If I understood Gary on SEN correctly and according to the entire time Champion Data has been recording stats that is. Him and Roo went on to talk about the complete disconnect of our mids delivering and our forwards scoring.

Hannan, Mcdonald, Garlett, Spargo, ANB have apparently been the biggest drop offs. Melksham also mentioned, but he has been out for too long so isnt entirely fair.

If that isnt a wake up call, then I dont know what is. We cant put that on injuries, it has to come down to skill and form.

What the hell has happened?

 

 

 

 

Hannan spent half the season out...can’t believe that Garlett played worse than last year...Spargo hopefully second year blues...McDonald well documented & ANB a front runner...good when the team is good. No earth shattering news there. 

8 minutes ago, DSP said:

If I understood Gary on SEN correctly and according to the entire time Champion Data has been recording stats that is. Him and Roo went on to talk about the complete disconnect of our mids delivering and our forwards scoring.

Hannan, Mcdonald, Garlett, Spargo, ANB have apparently been the biggest drop offs. Melksham also mentioned, but he has been out for too long so isnt entirely fair.

If that isnt a wake up call, then I dont know what is. We cant put that on injuries, it has to come down to skill and form.

What the hell has happened?

 

The players appear to refuse to take responsibility for scoring goals whether they are told to [censored] around with the ball as part of some poorly executed plan or they are scared to shoot and hence [censored] around who knows? They continue to invent comical ways of missing goals or turning the ball over. Keystone cops cartoon from where I view.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Kent said:

The players appear to refuse to take responsibility for scoring goals whether they are told to [censored] around with the ball as part of some poorly executed plan or they are scared to shoot and hence [censored] around who knows? They continue to invent comical ways of missing goals or turning the ball over. Keystone cops cartoon from where I view.

Interesting you phrase it that way.  I can remember watching the Swannies games last year. I can remember turning to a b-i-l  ,( who is a Swanny, one of the few that aren't Filth..lol ), and actually making this very comment..."this is farcical, it looks like no one want to take a kick, they're all too scared !! "....and we were... bizarre

1 hour ago, Kent said:

The players appear to refuse to take responsibility for scoring goals whether they are told to [censored] around with the ball as part of some poorly executed plan or they are scared to shoot and hence [censored] around who knows? They continue to invent comical ways of missing goals or turning the ball over. Keystone cops cartoon from where I view.

 

When Trac takes his shots he's such a damaging player. On Sunday he went beck to this rubbish...

Maybe the disconnect Goody is talking about is actually in the FD or between the FD and players rather than the midfield/forward connection.

No surprises.

I know people talk about poor delivery but our forward line has been terrible all season.

No coherent plan. No leading. Dropped marks. Shitty kicking. Not taking shots. Lack of confidence.

Just a disaster.

3 minutes ago, rjay said:

When Trac takes his shots he's such a damaging player. On Sunday he went beck to this rubbish...

Maybe the disconnect Goody is talking about is actually in the FD or between the FD and players rather than the midfield/forward connection.

Yes Rjay

There is  background talk  (unconfirmed) that there may be a problem with the circuitry

We don’t even have a forward line

2 hours ago, Kent said:

Yes Rjay

There is  background talk  (unconfirmed) that there may be a problem with the circuitry

oooh please do go on

Looking forward to the streams of excuses from the happy-go-luckies. 

Should be a read. 

The Melbourne Brand on show....

2 hours ago, stevethemanjordan said:

Looking forward to the streams of excuses from the happy-go-luckies. 

Should be a read. 

And I'm looking forward to reading you label legitimate contributing factors to our form slump as excuses regardless of their validity

Poor coaching, lazy adaptation (or lack thereof) to 6-6-6 rule, dysfunctional leadership, and growing pains for Oliver and Brayshaw, who have both been found out as being extremely one dimensional. 

Dunkley for the Bulldogs is demonstrating the type of player Oliver *should* be, or become, but Clarry is going through the motions and simply playing the year out atm. His performance is eerily Scully-esque circa 2011. His mind appears elsewhere. Very concerning.

Brayshaw seems down on confidence.

Mcdonald has attracted No.1 defender with Hogan gone, and so it's been a learning curve for him. Same with Weeds. 

Garlett, Spargo, ANB have been useless. There goes out forward line.

At one point this year our entire back 6 in Salem, Lever, May, Jetta, Lewis and Hibberd were out. This leads to lack of cohesion and connection with the mids due to lack of experience playing together. 

The variables all point to a pass for Goodwin given all of the above but the entire coaching team's approach has been a symptom of this and I feel Goodwin has been found lacking. It will be a learning curve for him as well.

The stats point to a list badly lack depth, but also a coaching team that had not prepared for nor considered the worst. 

We've blooded some talent in Petty Lockhart Hore Dunkley but these are atm depth players. That Hore was the general in our backline for a few weeks shows how badly hit by injuries we were.

Again though, we've maintained a healthy core, continue to win the ball and continue to get the ball forward. Goodwin's defensive coaching prowess is nonexistent it seems and he would be on notice.

You don't go from premiership fancy to bottom 2. I don't care how badly hit by injuries you've been.

Will be a fascinating next 12 months. Watch this space (if you dare)

 

I have written in another thread that there should be a team rule that anyone within 40m of goal and running free (or for Tracca and Clarrie 50m) must have a shot. No more dinky passes or stupid hand offs to players in worse positions with their backs to the goals. If a player must hand off (being tackled) then only to a team mate running free and facing to goals.

Better to shoot and miss than not to have a shot at all because of some stupid concern about being called greedy or goal hungry. These should be encouraged attributes.

Just shoot. When it becomes normalised we will win more games than we lose because we will be conditioned to scoring with every opportunity.

Simple change.

3 hours ago, stevethemanjordan said:

Looking forward to the streams of excuses from the happy-go-luckies. 

Should be a read. 

D'land reductionism at its finest.

Our midfield is built to bustle, getting an ugly ball forward, never mind the details. Unfortunately the credible rotation has shrunk with Vince and Tyson gone, Jones necessarily finding a new role, and Lewis obviously playing less and less time around the middle.

So the rotation of decent inside mids that we do have is getting tired, and we don't have the depth to let them shift around to spare them from constantly swimming inside the washing machine. Naturally, they can't afford to diversify to do anything more than their core job of bashing it forward, they don't have the legs to run defensively and they don't have the freshness (physically or mentally) to be clean in their ball use.

Injuries on the half-lines (esp. Hibbered and Melksham)  compound the issue and the call-ups from Casey haven't delivered the necessary standard.

Capping off the point, the allegedly lazy fatty Petracca is second only to Oscar McDonald for time-on-ground this season, at over 88%, because we are desperately trying to keep those core mids rotated to the bench while he smoothes his fatgiue up forward.

It is all the old 'too much for too few', and we've had to limit our play to what we can do, instead of what we'd like to do.

 

Meanwhile, our forward line, currently almost entirely injured, has also been almost entirely out of form. The fringe players we had up there providing some diversity last year combined for 3+ goals a game in 2018, but are either not on the field or far down in output this year. For example, 2018 to 2019 goal-per game numbers for players in roughly the same role -

Hannan from 1.5 to 0.7     Nibbler from 1.1 to 0.4       Spargo from 0.8 to 0.3    

You can play around all you like with the mess of Garlett, Vanders, Kent, Hunt, Fristch and so forth, with injuries and positions changing all over the place, but there's not a lot of useful insight there because there's been so much change. I guess the main insight is simply that there has been so much change and disruption.

And clearly, whatever way you mix it, Weideman and Smith are not currently a rival for Hogan's 2018 contribution. Not even combined!

Tom McDonald has been not even half as effective as a forward as he was in 2018. Just as he was showing a pattern of improvement he got injured, so, yeah, life sucks. But it is also notable that in the scattered few games where he did perform well, we mostly won. In fact, his five best games for the season are also our five wins. His numbers in those 5 games are uncannily similar to his 2018 stats, most notably averaging 2.8 goals. Tom McDonald kicked 14 of his 18 goals this season in Melbourne's five wins.

I'd argue that McDonald is second only to Gawn as our most important player, and he has had an absolutely pestilent year with injury, form, and more injury. 

Oh no.

No. No no no no no no.

Ah hell. Oh, this is no good at all, not at all. This will not do.

You know who we really need, the extra tall forward who can float aroud the ground, uses the ball well, and who is currently out of contract and probably unhappy with the way his current club hung him out to dry in the pre-season, and is a Victorian boy currently at an interstate club.

Forgive me. Ahhh I can't even type it.

 

 

Jack Watts.

 

 

We have crucified our forwards this year.  It must be tactics going forward. 

Stats from a few weeks ago on fox footy showed we on average take the easiest shots of all 18 teams, but have almost the worst conversion.  On a level of difficulty, West Coast take the hardest, but have the best conversion.  Watch the difference this week going i50.  West coast spread defences to every inch of the i50 area, and end up scoring from around 1in 2 i50s.  We try and always get the ball into a direct in front corridor, or pass off to team mates in better positions, and score from less than one in three i50s.  

Reminds me of how champion basketball teams can hurt opponents with 3 pointers, and as a result end up with the best FG percentage.  They stretch defences.  We are the equivalent of a basketball team always going for the easy layup or shot from the key.  Too easy to defend against.

That and practice goalkicking.  

21 minutes ago, Watson11 said:

Reminds me of how champion basketball teams can hurt opponents with 3 pointers, and as a result end up with the best FG percentage.  They stretch defences.  We are the equivalent of a basketball team always going for the easy layup or shot from the key.  Too easy to defend against. 

Great  point

have always thought that the 55-60 metre set shot guy who can also play back would be a very damaging player

Edited July 17, 20195 yr by Diamond_Jim

1 hour ago, tiers said:

I have written in another thread that there should be a team rule that anyone within 40m of goal and running free (or for Tracca and Clarrie 50m) must have a shot. No more dinky passes or stupid hand offs to players in worse positions with their backs to the goals. If a player must hand off (being tackled) then only to a team mate running free and facing to goals.

Better to shoot and miss than not to have a shot at all because of some stupid concern about being called greedy or goal hungry. These should be encouraged attributes.

Just shoot. When it becomes normalised we will win more games than we lose because we will be conditioned to scoring with every opportunity.

Simple change.

Kent touched upon the answer up the top there.
It's not a concern about being greedy or hungry.
They're terrified to take the shot and miss.
Better to hand over the responsibility to the next bloke than expose their own poor disposal ..... Again.

 

Edited July 17, 20195 yr by Fork 'em

17 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

Great  point

have always thought that the 55-60 metre set shot guy who can also play back would be a very damaging player

Salem, Oliver, Jones, and Frost all need to hit the scoreboard. Yes even from the backline. They can all slot it on the front from 50.

It's all out fault, we're an evaluative audience: https://believeperform.com/performance/why-are-some-players-afraid-to-shoot/ 

Edited July 17, 20195 yr by TRIGON

T Mac in horrible form (until the last few weeks), Weideman not taking the strides we anticipated, Vanders doesn't play, Hannan misses most of the season and Melksham has also spent plenty of time on the sidelines.  ANB, Spargo and Garlett have done Sweet FA and, really, only Trac and Hunt have seemed dangerous most weeks.  

Add in a midfield that hasn't functioned as well either, and a game plan that's all about the 'chaos' ball, and you add it together to get a very dysfunctional forward line.  Some is down to poor luck with injuries, some of it down to not adapting and a little bit of stubborness as well that took them half the year to acknowledge with the assistant coaching change.

Another way to look at this is that we have the easiest road upward of any bottom 4 team in history.

How many terrible teams would kill to be in the position where if they just fix up their forward entries they'll be good again (at last)?

4 minutes ago, Chook said:

Another way to look at this is that we have the easiest road upward of any bottom 4 team in history.

How many terrible teams would kill to be in the position where if they just fix up their forward entries they'll be good again (at last)?

Good point Chook.