If the ball is knocked free in the tackle it is holding the ball if there was prior opportunity and play on if there wasn’t.
Similarly, a player must dispose of the ball immediately when tackled if he had prior opportunity. If there was no prior opportunity, the player must be given a reasonable time to dispose of the ball.
That’s where the confusion lies; identical tackles can have different outcomes depending on whether there was prior opportunity.
Get rid of prior opportunity, adjudicate every tackle on its merits but don’t disadvantage players who take on the tackler. Ping them if they don’t make an attempt, but give them a reasonable time to dispose of the ball.
Grey area is reasonable...for name players its reasonable, for joe average in a crucial time of the game and in a crucial situation then it becomes inconsistently unreasonable. eg If Pendlebury or Nick Daicos get tackled in front of our goal it will be seen as no prior but if its Lachie Young or Lachie Cowan down the other end and its Nick Daicos doing the tackling then i know who my money is on to get the call...
The 360 degree swing tackle with no reward is frustrating, some players get a lot of time to dispose of the ball and others get very little. Players are tackling correctly, not dumping the player but lowering them and still get no reward, before when the player was slung hard the ball would usually become loose but now every player is able to stand up and take their time in many cases. Players are getting hugged rather than tackled and its become a balance thats favours the player in possession too much.....the only time it gets paid consistently are the obvious ones eg when the player has been surging away from the pack and tries to baulk or avoid a few players and has a fortnight to dispose of the ball but is dragged down.
I'd like to see us doing better at this level but it's a bit difficult given the unbalanced nature of our list. Hard for kids to develop when the side is getting flogged by 10 goals each week. Kind of like the seniors five years ago.
Our VFL listed players are very average...eg you would think a player like Tom Philips would excel at this level but he has been ordinary.
The folly of rucking BigH by default was exposed in the commentary when Brown started banging on about TDK going solo.
King rightly came in and described why solo rucking TDK is not sustainable season long, then there was a suggestion to ruck Charlie and King nearly fell out of his chair, and he describe why you don't ruck Charlie ever, and the same applies to overuse of BigH in the ruck, the risk is too high relative to the benefit.
The BigH to the ruck is an occasional pinch hit option, not a default tactic.
If our MC aren't smart enough to make use of Pitto and TDK sensibly, as required, we have an MC problem it's not the players.
Personally, I though the return of Saad and the front and square work of Williams made a huge difference yesterday, and off the back of Cripps and Walsh being dominant things might have got better if Witts had zero respite.
Williams is not scared to get at the feet of the marking contests and it makes a a huge difference. I also note once his confidence was up he got a few runs through the midfield and did well, his critics should take note.
I thought it's laughable that some have suggested GC were an easy kill, Miller, Rowell, Witts, Lukosius, King, Andrew, we destroyed the GC strengths, surely whoever suggested the easy kill was joking.
Have a look at the GC away record.....we were on the rebound after being smashed and GC were a ideal opponent to beat up on. Williams played ok but the next games will test him out, where he has to kick goals plus prevent some of the better rebound half backs from being effective players ie Houston and Farrell next game..
Gold Coast were an easy kill imho and I wouldnt be reading too much into the result or player performance good or bad.....Williams had a decent game which is good but he needs to build trust with a string of good games before we pin a medal on him. Conversely I wouldnt be throwing Owies and Fantasia under the bus either for having mediocre games and would want to see how they all go vs better quality teams starting with Port next game. Obviously Witts had a picnic in the hitouts like he usually does but I thought TDK played a very complete game and was more effective around the ground and for all Witts hitouts our midfield led by Cripps and Walsh won the day easily ...
Williams looks a bazillion times better when he can just chase the footy, doesn't have the discipline for standing a man as a defender
Needs to repeat that form vs better opposition before I am convinced he has arrived as a forward but it was a fair effort and he earned his money today.
GC are not that great and are poor away from home.Blues by 28 points with Charlie and Harry in the goals and Cripps and Walsh in the stats.. I think Port ,Essendon and the Cats will tell us more in games coming up..
Just a couple of points: Durdin has been way more ineffective than Fantasia. If Motlop was fit I'd guess neither would play. With Moo back this week, I'd chuck Cincotta in the guts and add him to the midfield rotation. Played midfield in his VFL days, has size, speed, grunt and is a good driving (ie low) kick.
Durdin had one more effective possession than all of us on the forum last game so the bar is low.....Orazio is a 100 game plus player who should be doing a lot better in a team with two dominant big forwards imo. He probably should have started in the twos when the season began and worked into some form but injuries to other players forced his inclusion so he ended up in the deep end and has spent most of the season drowning unfortunately. I think the ideal small forwards can take a turn in the midfield and a lot of the better ones do and I wonder if Orazio given some real minutes in the middle it might be a catalyst to get him going...
I think the massive offer to Hayward shows there is concern from the footy dept we are a bit Charlie/Harry centric and need other goal avenue alternatives, especially with Martin intermittent in appearances and JSOS injured long term. Premiership teams of recent years have had that variety and we lack that Fritsch, Heeney, O.Henry, Townsend, Dickson, J.Elliott marking type who can also be a threat at ground level and its compounded by our lack of a consistent small forward/s who can kick a bag of goals every now and then and also we lack the midfielders who can kick go forward and kick a bag too... Sydney have average input from Amartey, McDonald and Mclean but the variety with Papley, Hayward, Heeney and Warner seems to offset not having dominant bigs and probably helps even more in poor conditions when marking is more difficult.
We got beaten in the middle - they had two taggers basically - Rowbottom was on a tackling warpath and Jordan kept holding onto Walsh restricting him from hunting the ball. We didn't reciprocate with our own tagger(s) - Pitto had zero tackles and Grundy had a party on him. I understand we are trying to implement our own style but clubs have figured us out and taggers are now back in vogue.
I agree, Hewett is probably our main run with player and Kennedy can do the job as well as provide some drive but both Warner and Heeney have them for pace and once goalside with a break on our players they were not going to be caught. The player we miss in the middle like I said before is Cerra who has a bit more toe and a bit more class and would have been a better match for Warner in particular and would have required both those Swans mids to pay attention to rather than being fully offensive players. When we have Cripps, Walsh, Kennedy and Hewett in the middle we can look slow on the chase as a few news articles have suggested, I'd like to see E. Hollands spend a bit more time in the middle and maybe do what a few other teams do and throw the odd different player in there..
