Essay Question (500 words max)

[pitmaster 3,519]

OPTION ONE:

Is the high-intensity, numbers-to-the-contest style of play adopted by Melbourne in 2017 too draining for younger teams to sustain over a full season and does this explain Melbourne's fade out in that year?

OPTION TWO:

Can sporting clubs acquire a losing or winning culture over sustained periods of failure or success and have that culture maintained despite the constant coming and going of new and retiring players. Discuss with reference to Melbourne Football Club post-1964, Hawthorn Football Club post-1961 and St Kilda Football Club any time.

Students seeking a high distinction and attempting Option One may wish to incorporate references to the subject of Option Two (allowance an additional 250 words max).

 

[Return to Glory 8,412]

Let me guess, you're a school teacher?

 

[Stretchyourself 42]

Haha. Love it. Don't have time for an essay sorry. But i love our high intensity game. I'm really proud of our team. We've had some great wins this year, and I don't want to judge our whole year from the lens after a disappointing loss.

We have had to deal with more injuries than most, and suspensions. And a shocking draw! But our best is finally as good as anyone. And we are getting more consistent. 

 

The psychology was really hard yesterday. We had everything to lose and gain,  pies had nothing to lose. We looked nervous and will be better for the experience. Patience! 

 

If we get another crack at it,  i think we'll beat port. Week off would do us good. Get Viney back,  maybe even Hogan. Just love our Jesse! 

[The heart beats true 18,110]

I'm a two time university drop out, so I'll give you real world answers (because who has time for 500 words).

Option 1: Too draining for an inexperienced team undoubtedly, but we'll never get there if we don't work through it, and learn to maintain it.

Option 2: Yes and No. No in that our 2 best players yesterday were born in the mid 90's. They could give a stuff about what happened in the 60's. It's only irrational supporters manufacturing links in their minds that create what Roos called 'the veil of negativity'. The pressure to succeed because of a lack of success can create a fear of failure in the players that is self fulfilling. Goodwin knows it. He spoke about 'habits' because they need to replace our 'instincts'. Shifting the 'this can't be happening' instinct to an 'I'm in control of this' habit. 

[praha 11,236]

*cracks knuckles*

The Melbourne Football Club acts as an interesting basis for the critique on the transition from amateur to professional athleticism in the modern game. Is the club's recent failures a byproduct of cultural vulnerability, or is it merely part of the long, rebuilding grind? A question that has plagued Melbourne supporters and the broader football community for years, the answer is perhaps a combination of both.

The notion that Melbourne's current playstyle is too demanding of a young side may be true, but that still raises questions about the club's habits and cultural behaviours. Inconsistentcy is perhaps a better gauge of team youth and inexperience -- inexperience may make it difficult to play consistent football -- and a tough play style that relies on the sport's fundamental non-negotiables shouldnt be part of the problem.

Let's say it is part of the problem: it would then pave way for questions of cultural influence on the playing group, and the so called "soft underbelly" that continues to plague it. A player may ask, "Why go the extra mile if the Melbourne way always leads to failure regardless?" It might not be as direct a question but it would subconsciously affect approach and urgency to demanding play styles.

Ultimately, professional sport is a team game, and so good individual performances tend to get smothered by poor team efforts. The "3 word play analysis" gauge tends to paint an interesting albeit inaccurate representation of the big picture, as 22 average performancrs can still get a team over the line if the team structure and style is upheld.

There's no definitive answer to either question, but it is perhaps easier and more relatable for the fan to say the "losing culture" is the major drive of the problem. We can't possible know if the cultural issues of past years have gone, because the club is still in flux. Yesterday was a step forward and back, because it once again opened discussion about the club's purpose.

The End (?)

No idea of word count.

[Ethan Tremblay 30,828]

Are you Mark Neeld?

[rjay 24,894]

4 minutes ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Are you Mark Neeld?

Mickey Arthur...

I think I will be Shane Watson on this team building assignment.

 

[junk 342]

If younger players cannot sustain high intensity for the entire football season there are two solutions (1) recruit more experienced players especially mid(s) or(2) train existing players up so that they can perform in other areas especially the midfield. From memory Hodge was trained up to become a mid. The club can no afford to make excuses,the captain must make a statement or relinquish the position. We probably need to take a different approach in the game plan against the opposition. Point (1) might mean we will have give up something of importance i.e first round draft pick or a player.

[deebug 1,754]

Way too early for 500 word essays. Even if the season is too long for young players do you think the AFL give a stuff? 

They will just say it is what it is so find a way because we are not gong to do any thing for you.

[leucopogon 1,519]

I think the ordinary end to our year is due to a combination of the taxing game style and the Melbournisation of our leaders (N Jones, T Mac, now Gawn by the looks of it too), the holy grail is something for other clubs to play for, not us. I think we do need to bring in another Lewis/Sam Mitchell type or 2 from a successful club next season and push our Melbournised leaders to the role of foot soldiers or followers, they have no idea how to handle the extreme pressure at the pointy end of the season.

On top of this, I think opposition coaches worked out Goodwin's tsunami game plan and have nullified it. Max Gawn stinking it up since he came back into the team hasn't helped at all. I reckon as an opposition coach you would love seeing players like ANB, Hunt, Harmes, TMac, and Tyson with the ball in their hands as it means you've got a 50/50 chance of getting it back from a turnover. We have far too many butchers and VFL grade players.

 

[bush demon 2,039]

This is the puzzle which hamstrings our club. The past does matter. IMO we have never got over our winning spree  (1938 to mid '65) and certainly have never got over our losing mentality (post '65). How to explain the easy shots which could have put us into the '87 grand final. An ardent dee down this way maintained - on inside knowledge -  that Melbourne 'were not worried' about carlton in '87 and would have put them to the sword.  We choked then, as we have EVERY time we have started to climb the ladder since norm smith and barassi's departure.  i have lived through every one of these false dawns. can remember us climbing up the table in '67, '71, '76 and then our golden years of 1987-1991, when we hit a wall in most of those years ruining our home and away ladder finish and hence our shot at another flag.  Smith may have been an excellent coach but - like the queen, the royal familly rebecca judd and tarax lemonade he was not the messiah or  the panacea, and certainly - i digress here - had a lot of personal business attached with the barassi disaster. i mean if smith wanted the mfc to defend him against an umpire's  libel suit why did he feel free to then  slander  the melbourne committee on live television?  in defence of this year, we have continued to improve our ladder finish four years running, and have the lowest maximum points loss for a season in at least fifty years. ( i couldn't be bothered going back further, but footscray beat us by 40 points in our premiership year, and this year i think our max. points loss was 46 to adelaide, someone can correct me. we are a couple of elite players short of being able to win games we should be winning. we can't rely on our current best 18 to perform to their max through a whole season. we need to maximise the 'melbourne' in our club name by not playing in the backblocks and not playing late Sunday games and then playing the occcasional friday game (instead of watching sydney etc all the time). How we get to that position may rely on the improvement available in players like petracca, clayton, viney, gawn and others. i have invested my two children in the red and blue i hope they aren't memorising players numbers into the distant future like i did.

[Little Goffy 14,473]

'High-intensity' football does not necessarily involve significantly higher gross levels of physical activity over the course of a game, so much as it requires significantly higher levels of repeat efforts at strenuous intervals. While this certainly takes an additional physical toll on players by interrupting recovery cycles, the psychological impact of repeatedly pushing through pain is even greater.

Therefore, it is to be expected that young players with limited experience of the psychological fatigue of AFL-level football would mentally tire during a game and over a season. Symptoms of this fatigue include periods where the effort begins to falter, and where general concentration and alertness slips resulting in other mistakes, moments of panic, and failures to hold discipline or to follow 'team rules'.

Given the psychological nature of these lapses, it is to be expected that a cascading effect may take hold of a team wherein a few visible lapses by some players, a damaging 50m penalty, or a couple of too-easy goals to the opposition, may result in a short-term general failure of psychological intensity as effort appears to be going unrewarded.

The same principle applies across a season as it does within each game. In particular, players are likely to begin nurturing a desire or hope that they will be able to take a rest, the proverbial 'one quiet night'. The practical result of this may be that against opponents seen as weak and where a victory is 'expected', the team may feel they have an opportunity to avoid some of the weekly pain by playing a slightly less rigorous level of football. Similarly, approaching the end of the season and with a vague belief that 'we will be ok now, we're into the finals' lingering in their minds, a relaxation of standards can creep in on the assumption that 'we can lift again later when we really need to'. The inversion of this is that against opponents which offer a serious challenge will prompt the players to collectively set their minds to the task, knowing full well that the pain is necessary and cannot be minimised. The overall result of this would be a team that appears to over-perform against strong opponents and underperform against weak opponents.

If players have a sense that many of their teammates are not 'pulling their weight' to maintain the intensity, then the remaining players take on an additional stress burden of feeling that they are not only carrying a load for others, but also doing so in futility because the overall reward of wins, finals, and premiership opportunities becomes distant and unrealistic. Taken from season to season to season, this erodes the motivation required to maintain the levels of excellence and professionalism required to perform at truly elite level. The most 'rewarding' option then is to play, train, and 'live' at the level of talent they have, without feeling a great need to push through the pain barriers, or to accept the lifestyle self-denials, required for any chance of premiership success.

New players coming into a club can witness this attitude and the behaviours being modeled by senior players, and come to the same conclusions almost inevitable. Thus, the 'losing culture' can be transmitted from generation to generation indefinitely until such time as a circuit-breaker enters the system. Such a circuit breaker would need to be 1. of great standing in themselves, 2. skilled at identifying and motivating players who are willing to be the first to 'step up' to the new standard, 3. bring in new staff and leaders who understand and are dedicated to the standards required, and 4. be prepared to punish or even move on players and staff not willing to make the commitment.

Apologies, I went a little over the word limit, but hey, first draft no editing blahblah.

[Demonstone 22,341]

One I don't know and two I don't care.

[Satyriconhome 10,739]

26 minutes ago, demonstone said:

One I don't know and two I don't care.

Who needs 500 words  totally agree with above

[mauriesy 7,265]

2 hours ago, Little Goffy said:

Apologies, I went a little over the word limit, but hey, first draft no editing blahblah.

Hey ... here's an A+ for you.

[Sir Why You Little 36,991]

Leadership right through the Club, still needs work on and off the field. 

Our 1st Quarter starts are atrocious more often than not, Why? Catch up footy is too taxing when it happens regularly. 

I don't like games in the NT for many reasons, but our season started to nose dive after our trips up there, good Clubs don't touch it.

it's the slow starts that stand out to me, and that is all leadership, we just have to keep recruiting players who possess the right attitude when pressure is applied

[Wiseblood 24,637]

It's more of option one than option two for me.

I think there has been a large combination of things that have both gone against us and haven't worked out as planned.

I feel as though we played some excellent football in the first half of the year, and should have had more wins on the board if not for injuries we sustained in some of them.  That's bad luck, but it also showed a resiliency in the playing group that we didn't know we had.  Up to the Queen's Birthday game we had worked incredibly hard with what we had, and it took it's toll on some of our players, especially when you factor in how much we relied on some of younger players.

In the second half of the year it felt like our intensity, thanks to the super hard work in the first half of the year, dropped off by about 10% and opposition teams started to figure our gameplan.  The 2 off the back of the square looked like a master stroke in the first half of the year, yet it looked like a hindrance in the second.  Teams worked out how to stop us and Goodwin didn't seem to have the answers, which is understandable for a first year coach.  It means that we've had to work even harder for our wins while also putting up with further injuries to key players.

For me, the biggest thing we need to work on is our usage forward of the ball.  We are getting more than our share of inside 50s, but our over use of handball and willingness to just bomb it long have conspired against us.  We need another pre-season into the legs of the younger players, some tweaks to the gameplan and possibly the addition of a key backman as well.

The future is really bright - if we all had of been told we would have 12 wins at the end of the season 99% of us would have gleefully taken it - but there is still work to be done in some areas.

And the curse is absolute rubbish.

[pitmaster 3,519]

OPTION ONE:
Is the high-intensity, numbers-to-the-contest style of play adopted by Melbourne in 2017 too draining for younger teams to sustain over a full season and does this explain Melbourne's fade out in that year?

Thanks to those who took up the essay challenge. I posted the topics for light relief but since a few had a dip Clayton Oliver style I figure I should try to answer my own puzzle. So to begin, I reviewed our match statistics, which is not something I usually dwell on much, but I hoped there might be some patterns that might go some way to explaining our weak end to the year, losing three and recording two uninspiring wins among the last five games.

I found that: In its 12 victories Melbourne won contested possession, clearances and tackles in seven matches. Every one of these seven was up to, and including round 13 against the Dogs. The sole exception to this rule was that we were beaten for contested possession in the win against Essendon, but wiped them on clearances.

From this it would seem Melbourne’s early victories were founded on a basis of winning contested possession, winning more clearances and pressuring the opposition. No surprises there.

In the five victories in the second half of the year Melbourne won these statistical categories on only one occasion, the round 22 win over Brisbane. In the other four wins Melbourne was beaten in at least one of these categories. 

Even during its five losses in the first half of the year Melbourne scored well on these measures, winning the contested possession battle and the clearances count on three occasions while matching the opposition for the tackle count except in the round 9 loss to North (78-94). Indeed, in the round 7 loss to Hawthorn the Demons won contested possession 153-128 and clearances 37-30. Tackles were 85 apiece.

So even when Melbourne lost in the first half of the year it was competitive on these measures. In the second half of the year, the Demons drop off, just as they did during their second half victories.
Of the five defeats beginning from round 15 (Swans) to round 23 (Collingwood return match) Melbourne trailed its opposition in clearances and tackles in every case, and several times by big margins. 

The Swans won contested possessions 157-124 and the clearances 38-27. In round 20 the Giants won the clearances 60-43 and out-tackled Melbourne 119-86. Melbourne also lost the clearances and tackle count by a big margin in round 17 (Adelaide).

All this suggests to me that there is something in the suggestion that a young side faded as the season progressed. Melbourne’s best wins were against Adelaide in round eight, and over the reigning premiers in round 13. Even the wins in the second half of the year - let alone the losses - suggest the side could not maintain the pressure it exerted earlier.

Obviously, injuries were a big factor in the outcome as well and not everything can be put down to an unseasoned side. Gawn, Hogan and Brayshaw missing half or more of the season were massive losses. Equally important were injuries to Jones, Watts and Viney, while the inability of Gawn and Watts to recover their pre-injury form meant the group could not settle into a cohesive unit.
In this context 12 wins looks like an advance. But nothing explains that feeble effort in the first quarter of round 23.

[pitmaster 3,519]

And here is Option Two

Can sporting clubs acquire a losing or winning culture over sustained periods of failure or success and have that culture maintained despite the constant coming and going of new and retiring players. Discuss with reference to Melbourne Football Club post-1964, Hawthorn Football Club post-1961 and St Kilda Football Club any time.

 That culture matters in football can be inferred from Neale Daniher’s approach when appointed to coach the MFC. Among his first moves were classroom sessions in which he laid down his football principles and challenged the players he had inherited with very basic questions such as who they played for: themselves? their team mates? their club?
These questions were scrawled on a whiteboard that Daniher turned away when visitors entered the room. Daniher was trying to create a culture, a way of behaving that all understood but that was fully known only to the playing group and coaching staff. Veteran trainer, Sam Allica commented to Demon magazine how refreshing it was to see players instructed in fundamentals as simple as  “protect the ball carrier”. Such basics had become overlooked.
Well-run clubs use periods of success to create a sense of culture with “self talk” designed to reinforce standards. North Melbourne had “Shinboner Spirit” of which little is heard these days since they are struggling. Sydney has “Swans” Footy”. Both amount to a code for players to play up to including taking hits for the team when it’s your turn and never, ever throwing in the towel.
Former St Kilda and Hawthorn coach Allan Jeans said that he had seen ordinary coaches, and ordinary teams win premierships, but he had never seen an ordinary administration succeed. The off-field scene determines culture as much as the playing group. Hawthorn did not become a powerhouse after winning one, or even two titles (1961 and 1971). It did so much later and with sound administration.
For a contrasting example consider former St Kilda chairman Rod Butters’ admissions of crucial club decisions made in a fog of substance abuse or the fact that the Saints for long period in the 1970s and beyond were the “party club” with players motivated by what was on offer in the social club post match.
But culture can be changed. When Ron Barassi returned to coach Melbourne he complained that the players “had forgotten how to win”.
Barassi changed expectations and John Northey who succeeded him benefitted as a result , taking Melbourne into multiple finals campaigns and a grand final. Northey’s teams were gritty and tough, qualities personified by players such as Lyon, Grinter, Yeats and Brett Lovett. Later, Daniher moulded a culture and led Melbourne to another grand final.
Recently, Paul Roos began the process again and there is a strong hint that Simon Goodwin is continuing that work. The dropping of Jack Watts and Christian Salem for two weeks as the finals approached in 2017 is as much a lesson to the rest of the group: measure up, play your role or you are out: no-one is immune.
It is a mistake to conflate the post-1964 years as one thing emblematic of club culture. Those five decades only look the same if you don’t examine the detail. Following periods of renewal however, Melbourne confronted outstanding teams at the peak of their powers in those two finals. With more luck that history could look very different.