Collingwood Is Like A Mirror

[mrtwister 650]

If there's one thing Collingwood do well is make your weaknesses blatantly obvious. Today, we had ours exposed to us in front of 75000 people.

1. We seemed stagnant at stoppages today. Pies players always gathered the ball on the move if not at pace. If they missed it they still managed to get a hand to it and knock it somewhere else. We just seemed to stand and wait fore the ball. This happened time and time again, they were so dynamic.

2. I understand that part of our game plan is to play on whenever possible, but FFS there are times where we just shouldn't. We often struggled to get the ball out of our back 50 (see point 4) but when we did, we then took a mark from a short pass and played on. That's great IF YOU HAVE SOMEONE AHEAD OF YOU TO KICK TO. But because every player was in the back half 'helping' get the ball out there was never anyone there. Then the poor bugger with the ball would try and buy as much time as they could running at an angle or ducking and bobbing for the same result. A vacant forward 50. Are we supposed to all be that far up the ground?

3. We are a confidence team and lose faith and drive when we are down. Then, when we hit a good target, open up the play (after playing on of course) we hit the empty 50, kick to noone (see point 5) and then all the players throw their arms up in the air and start pointing at each other or where they think the ball should have gone. Then it got rammed down our throats again as our confidence and morale once again gets punished.

4. Im sorry, but playing on to the right hand side of the back half on a kick out and attempting to kick to some poor bugger standing there, waiting for the ball to hurry up and hit his hands before the 3 or 4 opponents bearing down on him can get there, ISN'T WORKING. Is this the best we can come up with despite the 'press' being around for as long as it has? We are not a precision passing team. If we were, we wouldn't have to play on all the time (see point 2). Every person standing in space for the receiving kick had at least 3 or 4 opponents within a 15m vicinity and they were all evenly spaced. BUT, look at one of their guys and they too had 3 or 4 of our players within 15m, evenly spaced as well as is the nature of the press. If our team insists on kicking to someone standing still, kick to one of their guys and let our boys get a run up and gang spoil/tackle them instead.

Personally, I'd be running that ball out of there with a plethora of organised handballing with an emphasis on outnumbering the defenders in a selected 'division' of the press. Basic stuff, but not a sound football tactic apparently.

5.If you are running into open space and noone is a target, at the very least, DON'T KICK THE BALL TO A SPOT THAT IS CLOSER TO AN OPPONENT. Brad Green was in this situation today and kicked it straight to a Pies player. Like, the guy didn't even have to move to mark it. Green then threw his arms up in the air because noone was there. Holy crap, there was 1 player in the whole forward 50, and he kicked it to his chest, lace out.

Sorry for the rant, and the long post, it's been a frustrating day.

[bjDee 1,249]

If there's one thing Collingwood do well is make your weaknesses blatantly obvious. Today, we had ours exposed to us in front of 75000 people.

1. We seemed stagnant at stoppages today. Pies players always gathered the ball on the move if not at pace. If they missed it they still managed to get a hand to it and knock it somewhere else. We just seemed to stand and wait fore the ball. This happened time and time again, they were so dynamic.

4. Im sorry, but playing on to the right hand side of the back half on a kick out and attempting to kick to some poor bugger standing there, waiting for the ball to hurry up and hit his hands before the 3 or 4 opponents bearing down on him can get there, ISN'T WORKING. Is this the best we can come up with despite the 'press' being around for as long as it has? We are not a precision passing team. If we were, we wouldn't have to play on all the time (see point 2). Every person standing in space for the receiving kick had at least 3 or 4 opponents within a 15m vicinity and they were all evenly spaced. BUT, look at one of their guys and they too had 3 or 4 of our players within 15m, evenly spaced as well as is the nature of the press. If our team insists on kicking to someone standing still, kick to one of their guys and let our boys get a run up and gang spoil/tackle them instead.

Personally, I'd be running that ball out of there with a plethora of organised handballing with an emphasis on outnumbering the defenders in a selected 'division' of the press. Basic stuff, but not a sound football tactic apparently.

Sorry for the rant, and the long post, it's been a frustrating day.

I feel your pain exactly.

I'd like to know how many of those kick outs to the flank actually progressed beyond the drop of the ball towards the Dee's goals vs those that were turned over or went out of bounds. Reckon it's about 20%.

I'd like to add another:

The clearances from hit outs. We might have actually won the day on hit outs (no idea, but that's what it looked like), but you wouldn't know it from the clearances which almost always went in the direction of the pies' goals. We had no (effective) system once the ball left the rucks' hands in the tap out.

[Chicken Deelicious 0]

I feel your pain exactly.

I'd like to know how many of those kick outs to the flank actually progressed beyond the drop of the ball towards the Dee's goals vs those that were turned over or went out of bounds. Reckon it's about 20%.

I'd like to add another:

The clearances from hit outs. We might have actually won the day on hit outs (no idea, but that's what it looked like), but you wouldn't know it from the clearances which almost always went in the direction of the pies' goals. We had no (effective) system once the ball left the rucks' hands in the tap out.

We had about double the hit outs. Dont know the number of clearances, but I can only imagine. Kick-ins must be one of the most problematic part of our structural play. Quick play on, kick to the flank. Knock it over the boundary line and have a stoppage. Your idea of 20% success rate sounds pretty optimistic.