Playing devils advocate, when i posted similar stats, people didn't like them because a pressure act was deemed to be the ability of created pressure without actually doing anything. Like chasing rather than catching.
I did a comparison of tackles, and Fantasia is well behind the other small forwards.
Pressure acts are weighted; physical pressure acts (bumping, pushing, tackling) are worth 3.75 points, closing acts are worth 2.25 points, chasing acts are 1.5 points and corralling are 1.2. Chasing and corralling (Zac Fisher's forte) are worth less because they don't have much impact on the ball carrier's ability to dispose of the ball. Fantasia isn't tackling as much as Durdin and Owies so he must be doing a hell of a lot more corralling, chasing and closing to be 17 to 8 and 5.
The same applies to Charlie. Apparently he doesn't chase and his tackle numbers are relatively low so, to be so far ahead of Harry, Durdin and Owies in pressure acts, he must be dynamite on closing acts and corralling.
Harry has incredible acceleration for a big man and his ability to put pressure on defenders by closing and tackling is a bonus for our forwards. Charlie has greater endurance but not the same acceleration. He puts his endurance to good use by applying pressure, closing and corralling, but his main priority is to create separation with his defenders. That's not quite so critical for Harry as he usually enjoys a size and strength advantage.
One or two games of stats won't make a big difference to overall stats, but after a couple of games the umpiring effectively forced TDK into changing his technique when there wasn't anything actually wrong with it. All because of Scott whinging.
We had plenty of debate about this at the time, and the influence of our ruck coaches, surely you remember.
Think back to the Geelong game last season. De Koning hurt Stanley with a fairly crude knee to the ribs. De Koning was slapped with a $3,000 fine and Scott did complain about Stanley's injury in his post game presser. We appealed and Tom was exonerated. In the games following, De Koning's free kicks against were 1, 0, 1, 3, 5, 3, 0 ... The five frees came in the Essendon game where the umpires favoured Essendon with 32 frees to 18. The frees paid against De Koning were all in general play; two for in the back and one for chopping the arms in marking contests, one for high contact and one for holding the man. In fact, it is very clear that the umpires did not adjudicate De Koning's ruck contests any differently than they did before the Geelong game
De Koning's technique may have changed marginally in that he is not so blatant when he targets the opposition rucks. However, it's still the same technique, just more effective than it was.
Chris Scott has nowhere near the influence that you credit him with. On the other hand, I suspect the AFL listens carefully to comments and suggestions from Princes Park.
Don't mind replacing Fantasia, but Moir is still a fair way off. He will be given plenty of time to develop before being paraded out a la Binns. With one or two exceptions, we are right into development and ensuring young players have served a comprehensive apprenticeship.
Yes, there's plenty of time for Moir, Binns, Monahan, O'Keeffe, Lemmey, etc. We're not in the position where we have to expose our "green shoots" to the harshness of AFL footy before they have toughened up.
Apart from destroying the “Charlie doesn’t defend” nonsense, it illustrates one aspect of Fantasia’s game that goes largely unnoticed.
As Thry has pointed out, Fantasia’s leadership is another reason why he is in the team. We have more than our share of relatively inexperienced players and Fantasia’s guidance and encouragement is invaluable.
Is Fantasia in our best 23? Probably not, but he will continue to be selected until Martin and Motlop are back in the mix.
We must not assume ever week will be like last weekend, especially this week. Do not forget the Handbaggers were the team that complained about TDK last season getting the umpires onside to start penalising TDK in the latter part of the first half of the season. Penalised for basically jumping higher than opponents and as a result putting his knee in their chest. TDK was punished, punished for Scott's actions of basically playing an undone Stanley and an inured Blicavs in the ruck.
Last week Conway is another monster, gave McInerney a touch up, and after the injury to Stewart we saw Scott using Cameron behind the ball as a mobile stoppage option. TDK won't get such an easy or open run if Cameron repeats this strategy.
Why then has De Koning's frees against average remained remarkably consistent across his entire career? On the other hand, his frees for average has been steadily climbing.
I have been as mystified as the next punter when it comes to rucklotto frees in past seasons but De Koning wasn't singled out for special treatment by the umpires at Chris Scott's request.
Crash, is this comp like a second tier, out of season thing, not the full blown professional competition?
The VFLW is made up of 10 teams representing or affiliated with the Victorian AFL teams and two “independent” teams; Willy and Darebin.
We’re running a lot of AFLW players through our VFLW team this season, not something we’ve really done before. Hopefully that will give our AFLW girls a flying start to the season.
Good thing about Pittonet last week is that he played well around the ground too. Works well with TDK playing well up forward.
That's the real key Jim. If both of our ruckmen can have an impact around the ground, it's a winning strategy. If we have to hide them on the pine, we're in trouble.
Just to reiterate the big man's words; "We've got such good connection, just trying to work together, whether it's who's having a better game against which rucks – there were passages where he was having a good day against Briggs, so he went in, and I went forward for a bit."
And that's why De Koning took most of the ruck contests against O'Brien the game before. Not because Pitto was underdone or because of a pre-determined plan but because De Koning was doing better against O'Brien than Pitto was.
We'll see how we against the cats. I'd only play one ruckman this week. The cats have historically surrendered clearance dominance to win field position.
Brisbane vs Geelong is a bit of an anomaly given the torrential rain and the Big O getting subbed out. In that context, Conway got 41 hitouts, Blicavs got 18 and Hawkins chipped in with six. That’s 65 to 35 but the clearances were even at 51 all.
We need to establish a clearance dominance as we did over GWS and that’s not going to happen if we take Geelong’s rucks too lightly. They have Stanley and Neale waiting in the wings and Sam De Koning can take a turn in the ruck.
Another consideration is the absence of Tom Stewart. There’s a case for Stewart being the Cat’s most important player and their defence will be weaker without his intercept marking. Stretching their defence further by “resting” a ruckman in our forward line and making their marking defenders accountable.
Then there’s the idea that, rather than worrying about what the opposition might do well, we just go to work and make them worry about us.
However i'll take issue with 1 point. TDK is no longer a specialist ruck. He can be a genuine forward option now, which was something that had been lacking previously. He was always capable of taking the odd mark and kicking the odd goal, but he is doing that more consistently now and showing the small forwards how to crumb the ball as well. He's become a much more all-rounded player.
Pitto as #1 ruck plays to his strengths. TDK as #2 ruck/forward plays to his strengths.
It might be a bit different when we play on a windy/wet deck in the middle of winter, but in ideal conditions of Marvel, it works.
Yeah, nah; De Koning is a specialist ruck! He attended 60% of the ruck contests against Adelaide but only took part in around one third of the ruck contests against GWS. He doesn't go on to the ball at the end of quarters to give Pitto a break or when the opposition big dog has a spell, he rucks at critical times and wins crucial hitouts (44% to advantage while Pitto managed 36%). How they divide up the ruckwork will depend on conditions, the opposition and the state of the game but we're playing two specialist rucks, one of whom has attributes that make him a potential ruck/forward. De Koning needs to do a lot of work on his forward craft, running patterns and marking if he is going to realise that potential. Importantly, oppositions see that potential and can't afford to leave De Koning without a tall defender when he does "rest" forward. That takes away their ability to double team Harry or Charlie with their third tall defender or ruckman.
The thing is that having De Koning jumping over and/or into the opposition's first ruck makes life easier for Pitto too. Our two gave Briggs a decent going over and I'm sure that Riccardi wished that he was somewhere else when it was his time to spell Briggs.
That was probably De Koning's best game and it was definitely Pitto's best. The challenge is to keep working on the dynamics and getting the best value out of both of them.
I don't really get the criticism of Charlie. He has a role to do and he does it really well. We have a plethora of small and medium forwards who are there to apply defensive pressure in our forward line. Charlie's main challenge is to get separation from his opponents.
Jeremy Cameron is being touted as the best player in the game at the moment and he has laid six tackles to Charlie's five. Somehow I don't think Scott or Vossy will be telling Jeremy and Charlie that they're not working hard enough.
