51 minutes ago, binman said:

Spot on about Collingwood's defensive issues.

The fast, transition footy Mcrae implemented at the pies (designed to counteract the zone defence, contest heavy method that was in vogue) is now the template for how AFL is played.

The method requires the back seven to push up the ground, making it super hard to maintain an effective zone defence whilst also putting a huge emphasis on defenders (and mids, wings and HHFs) needing leg speed to get back on turnover.

Given they won flag with a so so defence, and didn't have super quick back seven, somewhat surprisingly the Pies actually had the best defence in the AFL for most of last season. They mitigated their lack of defensive leg speed by being the slowest in the AFL to play on after a mark or free kick, allowing their defence to get set behind the ball.

But late in the season, injury age and their lack of speed all compounded and their defence fell apart, and they got opened up on turnover.

We had exactly the same issues, though ours were season long. And unlike the Pies our defensive structures were all over the shop. Which meant, that for all the noise about our forward line, our biggest issue was our chronic inability to defend on turnover.

Given Basset was our defensive coach he was bloody lucky to escape any real scrutiny as were a mess defensively.

Goody could have mitigated those issues by setting the defence deep and not playing fast. But instead, we went fast - in fact we were one of the fastest teams in terms of ball movement from the back half and were the quickest at playing on from a mark or free kick.

Obviously, King's method will be more of the same. But King won't have to worry about having our two best mids being butchers, which will mean fewer turnovers to defend. And i really like the mix of defenders with real leg speed he has at his disposal, in particular Disco (who is sneaky quick and zones off aggressively), Xavier Taylor and AMW (who, if fit, will be a key for us).

Goodwin the tactician was up against it with our lumbering, bomb it long midfield who so often seemed to ignore everyone including possibly the coach.

13 minutes ago, Roost it far said:

Goodwin the tactician was up against it with our lumbering, bomb it long midfield who so often seemed to ignore everyone including possibly the coach.

Yep.

With Viney, tracc and Oliver we arguably had the worst kicking midfield in the AFL.

18 minutes ago, Roost it far said:

Goodwin the tactician was up against it with our lumbering, bomb it long midfield who so often seemed to ignore everyone including possibly the coach.

Not just the midfield ... who amongst our backmen were able to hit up targets further afield at pace? They bombed it, much like the midfielders

It's a ruse that we moved the ball quickly from half-back. Long bombs take less time to travel and that was our game plan

Meanwhile, the other teams were sharing the ball at pace but in effect, that takes longer to progress forward than the long bombs

Another useless stat that tells us nothing

1 hour ago, binman said:

Yep.

With Viney, tracc and Oliver we arguably had the worst kicking midfield in the AFL.

Fixed Bin

3 hours ago, binman said:

in fact we were one of the fastest teams in terms of ball movement from the back half and were the quickest at playing on from a mark or free kick.

I recall hearing one of the commentators* later in the season, saying that we had become one of the top three sides for speed of ball movement.

*I can't recall who it was, other than a stats nerd (as opposed to a clown like BT)

Edited 30 minutes ago30 min by Roger Mellie

Food for thought... a winning relay team needn't have the fastest runners.... they need the quickest changovers 😉

If we can transition "effectively" with pace we wont need to be the quickest players by foot... but we'll be an absolute handful for opponents. A lot of defending relies on poor inbounding as well as time to setup. Get opponents on the Blackfoot.... get into their heads that one slip up and we're scoring snags... you've half the game won.

Good going Kingy...

Edited 5 minutes ago5 min by beelzebub