With Brad Crouch allegedly caught will illicit drugs overnight, do you think that would change Geelong's focus back to Viney?

I know it has been said he has signed a 5 year or 4 year deal or some sort of deal, but without an official announcement you have to wonder if he is still being courted by other clubs.  The Crouch incident might mean a club like Geelong look elsewhere, and we know that Jack was high on their list.

Edited September 28, 20204 yr by Wiseblood
Should say 'allegedly' caught.

39 minutes ago, Moonshadow said:

Not as happy as giving up nothing for Viney.

Realistically, I've come to the belief that Preuss will get us a late 2nd rounder at best, which will end up at around 40 by the time bids are matched

I'd bare my rrse in Bourke St if Geelong agreed to your suggestion and the AFL ok'd it

Id have faith that Geelong would not hold us to ransom on accepting pick 35, instead of swapping 17 for 47, when we've just let Viney walk to them for nothing. The 47 (3rd rnd pick) I think would make it pass the tampering sniff test as deanox said with it equating to 27. 

I can't see our club wanting to give everything up for 35. And when I say everything I mean the Tyson trade and development, as well as the 2 years of Preuss development. Geelong would know this and that GWS or Sydney are waiting in the wings with a pick/player trade.

Edited September 28, 20204 yr by John Demonic

55 minutes ago, Nascent said:

Apart Petracca pre-covid and Pickett extending his base "rookie" contract I don't believe anyone else has re-signed throughout the year. Wouldn't surprise me if we await details from the AFL and AFLPA about list sizes and salary cap before making major re-signing announcements. 

Would love to get a contract in front of Rivers, Jackson, Petty, Fritsch, Sparrow and others but that's for another thread.

True, i know a lot of people want Jack gone, but I'm not one of them.

He chose us, when he was a 16 year old boy; as we all know we were in the abyss of mess back then.

Jack has stuck with us, and i know it's stupid i still hope that we can maybe win a flag soon and i would love him to be part of that?

18 minutes ago, Kent said:

As you say very interesting

Could it be there is morre room and less structure at ball ups around the ground compared to Centre bounces?

This table is the ranking of teams by Centre Clearance differential (ie, how many more centre clearances per game more than your opponents) in red, and Stoppage Clearance differential (ie, non-centre bounce stoppages) in green.

 

What sticks out to me is that the lists are reasonably correlated (ie, Port, Geelong, Blues all good, Crows, Tigers, Hawks, Dockers, Swans all stink) but that the answer is probably lying in the teams where there is difference between the lists.

Let's divide them into different categories:

Good centre, lower stoppage: West Coast, North Melbourne, Collingwood.

Good stoppage, lower centre: Gold Coast, Melbourne, Bulldogs.

The first thing I notice about the first group (Eagle, Roos, Pies) is that they each have AA quality ruckmen. Naitanui and Goldstein are enormously responsible for the centre clearances in comparatively weak midfields. I think that this one is pretty easily analysed.

However the other AA ruckman is Gawn, who is part of the second group, which is comparatively poor in centre bounces! That's really interesting! Bulldogs have a great midfield and a terrible tap ruck (at this point), while the Suns have some really strong bodies over the ball (Greenwood, Swallow, Miller, Rowell) and a bullocking ruck (Witts). 

What I think this information leads us towards, is that the centre bounce tends to depend on the quality of your ruckwork (in addition to the midfield) whilst around the ground stoppages rely on the quality of your midfield, with the ruck being only a minor factor. Perhaps the problem is, despite his ability to get his hand on the ball, Gawn just isn't a very good tap ruckman but, rather, just an exceptional around the ground ruck. Or perhaps we just don't design good centre bounce plays.

 

On 9/26/2020 at 2:32 PM, spirit of norm smith said:

Simply have to sign JV up for a further 4 years through to end 2024. 

He has the heart of a lion. You just can’t replace players like Viney. 

2016 B&F winner.
2017 runner up in B&F.
Had foot issues which impacted his 2018.
3rd B&F in 2019
3rd B&F in 2020  Leadership award in 2020.  

Heart and soul of the club.  

 

 

We want you to stay JV 

 

On 9/24/2020 at 11:24 AM, Lord Travis said:

Heard the same thing, but different length deal - 4 years. Either way he's red and blue for the remainder of his career now.

Be interesting to see which players are shuffled out over the off-season!

I have this feeling that the words yourself and Lord Nev heard are the wrong ones.

42 minutes ago, Axis of Bob said:

This table is the ranking of teams by Centre Clearance differential (ie, how many more centre clearances per game more than your opponents) in red, and Stoppage Clearance differential (ie, non-centre bounce stoppages) in green.

 

What sticks out to me is that the lists are reasonably correlated (ie, Port, Geelong, Blues all good, Crows, Tigers, Hawks, Dockers, Swans all stink) but that the answer is probably lying in the teams where there is difference between the lists.

Let's divide them into different categories:

Good centre, lower stoppage: West Coast, North Melbourne, Collingwood.

Good stoppage, lower centre: Gold Coast, Melbourne, Bulldogs.

The first thing I notice about the first group (Eagle, Roos, Pies) is that they each have AA quality ruckmen. Naitanui and Goldstein are enormously responsible for the centre clearances in comparatively weak midfields. I think that this one is pretty easily analysed.

However the other AA ruckman is Gawn, who is part of the second group, which is comparatively poor in centre bounces! That's really interesting! Bulldogs have a great midfield and a terrible tap ruck (at this point), while the Suns have some really strong bodies over the ball (Greenwood, Swallow, Miller, Rowell) and a bullocking ruck (Witts). 

What I think this information leads us towards, is that the centre bounce tends to depend on the quality of your ruckwork (in addition to the midfield) whilst around the ground stoppages rely on the quality of your midfield, with the ruck being only a minor factor. Perhaps the problem is, despite his ability to get his hand on the ball, Gawn just isn't a very good tap ruckman but, rather, just an exceptional around the ground ruck. Or perhaps we just don't design good centre bounce plays.

Both. (re the bolded part)

1. In the second half of the year Max had some really poor games with centre bounce taps.  The taps regularly went to no mans land or to opp midfielders.  For some reason Max's taps have become predictable to ops and they shark them.

2. Clubs will often let our midfielders get first touch/possession at centre bounces, force a turnover and beat us on the outside.  Many clubs have openly talked about this as 'the way to beat Melbourne' for the last two years.  They simply structure up better than us.

We are not getting anywhere near enough value from our 'elite' midfield.

As a result, I suspect we are low on the scores from centre bounces.

Edited September 28, 20204 yr by Lucifer's Hero

1 hour ago, Axis of Bob said:

Interesting. I thought I'd try to get some basic stats to see how we rank. Luckily it's in footywire's advanced stats page.

And you're right, we average fewer centre clearances per game than our opponents (-0.4 pg - 11th best) but are ahead in stoppage clearances (+1.8 - 4th best). 

It's very curious, and something I might have to have a think about. Why are we so much better around the grounds than we are in the centre? Especially given a dominant ruck and a bunch of quality inside mids?

I think you might have hit the nail on the head here though when you wrote earlier that we set up not to concede.

We're happy to have repeat stoppages around the ground, but the easiest way to score against our set up is a quick well directed centre clearance that doesn't allow our defenders to zone off and intercept. It leaves us in 1v1s.

Because we can clog up space around the ground and get more numbers around the clearance, we can afford to go more attacking at these stoppage set ups. We can either have one off the back of the stoppage or the extra at the contest. 

I think ultimately this plan was shown not to work this year, mostly because we struggled to transition from attack to defence or vice versa well enough. We did it a few times (namely that Collingwood game), the Brisbane game clogged up the opposition and then hit them on the rebound, while St Kilda was a similar story, but our ball use going inside 50 was ordinary. 

I'm inclined to agree with the theory that we should be playing more aggressive, attacking football. I think better forward craft will help this and better decision making from our mids. If you look at how we still won the around the ground clearances, I think we should just attack from the centre stoppages too. I'd love to know what Jennings thinks we should do with our set up.

1 hour ago, Kent said:

As you say very interesting

Could it be there is morre room and less structure at ball ups around the ground compared to Centre bounces?

I would have thought the opposite. There's less space when your entire team can surround a stoppage, whereas centre bounces, no one's allowed in but the midfield.

1 hour ago, Axis of Bob said:

This table is the ranking of teams by Centre Clearance differential (ie, how many more centre clearances per game more than your opponents) in red, and Stoppage Clearance differential (ie, non-centre bounce stoppages) in green.

 

What sticks out to me is that the lists are reasonably correlated (ie, Port, Geelong, Blues all good, Crows, Tigers, Hawks, Dockers, Swans all stink) but that the answer is probably lying in the teams where there is difference between the lists.

Let's divide them into different categories:

Good centre, lower stoppage: West Coast, North Melbourne, Collingwood.

Good stoppage, lower centre: Gold Coast, Melbourne, Bulldogs.

The first thing I notice about the first group (Eagle, Roos, Pies) is that they each have AA quality ruckmen. Naitanui and Goldstein are enormously responsible for the centre clearances in comparatively weak midfields. I think that this one is pretty easily analysed.

However the other AA ruckman is Gawn, who is part of the second group, which is comparatively poor in centre bounces! That's really interesting! Bulldogs have a great midfield and a terrible tap ruck (at this point), while the Suns have some really strong bodies over the ball (Greenwood, Swallow, Miller, Rowell) and a bullocking ruck (Witts). 

What I think this information leads us towards, is that the centre bounce tends to depend on the quality of your ruckwork (in addition to the midfield) whilst around the ground stoppages rely on the quality of your midfield, with the ruck being only a minor factor. Perhaps the problem is, despite his ability to get his hand on the ball, Gawn just isn't a very good tap ruckman but, rather, just an exceptional around the ground ruck. Or perhaps we just don't design good centre bounce plays.

 

This is why I've levelled the blame at Max a lot this year. I think we've been super ordinary due to his predictable tap work in the centre square. Part of this could well be he hasn't been able to get off the ground. It seemed to me that he struggled with this, particularly in the second half of the year. This wouldn't be much of an issue around the ground, but the centre square often has much higher leaping going on. Perhaps this is the reason?

29 minutes ago, Lucifer's Hero said:

Both. (re the bolded part)

1. In the second half of the year Max had some really poor games with centre bounce taps.  The taps regularly went to no mans land or to opp midfielders.  For some reason Max's taps have become predictable to ops and they shark them.

2. Clubs will often let our midfielders get first touch/possession at centre bounces, force a turnover and beat us on the outside.  Many clubs have openly talked about this as 'the way to beat Melbourne' for the last two years.  They simply structure up better than us.

We are not getting anywhere near enough value from our 'elite' midfield.

As a result, I suspect we are low on the scores from centre bounces.

This isn't helped by the fact none of our mids are particularly penetrating kicks and we don't really get goals from midfield. This needs to change if we're to take the next step.

Edited September 28, 20204 yr by A F

Isn't Tracc a penetrating kick, A F?

He's very likely to hit the scoreboard more often next year IMO

1 hour ago, Moonshadow said:

Isn't Tracc a penetrating kick, A F?

He's very likely to hit the scoreboard more often next year IMO

Trac is probably the most penetrating out of our mids, yeah. Gus not far behind. We don't kick many goals from centre stoppages though. I can remember that Petracca goal against North. That was brilliant. We need a lot more of that - from all of them. Oliver needs to back himself more when he gets to 50.

Edited September 28, 20204 yr by A F

10 hours ago, Cards13 said:

Spurs were one of the most successful sides ever, this year was the first time they've missed finals in forever, I think it was the longest streak of finals ever in the NBA. Raps won the championship, they went all in, they achieved what they wanted to and this season was a very good regular season but they should have gone further (Celts are playing the Conf finals though).

Trying to boil it all down I'm just trying to look at the value of that player. Is his value to us, at a high wage, better than what his value can be to use without him? ie free agent pick plus his saved cap hit plus potential for other player/s that can make us better? Will it allow us to retain the other guys we need to (Tracc, Oli etc)? That is all I'm trying to look at not the "bleeds for the jumper", "runs through brick walls/he's a finals type player" or leadership he brings (if it was that good we would be playing finals this year...). All ifs and buts but is a great discussion topic in the current climate and Melbs current situation.

What you say definitely has merit but I think there's also plenty to be said for the intangible "culture" as well. My concern is we've spent the better part of 7 years trying to rebuild that and it takes a massive hit if Viney walks.

Wow ... there seem to be 2 camps.

One of my colleagues was in Jack's year level at Carey. Her comment was that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Which is perhaps consistent with the comments that he's difficult to coach.

His attempts to barge through tackles look totally clueless. He invariably gets caught. (A bit like Jonesy before he stopped doing it ... after about 10 seasons !!)

And his refusal to kick on his right foot when that is clearly the best option hurt the side. 

Actually there are 3 camps.I'm kinda in the middle. Don't really mind if he stays or goes. 

On 9/27/2020 at 8:19 AM, Lucifer's Hero said:

Couldn't agree more.  The set-up at stoppages, especially field stoppages is one of our weaknesses as there often isn't an outlet player; instead we play 'stacks on the mill'.

I agree its a coaching issue; I believe it comes back to the game plan and stoppage structures. 

Brisbane re-trained Mitch Robinson from the typical see-ball-get-ball inside mid to a wingmen who among other things patrolled his side of the ground and sat outside the pack as the outlet player at stoppages.  Mitch is not fast and is not the smartest guy in footy yet he is now one of the best wingmen in the AFL. 

I think we have the players that could be developed like Mitch was but it looks lie we haven't chosen to or don't know how to. 

This then comes down to coaching..... Something we aint good at. Having said that that's why JARED POLEC would be ideal as a winger for his run at least and getting the footy of an inside mid.

20 minutes ago, bingers said:

Wow ... there seem to be 2 camps.

One of my colleagues was in Jack's year level at Carey. Her comment was that he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Which is perhaps consistent with the comments that he's difficult to coach.

His attempts to barge through tackles look totally clueless. He invariably gets caught. (A bit like Jonesy before he stopped doing it ... after about 10 seasons !!)

And his refusal to kick on his right foot when that is clearly the best option hurt the side. 

Actually there are 3 camps.I'm kinda in the middle. Don't really mind if he stays or goes. 

BANG! Correct with all comments re JV!  however I would be happier if we negotiate hard an offload him and do a good deal!

Former captain, current vice captain in his prime years of his career, the season has been done for over a week, B and F been and gone and still no announcement. Seems bizarre if he has signed why the club hasn’t announced it yet. Something doesn’t seem right to me, maybe the people making list management and contract decisions have been shown the door or maybe Jack is just weighing up his options.

2 minutes ago, trout said:

Former captain, current vice captain in his prime years of his career, the season has been done for over a week, B and F been and gone and still no announcement. Seems bizarre if he has signed why the club hasn’t announced it yet. Something doesn’t seem right to me, maybe the people making list management and contract decisions have been shown the door or maybe Jack is just weighing up his options.

Maybe they've agreed in principle but still ironing out some details? I'm clinging haha

7 minutes ago, trout said:

Former captain, current vice captain in his prime years of his career, the season has been done for over a week, B and F been and gone and still no announcement. Seems bizarre if he has signed why the club hasn’t announced it yet. Something doesn’t seem right to me, maybe the people making list management and contract decisions have been shown the door or maybe Jack is just weighing up his options.

I think you'll find it's more to do with the afl taking there time letting clubs know the cap size for next year, His red and blue through and through.

2 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Maybe they've agreed in principle but still ironing out some details? I'm clinging haha

Yeah could well be the case but surely the list management side of the club have had plenty of time to get it sorted out. Something just doesn’t seem right to me.

5 minutes ago, Rednblueriseing said:

I think you'll find it's more to do with the afl taking there time letting clubs know the cap size for next year, His red and blue through and through.

Maybe but that doesn’t seem to be stopping other clubs, or maybe it’s just Carlton and their brown paper bags again.

But Viney bleeds red and blue, guys. Don't worry, he'll re-sign. ;)

What is the salary cap for next year?

How many players are On the list?

could this be why we aren’t hearing many deals across all clubs are being locked in?

He's also got officially until the start of November to decide. It's probably wise that he gets some distance from hub life to think things over

24 minutes ago, D4Life said:

What is the salary cap for next year?

How many players are On the list?

could this be why we aren’t hearing many deals across all clubs are being locked in?

I could be wrong but i dont think the AFL and AFLPA have agreed to anything..

Moght explain some delays..... but tbh i dont know.