My guess

We did load midseason. But we followed the same approach as last year when our players were fresher and not carrying as many niggles. Shorter preseason as well so we just didn’t have the right base to begin with. Our loading made the situation worse. Just my uneducated and uninformed theory.

Whatever we did, it didn’t work.

Second half of the year we looked flat.

I firmly believe we tried to replicate what we did in 2021, which we had the right to do given where it got us.

But I think the biggest factor in play for our season in 2022 was that we played 12 out of our last 14 games against teams in the 8, including 10 games against the top 5 sides! Our draw ended up being insanely difficult and we couldn’t maintain it every week.

In the same 14 week period Geelong haven’t had to play 2 finals sides back to back at all (and because of the week off still haven’t). They played the Eagles twice, North, Suns, and Saints. Their ONLY games against finalists from round 11 to finals - us, Richmond and The Bulldogs twice (5th, 7th and 8th).

I honestly believe we will never get a draw that hard again. We have played 3 months of finals. I doubt anyone could maintain that.

15 hours ago, BDA said:

Definitely sums up our season. 🙄

13 minutes ago, The heart beats true said:

I firmly believe we tried to replicate what we did in 2021, which we had the right to do given where it got us.

But I think the biggest factor in play for our season in 2022 was that we played 12 out of our last 14 games against teams in the 8, including 10 games against the top 5 sides! Our draw ended up being insanely difficult and we couldn’t maintain it every week.

In the same 14 week period Geelong haven’t had to play 2 finals sides back to back at all (and because of the week off still haven’t). They played the Eagles twice, North, Suns, and Saints. Their ONLY games against finalists from round 11 to finals - us, Richmond and The Bulldogs twice (5th, 7th and 8th).

I honestly believe we will never get a draw that hard again. We have played 3 months of finals. I doubt anyone could maintain that.

Good thinking.  I hadn’t realized just how heavy the load became.  I just hope that this years premiership get such a [censored] 💩 schedule next year. 

I've been meaning to do this for a while.  AFL.com has GPS data on teams, including total distance covered, high speed distance, and number of sprints.  High speed distance is probably the best indicator of fitness. I have plotted them all for 2021 and 2022.  I can't see any strong trends to support loading as a factor in our poorer performances mid year, either last year or this year, especially not with high speed running. 

Last year we averaged 39.4km a game of high speed running and maintained that average throughout the whole season.  In the loading period of rounds 11-18 our output did not really change at all.  This year we averaged 37.8km a game, but averaged 40.2km per game in rounds 1-10, fell off a cliff for 3 weeks (maybe loading), bounced back and then declined pretty much every week all he way through to last Friday night.  

 

 

 

Edited September 13, 20222 yr by Watson11
Added trend lines

Great work.  Thanks @Watson11.

I'll leave it to others to interpret your graphs for loading purposes.

From the graphs, with a few exceptions there is little doubt that from round 10 2022 we were worse in all three measures.  Round 11 2022 was when our injuries started, some players were ill and we had three losses in a row.  We didn't get a full 14 day bye.  Progressively from round 11 our injury toll mounted.  I won't list all the players but the list is long and it kept growing especially knee and foot injuries.  It meant fewer fully fit players had to carry more of the work load.  Not sure where the breaking point is on a player or a team but we hit it.

The error in our ways imv is we didn't use our VFL players enough to give the injured players a decent spell to rehab with the side benefit of getting some experience into the next group of players.

I'm sure there are many other factors that caused the 2022 drop off after round 10 and equally sure the club will go through those in great detail.

Edited September 13, 20222 yr by Lucifers Hero

@Lucifers Hero I added trend lines for both seasons to make what you were saying obvious.  

@binman Burgo's comment that against Gold Coast last year the physical output of the group was off the scales is pretty easy to see.  You have to feel sorry for Gold Coast that day. They had 46.4km of high speed running and 314 sprint efforts, which were off the charts compared to every other opponent we played but still lost by 100 points (the next best running effort was 40.7km).  

15 minutes ago, Watson11 said:

@Lucifers Hero I added trend lines for both seasons to make what you were saying obvious.  

@binman Burgo's comment that against Gold Coast last year the physical output of the group was off the scales is pretty easy to see.  You have to feel sorry for Gold Coast that day. They had 46.4km of high speed running and 314 sprint efforts, which were off the charts compared to every other opponent we played but still lost by 100 points (the next best running effort was 40.7km).  

Thanks for adding the trend lines.

It is easy to see why we went 10.0 this year from a fitness perspective.  What the trend lines show that after round 10 2022 we were worse in all three elements and the gap vs 2021 got bigger and bigger.  Maybe we went too hard a bit too early in 2022?

We virtually fell off the cliff as the season went on in 'High Speed Distance' which would be consistent with our inability to move the ball quickly down the wings and implement our overlap running from d50 to f50.  In 2021 this element was relatively flat for the whole season.  The increasing rate of the drop off for 2022 is quite alarming.

It all says we did fantastically well to be second on the ladder as about a third of our players (most of them in our best 10)  had heavily strapped knees, feet and ankles for much of the second half of the season.

Edited September 13, 20222 yr by Lucifers Hero

3 minutes ago, Lucifers Hero said:

  Maybe we went a too hard a bit too early in 2022?

 

I remember hearing a journo (Sam Edmund?) say early in the season that he had been told by a dees player that the preseason was the toughest they had done

8 minutes ago, binman said:

I remember hearing a journo (Sam Edmund?) say early in the season that he had been told by a dees player that the preseason was the toughest they had done

Interesting given that it was a shortened preseason.

So on the back of that tough, short preseason we charged out of the starting blocks for 10 rounds, did better on the 3 metrics than 2021 and then started to hit the wall and injuries exacerbated it.  And we never recovered enough to go the distance.

The graphs and your comment suggest we might have got the timing of our fitness schedule a bit out of kilter.  Hopefully, we get it right next year.

 

As an aside, I'm avoiding using the word 'loading' as it is very emotive and could sidetrack the discussion of the illustrative work @Watson11has put together.

Edited September 13, 20222 yr by Lucifers Hero

25 minutes ago, Lucifers Hero said:

Interesting given that it was a shortened preseason.

So on the back of that tough, short preseason we charged out of the starting blocks for 10 rounds, did better on the 3 metrics than 2021 and then started to hit the wall and injuries exacerbated it.  And we never recovered enough to go the distance.

The graphs and your comment suggest we might have got the timing of our fitness schedule a bit out of kilter.  Hopefully, we get it right next year.

 

As an aside, I'm avoiding using the word 'loading' as it is very emotive and could sidetrack the discussion of the illustrative work @Watson11has put together.

For me an interesting questions is the philosophy of not resting players and how that philosophy intersects with getting the program right

We didn't do it last year, and it worked. It is hard to argue it worked this year.

Half the season, we looked like extras from a civil war film with all the bandages and limping. 

1 hour ago, binman said:

For me an interesting questions is the philosophy of not resting players and how that philosophy intersects with getting the program right

We didn't do it last year, and it worked. It is hard to argue it worked this year.

Half the season, we looked like extras from a civil war film with all the bandages and limping. 

That is the $64 question.  One on which the fitness, medical and coaching department need to look each other in the eye and have a serious heart-to-heart.

I reckon Pert and Roffey will be asking the hard questions of the FD.  They may not have the data and the graphs but the 'eye' test spelt out what was happening quite a while ago.

Edited September 13, 20222 yr by Lucifers Hero

Compare Geelong they have rested players when the opportunity arose throughout the season, Selwood, Dangerfield etc now they look fresh - they did have a very easy draw compared to us but in hindsight it does appear we drove the squad into the ground

1 hour ago, Lucifers Hero said:

That is the $64 question.  One on which the fitness, medical and coaching department need to look each other in the eye and have a serious heart-to-heart.

I reckon Pert and Roffey will be asking the hard questions of the FD.  They may not have the data and the graphs but the 'eye' test spelt out what was happening quite a while ago.

The club would have all the data and graphs plus more, down to the individual players, and they would know exactly who was dropping off in terms of running as soon as it happened.  Why those players kept being played is more complex, and probably should be a discussion for the Culture thread, but I don't think the blame should be on the FD at all.  

Burgo had a lot of FD managers from AFL clubs, soccer clubs, NBA teams etc on his podcasts, and discussion is often about who makes decisions on players with injuries, and it is pretty universal that it is the Head Coach. The FD/medical staff's role is to provide the information, data, and risks to the coaches.  I can only assume MFC is the same.  

 

 

1 minute ago, Watson11 said:

The club would have all the data and graphs plus more, down to the individual players, and they would know exactly who was dropping off in terms of running as soon as it happened.  Why those players kept being played is more complex, and probably should be a discussion for the Culture thread, but I don't think the blame should be on the FD at all.  

Burgo had a lot of FD managers from AFL clubs, soccer clubs, NBA teams etc on his podcasts, and discussion is often about who makes decisions on players with injuries, and it is pretty universal that it is the Head Coach. The FD/medical staff's role is to provide the information, data, and risks to the coaches.  I can only assume MFC is the same. 

I was meaning Pert and Roffey may not have the detailed data and graphs but they don't really need as one could see that we weren't 'fit' and not playing out games.

Interesting that it is left up to the head coach.  In that case Goodwin (and maybe the selection committee) have some answering to do.  I'm sure Pert and Roffey will be asking the questions!

6 hours ago, Lucifers Hero said:

Great work.  Thanks @Watson11.

I'll leave it to others to interpret your graphs for loading purposes.

From the graphs, with a few exceptions there is little doubt that from round 10 2022 we were worse in all three measures.  Round 11 2022 was when our injuries started, some players were ill and we had three losses in a row.  We didn't get a full 14 day bye.  Progressively from round 11 our injury toll mounted.  I won't list all the players but the list is long and it kept growing especially knee and foot injuries.  It meant fewer fully fit players had to carry more of the work load.  Not sure where the breaking point is on a player or a team but we hit it.

The error in our ways imv is we didn't use our VFL players enough to give the injured players a decent spell to rehab with the side benefit of getting some experience into the next group of players.

I'm sure there are many other factors that caused the 2022 drop off after round 10 and equally sure the club will go through those in great detail.

Correct. 
apologies to you LH! We had some discussions earlier in the year, and with the benefit of hindsight you were correct, and I was wrong. 
 

We should pool all our data together and make a super data machine 

9 hours ago, layzie said:

We should pool all our data together and make a super data machine 

@Nasher see, this is the kind of client I am talking about…

#ICTlyf

Thanks to @Watson11 for those grapahs above. Pretty obvious our output didn’t even sustain let alone improve.

I hope the FD and High Performance team have some learnings out of this year. 

But, primarily, I just want our banged up stars to get a break, get healthy, and have a strong pre-season. The rest can flow from that.

This article in today's 'Age' discusses our habit of fading out late in games as well as the talk about Jackson.

It's interesting that the Club denies our players were banged up or that there was a lack of fitness.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/not-so-fast-eagles-unlikely-to-talk-pick-no-2-for-jackson-trade-20220913-p5bhth.html

10 hours ago, layzie said:

We should pool all our data together and make a super data machine 

like a flux capacitor

On 9/13/2022 at 3:16 PM, Lucifers Hero said:

Great work.  Thanks @Watson11.

I'll leave it to others to interpret your graphs for loading purposes.

From the graphs, with a few exceptions there is little doubt that from round 10 2022 we were worse in all three measures.  Round 11 2022 was when our injuries started, some players were ill and we had three losses in a row.  We didn't get a full 14 day bye.  Progressively from round 11 our injury toll mounted.  I won't list all the players but the list is long and it kept growing especially knee and foot injuries.  It meant fewer fully fit players had to carry more of the work load.  Not sure where the breaking point is on a player or a team but we hit it.

The error in our ways imv is we didn't use our VFL players enough to give the injured players a decent spell to rehab with the side benefit of getting some experience into the next group of players.

I'm sure there are many other factors that caused the 2022 drop off after round 10 and equally sure the club will go through those in great detail.

Lucifer. Thanks for that.  A good explanation - not an excuse - for our decline. 
GO DEES

8 hours ago, BDA said:

like a flux capacitor

 

Really need to get round to making one of these someday..

10 hours ago, Demonstone said:

This article in today's 'Age' discusses our habit of fading out late in games as well as the talk about Jackson.

It's interesting that the Club denies our players were banged up or that there was a lack of fitness.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/not-so-fast-eagles-unlikely-to-talk-pick-no-2-for-jackson-trade-20220913-p5bhth.html

Hmmm. I hope that is just bluster to avoid looking like you are giving excuses…

10 hours ago, Demonstone said:

This article in today's 'Age' discusses our habit of fading out late in games as well as the talk about Jackson.

It's interesting that the Club denies our players were banged up or that there was a lack of fitness.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/not-so-fast-eagles-unlikely-to-talk-pick-no-2-for-jackson-trade-20220913-p5bhth.html

This line amused me:  "They will re-examine their method of play and the mentality of players to become more conservative with the ball once a lead was established".

It is what playerrs were instructed to do in the first 10 rounds.  Goodwin notably said after the GCS game:  we didn't need to score (in the last quarter) !!  The same tactic was very noticeable after the second Port game and they nearly ran us down.  It is hard for players to unlearn something once ingrained. 

Early in the year we were able to get the momentum back when teams were starting to overtake us  Not so later in the season. The graphs above tell the story why!

Edited September 14, 20222 yr by Lucifers Hero