Mate of mine made the comment at halftime 'are they zoning or manning up?' and it occurred to us that they were doing NEITHER.

Now, we all know how difficult it is to drill a zone which is why most teams spend most of the off-season doing so.

As such, why not simply instruct our players to play man-on-man defensively for the rest of the season? Yes, it is not as good as a zone, but a half-hearted zone is far worse than simply manning up at the first opportunity.

My 2 cents,

They don't "replace" the zone.

What I mean is they set the zone just fine initially, but once one player moves to defend, he naturally leaves a gap - this in turn requires the rest of the zone to shift in harmony accordingly....but this isn't happening.

Some players react to the changes on the ground, while others fail to. It leaves holes in the zone.

Perhaps this has something to do with a number of the guys not really being a part of the first 22 in early training sessions.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This is why we would really benefit from having our own reserves.

Your own gameplan across two teams...everybody on the list is in sync and can be called up to fill a role that they understand, whether it is at AFL level or VFL level

  On 27/05/2011 at 15:55, pitchfork said:

My 2 cents,

They don't "replace" the zone.

What I mean is they set the zone just fine initially, but once one player moves to defend, he naturally leaves a gap - this in turn requires the rest of the zone to shift in harmony accordingly....but this isn't happening.

Some players react to the changes on the ground, while others fail to. It leaves holes in the zone.

Perhaps this has something to do with a number of the guys not really being a part of the first 22 in early training sessions.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This is why we would really benefit from having our own reserves.

Your own gameplan across two teams...everybody on the list is in sync and can be called up to fill a role that they understand, whether it is at AFL level or VFL level

Interesting point.....

  On 27/05/2011 at 15:55, pitchfork said:

My 2 cents,

They don't "replace" the zone.

What I mean is they set the zone just fine initially, but once one player moves to defend, he naturally leaves a gap - this in turn requires the rest of the zone to shift in harmony accordingly....but this isn't happening.

Some players react to the changes on the ground, while others fail to. It leaves holes in the zone.

Perhaps this has something to do with a number of the guys not really being a part of the first 22 in early training sessions.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This is why we would really benefit from having our own reserves.

Your own gameplan across two teams...everybody on the list is in sync and can be called up to fill a role that they understand, whether it is at AFL level or VFL level

Accurate observation Fork......we have gone back to the Daniher days where players finish up defending grass, because the opposition have moved toward one side of the zone or the other. To cure the problem requires players to run to fill the holes as others move to where the ball is going. Our players don't.

Zone defence is really easy to teach, but it has to be taught and taught properly. It is obvious when playing ball sports which players have never been taught, no matter how good they are individually. And at the moment it is obvious to me that the Melbourne players have NOT been taught.

I don't get it.

It seems to me, and to many AFL commentators (Brereton, Harley, Matthews, Lloyd) that we are basically the only club that does not at least try to implement the forward press. If we are trying, we are failing miserably.

Yet, in our best game of the year, we smashed Adelaide with an effective forward press that nullified their movement of the ball and gave us repeated scoring shots.

I cannot understand how we could so effectively use the press one week, and for the next three revert back to the useless style of flooding and pushing numbers behind the ball, thus defending from too far back and not getting enough inside 50s.

The game has moved on. If the ball spends more time in your forward half, you tend to win. We do not go forward of the centre enough, because we defend from too far back and we do not lock the ball in effectively when we do get it forward. Our forwards push too far up the ground. We need to look at the Adelaide game to see exactly how we set up then, and work from that, because the last three weeks have seen us fail utterly to work the forward press, and we are being beaten by sides who are exploiting that.

Our lack of an effective Press is a glaring inadequacy of our off season coaching. Personally i don't think Bailey should worry about whether Watts should play on Goddard or not but rather our total lack of an up to date game style. The HS articl yesterday should have read

"Oops, I really should have taught the forward press over summer"

You are right! Tpyical luke-warm ill-diciplined garbage this club keeps serving up in spades.

If they stick on their man, you'd hope they'd figure out where to run eventually, implement and anticipate.

  On 27/05/2011 at 15:49, Striker475 said:

Mate of mine made the comment at halftime 'are they zoning or manning up?' and it occurred to us that they were doing NEITHER.

Now, we all know how difficult it is to drill a zone which is why most teams spend most of the off-season doing so.

As such, why not simply instruct our players to play man-on-man defensively for the rest of the season? Yes, it is not as good as a zone, but a half-hearted zone is far worse than simply manning up at the first opportunity.

The way I am seeing it is that our forward press is based on the premise of leaving your man to place pressure on the ball carrier. This in turn creates a loose man. As a result another player behind that must leave his man to cover that loose man, thus creating another loose man further forward of the play. If this continues on, we end up bleeding goals to the man left behind in the opposition forward line. This is the reason it is important to place a good ball user as a floating man down back.

Last night Jack Watts was that man and kept being drawn forward into the play, thus negating his role.

Considering that we've only been playing the press for the past four weeks, we need to keep enduring and educate the loose man in the best way to play his role. For mine, the loose man should be the one person to keep dropping back when the rest of the players are instructed to move forward. This will give us at least even numbers at the contest and enable us to best draw a mistake from our opponent.

The process is correct, but at the moment, our implementation has been a bit haphazard. The more we play the press, the better we'll get at it.

When you consider that nearly majority of our team were playing for Casey four weeks ago, we are going ok. Match practise makes perfect!

  On 28/05/2011 at 17:14, Demon Tragic said:

When you consider that nearly majority of our team were playing for Casey four weeks ago, we are going ok. Match practise makes perfect!

Trouble is that the majority of the team weren't playing for Casey 4 weeks ago, and all of them were training with the club since last November.

We lack the discipline and game sense to implement a consistent forward press or zone.

You watch the game against Adelaide when I think we had our best 22 so far playing we maintained a much better Zone for 4 quarters.

We are slaughtered in transition through the zone and end up giving up Joe the gooses due to a severe lack of forward line and midfield pressure.

We don't have the game experience, physicality and endurance for our current 22 to play anything close to a consistent zone that would see us be competitive.

  On 29/05/2011 at 02:02, Diablo Deemon said:

We lack the discipline and game sense to implement a consistent forward press or zone.

You watch the game against Adelaide when I think we had our best 22 so far playing we maintained a much better Zone for 4 quarters.

We are slaughtered in transition through the zone and end up giving up Joe the gooses due to a severe lack of forward line and midfield pressure.

We don't have the game experience, physicality and endurance for our current 22 to play anything close to a consistent zone that would see us be competitive.

I think this is closer to the mark.

I agree that we don't implement the press as well as nearly every other club, but I still think it has to do with personnel - not bright enough, not quick enough, carrying injury, and dropping back to 'help out' and creating holes for the opposition. I will let others decide who is in which category.

It must be incredibly difficult for players to know exactly what their role is, when they're "rotated" on and off the ground so often.

Experienced players can probably recognise their exact role more quickly, but our players can't.

Often on Friday, players returned towards the bench, but when they got near it, were told to go back on. Not only was it a waste of energy, but it was evidence of a lack of planning at a coaching level. How do players know their role if the coaches aren't sure?

The players sometimes sprint the 120-odd metres to the bench, then have to sprint it again two minutes later , when they're sent back on. To me this could not be a useful "breather" for players. The rapid rotation increases fatigue, and adds to confusion.

I propose a radical change that is more appropriate for an inexperienced side like ours. We should MINIMISE the number of rotations. At least give it a try. We won't play any worse. Also, it might give the coaching staff more time to concentrate on other, more important strategies.

The problem is IMO 2 things, one we do not close down quick enough nor shift the press quickly enough. the second is we also don't run hard enough when we do have the ball, never seems to be any hussle.

Does anyone think my suggestion that the multiple interchange tactic is disorganising the team?

I don't think it's surprising that the opposition have loose players so often, when there's no time to set up any system.

It seems to me that coaching staff almost feel they will be judged by how many rotations they make, so they rotate as much as possible, and in my opinion, more than necessary.

I know that nowadays it's perceived that mid-fielders perform better with bursts of energy after a rest, but I don't understand why someone like Jurrah should be taken off after a goal early in a game.

I think there is merit in it, JJC, especially with all the inexperienced young players.

I know how hard it was trying to learn it myself, in just an amateur comp.

There was a definite harsh adjustment period, and it still falls apart at times.