9 hours ago, deejammin' said:

I mean, we did beat them in Brisbane this year with our worse list. Footy’s a funny game.

The thing is we've historically beaten them up around the ball. They score against us in transition.

I do wonder if @Ted Lasso is right and we should be keeping our competitive beasts in the contest with a more attacking game style...

It will be interesting.

Again, there was no real standout team this year.

Despite it looking like Lions and Suns dynasties, and the Lions going back to back, they arent unbeatable.

38 minutes ago, Adam The God said:

The thing is we've historically beaten them up around the ball. They score against us in transition.

I do wonder if @Ted Lasso is right and we should be keeping our competitive beasts in the contest with a more attacking game style...

It will be interesting.

Again, there was no real standout team this year.

Despite it looking like Lions and Suns dynasties, and the Lions going back to back, they arent unbeatable.

I don’t know if the stats reflect this but watching yesterday it felt to me like they got on top in the third through contest dominance. It was old school midfield brutalisation that changed the game, I thought, rather than back half scoring off transition.

they got on top in the second inside but once they added Neale it was just all over. The cats didn’t want to do the in and under hard stuff and Ashcroft and Neale destroyed them.

It’s funny what works in home and away can easily get exposed in big finals where the value of key forwards drops and inside mids skyrockets

20 minutes ago, Ted Lasso said:

they got on top in the second inside but once they added Neale it was just all over. The cats didn’t want to do the in and under hard stuff and Ashcroft and Neale destroyed them.

It’s funny what works in home and away can easily get exposed in big finals where the value of key forwards drops and inside mids skyrockets

I don’t agree with the key forward point.

They’d only have one flag if Daniher hadn’t dominated last year’s finals series.

And with Andrews impassable, I reckon Geelong would have liked having a decent key forward (with two unbroken arms) to try to make an aerial contest. Neale wasn’t capable.

Also worth wondering how it would have gone had Stewart been available to intercept and to make Gallop/the rest ruck more honest.

11 minutes ago, titan_uranus said:

I don’t agree with the key forward point.

They’d only have one flag if Daniher hadn’t dominated last year’s finals series.

And with Andrews impassable, I reckon Geelong would have liked having a decent key forward (with two unbroken arms) to try to make an aerial contest. Neale wasn’t capable.

Also worth wondering how it would have gone had Stewart been available to intercept and to make Gallop/the rest ruck more honest.

of course Key forwards are always valuable, but consistently we see in big grand finals that the key forwards do struggle to dominate the game, and the inside bulls generally need to play well for you to win.

Brisbane scored 122 points and i believe only 1 goal came from a key forward despite Stewart not being there for the cats, it does show that it's more about pressure and the smaller crumbing players and the mids being able to break stoppages and kick goals.

I believe this is largely by virtue of the fact you don't make a grand final without a strong defensive set up, and so it really becomes a midfield arm wrestle that's often decided by contest dominance and forward half x factor.

This general sentiment is why it concerns me if we throw out our contested game.

We have to be able to play the back half transition game, but then revert to beast mode contest in finals and big matches where the pressure level goes through the roof, and scoring through pure ball movement is much harder.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Adam The God

2 minutes ago, Adam The God said:

This general sentiment is why it concerns me if we throw out our contested game.

We have to be able to play the back half transition game, but then revert to beast mode contest in finals and big matches where the pressure level goes through the roof.

100%. Look how our season started this year when we focussed our off season on being more attacking...we just completely fell apart defensively.

I'm still adamant that the biggest contributor to the result of any AFL match is pressure. Geelong beat Brisbane 3 weeks ago because their pressure was higher. Brisbane turned it around 80 points mostly because they brought the pressure and Geelong couldn't handle it.

The challenge is convincing a group of 23 people of the benefit of sacrificing a bit to focus on the pressure element....not many teams can do it consistently.

Loved Ashcroft's speech on the podium....celebrate for a bit and then straight back to work. What a great attitude.

11 minutes ago, Adam The God said:

This general sentiment is why it concerns me if we throw out our contested game.

We have to be able to play the back half transition game, but then revert to beast mode contest in finals and big matches where the pressure level goes through the roof, and scoring through pure ball movement is much harder.

I agree but also from Kings words about our brutality around the footy - he won’t abandon what he found most defining.

11 minutes ago, Adam The God said:

This general sentiment is why it concerns me if we throw out our contested game.

We have to be able to play the back half transition game, but then revert to beast mode contest in finals and big matches where the pressure level goes through the roof, and scoring through pure ball movement is much harder.

It's why i was really encouraged by what King said about just bringing balance to our game plan rather than us over indexing on contest and defense, they're a weapons but we've had nothing else since 2021.

If we can elevate our scoring, forward 50 efficiency and transition games and retain our contest and defensive strengths we can bounce back really quickly.

MUCH harder to do if we trade off Petracca for a couple of picks in the 20s in a weak draft though.

1 hour ago, titan_uranus said:

I don’t know if the stats reflect this but watching yesterday it felt to me like they got on top in the third through contest dominance. It was old school midfield brutalisation that changed the game, I thought, rather than back half scoring off transition.

This x100

The one thing I’ll always give credit to Goody for is that he had our list primed to play finals footy in 21-23

Putting aside our conversion in front of goal, was there any final in that time that we were beaten on ball? We were in every game to the death and would argue beat ourselves in three of the four finals

Clearly we need more balance to our game to improve our transition and scoring power (and not only rely on winning contest), but finals always show that when push comes to shove in a big game contest is king

You just need to be able to finish your work, which sadly we couldn’t after 21

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by demoncat

It’s all about balance. Brisbane have some contested beasts but they are all good users of the footy and spread well. They compliment them with some players who started as outside runners but have upped their contested ball stats. Combined with generally high level footy IQ you’ve got an elite midfield ready for finals.

The common themes; ball use and footy smarts. Other than those two things, the players lean into what they’re best at.

We have a few younger players that could, with the correct game plan and development, fit that profile in Langford, McVee, Windsor, Lindsay, Howes, Rivers & perhaps Kolt. Kozzy is obviously good at everything….

Heard quite a bit of unsubstantiated stuff about King yesterday which has aroused my footballing fire for 26. If half of it is true we should play some pretty interesting footy next season.

Now back to sleep.

2 minutes ago, JJJ said:

It’s all about balance. Brisbane have some contested beasts but they are all good users of the footy and spread well. They compliment them with some players who started as outside runners but have upped their contested ball stats. Combined with generally high level footy IQ you’ve got an elite midfield ready for finals.

The common themes; ball use and footy smarts. Other than those two things, the players lean into what they’re best at.

We have a few younger players that could, with the correct game plan and development, fit that profile in Langford, McVee, Windsor, Lindsay, Howes, Rivers & perhaps Kolt. Kozzy is obviously good at everything….

Heard quite a bit of unsubstantiated stuff about King yesterday which has aroused my footballing fire for 26. If half of it is true we should play some pretty interesting footy next season.

Now back to sleep.

When you wake up I’d love to hear some of that gossip about King 👀

3 minutes ago, JJJ said:

It’s all about balance. Brisbane have some contested beasts but they are all good users of the footy and spread well. They compliment them with some players who started as outside runners but have upped their contested ball stats. Combined with generally high level footy IQ you’ve got an elite midfield ready for finals.

The common themes; ball use and footy smarts. Other than those two things, the players lean into what they’re best at.

We have a few younger players that could, with the correct game plan and development, fit that profile in Langford, McVee, Windsor, Lindsay, Howes, Rivers & perhaps Kolt. Kozzy is obviously good at everything….

Heard quite a bit of unsubstantiated stuff about King yesterday which has aroused my footballing fire for 26. If half of it is true we should play some pretty interesting footy next season.

Now back to sleep.

Share?

I've lifted this straight from BigFooty but though there were some interesting titbits

58 minutes ago, Adam The God said:

This general sentiment is why it concerns me if we throw out our contested game.

We have to be able to play the back half transition game, but then revert to beast mode contest in finals and big matches where the pressure level goes through the roof, and scoring through pure ball movement is much harder.

Agree with what you say. Our problem was that we were all inside and no outside.We have started to address that clear list imbalance.

Here is my issue though and I hope that it is Kings number one priority. Sort out our forward half of the ground. You can work on transition and slingshot all you like but you are wasting your time if you cannot finish the work off with scoreboard reward. We have been for far too long inefficient and ineffective going forward. Fix this and I believe we can get back to playing finals football again.

It’s only early and he barely has the coaches polo on yet but I have been impressed with him in his press conferences.I believe in him and I look forward to watch consistently more attacking and watchable football going forward.

2 hours ago, Ted Lasso said:

they got on top in the second inside but once they added Neale it was just all over. The cats didn’t want to do the in and under hard stuff and Ashcroft and Neale destroyed them.

It’s funny what works in home and away can easily get exposed in big finals where the value of key forwards drops and inside mids skyrockets

The cats will always give up the inside / contested game as their 1-wood has been scoring from turnovers - in particular defensive half stuff.

Whilst we herald the Lions offesnive game yesterday, you cannot deny their growth on the defence side. Before last year, the Lions were terrible defensively. Yesterday they proved that they could bring a really strong level defence.

Freo bound WOW

Fremantle have picks 11, 29, 38, 47, 65

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by adonski

6 minutes ago, adonski said:

Freo bound WOW

Fremantle have picks 11, 29, 38, 47, 65

you'd think we might be lucky to weasel pick 29 out of them

such a shame

one of the few players who can hit a target by foot coming out of our back 50

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by whatwhat say what

Geelong beat Brisbane 3 weeks ago because their pressure was high and Brisbane couldn’t handle it

Brisbane turned it around 80 points mostly because they brought the pressure and this time Geelong couldn't handle it.

It is about transition footy and skills PLUS applying pressure and winning the contested footy. You can’t focus on one. We became just a contested team and now have to bring the attacking run as well. It’s been early stages but you can see it !!