Hey everyone! Being the football expert that I am, I thought I’d start a bit of a finals footy blog as we soar in to September to share my thoughts, feelings and excitement with you all.

Firstly, let’s talk about Saturday night. Ninety-five points? No big deal. I hope Collingwood were watching that and shaking in their little Magpie boots. A big pat on the back to the boys - what a great effort - and hopefully that massive win will send them in to the first week of finals with heaps of confidence.

Did you know that John Worsfold has become the first AFL/VFL coach in 94 years to take his side from the bottom of the ladder to the finals in a consecutive year? What a legend! That’s why he’s my hero.

Now let’s look ahead. This Saturday, my boys will make the trip to the mighty MCG to face off against Collingwood for the first qualifying final.

I’m going to get real for a minute people, I do have a few concerns to share with you. Collingwood are the reigning premiers, they have been sitting at the top of the table for most of the season having only lost two games, and will be playing on their home turf this Saturday.

But am I still confident? You bet I am! Here’s why:

1) West Coast have a very healthy, in-form squad and we’ve been lucky enough to cruise through the season relatively unaffected by injuries. With Sammy Butler back, and Will Schofield and Jack Darling likely to return this week, we have a massive group of talented players to pick from, which puts us in a very good position. Collingwood, on the other hand, will be missing Dale Thomas due to suspension, and have key players Chris Tarrant, Leon Davis, Tyson Goldsack and Travis Cloak under injury clouds.

2) Collingwood are beatable! As we saw last week against the Cats, they are just as vulnerable as any other team and fumbled when under pressure. So all we need to do is put pressure on them. (That was easy to figure out, I should probably pass that on to Woosh...)

3) The two games Collingwood have lost were both to Geelong, and we beat Geelong in round 16. So by the laws of logic, if we can beat Geelong, and Geelong can beat Collingwood, then we can beat Collingwood. You can’t argue with logic, guys.

4) Collingwood’s massive loss last week must have shaken their confidence a bit, whereas we are coming in to this final with sky-high confidence after our huge win.

So there it is everyone, my thoughts and feelings on our qualifying final for this weekend. I told you I was a footy expert, I’ll probably be offered a coaching gig pretty soon.

If you guys have any other thoughts, feelings or theories, let me know at facebook.com/RickTheRockEagle.

Bring on September and go Eagles!

Rick