7 hours ago, Salems Lot said:

The first couple of games highlight the mistake the AFL have made in expanding the comp so quickly.  I am a fan because of what AFLW represents as much as enjoying seeing my club in the vanguard of change.  But the standard is ordinary with a couple of exceptions.  Having said that the Dees did seriously lifted in the second half and I would suggest that with 2 howler frees to GWS in front of goal the scoreline flattered them.

As a side note, my son plays cricket with a girl who has switched from soccer to AFLW because she wants to play at the highest level.  She is good enough and will be in the draft in another 12 months.  Seeing her change her direction is exciting and she is one of many who are doing the same thing.  I am still concerned however that the extra teams will really stretch the talent base.

Go Dees!

100% the worst thing the AFL could've done for AFLW is expand it too quickly. The talent drops off very quickly as it is, with new teams it's only going to get worse.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fantastic initiative and what --coach-- has said is what it's all about. His daughter now has female Demon heroes she can look up to and aspire to be, but it will take time before the standard improves to a high level across the board. Instead the AFL has bowed to pressure from other clubs to install more teams and will in fact set the games quality back.

Take a look at womens cricket, it's still only now starting to get to decent level and even then the drop off in abilities is quite sharp.

Great win by the Demon women, keep it up!

I've seen bits and pieces of womens football for about 15 years, since I used to work with one of the St Albans Spurs players, but Saturday was the first full game of AFLW that I have watched. Overall I really enjoyed the day and the contest. There is clearly a lot of goodwill towards making AFLW work and getting it right first time, and I hope this happens.

A few thoughts:

• The skill level, particularly by foot, is poor. There are very few players who can hit a target 25 - 30 metres away. I thought GWS were better at this than Melbourne. Perhaps this is a consequence of bringing in so many players from other sports. Hopefully this improves markedly as the new draftees are players who have been in the sport better.
• Melbourne were much better around the contest than GWS and looked much better in the second half when they were prepared to move the ball forward by any means, rather than chipping the ball around. I doubt they will get a half to sort themselves out against the better teams.
• The gap between the best players and the rest is immense. You could immediately see the effect that losing Paxman had on Melbourne, as one of the few players who can use the ball well.
• I was okay with 13 goals kicked across roughly 70 minutes of play (1 every 5 minutes or so), but we clearly had the best game of the weekend. Anything less than 10 goals a game just doesn't cut it. I suspect the game would benefit from playing on smaller grounds.
• I don't see any reason for the competition to expand from 8 teams to 14 over the next two years. There isn't the player base, and with little or no revenue generated by either the competition or the clubs, all you are doing is creating a massive gravy train. Far better to focus on getting the fundamentals right and having the best product possible over a period of time, and then expand when this is achieved.

14 minutes ago, poita said:

The skill level, particularly by foot, is poor.

I think it's worse by hand 'poita', hand balling is for many about little league standard. It's an area of the game that is really hard to learn. A lot of the congestion is caused by poor use by hand.

15 minutes ago, poita said:

I suspect the game would benefit from playing on smaller grounds.

I think the first thing they could do to fix this is bring it back up to 18 players on the ground. It goes against what I've said before about the talent pool (add no more teams yet) but in this case it might help the game a bit. The players don't kick long enough and play doesn't link up, it doesn't help with the congestion (16 on the ground) in the womens game and is I think in part responsible for the low scores.

2 hours ago, rjay said:

I think it's worse by hand 'poita', hand balling is for many about little league standard. It's an area of the game that is really hard to learn. A lot of the congestion is caused by poor use by hand.

I think the first thing they could do to fix this is bring it back up to 18 players on the ground. It goes against what I've said before about the talent pool (add no more teams yet) but in this case it might help the game a bit. The players don't kick long enough and play doesn't link up, it doesn't help with the congestion (16 on the ground) in the womens game and is I think in part responsible for the low scores.

Spot on rjay, they should not play on large ovals and if that means that all games in Victoria as an example are played on the one ground so be it. In Fridays game a Carlton player was kicking for goal after the quarter time siren it was right on the 50 metre line.

The kick barely travelled 25 metres, now I know that the majority of women will never lick 50 metres but it just shows up one of the glaring problems with the women's game.

IMO the only way the female game will develop to the point of being good is to have a lot different playing conditions to the male game.

Perhaps AFLX is the way the female game should be played?

3 hours ago, poita said:

I've seen bits and pieces of womens football for about 15 years, since I used to work with one of the St Albans Spurs players, but Saturday was the first full game of AFLW that I have watched. Overall I really enjoyed the day and the contest. There is clearly a lot of goodwill towards making AFLW work and getting it right first time, and I hope this happens.

A few thoughts:

• The skill level, particularly by foot, is poor. There are very few players who can hit a target 25 - 30 metres away. I thought GWS were better at this than Melbourne. Perhaps this is a consequence of bringing in so many players from other sports. Hopefully this improves markedly as the new draftees are players who have been in the sport better.
• Melbourne were much better around the contest than GWS and looked much better in the second half when they were prepared to move the ball forward by any means, rather than chipping the ball around. I doubt they will get a half to sort themselves out against the better teams.
• The gap between the best players and the rest is immense. You could immediately see the effect that losing Paxman had on Melbourne, as one of the few players who can use the ball well.
• I was okay with 13 goals kicked across roughly 70 minutes of play (1 every 5 minutes or so), but we clearly had the best game of the weekend. Anything less than 10 goals a game just doesn't cut it. I suspect the game would benefit from playing on smaller grounds.
• I don't see any reason for the competition to expand from 8 teams to 14 over the next two years. There isn't the player base, and with little or no revenue generated by either the competition or the clubs, all you are doing is creating a massive gravy train. Far better to focus on getting the fundamentals right and having the best product possible over a period of time, and then expand when this is achieved.

Good "thoughts" Poita.

GWS prepared for this well. They picked their two toughest players to wear Daisy and O'Dea like a glove for much of the game, (though if Paxman hadn't gone down they probably wouldn't have been able to cover the three of them), so our two best ball users were under the pump most of the time; when they did get clear, they were really damaging. GWS defended in numbers and stopped us spreading from stoppages pretty well; they tried to score on fast breaks, and did move the ball well at times.

As others have said, defensive skills are easier to teach to "average" players than attacking skills - the tackling, for example, has gone up a notch from last year, as has teams playing a defensive strategy. It will take some time for the attacking skills to catch up. And there are a number of players from other sports who have definite athletic ability but are still learning the skills.

The problem about expansion is that now everybody else wants a piece of the pie, including the clubs that were indifferent at the beginning, though other clubs might feel justified in believing they were gazumped at the original allocation. The AFL will probably engineer it so that the big Melbourne clubs, Sydney and Brisbane (GCS) will be at the head of the queue.

On 04/02/2018 at 4:57 PM, fndee said:

 

Im not sure what Mel Hickey offers the team aside from tackling (9 for the game) but a midfielder she ain’t at this stage. 

 

100% agree with this. For a “marquee” player she offered very little on Saturday.

Looked like a fish out of water around the ball and only laid that many tackles because she was second to it at just about every contest.