With a young team and a wide-open field, I feel pretty certain that this is an important subject with not just our run to the finals but also our potential to impact deep into them. But what would you do if you're Simon Goodwin? And had the chutzpah? 

We have (bracket to consider):

Bulldogs (six-day break - no genuine oppo ruck).

West Coast (consecutive six-day break - lack of ruck, big cross-country travel).

Sydney (back-to-back-to-back six-day break coming off big travel - Friday night game under the lights).

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..  . . . . .

Carlton (eight day break at home).

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . .. . .. . . . ..

Adelaide (in Darwin, six day break, top team, travel and draining conditions).

Port (a similar game set-up but at home - against an interstate ladder contender).

Roos (interstate regional travel).

GWS (interstate regional travel - against an interstate ladder contender).

 . . .  . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . .

Then: An extra day break and a run of three matches at the G' in the lead-up to finals, inc. the Saints, Brisbane and Pies.

?

 

 

 

 

I can't understand why we play Queens bday after the bye round.

It means the bye gives us about a 16 day break and sees us at least having a couple 6 day breaks which are going to be hugely challenging to manage.

Today's game would have been taxing and a few boys will be sore over the next three weeks.

I see the pies have the bye next week, how convenient

 

We have some handy players running around in the VFL.  Wagner and Stretch will come into the team over the next month you'd think.

JKH will get another shot too.

14 minutes ago, deeko said:

I can't understand why we play Queens bday after the bye round.

It means the bye gives us about a 16 day break and sees us at least having a couple 6 day breaks which are going to be hugely challenging to manage.

Today's game would have been taxing and a few boys will be sore over the next three weeks.

I see the pies have the bye next week, how convenient

 

I think the staggered bye is ridiculous, but the fixture is the fixture. What would you do to mitigate the impact deeko?

8 minutes ago, Skuit said:

I think the staggered bye is ridiculous, but the fixture is the fixture. What would you do to mitigate the impact deeko?

It's hard to say mate as everything I'd think of would see us being considerably favoured.... obviously.

The NT games do a bit of damage physically playing in the hot/humid. I would have these played on a Friday night or Sat, then the following round have QB on the Monday giving us 9/10 days recovery then maybe the bye??

I can't believe we would have the bye and play the Monday afterwards followed by 3x6 day breaks. Very poorly designed for us. Mis teams I imagine would want the bye after playing a Sunday game that's followed up by at least a Sat game. 

19 minutes ago, deeko said:

It's hard to say mate as everything I'd think of would see us being considerably favoured.... obviously.

The NT games do a bit of damage physically playing in the hot/humid. I would have these played on a Friday night or Sat, then the following round have QB on the Monday giving us 9/10 days recovery then maybe the bye??

I can't believe we would have the bye and play the Monday afterwards followed by 3x6 day breaks. Very poorly designed for us. Mis teams I imagine would want the bye after playing a Sunday game that's followed up by at least a Sat game. 

I'm talking re. the fixture we have for the remainder of this year as to player management. Probably many surprised that we didn't bring in Spencer when we had the chance. Personally, I think this is putting a huge extra burden on our players - one we've managed to overcome on a couple of occasions due to being a pretty-decent team, but not without a residual impact. But from here? Bulldogs have no ruck - do we go again with our set-up? And then send Gawn on a road-trip? Does Pedo go perm forward? Do we have the luxury of resting players on occasion? How do we manage the impact of the Darwin sojourn? Etc. etc.

1 hour ago, deeko said:

I can't understand why we play Queens bday after the bye round.

It means the bye gives us about a 16 day break and sees us at least having a couple 6 day breaks which are going to be hugely challenging to manage.

Today's game would have been taxing and a few boys will be sore over the next three weeks.

I see the pies have the bye next week, how convenient

 

if we are good enough we will overcome it. if we aren't, ppl like you will look for these type of excuses...

Edited June 12, 20178 yr by mattjm
because

9 minutes ago, mattjm said:

if we are good enough we will overcome it. if we aren't, ppl like you will look for these type of excuses...

Mattjm: occasionally some of us like to have a discussion about tactics without the bs ppl like you look to bring to every thread. Reflect on the point or move on. 

skuit: tactics? ha... do you hear the eagles or dockers crying 'poor me' about flying 7 hours every fortnight?

gimmie a spell precious.

if we are good enough we will overcome the fixture. end of story..

no more 'our boys may be sore boo hoo' mentality...

Edited June 12, 20178 yr by mattjm

1 hour ago, mattjm said:

skuit: tactics? ha... do you hear the eagles or dockers crying 'poor me' about flying 7 hours every fortnight?

gimmie a spell precious.

if we are good enough we will overcome the fixture. end of story..

no more 'our boys may be sore boo hoo' mentality...

That's great mattjm. So your opinion is that we go in with what we consider our best 22 for the remainder of the season? That's fine, if so. It's also a tactic. I was simply asking in what ways we may be able to mitigate some of the burden of the fixture, a la Hawthorn and the Saints and Freo and Geelong during their recent grand-final years by resting/managing payers etc. to gain an advantage over the competition. Apologies if this is considered precious rather than proactive.

I think having a ruck back will help TMac and Jack Watts as they both were looking tired leading into the bye. Jack will also benefit with having Pedo or Hogan in the forward line with him to take pressure off and forcing the opposition backline to have to man up on additional useful tall (in the case of Pedo and even more so in the case of Hogan).

Trac admitted on the weekend that he was starting to struggle by the time the bye came around - so we need to take this into consideration for all of our younger players, of which we have quite a few. Don't want to end up like the last couple of years where we end up with too many players being fatigued at the same time.