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In Season - Loading/Periodisation: Put your conjecture here.

Engorged Onion
Engorged Onion
in Melbourne Demons

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We are 100% loading. 

the last 3 games we've gotten into a dominant position and then run out of legs. 

Form, confidence, opposition tactics, our players being a little banged up in some cases are all factors, but there is no doubt in my mind our lack of run, energy and spark is due to a heavy loading phase. 

the same 3 rounds last year we went 1-2 and dropped off dramatically, with commentators saying we were shot.

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    I know pretty much nothing about this loading stuff. But if loading has cost us three wins, then the whole theory/strategy must be called into question.

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    1 minute ago, Fanatique Demon said:

    I know pretty much nothing about this loading stuff. But if loading has cost us three wins, then the whole theory/strategy must be called into question.

    I don't think the plan is to definitely drop the games here - exacerbating factors have not helped (injuries to key personnel at both ends of the ground, and both covid and flu going through the group in the leadup). It appears the question is, do you want to run out of gas on the cusp of finals, or have a mid season dip so that you can be fit and flying come Sept?

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    This is not about loading. Our pressure has been down for almost the entire season.

    We are 17th in the comp! Chew on that for a moment. Only Essendon are worse. You fix that and it is fixable, then we may have our season back,  but don’t think for a moment we will win a final let alone a GF with that effort. 

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    Thought I'd re-post in this thread.

    Purely for context. Richmond whom won the Premiership in 2019.


    Richmond 2019 3 losses during  Round 11,12,13 (North Melbourne, Geelong and Adelaide) - North Bloody Melbourne!?
    2nd halves
    Opposition= 9.2+9.4+13.4 = 31.10
    Richmond = 3.5+3.3+4.8 = 10.16

     

    48 minutes ago, Engorged Onion said:

    A premiership team doesn't lose 3 in a row don't you know..

     

    Screen Shot 2022-06-13 at 19.56.20.png

     

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    We must be loading given our complete inability to run out the last third of games. 
     

    The question I have for the sports scientists among us, is it possible we’re loading too much?  Not only are we exhausted but we seem more injury prone. Could that also be a result of the additional stress on the body of loading?

    Edited by Nairobi_Demon
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    2 minutes ago, CYB said:

    This is not about loading. Our pressure has been down for almost the entire season.

    We are 17th in the comp! Chew on that for a moment. Only Essendon are worse. You fix that and it is fixable, then we may have our season back,  but don’t think for a moment we will win a final let alone a GF with that effort. 

    Pressure (I'm unclear of what makes up that metric) , could you please tell me where the Dogs are? (where do you find the stat @CYB

    My take is - Limited pre-season comparable to others. Depleted from an injury perspective to key personnel (backs, forwards, midfielders)... Potentially doing a hard training block (and even if we remove that), what we know is, is that injuries to key personnel (or playing injured (unspoken)) is THE key correlation to winning premierships.

     

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    3 minutes ago, Nairobi_Demon said:

    We must be loading given our complete inability to run out the last third of games. 
     

    The question I have for the sports scientists amount is, is it possible we’re loading too much?  Not only are we exhausted but we seem more injury prone. Could that also be a result of the additional stress on the body of loading?

    Short answer is no, i'd say we're probably in the heaviest part of the phase now and we'll slowly release it over the next 2-3 weeks and look to be cherry ripe for the run home. 

    I think honestly we've just had a few things go wrong on field at the same time as we've not quite been at our greatest physically, we've got a few players who i think are playing injured, a few who are pretty banged up and losing Steven May has absolutely killed us.

    I think we had a little bit of a blessed run with injury in 2021 and 2022 is a little bit closer to just what you'd expect, especially given we now have Selwyn Griffith in charge who has a very similar program in place to Burgo, but not identical and sometimes individuals respond differently to subtle changes in the conditioning program.

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    Losing key defenders in game has cost us 2 games. 

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    8 minutes ago, Engorged Onion said:

    Pressure (I'm unclear of what makes up that metric) , could you please tell me where the Dogs are? (where do you find the stat @CYB

    My take is - Limited pre-season comparable to others. Depleted from an injury perspective to key personnel (backs, forwards, midfielders)... Potentially doing a hard training block (and even if we remove that), what we know is, is that injuries to key personnel (or playing injured (unspoken)) is THE key correlation to winning premierships.

     

    It’s been on the various media platforms for a few weeks now. 

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    22 minutes ago, CYB said:

    It’s been on the various media platforms for a few weeks now. 

    Thanks for the guidance....😘 anyways...

    2019 - Richmond's Mid Season Report Card...directly after 3 straight losses.

    ""The times Richmond have come up against the leading teams in the competition - Geelong, Collingwood, GWS Giants and even Adelaide – the yellow and black have been well beaten. Throw in costly losses to North Melbourne and Western Bulldogs and that means a third straight finals berth – not to mention a top four finish - is in peril."

    This sounds like a familiar narrative in the media!

    Now I bet if I posted this last year... there would have been howls of derision, as we had not won a premiership yet... (I get it, people require evidence first) - but now having won a premiership...things feel pretty familiar with last year, and even what other premiership contenders have done over the last 4/5 years as a bit of a philosophy....

    All of those teams though, have to contend with legitimate injuries to the top echelon of their playing group...as we are... and this provides another bit of context to make sense of why have we lost 3 in a row...and yet why all is not lost... actually... it's a familiar sight if you're prepared to look amongst the nuance.

    Edited by Engorged Onion

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    9 goals to 3 in the 2nd half, giving up a 20 point + lead in the first half for the 3rd week in a row.

    Nup nothing to see here,  no trend, no similarities to last year :- just a dominant team from earlier in the year, that is now useless apparently :) 

    funny stuff. 
     

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    11 hours ago, Nairobi_Demon said:

    We must be loading given our complete inability to run out the last third of games. 
     

    The question I have for the sports scientists among us, is it possible we’re loading too much?  Not only are we exhausted but we seem more injury prone. Could that also be a result of the additional stress on the body of loading?

    Yes injuries can result from excessive overload, but most of our injuries are from impacts and completely unrelated to training, fitness etc if we had a spate of soft tissue injuries I would be concerned about the training load.

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    Aside from the injuries…Pondering if Swans and Saints supporters have heard of this so called loading phenomenon? Or whether to explain these quite surprising losses, they just  think their teams are just not 

    ‘switched on’

    ‘hungry enough’

    ‘just don’t have enough pressure’

    ‘Have inherent structural problems’

    ’have been worked out’

    😇

     

     

    Edited by Engorged Onion

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    On 6/13/2022 at 8:45 PM, CYB said:

    This is not about loading. Our pressure has been down for almost the entire season.

    We are 17th in the comp! Chew on that for a moment. Only Essendon are worse. You fix that and it is fixable, then we may have our season back,  but don’t think for a moment we will win a final let alone a GF with that effort. 

    And yet we were 10-0 with those same stats...

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    1 minute ago, A F said:

    And yet we were 10-0 with those same stats...

    That's what I keep reasoning on... we're 10-3 (and 10-0) despite dropping down the ratings of pressure and defence. It means that if / when we improve those areas of our game we will be humming. I'm of the belief that our lack of pressure is by design due to the shorter pre-season and the quirks of the fixture, and that the style from last year will be reintroduced in the last third of the year. 

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    After the Geelong Eagles game Hawkins said that Geelong have had increased training the last 2 weeks. Following that comment Nathan Buckley said that all teams are in different training modes depending on their plans for the season.

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    35 minutes ago, Stu said:

    That's what I keep reasoning on... we're 10-3 (and 10-0) despite dropping down the ratings of pressure and defence. It means that if / when we improve those areas of our game we will be humming. I'm of the belief that our lack of pressure is by design due to the shorter pre-season and the quirks of the fixture, and that the style from last year will be reintroduced in the last third of the year. 

    I’ve been wondering this as well - if we are going to ratchet up the pressure in this half of the season. Let’s hope so!

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    19 minutes ago, The heart beats true said:

    https://www.afl.com.au/news/781691/-we-set-up-our-program-to-be-at-our-best-when-it-counts-cats-bold-plan-to-peak-at-right-time
     

    Conjecture over. Looks like some clubs are openly discussing it now.

    Debate over.

    And I wonder why the cats are pushing the loading harder than usual this year??!  Maybe because they witnessed the benefits of it from their opponent in the 2021 prelim. 
     

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    “Scott’s gave context to the performance post-match when he said the team had ramped up its mid-season program significantly as part of a bigger plan to peak during September.

    "It's what we do during the middle period of the year. We double down, even more than we might have done in previous years," Scott said.

    "We might cost ourselves a little short-term, but we set up our program to be at our best when it counts.

    "If we finish ninth because we try to prime ourselves to be at our best later in the year, then we'll live with that.

    "We haven't been able to execute that over the last few years anyway. That's a reason to do it better."

     

    The section I’ve got in bold is why I think Melbourne is not done with the loading for this year and have another 4 week block of hard stuff on the track to come. Our 5 games post last seasons bye also informs that opinion. 

    Edited by Vipercrunch

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    7 hours ago, Engorged Onion said:

    Aside from the injuries…Pondering if Swans and Saints supporters have heard of this so called loading phenomenon? Or whether to explain these quite surprising losses, they just  think their teams are just not 

    ‘switched on’

    ‘hungry enough’

    ‘just don’t have enough pressure’

    ‘Have inherent structural problems’

    ’have been worked out’

    😇

     

     

    Saints supporters on BF definitely bemoaning their lack of "effort" and "heart" last night. They definitely looked sluggish last night (and last week) as did the Swans in the little I saw of them today.

    It's clear most club's aiming for finals (top 4 really) are doing this, my concern is more about our injuries to key players rather than the sluggishness. We will rebound later in the season, of that I have no doubt.

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