Axis of Bob

If this is the bar you need to jump over to say a team won't win a Grand Final soon, then it would be absurdly easy to write one about every team in the league. For example: Bulldogs: Class is mostly in one area. Defence terrible and defence wins premierships. Zayne Cordy has to take the number 2 big forward. Awful in the ruck. Halve the midfield and you beat them. They're flat track bullies. Went to water when they faced pressure against an understrength Richmond. Brisbane: Defence ordinary after Andrews and struggle to defend run ons. Poor in the ruck. Too many small midfielders who have been bullied around in finals the last few years. Rely on too few to do too much, and they're all similar players. Had their chance in the bubble and still didn't threaten. Port: Butters out indefinitely. Lack a big marking option after Dixon. Too many 'meh' smalls. Struggle to score in tight games. Many players lack class. Best players are either old or young, with middle filled with average footsoldiers. 'Stars' aren't good enough to win games like others can. Had their chance int he bubble ... now they're all a year older. Geelong: Old and lack pace. Midfield lacks class. Ruck is terrible and costs them games. Play a high possession game that can get shut down in high pressured finals. Have struggled to win finals during their run at the top. Their old list plays well during the regular season but doesn't have it in them to raise their game again once the pressure goes up in finals. No team is perfect. Nor are we.

We had a lot of chances going forward and didn't take them, so we shouldn't have given the opportunity for those late decisions to matter. We played badly and they played well. Sometimes that happens. We missed Salem's presence behind the ball quite a lot.

I agree that it's a really good one. The idea of community, the journey, and the many layers of people and support that it takes to make a club is a great message. I really like the indigenous guernseys. Each artwork tells a story and it's wonderful for the broader public (myself included) to be exposed to the significance of them.

Had.

I have a different idea around the idea of Goodwinpressing. I think think the better tactical equivalence is Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid. Klopp pushes men up to win the ball as soon as the opposition gains possession, which is before they have time to make decisions. This is the 'forward press' that was popularised by Ross Lyon. Our game is more Simeone, whose philosophy is to flood dangerous positions on the ground (ie, the centre), and allow possession in places that are easy to defend (ie, near the boundary/touch line). Once you can get the opposition pinned in a difficult position that's when you press them hard and force a defensive kick to a place where you are superior (ie, long down the line). So for Atletico this manifests itself as forwards and mids covering the centre of the ground, allowing easy passess to wide backs and mids who are then pressed hard as the defenders shift across to them, causing a pressured long ball or a turnover. For Melbourne, it means blocking the switch kick and allowing an easy chip wide, before pressing that player hard and preventing them from any kick other than the long kick down the line, where we have our superiority in Gawn, May and Lever. It takes great discipline from players to avoid taking the easy option wide because they are so free. But the next possession becomes extremely difficult, which is where you get the intercepts. FWIW, Atletico is a tactically disciplined team that usually win low scoring, grinding games against more talented teams.

We could be 19-0 playing a 16 man North Melbourne and I guarantee someone would say "This is a danger game."

When was the last time a team didn't make mistakes in a game of footy?

There's a reason why the best teams tend to at, or near, the top in terms of least scores against. It's because strong defence is far more consistent than strong offense. Defences are systematic, so a good team can rely on their defence even when they aren't playing well. The best offenses can blow teams off the park in a matter of minutes, but it's much harder to rely on attacking brilliance, especially when the pressure of finals steps up. I think we win this comfortably because Carlton hasn't demonstrated the ability to defend well when they aren't playing well. They can stay with us for long periods of time, as most teams will, but they've gone to water defensively for periods in each game they've played and let through multiple consecutive goals. Given that we are unlikely to do that, we will probably win by the number of goals that we kick when Carlton have their defensive lapse. But footy can be a funny game sometimes.

I was never a MFCSS sufferer, so this season has just been very enjoyable. But I have noticed that the season has made a lot of supporters uncomfortable, probably because they are torn. They know that we are a good team, but they've defined their whole supporter experience as being that of a loser. Losing is their comfort zone. They know all the jokes about their team being terrible. They know how to react when someone says they're terrible but don't know how to react when we're good. Like someone who has just lost 50kg and they still see themselves as a fat person who is masquerading as a skinny person. I think a lot of supporters are still finding their feet as to who they are as football supporters, now that their football world has been tipped upside down. I think it may take some people a long time. Maybe they'll be telling people that they're still a few kilos overweight forever.

Nah, it was in an article that I read in the past week. I can't remember which on it was, although I'm sure someone out there will know. It's a shame that we can't get access to a lot of those more advanced stats, as they would really be informative. You see a greater level of coverage of a lot of baseball and basketball etc because these advanced metrics are available to help analysts and help them prosecute certain arguments. In baseball you can have interesting and legitimate arguments about whether a pitcher is better because they are getting more groundballs vs flyballs, and then be able to back that argument up with data, whilst we AFL spectators get BT telling us that players should aim at the goals like it's the most complex thing in world sport.

Yep, that's probably clumsy from me. He's not just barrelling through every stoppage waiting for the miracle ball but he's definitely prioritising getting a high impact clearance over defending his opponent a lot of the time. Or at least having him in the centre means that the coaches are prioritising that aspect because of his strengths and weaknesses in that position.

I think there are probably a couple of different ways to look at it. There are the basic stats (often known as 'counting stats') like kicks, handballs, clearances, hitouts, etc.... basically anything where you are just counting the things that happen on the field. Then there are the more advanced stats which can give you an idea of what, in particular, actually helps your team to win. The 17-4 centre clearance stat is a counting stat. It simply counts how many times a team clears the ball from a centre bounce. This will include a dominant clearance where a player runs out of the stoppage and kicks a goal directly, but it will also include a 15m scrub kick forward to a defender (who then moves the ball quickly for a counterattacking goal). Counting stats are nice, but only have limited use. The very interesting thing I saw was that, despite being 17th for centre clearances, we're actually 4th in centre clearance score differential. This indicates that the relative quality of our clearances is extremely high. If you look at the players we have in the centre, we have some very damaging players .... Petracca, Oliver and Viney. If you look at the setups, Petracca often runs a bit of a 'Hail Mary' run through the stoppage. The odds of this coming off are pretty remote, but we have Viney to disrupt anything that goes wrong. We obviously didn't on the weekend but generally our lost clearances are pretty ineffective whilst our won clearances are very dangerous. My favourite stats are ones to do with the expected gains based on a particular event. Things like strokes gained in golf, or expected runs in baseball. Here we can quantify the fractional gain of a good drive vs safe layup shot, or expected number of runs from a sacrifice bunt in baseball vs letting a hitter swing away. It doesn't mean that a golf shot saving you 0.1 shots will have a direct result on that score, but it means that over 100 shots you should be saving 10 shots on average, which builds up over time. These statistical models are built over time using a huge number of instances. I think about footy in a similar way. Something along the lines of the expected scores for different types of clearance, which should show you what to prioritise. For instance, a high quality centre clearance (which is delivered cleanly, unpressured, and deep to a forward target) might average (for example .... these numbers are made up!!) +2.5 points each, whilst a pressured, shallow, hack kick forwards might earn you +0.1 points per clearance. This would mean that a clean clearance is 25 times as valuable as a poor one, so we shouldn't be prioritising poor clearances to the detriment of good ones, even if we get a lot more of them. By the same token, we should be trying to prevent opposition clean clearances as much as we possibly can, even if we have to stop our own wins to do so. A reminder that I made up those numbers to explain an idea. They aren't real! What is real is that the 'counting stat' is far less important than the number of points we are expected to score from centre clearances vs the number we are expected to concede. So this explains why we have Petracca running kamikaze whilst others often are very defensive, and that the presence of Viney is crucial in them. We could definitely be getting more clearances by putting players like ANB, Spargo, etc in there because they can make use of the extra space available in the centre bounce, and sending Petracca (a power player who isn't a great stoppage player) into the forward line. This would improve the counting stat of clearances but we would score fewer points per clearance because the quality of those clearances would drop markedly. So there is a tradeoff: quality of clearance vs quantity of clearance. Quantity is the easiest thing to measure but it can often be misleading when trying to do what you're trying to do ..... which is to score more points than the opposition.

Way, way back in the day, it was only match reports to be found online. Whispering Jack was doing it way back then too, plus Hoju had his own going, with the Melbourne Chronicle along with Demonology. There may have been a few others too. There was nowhere for people to talk about the footy and it was more having some knowledgeable people shouting their thoughts into the universe. Jack was the only place I could find out how the Melbourne players went in the VFL at Sandringham. Demonology was a really interesting place during its heyday. It had a very simple layout that often made it hard to find stuff, but it was a great place to have a debate (especially in the early 2000s). Also, who could forget rono's obsession with turning Darren Jolly into a 'multidimensional tall', playing forward, back and ruck! It's definitely something that Terry Wallace would have done! ? I was on Demonland back in the day too. I was Spunjy (I changed it in 2005 when the forum software was switched to prevent ambiguity, and embraced the 'Spongebob' that I was sometimes called). I never really understood the rivalry between the two sites. I was just happy to have multiple sites to be able to chat about the Dees, although my memory is that most Landers were members of both whilst those who identified as Ologists probably cross pollinated less. I do think that the move across to proper forum software and the really great work put into the site by @Nasher as well as the far superior moderation (Ology always had problems with that) resulted in Demonland becoming a much more welcoming place for newbies. I think that the strength and stability of @Demonlandand @Whispering_Jack as well as Nasher's work was the key reason we have such a vibrant and long standing community which is certainly one of the better fansites in the AFL. Thanks to everyone who helped make that happen, as well as those who helped with many the other MFC sites that have kept me distracted since the late 90s.

A 32 year old Trac is still going to be a hell of a player. He could play in a forward pocket for the last 3 years and still be a nightmare for the opposition. There is a history of power based midfielders like him having excellent longevity in the game too. Shaun Burgoyne had 24 touches and 2 goals in the 2014 Grand Final at about that age. Spreading his contract out over 7 years also provides us with the flexibility to move it around to accommodate players, either by bringing some of it forward or pushing it back. It's much harder to do that with 3 year deals. Also, all decisions like this are based on risk vs reward. Trac is transferring some of his risk to the club by getting more money guaranteed (ie, longer contract) but the flip side for lowering his risk will be in lowering the reward (ie, that the club doesn't have to pay him as much). In our case we are comfortable with the increased risk in exchange for the increased reward. Hopefully we can use that reward on other players to keep a strong group around Trac and hopefully win flags.

I think the lack of clearances is because we replaced Viney with players who aren't Viney. He's a bit polarising on here, but Viney is really crucial to our midfield setups because of his insane intensity and power, especially defensively. He's able to control where the space is and, if something goes wrong, shut it down really well. When you replace that with Brayshaw, for example, then you are getting a big body who hits in straight lines to replace a shifty but powerful tackler. We had one player get 7 tackles against North (Jordon), whilst Viney averages 7 a game. Oliver had 4 and nobody else had more than 4. As a result North were able to walk the ball out of clearances, especially early.

I don't there's any need to change our tactics. Thankfully Tomlinson's role is the easiest to replace, although he was doing it well. His job is just to run with the opposition's big forward and be competitive. At the best teams this role is played by the least talented tall defender, as all they have to do is stand and engage the opponent whilst support flies for the ball. Think of the likes of Astbury, Broad, Balta, or Marcus Adams, or Clurey, or J Kolodjashnij. These are good, honest, reliable talls that have a specific role to play, but the role they play isn't impossible to replace. If May or Lever were the ones to go down they're tough to replace ..... they're uniquely good players that we build our defence around. But we probably still wouldn't change the tactics, we'd just implement them more poorly. I think our forward structures are easier to mess with based on personnel. We have 3 tall forwards available (Brown, TMac, Weid), plus Jackson and Fritsch who play tall and small, so can probably experiment with a one tall (+Jackson and Fritsch), 2 tall or 3 tall forward line at different stages to see what works. Having Fritsch and Jackson show strong ground level skills so far does give us more options.

I'm not for the Goodes comparison. Goodes was a linebreaking, power athlete who played ruck at certain times because he wasn't being exposed by him opponents. His best ruck year was comfortably 2003, and he only averaged 12 hitouts a game that year whilst his back up ruck Jason Ball averaged 15. Playing Goodes in the ruck was the equivalent of playing Joel Smith in the ruck, if Joel Smith was a superstar. Also, Goodes was a straight line runner with immense power. He broke into open space and, once he got there, he was devastating. Such a good player to watch. Jackson is more like a ballet dancer. He's all twists and turns, dancing feet, doing his best work in close confines. There isn't really a good example of him in the game, I don't think. The skills he has are unique, especially in a player of his size. It's hard to know just what he'll end up being because there isn't really a great reference for him.

I’m watching too. Already it looks like the Dogs trying to handball through, but the second tall is a real issue for them. Very interesting.

I don't have access to it you could get an idea from players. That said, a midfield intercept may often created entirely by forward pressure, and a defensive intercept by midfield pressure etc. It's complex. But, FWIW, here are our top 10 interceptors: Rank / Name / Games / Intercepts per game 1 Jake Lever 6 11.17 2 Christian Salem 6 7.67 3 Steven May 5 6.40 4 Max Gawn 6 6.17 5 Michael Hibberd 2 6.00 6 Angus Brayshaw 6 5.33 7 Jayden Hunt 6 5.17 8 Trent Rivers 6 4.83 9 Clayton Oliver 6 4.50 9 Ed Langdon 6 4.50 Interesting that they're all defenders in the top 8 aside from Gawn and Brayshaw. Also, over 11 intercepts a game from Lever is cartoonish. Nobody has finished a year with double figures since they've been keeping the stat.

I know it's going to sound really boring and cliche, but I think it's mostly to do with the players just 'playing their role' better. We've always been really strong at the footy but we just haven't had anyone holding their position on the outside. This means that we have people ready to receive in better positions .... but also those players outside will drag defenders away from the ball and create opportunities for others. By not going for the ball (or sometimes even coming within a kick of the contest) you are able to stretch the defenders and stop them helping each other out. And that requires each of the players to know their role, even if that role is to stay the hell out of the play for a while until the play reaches a certain point. The interview on the club site with Spargo is very good and shows a lot of this. He used the example of Brayshaw, a very good inside midfielder, who is playing as a specialist wingman. He's used to going in to grab the ball in contests and he's now having to run away from the ball to create space and lock up space in defence. That's a hard bridge to cross but he's doing a really good job of it at the moment. In 2018 and 2019, he averaged 10.6 and 9.4 contested possessions a game. In 2020 and 2021 he's only getting 6.5 a game and his overall disposal numbers have dropped significantly. His intercept possessions are well up as are his score involvements, which shows that even though he's not winning as much of the ball, the play that he's involved in is much more important. Last year he was a bit lost playing on a wing but he's playing his role much better and other players are benefiting from it. One of the big stats I see for us this year is intercept possessions (differential) because it's a structural indicator. Last year the top 4 in this were Brisbane, Richmond, Geelong and Port. Richmond have been top 4 in this since 2017. Teams don't just get unlucky and kick the ball to you, they do so because you force them to kick the ball where you have advantage. That's what we're doing. We have +10 intercepts per game, with the Bulldogs 2nd with +3.5. That's extraordinary and the only precedent is the (mostly!) dominant 2018 Richmond team who had +9. It probably won't continue at that level but it indicates a level of structural dominance over games. That's a whole of team stat too because intercepts involve multiple levels of defence: good field position, small forwards harrassing, inside mids pressuring, outside mids holding structure outside the contest, and finally the defenders winning the ball back from the rushed kicks that the rest of the team created.

I think the difference with the handballing we did is that most teams handball as a way of shifting the pressure away from themselves and on to a team mate, because they are under intense pressure. Handballing, in itself, isn't a bad way to play but it depends on how and why you do it. Richmond relies on pressure around the ball to either turn the ball over or to force a longer kick down the line. Teams often feel this pressure and shift the ball to a safe player behind the ball (putting that player, who is in a worse spot, under pressure) or chip it sideways to a free player (which slows the game and forces a long kick down the line). But there are only limited resources on the ground at any time, so you have to make choices about where to spend them. For example, we used Hibberd to tag which has advantages but also robs us of a line breaker. In Richmond's gameplan, they commit players to pressure around the ball and towards the defensive side of the contest, and commit them to defending the long kick down the line that results from that pressure. The tradeoff is that a composed short disposal forwards from the contest will be going into the gap where those pressure players have come from because they only have a finite amount of resources on ground. We exploited this gap with composed handballs to players who were taking the ball forwards. This took the pressure players out of play and forced their down-the-line defenders to come at the ball, which took away their defensive shape and allowed us to get some one on one (or better) looks near goal. To do this you have to be a good team with good footballers around the ball. Salem was wonderful at this by being able to absorb the pressure behind the ball and make great decisions that turned that pressure back against the Richmond tacklers.

Trust me, there's plenty of rubbish that I've got in my post history. But don't look too hard for it! ?

I think Jackson suffers from the fact that he looks so much less like a young ruck/forward than most young ruck/forwards do. He moves so smoothly and with so much coordination that he gets judged like he's a 25 year old. He actually looks too good for his age so people can get fooled into judging his forward play like he's a mature player like Tom McDonald. But he's 19. He's a ruck forward. What he's doing is remarkable. He was beating Ben McEvoy, a 31 year old premiership ruckman comfortably in the ruck and then spreading like a midfielder. He's beaten or halved against every mature AFL ruckman he's played this year. He's a viable forward target against mature AFL key defenders. And he's 19. He has more contested marks this season than any player his age or younger. He gets his hands to more than others because he's much, much better than others. He's 19. McEvoy didn't have as many hitouts as Jackson had yesterday until he was nearly 22 in his 4th season. Lycett was nearly 22. Nankervis didn't even play until he was 22. Jordan Roughead was 24. Max Bailey was nearly 23. Mike Pyke was 25. Brad Ottens was 19. Darren Jolly was 21. That's all of the premiership number 1 rucks for the last 11 years, and they all first got 22+ hitouts when they were playing as a solo/leading ruck, not as a key forward who gave the number 1 a chop out when he was tired. I feel a bit sorry for those who can't appreciate what Jackson is doing. This should be a time of wonder and enjoyment at a kid who is doing phenomenal things at this stage of his career. Sit back and enjoy it.

I love Chunk. He's been a really good, durable player and the sort of player and role model that we're been lucky to have had. Started as an outside runner with an inside midfield's body and he worked hard early in the VFL to change his game to suit what he'd need to be at AFL level. Some players are coach-proof. They don't complain, don't wallow, and just work so hard that they can succeed in any system. Nathan Jones is one of those players. He won B&F's in terrible teams because he just kept turning up and doing the work when others didn't. The journey of an older football is an interesting one, where you initially lose some athleticism to see yourself return to the pack, then eventually lose enough that you are clinging on just to compete. It's a slow, frustrating journey for players who can't play the way they know they can/could but some players can move past that to the point where they see the development and success of younger players as being part of their own success, which becomes very satisfying. I think Nathan Jones is at that point now, and he's playing a very selfless role to help those players achieve that. He's a former captain, former B&F (multiple times) and must take enormous personal satisfaction in his part of turning a woeful, dysfunctional team into a genuinely good one at the end of his career. He may not ever win an AFL flag, but we wouldn't have been able to navigate the way out of the mud without him setting standards and getting the job done, becoming the standard setter that new recruits could aspire to. If we achieve success it will be built on the hard work he did when a lesser person would have given up. Well done. 300 games is no less than you deserve.

A Kozzie taking down Selwood thread, that becomes a TISM thread. What time to be alive. Although it does need more Les Murray.