Axis of Bob

OK. Viney does multiple roles, and it varied depending on who is in the centre with him. Here is one against St Kilda, without Oliver. It's Viney, Brayshaw and Petracca. This is set up for Petracca to have the who far side open to him. Viney blocks out Steele, Brayshaw gets inside Jones to block and Petracca beats Ross and gets to the far side with space. This is shown below: Unfortunately the play breaks down because Brayshaw can't get inside Jones to block him out, so Jones gets the ball before it gets to Petracca. Viney, on the other hand, gets Steele out of position and is therefor a non-factor in the stoppage. This is shown below. I show this as an example of how important these roles are in stoppages. Here is another, with the play designed for Oliver. Oliver is to beat Shiel to the tap to the far side, with Viney blocking out Merrett to create space and Melksham playing purely defensively on Stringer (near side). Essentially: Merrett give Viney the slip early, which puts the play in jeopardy. But Viney is able to recover to win body position to push Merrett into the contest, which keeps the play alive. Oliver gets a little hold from Shiel, but because Viney has done his job so well on Merrett he's now clear and able to recover the ball to win the clearance. Around the ground, Viney does the same on good players. Here the tap is for Oliver, with Crouch defending him. Brayshaw blocks the inside exit and AVB the defensive exit (we're kicking left). Viney is trusted one on one with their best player, Rory Laird. Viney beats Laird for position and, when there's no effective tap from either Gawn or O'Reilly, Viney is able to win the clearance off the back of his good defensive body work. Now he's one with Petracca on Laird and Brayshaw on Crouch. It's a weird one because the play breaks down with a dodgy bounce. The tap ends up going forwards to no-man's land. But the important thing is the defence at the stoppage. Crouch edges Brayshaw off the ball and Petracca is lost with the clever Laird, but Viney recovers really quickly from the odd tap and gets himself between the ball and Keays, who isn't able to have any influence on the play. The first possession is won by Crouch and the clearance by Laird. It's a comfortable clearance in the end and Laird wanders through untouched. Keays is shut out quickly by Viney. Brayshaw and Petracca are non-entities once beaten, but Viney is able to do his role so consistently. This happens over and over again. Viney is able to kill opposition clearances and also win his own off the back of this. He doesn't have the play designed for him as often as the attacking mids, but he can do it well if there is another defensive midfielder in the stoppage. For example, this stoppage involves Vandenberg. Viney is on Shiel (left) whilst AVB is blocking Merrett and Oliver is being defended. Shiel is the opposition's best midfielder, but Viney is so good at winning the body battle in stoppages that the play can confidently predict he wins body position for the surprise attack. Oliver's man only has eyes for him, so Oliver just has to stay out of the way of Viney, whilst AVB just blocks Merrett away. The tap goes to the far side, which is easy to do when the opposition has Stewart in the ruck. It's an easy clearance in the end because of a terrible setup by Essendon. But the whole play depends on Viney winning body position, which he does. Usually he does it defensively for other players, but he can do it himself so reliably that sometimes they design plays for it. He has the quality to play both attacking and defensive. The defensive midfielder is under-appreciated. Brayshaw has been given this responsibility at times, but he just doesn't do it to the level of Viney. You can see that, since Brayshaw went down late in the year, Melksham has been sent into the middle to play defensively. Oliver can do it at times, but he's a target man more often than not whilst Viney creates the space he can use. When Petracca is in there the ball is almost always going to him. Oliver is a rounded midfield but he doesn't play as a defensively minded stoppage midfielder like Viney. Viney is so important because he's so much better than the next best player in his role (Brayshaw, AVB and Melksham), and one of the best at it in the league. Plus, on top of that, he can be used offensively when required. There's a reason why a range of coaches love him every single year, but his style means that it doesn't always get its way on to the stats sheet.

When I get a chance later on I'll put some screenshots up to show what I mean.

No, that's the role he plays, especially in stoppages. He plays as the defensive midfielder, and he's pretty much the only one who does in our team. He is really good at taking out opposition midfielders in stoppages and creating space for the others to win the ball in. As a result, he's probably the most important player in our midfield. We have many ball winners, like Oliver, Petracca and Brayshaw, so if one of them misses then they are replaced by another. But if Viney misses then the defensive midfielder replacements are far inferior, like Vandenberg or Melksham, although Sparrow did some in the middle of the year. Viney currently is a defensive midfielder, and an exceptionally good one. That's why he does so well in best and fairests because his role, whilst not well understood, is extremely important and he's extremely good at it.

But that's the same role that he plays now!

The difference here from many of the other ruck trades is that Preuss has 2 years of contract remaining. This means that we have full control, unlike say Nankervis or similar. We have leverage here because it's not like we are desperate to get rid of him and he's contracted. We could easily have him on the list for another year and do it next year. We hold the whip hand and it wouldn't surprise me if we got a pretty decent deal for him. He play 2 games in the ruck this year. One where he was very competitive with Grundy and the other where he smashed English. He's an AFL quality ruck who we have in contract. A team that needs a first ruck would need to tempt us into trading him.

Then the problem is likely to mostly yours. This year, Viney conceded 15 free kicks in 16 games. Let's say, for simplicity (even though it overstates it), that half of these were for holding the ball. That means that he was conceding a holding the ball free kick fewer than once every two matches. If it's even a problem then the impact of that is so extremely small that it's barely worth talking about. Like I said, the problem is likely to be one of perception.

Fair enough. That misreading of the list (how?!?!) was clearly a mistake. As it relates to Polec, the misreading of the list doesn't make me less concerned. I think he's worth speaking to but I'd be really concerned about his time at north this year. In a game that's now so heavily built on team defence, I'd be worried about bringing in a kick chaser. I think you'd need to be really clear on what the issues were and whether you could fix/manage them. 4 clubs in 11 years across 3 states .....

They delisted 11 players before they even got a chance to get to the trade table ..... I think it's clear that they've been pretty set on a rebuild. Also they were aiming for finals last year. 2019 was a bit of a 'last chance saloon' for them, and when it became clear that they couldn't do it Brad Scott left. The fact the Shaw got a short term bump wouldn't have altered their view .... you don't change coaches mid-season to make finals that year!! Because Jed Anderson isn't going to perform a skill better because he tries harder to do it but Jared Polec can play more defensively if he tries harder to do it. One's a skill and the other is a behaviour. It's like a talented batsman who throws his wicket away (Polec) going for a slog, rather than a tail ended (Anderson) trying to defend but just not being good enough. You can't change the skill much, but you might open with the slogger for a few games (even if it isn't his best role) with the simple instruction of 'I don't care how many runs you score, just be there after 20 overs' because you get a long term benefit. That's what Shaw is doing.

So he plays team first footy. He's always been a battering ram .... it isn't his choice, it's how he plays. It's a blessing and a curse. If you said he may not complement our midfield, that's one thing, but saying he doesn't play team first footy because he doesn't have Oliver's in close hands and vision is rubbish.

He finished 3rd in the B&F over Oliver and Gawn. I'm willing to say that this 'not team first' stuff is complete rubbish.

If we get him he won't kick 60 goals a year, but he will be dangerous under the long ball because he's 200cm tall and reasonably strong. That makes our whole forward line work better and requires the opposition play their best defender on him. You can build a forward line around that.

Clearly he's setting standards to his players as he tries to instill a defensive 'team first' culture, just like Roos did with us and multiple other coaches have done as well. Roos brought in Vince and Cross to alter the culture of the side, and clearly Rhyce is trying to do the same thing. He's been given a clear remit to rebuild the team after a decade of topping up under Scott. They're bottoming out and that involves building the team around the values the coach wants. The second part of your question about 'doesn't have the ability to teach skills and ball movement' is complete rubbish and just trying to shoehorn an excuse for Polec. Wins are irrelevant to North this year, just as they were to us in 2014. You're looking at the move from a single game perspective, which is not how Shaw or North would be looking at it. They're in rebuild mode, where the results aren't as important as the system and habits. If Polec won't follow instructions and his young team mates see that it doesn't make any difference, then why should they? And it may result in an extra win or two now this year, but you're building a team on foundations of sand. North know, more than most, that being a 'near enough' team sucks and they'll do the rebuild properly this time.

Yeah, I think most of this thread has got it around the wrong way. The point about the clearance differential is the most important, as we are actually a good clearance team overall (as per the stats). You can say we should amke tweaks, change the balance etc. but, even so, clearances are still a strength of ours. But we play a low stoppage game, which is strange because we are very strong here. Why? I think because we aren't a strong team at locking the ball inside 50. We don't get repeat stoppages inside our forward line, but instead we win the ball back deeper than most due to our strong defence. Interestingly some of our best wins have been when conceding more inside 50s and winning through transition. The information is incomplete because the real information we need is scores from stoppages differential. If we score strongly from stoppages whilst restricting the opposition, then overall clearance numbers are largely irrelevant. The real answer is that we simply don't have enough information to know exactly how effective we are. Or, more to the point, the answer to the original question is "I'm not sure that this is even a problem".

Trade rumours rarely age well, but this one aged badly so quickly that it actually went back in time to before Zac Williams came out and said that he was exploring free agency to a Melbourne based club! That was about 5 minutes before you posted.

Ummm ..... the answer to our key forward requirements is 6 foot 1 wingman, Harry Perryman?!?!?

A medium marking option is so far from our most pressing need. Gunston is a good player, but why waste resources (draft picks and money) on him when the incremental improvement is so small? It would be much smarter to use those on a player who fills an important, pressing need .... like a crumbing small forward or a running half back.

He's a very good and long kick .... but I'm just not sure we can accumulate enough down the field free kicks to make him effective.

We paid a future first, 26 and pick 50 (which is effectively zero since we weren't using it anyway) for pick 10 (Pickett), 28 (Rivers) and a future fourth rounder. In reality, we traded 26 for 28 (Rivers) and a future fourth rounder, and our future first round for pick 10 (Pickett). It makes perfect sense. If we had a first rounder in 2020 still, we'd be screaming out to draft Pickett.

Nah, he's pointing at his direct opponent, who is less than 2 metres away, demonstrating that he's legally allowed where he is.

I really like some of the comments here about how we were able to beat a top 8 team without winning the inside midfield battle. We won a structural battle with St Kilda, as we won despite giving them the stoppage and territorial advantage that we usually use to win games. We mostly didn't allow them to get in behind us and forced them to win contests against our excellent defenders in order to kick goals, and they weren't able to. We were really good at forcing them to go through our zone, rather than around it like the Dogs did and they simply could score because of it. They kicked a few goal because of rank turnovers but those , unfortunately, will happen in almost any game of football. It's a good sign that we can stay in games (and win games) when we aren't playing our best. It's a big tick for the plan and the scrappy, blue collar team we played with.

You're misunderstanding it. This is how teams defend because they can cover more space this way because the ball takes time to travel through the air. If you're kicking to a stationary player only 50 metres away, the ball would take up to 3.5 seconds to travel from the kicker's boot to the target. If you add the time it takes the player to kick the ball then that's over 4 seconds to get the ball to a team mate 50 metres away. If the ball is being kicked to a stationary target inside a zone 50 metres away, how far away do the defenders need to be if that player can mark the ball uncontested? 30 metres away Otherwise you're just send hospital kicks. If the ball got there faster then they would have to stand closer to the 'free' player. A shorter kick (say 30m) will have about 2.5 seconds from hand to target, so a defender only need to be 10 or 15 metres away from the target to effect a spoil. That's why a zone works.

I'm reminded of the story about Ablett Jnr, earlier in his career when he was a dangerous forward pocket, being told by his teammates that he could be the best player in the competition if only he worked harder. Ablett was shocked and affronted because he thought he WAS working hard. Of course he later discovered what working hard really was but he wasn't able to know what working hard felt like until he actually had already done it. This happens with a lot of players and some unfortunately never cross that barrier, or it happens too late for them. The suburban leagues are filled with talented former AFL listed footballers who never quite got it.

I agree that work rate is one of the most important things for getting the game on our terms (as well as defensive cohesion). Part of that is at selection and drafting, and it's a question that's hard to answer. Do we play defensive forwards at the expense of, much more talented, goal kicking forwards? Given that scores are lower and goals much harder to come by, is the sacrifice of the goal kicking for defense worth it?

This is great. I think it backs up the general idea of how we feel about the game in losses vs wins, but also backs up the notion that AFL observers really don't have access to (or haven't developed) the stats to demonstrate what we're discussing. It would be so much easier if this was the Demonland baseball forum! The UP/CP differentials (and UM) do demonstrate the crux of what we're getting at, which is that we are excellent at winning games that are contested and poor at winning ones that are not. That's why our losses often look easy but our wins look hard (although it could be the view of a supporter). The big question is about how a team like ours would go about making the game more contested. Does that involve pressing higher, or pushing a zone defender up closer to the ball, or playing a smaller faster forward line, or pushing our forwards higher up the ground, pull players out of the contest to have more inside 50, play the ball closer to the boundary line, etc... ? Our success will come when we are able to play the game on our terms more (duh!) by making the opponents scrap more. So what is the best way to get the game on our terms?

The problem with Polec is that he looks good to spectators but terrible to coaches. That's because coaches know a lot more about what things a player does away from the ball (they have vision, GPS data etc), especially this year when spectators can only watch the game on TV. Spectators only watch the player with the football or in the direct contest, often yelling "kick the bloody thing!" without realising that there's nobody to kick to (which is either outside of screen or they just don't notice). Polec is not a team first footballer, and he's not good enough or impactful enough for coaches to tolerate that. Especially new coaches rebuilding a club that requires good habits to be instilled first (like Shaw is trying to do at North). Polec gets good numbers, but but there's a reason why teams haven't tried especially hard to keep him. Think about it this way: In round 8 he had 25 touches (16 contested) and a goal in a close loss to Carlton where he will probably poll 3 Brownlow votes. He was immediately dropped, and North beat Adelaide by 10 goals!! He came back in, played two ordinary games, was dropped and was has been out of the side since. The overwhelming likelihood is that he is not following the coach's instructions (probably defensively) and that is a massive red flag in an AFL environment that requires team defence and attack more than ever. Clearly the coaches don't trust him to play his part in that. I don't want him because he's doesn't bring enough to the team to outweigh the many red flags that his career has raised to this point.