I recall Gawn speaking post match about the challenge of facing DeKoning and Pittonet and the physical effort it took. St Kilda were behind the eight ball in that department yesterday once Marshall went into the concussion protocols.
We'll need two rucks against him The question for us...O'Keefe or Reidy.
Put 2 players against any 1 player and they will find it difficult.
THe other side of that coin is that you have less players to play on other players....and thats where the damage gets done.
We've had many a debate about our chances this season and you've tried to convince me we'll be ok because of the spread of talent we got in vs losing elite talent. This is the same argument but coming from the opposite direction. Forget about trying to cover the elite Gawn and use your spread of talent to win other areas of the ground.....and thus the game.
Rucks are overated. Gawn is elite. Gawn vs 1 ruck, he might get 30 touches and kick 2 goals. Gawn vs 2 rucks, he might get 20 touches and kick 1 goal.
Is it worth adding an extra player to save 10 touches and a goal? Do we go down a midfield rotation as a result? A midfielder that might get you 20 touches and a goal themselves.....as well as ease the load on the other midfielders, allowing them to benefit as well.
Now, more than ever, our team can afford to play 2 'ruck types' given one of them is basically our FF. But even then, the output of HOK (or Reidy) in that role is not really seeing us get much of a benefit.
Stick with 1 ruck, and run them off their feet. .....or at least limit the damage we do to ourselves when we fall in a hole after half time unable to run anymore.
I don't think we can name 6 teams that we are above at this stage, there'd be a few who you could argue, and melbourne would be one of them, but equally likely to be on a par with us. Especially with norths win today.
Thats half the problem though isn't it. Players edging into an area past their prime and not enough young talent coming in to bridge the gap. It is not necessarily about ins vs outs player by player.
This has been a big criticism from me over the journey. Each individual player recruitment in itself is not necessarily a bad idea. You can build a good case for every player recruited vs what they cost us.
However, list building is not about getting a clump of individuals together, instead its about building a fully fleshed out list that is not easily defeated by some injuries. This is why i've been banging on about our 37 small forward recruits over the journey. All can play football to different degrees. But they do not make our team/list better when half of them are forced to play 2's because we have too many in the 1's already. At the same time having only 1 AFL capable KPF on the list, and only somewhat better at the other end.
Agree, but the point was our strong list depth wasn't really strong as soon as the game went to a more precise skilful kicking style.
We lived and died by our good players playing well and our form is coinciding with the top dropping off not the bottom.
Our list was not fully formed, sure, but nobody said it was. It is more 'out of shape' now than it was though, which is MBBs point.
that might be true but our maturing elderly were in their prime. We've not exactly see our list flourish elsewhere with the exception of Kennedy.
Everyone else is gone from the afl or spare parts player. The wheels had fallen off by the time Charlie, jsos and tdk moved on. Every other player who left us is retired, or cant get a game.
Thats half the problem though isn't it. Players edging into an area past their prime and not enough young talent coming in to bridge the gap. It is not necessarily about ins vs outs player by player.
This has been a big criticism from me over the journey. Each individual player recruitment in itself is not necessarily a bad idea. You can build a good case for every player recruited vs what they cost us.
However, list building is not about getting a clump of individuals together, instead its about building a fully fleshed out list that is not easily defeated by some injuries. This is why i've been banging on about our 37 small forward recruits over the journey. All can play football to different degrees. But they do not make our team/list better when half of them are forced to play 2's because we have too many in the 1's already. At the same time having only 1 AFL capable KPF on the list, and only somewhat better at the other end.
It seems as though the methodology of that survey is not, shall we say, particularly robust. Possible more for sh1ts and giggles than anything else. What is important IMO, is that across a range of different surveys / analyses from different institutions, Melbourne is constantly ranked near the top, as the 2nd half of this article shows.
Perhaps these lists arent what they're cracked up to be.
Yep....hard to get up to the minute information on every city around the world and collate it in a meaningful way. A lot of the data is reused from days past.
One thing that annoys me about our play is that we continually give up ground when there's a mark or a free. We tend to go to "outside five" between the arcs and in our forward 50 and when we "stand", it's usually a couple of metres back from the actual mark. Short's kick from the 50 would have struggled to make the distance if our player hadn't retreated a couple of metres.
I understand that it's about guarding territory trying to minimise passing and playing on options giving up metres within range of the goal is just dumb.
The couple metres back is an umpire directive and i cant understand it.
Forever and a day, wherever you take a mark, a player stands on the mark. This got tricky when a player took a mark on a lead, with the player on the mark asked to come back a bit as his chasing momentum took him over the mark. Fair.
However in the modern game the umpire almost always asks the player to come back off the mark for no reason.
I commented on it in our game. A player took a Mark on the centre square line. The man in the mark was asked to stand in the 50m arc. Thats a good 3-4m back of not more. This is not an outside 5, or a stand. That's where the umpires marked the line. Forget who it was but the player kicked a goal, just clearing the players on the goal line.
Every side loses the stoppages and clearances at some point but find other ways to win.
@madbluboy Is part of our problem we are trying to win everything, instead of just focussing on maximising what we are best at?
Have we spent too much time focussed on our weaknesses, and that is having a negative effect on what we are good at?
Mbb can answer for himself, but i need to comment on this.
I think this is a huge issue that is evident in the players we pick. Before i explain, let me digress.
There are 2 types of mentality when trying to win games of footy....with a subtle difference. 1. Kick more goals than the opposition. 2. Keep the opposition to less goals than you.
1. Is attacking. 2. Is defensive.
In reality, you need a bit of both.
We WERE offensive, then we changed and now we are defensive.
Now back to my point. We are too focused on defense, to the detriment of our offense.
The 'need' to keep playing someone like fogarty because of his 'pressure' is evidence of this. First of all, his pressure is not that significant....and his attacking output is sub-par. Add to fogarty is the off- season is the rebadging of someone like williams. Is our best small forward. Kicked our only goal in the 2nd half to win is the game.... but had spent majority of his time being rebadged as a defender and midfielder. Why?
Change the focus slightly to being more attacking, then essentially williams will kick you more goals than fogarty saves....and we are better off as a result.
Players get more joy out of attacking and kicking goals. As a club, we get more wins too. You may argue you don't get wins in finals playing that way (or enough wins) which might be so.....but ross lyon playing ultra defensive hasnt got any either.
So lets try to win games instead of trying not to lose them.....and pick a side that can do that.
Agreed, as was the free to Lynch because Young supposedly blocked him from the marking contest.
Unless my eyes deceived me, Young stood his ground without moving to block the Sniper and without spreading his wings to block The only mistake he made was to look behind him but I don't think the rules of the game should require him to move out of the way or to vanish in a puff of smoke.
The Sniper is overly protected and also received another very soft free kick when Young's right arm brushed along the Sniper's side - without in any way wrapping him up or grabbing him.
The problem was he looked, not once, but twice. That was deemed as not having eyes for the ball, and thus a block. TBH, i think it was fair. Sure it probably could have another 10 examples where its not paid, but IMO they probably should be paid more, not less.
At the end of the day, make the ball the objective or do a better job of disguising it.
Thats a bit problem with Young....he makes simple mistakes....often. How many times does he fist the ball away when he has 2m on his opponent?! I get that he doesn't want to be outmarked, but that doesn't mean you never attempt a mark.
I fear Moir is going to struggle under our faster game style, he seems best suited to the older stoppage / marking game style where he could be the 3rd man up in the contest.
To persist he really needs to make better use of his ambidextrous capabilities, if anything he seems to have gone backwards in that regard.
Moir will be best as a stay at home FF. Isolate him 1 on 1, and you'll get a fair amount of goals out of him.
Yes, he can be a bit slack. Yes, he can drop his head in the contest a little bit.
You know who else could fit into those same shoes? Fevola!
With Tasmania coming in the Draft won't bring us a lot of joy.
Potentially.
I cant remember if the rules are set in stone or not, but i believe part of the deal is that tassie must trade away some of their early picks/ concessions.
This is where we can try and get a leg up.
Trade away a 30yo Harry and get a top 3 pick.....or trades of that ilk.
It SHOULD make it a little bit easier to get top picks.
Now whether you use those picks on kids or other established talent is a later debate, but getting the picks should be a good start.
My Heart rate was not healthy in that last 5 mins 🙄
Im the opposite - i have no fear no expectation anymore.
I know where we sit and any win this season will be hard earnt and apart from the bottom 3 sides of WC, North and Rich we wont be troubling any of the teams above and will be some big hidings as well in this season.
This is basically what ive been saying all b offseason.
People need to lower their expectations this year. Do that and your mental health will thank you.
Some players will improve. Some players will get worse. Some players will get injured. Some players will retire.
Overall, our list is weaker, and all other things being equal, our results will be worse. Sure a great run with injuries may help, but looking at our current injury list, that looks unlikely.
So expect poor results and youll sleep at night.
Now, doesnt mean we need to blow up the place. With some young additions and extra draft picks banked....i expect to improve in a year or 2.....just not now.
.....that is of course if we can hold our crap together and not blow up the place in the meantime......which im not confident on, but if everyone lowered expectations itd be more likely.
