We definitely looked sluggish and "off" tonight for whatever that's worth. I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the eating so we will just have to wait and see.

*Conjecture*

Both teams looked cooked, couple that with 5 day breaks. Games just aren't going to be of good standard at this time of year.

Lol we lost tonight because we weren't as good as Geelong, who are also loading btw. 

Look, this got me through the 3 consecutive losses, but we ain’t the only team doing it so need to look at the actual reasons.

We looked 'off' from the word go last night... I was at the ground and in the final quarter, I was pondering a comment made by @binman during the week in reference to Brisbane playing us at the MCG - they were presumably loading, and perhaps felt the % of a win at the G that night was 40/60% best. Thus, let's do some loading. I wonder from a scheduling perspective whether that was not dissimilar from our FD's perspective. It is worth the risk to be 'flat', within a 5 day window, and if we lose at Kardinia Park, then so be it.

As a supporter, I don't buy into the need to make 'statement's, that's just emotional responses to either feel good, or feel quite [censored] as it justifies the weekly proposition that you are only as good or 'bad' as your last game.

Goodwin (and all coaches) have been in and around the system and are shrewd enough  to understand that Round 1-22 is merely the pre-season. The real season then begins.

What feels like a more accurate reflection of what we can achieve from a performance perspective?   Was it the games vs Saints/ Brisbane or vs Freo/Geelong. I'm either optimistic, or blindly naive.

The question as always is why was our pressure and execution down....when there is plenty of evidence that we can perform a particular way.  It certainly aint attitude....

If you like rudimentary graphs... here is one I prepared earlier (that's a nod to Gabriel Gate who did the menu at the presidents function).

Scoring shots per round for the opposition.

 

Edited July 8, 20222 yr by Engorged Onion

7 minutes ago, Engorged Onion said:

The question as always is why was our pressure and execution down.... it certainly aint attitude....

I was at the ground too mate and this is it. It wasn't attitude. We were up for it, we just looked exhausted and this impacted on our ability to mark space, defend stoppage, not fumble (sometimes under little pressure) and make the right decisions at the right time.

Fritsch, who had a trainer to him most of the night, made some horrible decisions. Burning Kozzy in the square like a few weeks ago and then going long to Gawn in a 2 v 1 situation when Petracca was right in front of him all alone.

Outside of the first quarter and a bit, we basically made poor decisions entering our forward 50.

3 hours ago, A F said:

I was at the ground too mate and this is it. It wasn't attitude. We were up for it, we just looked exhausted and this impacted on our ability to mark space, defend stoppage, not fumble (sometimes under little pressure) and make the right decisions at the right time.

Fritsch, who had a trainer to him most of the night, made some horrible decisions. Burning Kozzy in the square like a few weeks ago and then going long to Gawn in a 2 v 1 situation when Petracca was right in front of him all alone.

Outside of the first quarter and a bit, we basically made poor decisions entering our forward 50.

You're both spot on in my view. The intent was there, the legs weren't. 

On TV it looked like we struggled with the ground and footing, never really confident running, and how the ball was bouncing, how slippery it was etc. while they seemed pretty comfortable.

I put it down to "home ground advantage" (cold dewy Thursday night in Geelong with stadium missing winds, is basically how they train).

On 7/7/2022 at 11:43 PM, CYB said:

Look, this got me through the 3 consecutive losses, but we ain’t the only team doing it so need to look at the actual reasons.

Didn’t realise the loading theory or practice depending on your stance was purely a coping mechanism for your stress around supporting the dees 

We could have taken the lead 2/3rds of the way through the Geelong game despite looking sluggish and fumbly. We were under more physical duress than they were. Geelong said they are running on top of the ground now and felt good. They built their season around this game it seems. It will be interesting to see how the two programs play out come season end. They look good now. 

47 minutes ago, von said:

We could have taken the lead 2/3rds of the way through the Geelong game despite looking sluggish and fumbly. We were under more physical duress than they were. Geelong said they are running on top of the ground now and felt good. They built their season around this game it seems. It will be interesting to see how the two programs play out come season end. They look good now. 

Geel might have only done the first phase of the  graph from vipercrunch above! 

Was very encouraged to hear Duckwood say how they had set themselves for this game (exact opposite to his comments after the WCE game, when he said they had been loading) 

We will know to what extend our loading program has worked by how we play R20-R23 - if it has been done successfully, I would be surprised if we lose more than 1 of these last 4 games (despite the tough opposition).

I think we will drop 1 of the next 2. Then 1 of the last 4. Leaving us at 16-6 and a top 4 spot. 
 

 

 

2 hours ago, 1964_2 said:

 

I think we will drop 1 of the next 2. Then 1 of the last 4. Leaving us at 16-6 and a top 4 spot. 
 

 

 

I was just saying to a friend that I'd be thrilled if we win the next two, but surprised, not surprised if we won just the one and not shocked if we lose both.

But I think we will win the next four after the dogs game and go on to remain undefeated and win the flag.

If we follow last year's pattern, we will be running on top of the ground and back to our rampaging best in our round 20 game against freo in Perth.

 

On 7/7/2022 at 11:19 PM, Vipercrunch said:

 

5 minutes ago, binman said:

I was just saying to a friend that I'd be thrilled if we win the next two, but surprised, not surprised if we won just the one and not shocked if we lose both.

But I think we will win the next four after the dogs game and go on to remain undefeated and win the flag.

If we follow last year's pattern, we will be running on top of the ground and back to our rampaging best in our round 20 game against freo in Perth.

 

The only thing I hope is that our competition aren't also here, otherwise we are in trouble.

Serious question but surely they are following a similar strategy?

The winning record in the first half of the season I guess gives us an advantage but...

12 minutes ago, binman said:

I was just saying to a friend that I'd be thrilled if we win the next two, but surprised, not surprised if we won just the one and not shocked if we lose both.

But I think we will win the next four after the dogs game and go on to remain undefeated and win the flag.

If we follow last year's pattern, we will be running on top of the ground and back to our rampaging best in our round 20 game against freo in Perth.

 

That pleases me about Freo. Most feared game we have left personally.

On 7/8/2022 at 2:35 PM, deanox said:

On TV it looked like we struggled with the ground and footing, never really confident running, and how the ball was bouncing, how slippery it was etc. while they seemed pretty comfortable.

I put it down to "home ground advantage" (cold dewy Thursday night in Geelong with stadium missing winds, is basically how they train).

I got the impression the ground was very wet and heavy. There were a few closer shots showing how dug up the ground was. The weather had been dry in the few days before the game, which made me wonder… did they water the ground to make it slower and heavier? They train on it so they’d have a much better feel for how it “played” after a few sessions, and that would take away our explosive midfield edge. 

It’s a wild theory, but it aligns to the idea that they set themselves for this game (and clearly played like they set themselves for it). 

Edited July 10, 20222 yr by Stu

35 minutes ago, binman said:

I was just saying to a friend that I'd be thrilled if we win the next two, but surprised, not surprised if we won just the one and not shocked if we lose both.

But I think we will win the next four after the dogs game and go on to remain undefeated and win the flag.

If we follow last year's pattern, we will be running on top of the ground and back to our rampaging best in our round 20 game against freo in Perth.

 

Yep, am more confident of our chances to win the last 4, than I am the next 2. 

Be an absolute bonus, if we did happen to win the next 2 though! 

Anyone suffering from Thurs night PTSD, needs to watch the lions replay a short 2 weeks ago - If loading has worked, and we are fresh (without injury), I agree that 7-0 and back to back is very likely. 
 

37 minutes ago, rjay said:

 

The only thing I hope is that our competition aren't also here, otherwise we are in trouble.

Serious question but surely they are following a similar strategy?

The winning record in the first half of the season I guess gives us an advantage but...

Firstly, it’s guess work for other teams. We have the template from last year that worked perfectly :- with the context of a similarly strong start to the year, banking wins, and allowing us to press the button on the maximum loading program.

Even if we were say 7-3, we wouldn’t have had the luxury to risk losing games because of training load. 

The other factor is that our game style arguably relies on high km’s and work rate, to a greater extent than the other contenders. 
 

Edited July 10, 20222 yr by 1964_2

3 hours ago, von said:

We could have taken the lead 2/3rds of the way through the Geelong game despite looking sluggish and fumbly. We were under more physical duress than they were. Geelong said they are running on top of the ground now and felt good. They built their season around this game it seems. It will be interesting to see how the two programs play out come season end. They look good now. 

If you look at last year, Geelong were absolutely flying at this point in time too. They had won 10 of their past 11 but it was around early August things started to turn awry for them. 

They struggled to get over North Melbourne, then they lost to the GWS at home, almost lost to a really lowly Saints side and then got overrun by us at home. By the time finals had started they were cooked and Port destroyed them and they never really recovered.

With them going so well at the minute it wouldn’t surprise me that they’ve mistimed their training loads again and stumble in September.

Edited July 10, 20222 yr by At the break of Gawn

This thread is hilarious. Never seen so many people trying to wish away poor form in one place. 

8 hours ago, DemonWA said:

This thread is hilarious. Never seen so many people trying to wish away poor form in one place. 

I'd also like to think that no one who is 'pro-loading' thinks it's the only contributing factor to losses. 

Those same folk who are pro-loading probably recognise that we had injuries in game post our 10-0 run.  They like to ask questions around, how is it that we got to 30 points up and then got comfortably reeled in by Freo in quick time... what contributed to that... and then don't just dismiss it by 'poor form' or 'not hungry' or 'drinking-bathwater'. They recognise that Chris Scott (other coaches etc) and the FD did some things around midfield set-ups that we were either unable to or didn't counteract. The recognise Goodwin constantly talking about 'connection'.

Serious question. What are the factors that contribute to the unoperationalised notional phrase 'poor form in your opinion?

I for one am not a person to look at a bunch of matches and explain it away as 'merely' poor form. For me it is an overarching phrase that is ultimately meaningless.

Players don't lose their skill all of a sudden...nor can they keep effort and pressure up every single game for the entire season... and what things impact on effort and pressure? Things such as health, fatigue, illness, psychological factors of willingness, being aligned to your values....what the other team brings on the day themselves in relation to the 5 things just mentioned.

This thread ultimately isn't focused on outcomes of matches. It's a 'sense making tool' of how things have come to pass.

It's using objectivity and science and the reality of what occurs within the industry.

Loading wasn't spoken about pre 2020 when we'd be inconsistent as ferk, or at least consistently getting rolled by teams.

The fact that we've had two years of 10-0 starts, slumps from rounds 11-19, (11-16 this year) is markedly different from years ( 2005-2018)  when by round 10 we would probably 4-6 if not 2-8. So it's useful to start to inspect things and be curious.

Things have changed, unless of course two years of 10-0 are explained as being lucky and or a fluke (maybe due to the draw?)...so then I become curious as to how did the 10-0 come to pass?

It's good to be curious about how humans perform under scrutiny, particularly in extreme athletic environments. 🙂

 

Edited July 10, 20222 yr by Engorged Onion

8 hours ago, DemonWA said:

This thread is hilarious. Never seen so many people trying to wish away poor form in one place. 

I think like most dees supporters I would love for us to be playing well and winning. ‘Poor form’ isn’t a sensible term for making sense of what we see though. It is just catch phrase, it has components that you can talk about though. It is made up of strategy, skill, fitness and psychological state.

 This thread is discussing the fitness component. I think it is a critical element for understanding what we are seeing. But every one of those elements I have noted effects the others.

 For simplicity sake let’s just say that a skilled footballer doesn’t become less skilled over a season. Although game to game there are certainly micro strategy tweaks, overall we are playing the same strategy that we were playing at the beginning of the year (and last year). That leaves fitness and psychology as our 2 possible variables that are affecting the outcome of games for us. Talking about team psychology feels like a waste of time since we don’t know any of the players well enough to do anything but guess their mental state, arousal levels,etc.

 There is one other significant factor but for the purposes of discussion on the thread topic we ignore it. That is the opposition. How we match up against a given opponent tends to get done to death in post match threads (tbh with precious little insight but plenty of vitriol and passion).

 Those who are pro the idea of periodisation and scaled training loads are basically saying that this is the strongest variable factor during the year on our form. Interestingly fatigue plays into all 4 factors in form - tired player’s skills degrade, tired player’s tend to drop their heads, tired player’s are less laser focused on strategy execution.

10 hours ago, binman said:

I was just saying to a friend that I'd be thrilled if we win the next two, but surprised, not surprised if we won just the one and not shocked if we lose both.

But I think we will win the next four after the dogs game and go on to remain undefeated and win the flag.

If we follow last year's pattern, we will be running on top of the ground and back to our rampaging best in our round 20 game against freo in Perth.

 

Lol.

This thread is truly hilarious. 

Honestly think we lost because the opposition simply were better then us on the night....

Is this whole 'loading' narrative an easy excuse everytime we lose?

1 hour ago, JimmyGadson said:

Lol.

This thread is truly hilarious. 

I totally agree.

Though, i suspect not for the same reasons.