from 50 to 120-game players that can catapult them. All those guys at Melbourne all just shot up together.
“I thought to myself ‘who is going to improve Geelong and how can their top-end players keep doing it?’.
“That’s where Richmond is falling off the cliff. Not enough young talent coming through and their top-enders aren’t going as well.
“That’s potentially what I thought would happen at Geelong, but we’ll see how they go this year.”