4 hours ago, von said:

I wonder if players truly understand what is happening with their training programs and why. Players don’t need to understand the science they just need to turn up and complete the prescribed program. The way some players in the media talk it seems as though they don’t. I think this is also a generational thing. Training has changed a lot over the years I assume. From a mental standpoint I can see how players may be coached to work on mental application and preparation with the coaches adjusting their expectations depending on where they are in their training schedules. If players knew they were expected to perform at a lower level would that affect them on game day?

I’ve been pondering exactly this. You’ve put it with much more clarity than I could have. 

I listened to a Cameron Mooney interview and a part caught my attention where he was asked about Geelong dropping a few games during the 2009 season, where they finished 18-4 and won the premiership. This was his rough quote - 

'We started doing a little bit of a rotation through our training, we started doing a really big training block at the end of the season as well, so we had a group of guys who trained really hard, a group of guys who trained medium and another group who trained really lightly. We rotated these groups through a four or five week period. We dropped a couple of games on the back of that, but we knew we were in a really good position. If we dropped a couple of games it didn't really matter, we had our eyes on the prize at the end. Internally we were feeling great, whereas externally the talk was that we had run out of legs and had got to the end of our era.'

It sounds quite a bit like the loading that is discussed here in our era, and I wonder whether we do a similar thing by having different groups of players training heavily at different times, rather than the whole team at the same time.

Here's the link if you want to hear. The relevant part is at 7:15, and it's the podcast 'Cameron Mooney: Geelong vs St Kilda - two out of three ain't bad!'.

Just had the unfortunate experience of watching Lloyd and Ross Lyon on FC (2 blokes that hate us, and wrote us off recent weeks)

Apparently we beat Freo because Matthew could identify 20 seconds in that our  ruthnesness and hunger was much improved.

BUT the 2 $&@@$ did tip us to beat the filth. Ross even said “we are the real deal again” 

 

How do we get Binman on channel 9 / foxtel next year? 

1 minute ago, 1964_2 said:

Just had the unfortunate experience of watching Lloyd and Ross Lyon on FC (2 blokes that hate us, and wrote us off recent weeks)

Apparently we beat Freo because Matthew could identify 20 seconds in that our  ruthnesness and hunger was much improved.

BUT the 2 $&@@$ did tip us to beat the filth. Ross even said “we are the real deal again” 

 

How do we get Binman on channel 9 / foxtel next year? 

God I want to punch those two in the face so hard.

Two weeks ago Lloyd said we can't win the flag, what [censored].

2 minutes ago, 1964_2 said:

Just had the unfortunate experience of watching Lloyd and Ross Lyon on FC (2 blokes that hate us, and wrote us off recent weeks)

Apparently we beat Freo because Matthew could identify 20 seconds in that our  ruthnesness and hunger was much improved.

BUT the 2 $&@@$ did tip us to beat the filth. Ross even said “we are the real deal again” 

 

How do we get Binman on channel 9 / foxtel next year? 

Ross The Boss is my least favourite segment on all of television right now.

BTW I'm watching on delay so I'm about 10 mins behind you. Not looking forward to that foam.

I gave up on footy classified a few years ago - unless there's some off field stuff going on which Caro is great at reporting on the rest is garbage.

18 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I gave up on footy classified a few years ago - unless there's some off field stuff going on which Caro is great at reporting on the rest is garbage.

I think the two eps per week is overkill and takes away from the 'must watch tv' factor that the show used to have. 

@binman - not sure the loading plan involved us, in Round 21, having an extra day break against a side on back-to-back six day breaks and then being steamrolled in the second half...

Loading back on again this week eh

LOL

Not sure what's funny? The same people on here who've been genuinely sucked in by this thread all year, or.... Nah this [censored] is too funny!

Thoughts @JimmyGadson?

Edited August 5, 20223 yr by dazzledavey36

1 minute ago, dazzledavey36 said:

LOL

Not sure what's funny? The same people on here who've been genuinely sucked in by this thread all year, or.... Nah this [censored] is too funny!

Sucked in? clubs are pretty open about loading, if you're denying that's something they do? 

anyways, had nothing to do with tonights result, another poor defensive showing is a massive concern this close to finals

I think we can put this loading crap to bed, we can’t run out games we are just not good enough simple as that, not a chance to win the flag we won’t even make it that far COOKED 

Ive been a devils advocate to the loading theory but I don't believe tonights result puts it to bed. 

Collingwood are playing great team footy. We lost narrowly because we didn't take our chances. 

Not sure about this loading caper. Pies looked fitter and faster than us tonight. 

It’s starting to look like we are trying to replicate 2021 and not taking into consideration the different player fitness bases, and the injuries we’ve accrued along the journey.

I think our fitness department have got it wrong this year. We looked gassed in the last quarter. We didn’t have any energy. That’s a big mistake by the new guy. I think he’s going to be asked a lot of very hard questions.

18 minutes ago, DemonWA said:

Ive been a devils advocate to the loading theory but I don't believe tonights result puts it to bed. 

Collingwood are playing great team footy. We lost narrowly because we didn't take our chances. 

I've never bought the loading theory as being any significant reason for us going from 10-0 to 13-5 prior to last week.

I also don't think that loss = no loading and win = loading, either.

But the way tonight played out doesn't sit well with the notion that we've set our season up to be at our fittest right now:

• First half we had +22 more CPs. Second half only +2
• First half we laid +8 more tackles, despite having +47 more disposals. Second half we were outackled -20 despite the disposal gap staying roughly the same (+46)
• They laid 26 tackles in the tight fourth quarter, double our 13
• We dominated territory in the first half with +23 inside 50s. Second half just +1.

11 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

I've never bought the loading theory as being any significant reason for us going from 10-0 to 13-5 prior to last week.

I also don't think that loss = no loading and win = loading, either.

But the way tonight played out doesn't sit well with the notion that we've set our season up to be at our fittest right now:

• First half we had +22 more CPs. Second half only +2
• First half we laid +8 more tackles, despite having +47 more disposals. Second half we were outackled -20 despite the disposal gap staying roughly the same (+46)
• They laid 26 tackles in the tight fourth quarter, double our 13
• We dominated territory in the first half with +23 inside 50s. Second half just +1.

Yeah agree. But it's also possible we're just not as fit as Collingwood. Loading or otherwise 

1 minute ago, DemonWA said:

Yeah agree. But it's also possible we're just not as fit as Collingwood. Loading or otherwise 

But that's the point - the idea of the loading theory was that we were losing those mid-season games to peak our fitness now. If other sides are doing better fitness-wise than us, including the side which has won 11 straight and therefore clearly didn't need to load up mid-season like us, it's hard to accept loading is why we dropped those mid-season games. If it was, the loading certainly didn't pay off tonight.

We kick straight and it's a comfortable win. I don't think this undermines the loading discussions. That said, we were very poor in the second half.

12 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

But that's the point - the idea of the loading theory was that we were losing those mid-season games to peak our fitness now. If other sides are doing better fitness-wise than us, including the side which has won 11 straight and therefore clearly didn't need to load up mid-season like us, it's hard to accept loading is why we dropped those mid-season games. If it was, the loading certainly didn't pay off 

I'm aligned with that for sure. 

I feel like in the 2nd half we engaged in a shoot out(a little like the dogs game) which is a sign we were not in control. That's got to be a factor too. I'm not devastated by these losses. I think our team is good enough and maybe loosing these sorts of games might spur them on a little. 

Not fit enough! 

47 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

I've never bought the loading theory as being any significant reason for us going from 10-0 to 13-5 prior to last week.

I also don't think that loss = no loading and win = loading, either.

But the way tonight played out doesn't sit well with the notion that we've set our season up to be at our fittest right now:

• First half we had +22 more CPs. Second half only +2
• First half we laid +8 more tackles, despite having +47 more disposals. Second half we were outackled -20 despite the disposal gap staying roughly the same (+46)
• They laid 26 tackles in the tight fourth quarter, double our 13
• We dominated territory in the first half with +23 inside 50s. Second half just +1.

I agree with this. We looked completely out of legs again after half time. Not enough burst from stoppage. I thought our midfield was crushed in the second half tonight.

I think we’ve got our training really wrong. We had no ability to elevate in the last quarter and burst forward. We looked like we did 2 months ago. Something isn’t quite right with the plan.

Fitness wasn’t the problem tonight. We dominated all the stats bar tackling.

This was lost in game plan. We stick to this philosophy of our method beats the opponents. Which gets you through H&A but if the Pies have the one trick. How can you not have a plan A,B &C to take it away from them? We don’t have to alter our method that much. 

Edited August 5, 20223 yr by CYB

On 8/2/2022 at 7:33 PM, binman said:

You might well be right. 

But one of the things I really dislike about not factoring in the impact of  training regimes and preparation on a team's performance is how, in the absence of doing so, often the footy media's and fan's default explanation ends up a variation of mental weakness/soft/got ahead of themselves/didn't turn up type rubbish.

It's just so mind numbingly simplistic and lacking any nuance.

 

https://player.whooshkaa.com/rsn-breakfast-club?episode=1028645

So you're calling out Adam Yze now. Wow I think you might have "got ahead of yourself", yourself.

A big hit to use “loaders” tonight!  More than happy to put my hand up and admit when wrong. 

Absolutely no excuses tonight. And the similarity with other “loading” losses just too uncanny. 

Sure loading is a big factor, but more than happy to acknowledge I placed too big a weighting on how big a factor it is/was. 

Well done to others who favoured other factors. That second half, was just really weak in so many different ways. 

Sorry guys, but I fear this year will go down as a wasted golden opportunity.