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Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #105 –
Quote from: TheSheik – on
Reckon we will be doing quite well to hold on to our ladder position from last year. Can't see us getting past that given the number of new faces we have on the list.

Yes I agree.

I don't think we will see the winning / losing streak we saw last season, at least I hope we don't, if we do we haven't progressed.

I'm hoping we see us winning some close ones, with a balanced mix of expected wins and losses. Along with fewer games like those ones last year in which we never looked like a serious opponent.

I suspect our defence might be a little weaker this year, as much as Tuohy is maligned by many supporters he was a very effective negator. Plus the retirement of Jamison removes an experienced head on and off the field.

I'll be interested to see the effect 1AW has on the young players, if he's effective we should see them rapidly looking fitter and stronger by mid-season. I suspect he'll either make them or break them in this regard, he punished himself at times from a endurance and aerobic fitness perspective which is not always a good thing.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #106 –
Quote from: DJC – on
I can't understand that logic Sheik  :-\

Yes, we have an inexperienced list but the blokes we brought in are streets ahead of those who departed (on their 2016 form).

Zach Tuohy (irrespective of his 2016 form) will be missed, and young Byrne might be tracking nicely but his absence from our team really stifled a lot of our run.  I also think that young Cripps with a hindered pre season might be doing well to reproduce any of his form from last year, let alone firing from round 1.

I think that too many people are being labelled as pessimists, when they are being realists just because too many are being optimistic.
"everything you know is wrong"

Paul Hewson

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #107 –
Quote from: DJC – on
I can't understand that logic Sheik  :-\

Yes, we have an inexperienced list but the blokes we brought in are streets ahead of those who departed (on their 2016 form).

They have yet to kick a ball in anger... how can you claim them to be "streets ahead of those who departed"? ????

Do you mean that any of them can kick 50 goals a season, be capable of playing forward and back and will play 200 games ?

Every year we delist and retire players and we recruit replacements... and we hope they are all upgrades.
Guess what ? 17 other teams do the same thing !
No guarantees...
Let’s go BIG !

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #108 –
Quote from: Thryleon – on
Zach Tuohy (irrespective of his 2016 form) will be missed, and young Byrne might be tracking nicely but his absence from our team really stifled a lot of our run.  I also think that young Cripps with a hindered pre season might be doing well to reproduce any of his form from last year, let alone firing from round 1.

I think that too many people are being labelled as pessimists, when they are being realists just because too many are being optimistic.

Yes Tuohy was a best 22 player, as was Walker, although wear and tear rendered him a shadow of his best.  The other players we shed, including Jammo, did nothing in 2016.  Marchbank is a more than adequate replacement for Jammo (at his best) and we know Palmer and Smedts can play.  That's one reasonable HBF and two struggling players out and one exciting KPP and two reasonable players in, making a stronger list.  Of course, if a couple of SPS, Pickett, Lebois, Fisher, Macreadie, Polson, Williamson and Kerr make the grade, we're well ahead of 2016.  Then there's the development of last year's draft crop.

Holding on to our ladder position should be achievable as the lower end of acceptable outcomes.  That's based on a considered, realistic assessment of our list changes - and Bolton's call for fans to be patient :)  An optimistic view would have us playing finals, and I think that the chances of that happening are very slim. 
It's still the Gulf of Mexico, Don Old!

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #109 –
Quote from: DJC – on
Yes Tuohy was a best 22 player, as was Walker, although wear and tear rendered him a shadow of his best.  The other players we shed, including Jammo, did nothing in 2016.  Marchbank is a more than adequate replacement for Jammo (at his best) and we know Palmer and Smedts can play.  That's one reasonable HBF and two struggling players out and one exciting KPP and two reasonable players in, making a stronger list.  Of course, if a couple of SPS, Pickett, Lebois, Fisher, Macreadie, Polson, Williamson and Kerr make the grade, we're well ahead of 2016.  Then there's the development of last year's draft crop.

Holding on to our ladder position should be achievable as the lower end of acceptable outcomes.  That's based on a considered, realistic assessment of our list changes - and Bolton's call for fans to be patient :)  An optimistic view would have us playing finals, and I think that the chances of that happening are very slim.

I think we saw last year that Weitering and Plowman didn't quite have the size to deal with the KPFs, which is why Rowe had such a good season in my opinion. Rowe wasn't filling gaps around Jammo as Jammo was out, Rowe was the main man and it showed in his performances.

Not sure Marchbank or Plowman are a Jammo type. Whether supporters like him or not Jammo was an exceptional fullback dealing with opponents far bigger than him.

Perhaps Weitering will develop far greater upper body strength in 2017, he's got the legs, he needs the core, arms and chest. This idea of developing core strength is not as straight forward as doing the training, some people just never get it, the don't have a body wired the right way!

I don't see Smedts as a heavy defensive hitter, he can play, but he plays more like we want Boekhorst to play. I see them both as running options. Smedts reminds me of Simmo pressing forward, but without Simmo's attack on the football. If Casboult is fit and firing up the field, or McKay, I expect to see Boekhorst or Smedts hitting the front and square on the wing to receive and delivering the footy inside F50 or even finishing. They should model themselves on Breust or Gunston. I'll be very disappointed if I see Smedts and Boekhorst always forward of the contest looking for a cheap handball.

To me Palmer is McLean Mk.II, he'll do the grunt stuff, be the link man, put himself in the right positions to pop up regularly when required. You should not expect too much flash, just a job doer getting a job done.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #110 –
Quote from: DJC – on
Yes Tuohy was a best 22 player, as was Walker, although wear and tear rendered him a shadow of his best.  The other players we shed, including Jammo, did nothing in 2016.  Marchbank is a more than adequate replacement for Jammo (at his best) and we know Palmer and Smedts can play.  That's one reasonable HBF and two struggling players out and one exciting KPP and two reasonable players in, making a stronger list.  Of course, if a couple of SPS, Pickett, Lebois, Fisher, Macreadie, Polson, Williamson and Kerr make the grade, we're well ahead of 2016.  Then there's the development of last year's draft crop.

Holding on to our ladder position should be achievable as the lower end of acceptable outcomes.  That's based on a considered, realistic assessment of our list changes - and Bolton's call for fans to be patient :)  An optimistic view would have us playing finals, and I think that the chances of that happening are very slim.

See I disagree.

I think its a realistic assesment to believe that we have gone forward at roughly the same rate we have gone backwards and that we will realistically tread water.

I do think that players that are having hindered pre seasons are an example we can point to as to why we will be inferior than the 2016 version.  Walker, Jamison are furthy's.  They played 15 games between them for 9 goals and not much gain.  We might lack a bit of their experience and leadership, but thats easily countered by youthful enthusiasm.  Tuohy on the other hand, had a solid if unspectacular year and statistically one of his best seasons.  22 games, more disposals than ever before.  Solid.

Marchbank may negate his absence.  He has the ability to, but he is a young buck early in his career, and Tuohy whilst no superstar, was a solid week in and week out performer.

Byrne is also down and out for now.  He might come good later on, but it means we have two holes being filled by one acquisition for a net loss even if thats temporary, and even if Sheehan can step up to fill the void, there are no guarantees he will get an elevation nor that he will hold up for more than a couple of weeks as his body has been letting him down.

Add Phillips going down injured to LTI, and a sprinkle of Gorringe being hindered, and then you start relying on our young draftees to improve significantly on their 2016 output, to help us tread water.  History shows draftees take about 3 years to get going to solid performing AFL players and that is usually the better draftees.  Guns like Cripps just morph into freaks and become excellent players and are very few and far between. Use Bryce Gibbs and Marc Murphy as your comparisions, and we can expect limited improvement through draftees.

Can Simpson at age 33 continue playing sterling footy forever?
Can Docherty reproduce his career best form of 2016?
Can Murphy reproduce his career best form rather than anything else?

There are enough things there to suggest that we could improve, or that we could go backwards looking at known quantities with the only likely outcome (based on current knowledge) that we will simply be roughly where we were at last year.  We might even go to a more exciting version of ourselves and win the exact same amount of games.  That in itself is improvement.

Do you understand me?  That is a more than realistic scenario IMHO. 

At the end of the day I look at it as us laying the groundwork to achieve future progress, and not necessarily improving this season.  The improvement will never be linear.  At some point it will increase more than before, but it may taper at some points too, and I see this year as being a tapering year laying the foundation for future drastic improvement.
"everything you know is wrong"

Paul Hewson

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #111 –
I am probably more with you Thry - it's a groundwork year and we will do very well if we win 7 games again given the forward-line we have.

To add to the lose of ZT I would also say that the lose of Everitt is another hole that needs to be filled. He had a lot of faults, but in our 'golden run' of beating Coll, PA and Geelong he kicked 3/3/4 goals and was instrumental in all those wins. He also kicked 3 against Freo. When the team was playing well he was able to convert the good work into goals better than any player on the list.

To understand just how poor our forward-line is I looked at some stats last night - we kicked 224 goals last year and 219 in 2015. You have to go back nearly 50 years to find a Carlton team who has kicked 220 goals in a year - even through our worst period we had a more potent forward-line!

Historic stats will also tell you that first or 2nd year players rarely achieve anything more than a goal per game - so McKay, Curnow, Jack, Pickett, Fisher etc cannot be expected to deliver match winning goal scoring performances. This really leaves Levi and Wright as our main avenues to goal this year [as they were last year], but we need them to score more goals more regularly than either of them have ever done in the past.

The other interesting thing to note about Levi and his goal scoring is he has been far from the 'match winner' you desperately want your KPF to be. He kicked 1 goals or less in 6 of our 7 wins [he kicked 3 against Coll]. Relying on him to be the main guy has proven something that he is not capable of over the last 3 years.
 

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #112 –
Tip top post. Loving your work sbf.

I have a love/hate thing with Cas. I like the guy,and want him to do well. Great marking etc. But I find it appalling that someone who made has debut in 2012 and has now played 72 games according to wikipedia, still needs to be taught how to kick. This is not the situation you want from someone who is supposed to be top 3 of your leading goal kickers every season.  One wonders if any other AFL club would countenance a situation like this.

I've stated before that I think he should be played in the goal square, but nobody seems to like that idea.

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #113 –
Quote from: PaulP – on
Tip top post. Loving your work sbf.

I have a love/hate thing with Cas. I like the guy,and want him to do well. Great marking etc. But I find it appalling that someone who made has debut in 2012 and has now played 72 games according to wikipedia, still needs to be taught how to kick. This is not the situation you want from someone who is supposed to be top 3 of your leading goal kickers every season.  One wonders if any other AFL club would countenance a situation like this.

I've stated before that I think he should be played in the goal square, but nobody seems to like that idea.

Yep. Banking too much on Levi is, as they say, a triumph of hope over experience. If he fires it will be a bonus, but don't put your house on it. We need other options for sure.
Reality always wins in the end.

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #114 –
Quote from: cookie2 – on
Yep. Banking too much on Levi is, as they say, a triumph of hope over experience. If he fires it will be a bonus, but don't put your house on it. We need other options for sure.
Never a truer word was spoken - but who else other than Levi has the potential to kick 30-40 goals in a year?? Without having someone kicking this sort of number you are resigned to kicking low 200 goals in a year, and finishing bottom 4. To climb even mid pack we need to increase our scoring shots per game by over 30% compared to what we delivered in the back half of 2016.

That is massive increase in any one language, especially when we have not recruited any experienced goal kickers. That is why realistically I don't see us moving from the bottom 4 next year unless we produce something extraordinary up front.

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #115 –
Quote from: PaulP – on
I've stated before that I think he should be played in the goal square, but nobody seems to like that idea.

Is it practical?

In reality it takes a sh1t load of effort to generate shots inside 25m and when you get them in that zone you cannot afford to waste them, if you do waste them it's demoralising to the team based on effort versus reward.

By comparison you can generate a sh1t load of shots from 50m and nobody is expected to kick them, if you get them you're a hero and if you don't it's no big deal!

So perhaps it's a bit of harm minimisation being put in place by the top dogs!

As a coach you'd be on a short life expectancy if you built a game plan to deliver goal square marking opportunities to your clunking forward only to see him burn you 50% of the time when he actually clunked one. How many opportunities would he get, how many of those would he clunk, how many of those would he kick? It's not a winning, positive, or improvement strategy.
"Extremists on either side will always meet in the Middle!"

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #116 –
Quote from: LP – on
Is it practical?

In reality it takes a sh1t load of effort to generate shots inside 25m and when you get them in that zone you cannot afford to waste them, if you do waste them it's demoralising to the team based on effort versus reward.

By comparison you can generate a sh1t load of shots from 50m and nobody is expected to kick them, if you get them you're a hero and if you don't it's no big deal!

So perhaps it's a bit of harm minimisation being put in place by the top dogs!

As a coach you'd be on a short life expectancy if you built a game plan to deliver goal square marking opportunities to your clunking forward only to see him burn you 50% of the time. It's not a winning, positive, or improvement strategy.

The next time you see Casboult missing a set shot, 30 out, right in front, sunny day, no breeze etc. , you will, in a very well practiced move, reach, in a pique of fury, for those three remaining strands of hair on our head. As your hand maneuvers this way and that, desperately searching those "no so green shoots" you will realize that they were in fact ripped out the last time you saw Casboult kick. Just like Saul on the road to Damascus, you will experience a blinding flash of light, of such terrifying force that it will propel from your sofa to a place you never knew existed. In this moment, you will cast your mind back to Pauly's Paddock, and you will think to yourself, "you know what - that good for nothing, hairy ar$ed primate may be onto something."

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #117 –
Quote from: PaulP – on
The next time you see Casboult missing a set shot, 30 out, right in front, sunny day, no breeze etc. , you will, in a very well practiced move, reach, in a pique of fury, for those three remaining strands of hair on our head. As your hand maneuvers this way and that, desperately searching those "no so green shoots" you will realize that they were in fact ripped out the last time you saw Casboult kick. Just like Saul on the road to Damascus, you will experience a blinding flash of light, of such terrifying force that it will propel from your sofa to a place you never knew existed. In this moment, you will cast your mind back to Pauly's Paddock, and you will think to yourself, "you know what - that good for nothing, hairy ar$ed primate may be onto something."
Great mental picture there, and something to varying degrees we can all relate to I'm sure..........

The point is maybe 20 years ago you could have gotten away with 'Levi in the goal square' but the game has changed too much since then. You can argue the merits of that change until the cows come home, but the fact is all forwards have to be able to press up high when they don't have the ball and be able to make a contest on the wing and then double back into the free space.

Actually last week Cas looked good when he led up to the HFF and took a few nice marks. He is an elite contested mark, so many would argue he is most useful to the team when he marks the ball up the ground and not i50 - letting others finishing off his work.

That would all make sense if we had another marking target and goal kicker who could consistently take advantage of his work. To become a good team you need 3-4 genuine forward targets who can kick multiple goals and give your attack variety. In 2-3 years we might be there if all the draftees come off [but we know statistically that less than half of them will in reality], but this year we rival only Brisbane in our lack of offensive threats. This means that teams are always in the game against us, and they only have to shut down Levi and Wright and then we don't have many other threats. It also means that Levi is going to continue to spend a lot of time up the ground, not camped i50.

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #118 –
sbf, I know it's not trendy, I know it's probably daggy, but I have no faith that Casboult will fix his kicking now. He's been on the list 5, 6 seasons, plus the NB's before that, plus x years of junior footy, and still these chronic problems persist. I should also add, somewhat comically, that the Hawks under Clarkson didn't have all that recent success by following trends.

The FF in the goal square doesn't have to be every second of every game. I've said before Levi is great as a target after a behind is scored, on the wing etc. He could easily play a few different roles - just nothing that involves kicking for goal between 20-50m from goal.

Other teams know Casboult will be a nightmare in the goal square. It's takes his big Achilles heel out of the equation. He's an elite mark. He can easily hold his own in the rough stuff. He will never be left one on one in the goal square. He'll have at least 2, maybe 3 defenders watching him, because from there he'll mark anything and won't miss. He can even be used as a decoy if required. The F50 setup is critical - we need the 2nd and 3rd talls, and the goal sneaks all set up correctly. The ball delivery needs to be suited to the play. Flat and short to the 2nd and 3rd talls further away from goal. Higher and more helicopter style if going to the goal square, pricnially to avoid being picked off as an intercept by a defender.

I say we try it for a few games - it's not as if we're putting our flag chances in jeopardy by doing so.

Re: The Hard Road To The Premiership

Reply #119 –
And can I just add, the FF in the goal square idea will also hopefully force / encourage our players to run and carry more and kick deeper, with the ball landing closer to the goal square. I don't know why, but it almost seems as though our players are scared of being dispossessed, so rather than release the ball closer to the 50m arc, they release the ball further up field, resulting in shallow F50 entries that don't translate into genuine scoring opportunities. Our F50 entries have been a bugaboo of mine for a while now.