Post Match Discussion - Round 5

[DubDee 26,117]

Maybe we are just an average side

[Jaded No More 68,974]

I thought last week’s capitulation was out of character and an aberration. Guess not. 

So I think the game plan is have 3 forwards and 10 defenders. Try to win ball, handball around to raise everyone’s Supercoach rankings. If ball is not yet turned over, find Gawn on the boundary, bomb to him. Hope he marks. If he marks, make no attempt to run back, just let him kick it to whichever poor bastard is playing at FF with 3 defenders on him. Ball comes in, ball rebounds out. Opposition score. 

Have I nailed it?

[titan_uranus 25,043]

One of the problems with our NQR players is each is good at just one thing.

Harmes tackles. ANB runs. Hunt is fast. Stretch spreads. Tyson can get a clearance.

But outside of these things they're good at, they're not good at anything else.

So people will inevitably say the FD won't drop Harmes because he laid 9 tackles, but he is useless in all other aspects of the game. ANB breaks running records but can't make a good decision. Stretch gets into the right spots but then fumbles every time he goes near it.

Compare these players to someone like Higgins. Higgins has Hunt's pace, but also Harmes' tackles, Garlett's goal-kicking nous, etc. 

[DeeZee 7,445]

I am so peed off at this club it’s not funny.

why the hell cant we score all of a sudden?

why do we leak so many goals to the opponent every game?

why can’t we play out a whole game?

[Watts the matter 1,235]

9 minutes ago, ignition. said:

The biggest issue is the game plan!

I feel like a broken record saying it.

I find it hard to judge the players when clearly they've been told to run together in a wave.

Yes, they seem to win a lot of the contest. But everything is rushed. They bang it on the boot inside 50, they handball to a teammate in danger. Then when it's lost the opposition gets out far too easily because they were all in or around that wave. It is just so incredibly inefficient. The inefficiency is the cause of the fade outs. If it was one of two game plans fine, I wouldn't see an issue running with it for half a quartet at a time. But it's not. There no plan B. There's no spread. There's no hitting up the short chip or mid-range kicks. In fact they're very little kicking to a lead up man (because there was no spread in the first place).

Yes we got out classed, but it was only because of a [censored] poor game plan. I'm sick of it. The coaching staff need to improve "their" game first and foremost!

The first clearance of the game basically summed us up.

Extra man at the back of the square (Hunt) runs through and kicks the ball instead of handballing.

Surprise, surprise, hits the extra Richmond player on the chest. 

We are dumb and don't function well as a team.

[The Swimming Dee 1,904]

13 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

It was a 14 point margin 10 early in the fourth quarter. We ran out of puff one down on the bench and the best side in the comp got a run of goals on, but the issue isn't the last 15 minutes.

The issue is that we have now played 5 straight games with the same problems each week.

For the first 16 minutes of the third quarter, Richmond had one possession in their forward half. One. Inside 50s were 12-1. But we'd only kicked 2 goals when we should have kicked 5. We lifted our effort for those 16 minutes, we dominated general play, but we continue to stuff it up inside 50.

Same problem in Q1 - the first 10 minutes was predominantly played in our forward half but we kicked 1.6 or something and didn't put any scoreboard pressure on.

A few things are apparent. The first is that opposition sides know how to set up against us and it's the same every week - an extra defender behind the play. I'm embarrassed that we can't work out what to do to get around this tactic. Literally every side has used this against us to their advantage.

What is also apparent is we have far too many NQR players who aren't good enough: ANB, Wagner, Stretch, Harmes, Vince, Hunt, Tyson. Our reliance on NQR players leads to too many going up and none staying down, momentum-killing turnovers, selfishness creeping into the better players (Gawn a prime example), wasted inside 50s.

Too much is being left to too few. Oliver and Petracca are expected to be leading the club but they have no support. Gawn is dominating the ruck but we can't buy a clearance. 

There were positives: the back 6 was markedly better this week. Eventually the toll of our awful forward line/midfield was too much, but for much of the game our backline held its own. OMac and Lever are improving, Lever's best game. Hibberd and Jetta also played much better.

But if the coaches can't work out how to get the side to score when the opposition drops an extra behind the ball, we're not going to get close to the finals. It's simply not good enough.

The best post I have read in a long time.

 

[buck_nekkid 6,046]

Ok.  I have taken a few moments to calm down (the smug Tigers whankers sitting behind me sent the old blood pressure through the roof...).

It was a full pressure game, Tigers played 4 quarters of it.  Under pressure, we fumbled, rushed, and had no tempo.  The first quarter we went helter skelter, and a little bit of poise could have seen us well in front.

We corrected our defense at 1/2 time, and ran a deeper ‘wall’ across half back.  This significantly improved our ability to rebound.

A huge issue is we love to play contested ball - but we are hopeless at scoring from stoppages in our 50, and leak too many from stoppages in the D50.  Seems like so much hard work ends up being wasted.

third quarter was a cracker.  Pressure ramped up, and both teams going hard.  We gave up a couple of easy goals and turned our efforts into nothing.

WE have a lot of issues.  3 goals in 5 quarters is pathetic.  We rely on halving the centre contest and winning the contested ball.  Apart from the third, we were shredded at clearances.  Max might win the taps, but when the tigers stream forward out fo the middle, it is a difficult game to win.

Weids gets a pass mark.  The list of those who do not is too long for me to bother.  The big problem is no one really put their hand up at Casey (except Pedo, but do we need another tall?)

The problem is not the game plan, or the personnel.  It is the game plan using this group of personnel.  Something has to give with either of these variables.  We really need big wins over the next 4 to get our season back on track.

[Devil In Disguise 2,278]

Jayden Hunt is a worry & looks nothing like the player he was last year. Goodwin put the white flag up when he picked Stretch ahead of Hannan, didn't drop Harmes (putrid 2 weeks in a row) & left an in form tall in Pedo out of the team.

[Leoncelli_36 2,264]

1 minute ago, Jaded said:

I thought last week’s capitulation was out of character and an aberration. Guess not. 

So I think the game plan is have 3 forwards and 10 defenders. Try to win ball, handball around to raise everyone’s Supercoach rankings. If ball is not yet turned over, find Gawn on the boundary, bomb to him. Hope he marks. If he marks, make no attempt to run back, just let him kick it to whichever poor bastard is playing at FF with 3 defenders on him. Ball comes in, ball rebounds out. Opposition score. 

Have I nailed it?

That's it isn't it. Nail on the head. It's a putrid game plan. You may also wish to add Max's hitout plan to smash the ball blindly into space for the opposition and at Centre bounces he taps to the outnumbered side of the contest. It's genius stuff. 

[bing181 9,328]

2 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

Harmes tackles. ANB runs. Hunt is fast. Stretch spreads. Tyson can get a clearance.

Agree on all that, though I'd take Tyson's "can get a clearance". Not to be scoffed at.

[DeeSpencer 26,081]

Richmond at the MCG are the fittest, fastest and easily best team in the comp.

I watched Geelong, Adelaide and GWS all play the same game we did against the Tigers last year in the finals.

Want to spread it more against the Tigers pressure and work rate, good luck.

Reacting to slippery conditions and a bad game where we over possessed the ball last week we were always going to play pretty safe but at least we had the ball moving faster.

The 3rd quarter (and parts of the first and 2nd) showed it's not actually a cardinal sin to go long down the line if you have the talls and smalls in the right spot.

Our hands aren't slick enough around the contest and we don't have the class on the outside to nail the kick that opens up the play. Besides that we need to work on our team work with men up and down but the side has and will keep changing and it can't all be fixed over night.

Tonight was far better than the Hawthorn game obviously and not out of line with our first 3 weeks. Heck it might even have been better.

[SPC 3,551]

We had 3 players within this team able to change the course of events.. Richmond had 22

[ding 5,126]

1	Richmond	5	16	137.9	4	1	0	517	375	W L W W W
2	West Coast Eagles	5	16	132.3	4	1	0	520	393	L W W W W
3	GWS Giants	5	14	131.7	3	1	1	470	357	W W L W D
4	North Melbourne	5	12	135.2	3	2	0	434	321	L W L W W
5	Geelong Cats	5	12	116.5	3	2	0	481	413	W L L W W
6	Hawthorn	5	12	114.1	3	2	0	493	432	W W L W L
7	Adelaide Crows	5	12	108.4	3	2	0	452	417	L W W L W
8	Port Adelaide	5	12	105.3	3	2	0	435	413	W W W L L
9	Sydney Swans	5	12	104.4	3	2	0	450	431	W L W W L
10	Fremantle	5	12	104.2	3	2	0	421	404	L W W L W
11	Gold Coast Suns	5	12	87.1	3	2	0	359	412	W W L L W
12	Collingwood	4	8	106.7	2	2	0	352	330	L L W W
13	Essendon	4	8	99.2	2	2	0	378	381	W L L W
14	Melbourne	5	8	88.8	2	3	0	421	474	L W W L L
15	St Kilda	5	6	73.1	1	3	1	334	457	W L L L D
16	Western Bulldogs	5	4	67.4	1	4	0	358	531	L L W L L
17	Brisbane Lions	5	0	68.6	0	5	0	336	490	L L L L L
18	Carlton	5	0	65.2	0	5	0	337	517	L L L L L

14th is about what we deserve. Our percentage also starting to look ugly.

What the hell has happened to our team?

 

[Delusional demon 82 1,197]

The only positive that can take out of our current situation atm is that we’re in almost exactly the same position as we were this time last year 2 -3  , in fact only difference is that we’ve finally beaten norf 

how we go against Essendrug on Sunday will tell us a lot  , the next 4 rounds are all very gettable games , hopefully coinciding with the return of Viney and TMac 

[Watts the matter 1,235]

2 minutes ago, ding said:

1	Richmond	5	16	137.9	4	1	0	517	375	W L W W W
2	West Coast Eagles	5	16	132.3	4	1	0	520	393	L W W W W
3	GWS Giants	5	14	131.7	3	1	1	470	357	W W L W D
4	North Melbourne	5	12	135.2	3	2	0	434	321	L W L W W
5	Geelong Cats	5	12	116.5	3	2	0	481	413	W L L W W
6	Hawthorn	5	12	114.1	3	2	0	493	432	W W L W L
7	Adelaide Crows	5	12	108.4	3	2	0	452	417	L W W L W
8	Port Adelaide	5	12	105.3	3	2	0	435	413	W W W L L
9	Sydney Swans	5	12	104.4	3	2	0	450	431	W L W W L
10	Fremantle	5	12	104.2	3	2	0	421	404	L W W L W
11	Gold Coast Suns	5	12	87.1	3	2	0	359	412	W W L L W
12	Collingwood	4	8	106.7	2	2	0	352	330	L L W W
13	Essendon	4	8	99.2	2	2	0	378	381	W L L W
14	Melbourne	5	8	88.8	2	3	0	421	474	L W W L L
15	St Kilda	5	6	73.1	1	3	1	334	457	W L L L D
16	Western Bulldogs	5	4	67.4	1	4	0	358	531	L L W L L
17	Brisbane Lions	5	0	68.6	0	5	0	336	490	L L L L L
18	Carlton	5	0	65.2	0	5	0	337	517	L L L L L

14th is about what we deserve. Our percentage also starting to look ugly.

What the hell has happened to our team?

 

Have really shot ourselves in the foot.

Have a very tough fixture to end the season and needed to get off to a flyer.

[Elegt 872]

6 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

One of the problems with our NQR players is each is good at just one thing.

Harmes tackles. ANB runs. Hunt is fast. Stretch spreads. Tyson can get a clearance.

But outside of these things they're good at, they're not good at anything else.

So people will inevitably say the FD won't drop Harmes because he laid 9 tackles, but he is useless in all other aspects of the game. ANB breaks running records but can't make a good decision. Stretch gets into the right spots but then fumbles every time he goes near it.

Compare these players to someone like Higgins. Higgins has Hunt's pace, but also Harmes' tackles, Garlett's goal-kicking nous, etc. 

harmes missed a large amount of tackles tonight.. Higgins isn't fast, he's just  good old fashioned small forward nothing too fancy, with no glaring  deficiencies

[billyblanks29 184]

6 minutes ago, buck_nekkid said:

Ok.  I have taken a few moments to calm down (the smug Tigers whankers sitting behind me sent the old blood pressure through the roof...).

It was a full pressure game, Tigers played 4 quarters of it.  Under pressure, we fumbled, rushed, and had no tempo.  The first quarter we went helter skelter, and a little bit of poise could have seen us well in front.

We corrected our defense at 1/2 time, and ran a deeper ‘wall’ across half back.  This significantly improved our ability to rebound.

A huge issue is we love to play contested ball - but we are hopeless at scoring from stoppages in our 50, and leak too many from stoppages in the D50.  Seems like so much hard work ends up being wasted.

third quarter was a cracker.  Pressure ramped up, and both teams going hard.  We gave up a couple of easy goals and turned our efforts into nothing.

WE have a lot of issues.  3 goals in 5 quarters is pathetic.  We rely on halving the centre contest and winning the contested ball.  Apart from the third, we were shredded at clearances.  Max might win the taps, but when the tigers stream forward out fo the middle, it is a difficult game to win.

Weids gets a pass mark.  The list of those who do not is too long for me to bother.  The big problem is no one really put their hand up at Casey (except Pedo, but do we need another tall?)

The problem is not the game plan, or the personnel.  It is the game plan using this group of personnel.  Something has to give with either of these variables.  We really need big wins over the next 4 to get our season back on track.

Completely disagree. The problem is the game plan and not the players. We were one of the highest scoring sides last year. What has happened?  Goodwin thought he had to evolve but he didn't. 

Edited April 24, 2018 by billyblanks29

[Jaded No More 68,974]

Just now, Delusional demon 82 said:

The only positive that can take out of our current situation atm is that we’re in almost exactly the same position as we were this time last year 2 -3  , in fact only difference is that we’ve finally beaten norf 

how we go against Essendrug on Sunday will tell us a lot  , the next 4 rounds are all very gettable games , hopefully coinciding with the return of Viney and TMac 

If we win the next 4, I’ll be shocked, amazed and delighted. 

With this game plan and a side full of plodders who can’t kick, handball or run fast, we are going to be lucky to beat St Kilda and Carlton who are both due for a win. 

[rjay 25,088]

22 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

I think the structure of our side is almost right.  We miss Viney and T Mac, and our some of our fringe players are well down on confidence, but I like how we set up tonight.  Weideman straightened us up, did some good things and wasn't disgraced when he pinch hitted in the ruck either.  Lever played his best game for the club and linked up well with O Mac, while Jetta and Hibberd looked much better as well.

Add in two of our leaders and get our confidence back up and we're back in the season.  However, that's going to take some tweaking of the game plan and some hard work over the next few rounds for that to happen.

What it showed me tonight is it's not right & not likely to be right this season even with the addition of Viney & T Mac.

We have too many one paced players and no real outside run, carry and class. We have lot of grunt players who play there best as inside mids playing out of position.

This needs to be addressed in the off season with free agency & trades.

[Go the Biff 3,442]

19 minutes ago, McQueen said:

I was being facetious, biff.

A better game plan being developed in 2 days... you know... funny??

Ah, whatever.

All good - my sense of humour has been shunted a bit tonight. FWIW the article is a pretty good read.

[Adam The God 30,411]

2 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

Whilst I agree that the way we play is a problem, I don't think the problem tonight was defensive. For three quarters our press kept us in the game because of our effort.

The problem was we weren't scoring, so every time they scored it hurt more than it should have.

We should have been leading in the middle of the third, we'd been absolutely dominant. But because we don't convert momentum/dominance into scores, it all falls apart when the opposition gets on top (which will happen vs sides like Richmond, Hawthorn and Geelong).

Completely agree, but whenever they went inside 50 or there was a stoppage inside defensive 50, they looked like scoring and often did. 

But I was ropable in the first quarter, because I knew we'd lost the game by kicking 1.5. We simply didn't look like scoring in the second because we'd kicked so poorly in the first that it was as if we didn't believe we'd kick goals.

Scoreboard pressure is one of our main failures the last fortnight. We simply haven't converted our dominance into legitmate scoreboard pressure. This has a lot to do with our dysfunctional forward line, but also our inaccuracy. We're failing to do the basics right. It's interesting because historically, our accuracy has often won us games. But if ever there was a time we needed to go back to doing the basics properly it's now. We constantly fumbled again, missed gettable shots and defensively often had no one out the back of the packs playing the sweeper role. Like last week, we probably conceded 8 to 10 goals because we lacked the discipline of having a sweeper back, which if you look at Richmond's backline, they continually had.

[Coq au vin 755]

11 minutes ago, BrisbaneDemon said:

I had great hope for Tonight, I actually thought if we turned up we would win.

Our defensive structure is nonexistent at the moment, we’re playing such a high press that is too easily beaten, we need to throw some serious cash at a highly rated defensive coach, look what Leppa as some for the Tigers.

Also what has happened to all of dash and exciting football that we played last year, we’re so vanilla this year it’s not enjoyable watching us play, we kick long down the line to an out numbered person. We aren’t running two ways and we aren’t playing for each other.

i agree with a lot of people here that we’re not destined for finals, Gawn really needs to start sending it down the throats of our midfield, he hits it to space and the opposition grab it and off they go.

at round 5 I’m not enjoying watching us play, the bomb it long to a contest it Mark Neeld esk.  

The defence was not the problem for 3.5 quarters. The scoring was the problem. We got it into our 50 often enough but couldn’t capitalize on it because of poor skills, fumbling, bombing it in long, missing targets by foot and missing shots on goal. They stacked our forward fifty with lots of their players so this put pressure on our forwards and contributed to fumbling and getting caught with the ball when trying to play on and kick goals or pass to team mates, resulting in turnovers and coast to coast goals to them. There was also some poor decision-making e.g Tyson kicking backwards into their forward 50 and missing the target by a mile instead of going forward. Late in the last quarter when the game was already lost the defence leaked. But by then the momentum was all their way. It was too late, we’d missed our multiple opportunities to score.

[scarlett 247]

15 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

I think the structure of our side is almost right.  We miss Viney and T Mac, and our some of our fringe players are well down on confidence, but I like how we set up tonight.  Weideman straightened us up, did some good things and wasn't disgraced when he pinch hitted in the ruck either.  Lever played his best game for the club and linked up well with O Mac, while Jetta and Hibberd looked much better as well.

Add in two of our leaders and get our confidence back up and we're back in the season.  However, that's going to take some tweaking of the game plan and some hard work over the next few rounds for that to happen.

While i agree we miss viney and t-mac and believe they will make a difference its the lost generation of players thats hurting us. Vince, Lewis and not so much jones but he shouldn't be relied on for this is what this club is missing. Players that should be in the same experience group as viney, t-mac, gawn and hibberd (jones should be getting pushed out to where vince/lewis are) that are just consistent and know what to do. Our list is badly balanced with  lewis and vince not being pushed out because of this. Theres too much for to do for these few and we rely on younger players and role players to do more than their capabilities.

12 minutes ago, Wiseblood said:

Can we fit Hogan, T Mac and Weideman in the same side?  Or are we too top heavy, even factoring in Hogan playing further up the ground?

Weids help in the ruck was good. Provided more than pedo. I think him and t mac taking turns to spell gawn will work. Hogan is very mobile and t mac can be used as a marking link between the arcs a lot more while still leaving structure forward. Weids tackling and chasing has always been good. Id rather t mac replace harmes than weid.

11 minutes ago, Forest Demon said:

This isn't the the first time I've said this, but our game plan, and the type of players we have set the team up with isnt working.

We rarely have open options when we move the ball, as opposed to our opposition who seem to have a lottery of options.

Our "outside" players, half forward flankers etc, are guys like Harmes and ANB. Decent back up mids, but we need players in those roles to have more class.

Im not a huge Watts fan, but when we let him go, I said we better know what we are doing, as it leaves Salem as our only real top class reliable kick.

We have loaded up on contested types, but it ain't working,

Watts was in that age/experience group but couldnt be relied on. Perhaps salem needs a role change. While hes not the quickest either is gaff but he uses his skills well. We know salem goes in hard but wouldnt we be better off having it shovelled out to him with a fraction of a second more time?

[Straight Sets Simon 23,113]

On a night when there was a lot of fumbling (even moreso than usual) we leave out or cleanest player in Fritsch.

Not saying we would have won but he would have helped.

[Moonshadow 17,677]

19 minutes ago, BrisbaneDemon said:

I am amazed at the amount of times 4 demons fly to spoil the ball.......

It's very Melbourne-like. Happens repeatedly every week. Often resulting in a cheap goal out the back