Axis of Bob

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.

"Relatively slowly" means that the ball hangs in the air for a period of time, which allows defenders to cover that space. It means that just because you're in space it doesn't automatically mean that the ball has enough time to get to that open player before a defender can cover them. Unlike a short handball, which can get to a team mate before the defender has time to react. The time the ball hangs in the air is the reason why a zone defence works, because you don't need a defender playing on every forward, you just need a defender close enough that they can cover the kick by the time it reaches them. Just because it's the fastest way to move the ball forwards doesn't mean that it's fast.

Firstly, I think pressure acts are a better indicator. You can see these on the AFL site but they're much more difficult to track because the AFL site is awful. Usually they show that Weid and Fritsch are the worst, Kozzie easily the best and everyone else in between (although closer to the bottom). I think that keeping our forward deeper is important to use our mediums properly. Mediums need space to beat their opponents, generally, whilst talls and smalls are less disadvantaged by congestion. However it does mean that we are in less of a position to defend when the ball is turned over. It requires that the midfield push up to our forward line to seal off the exits and compress the field, and I think the midfield failure to do this was probably the main cause of our poor 3rd quarter last week.

Just looking at the stats, during the 2 weeks where we played a single tall setup (Geelong and Richmond) Fritsch's had an almost hilariously low (for a forward) 3 and 4 pressure acts. By comparison, our number one key forward, Tom McDonald, had 10 and 8 in each game, whilst Kozzie had 16 and 19. Yikes! I'm not doing this to single out Bayley, I'm just showing that kicking goals isn't the only thing we need to look at. Currently the balance of the forward line doesn't seem quite right, IMHO, because our highest quality forwards are of a different style to the midfield and defence.

Well it was interesting earlier in the year where Goodwin played with just one tall forward. It was hailed as a failure, but it was certainly more geared around our strengths and weaknesses of our forward line. The difference, of course, was that the forward was McDonald rather than Weideman. The games were we did this were against Geelong (TMac and Fritsch barely touched it) and Richmond (we were constantly outmarked up forward), before the plan was dumped and we brought Weideman in for the Gold Coast game. Interestingly, even though we played better, our second forward didn't get near it and 4 of our forwards didn't even register a tackle (Weid, TMac, Fritsch and Bennell) as we thoroughly destroyed them in the midfield. Let's look at the top teams at the moment: Port (Dixon, Ladhams and Georgiades), Brisbane (McStay, Hipwood), Geelong (Hawkins), West Coast (Kennedy, Darling), Richmond (Lynch, Riewoldt). Those teams have a range of styles in the forward line but, with probably the exception of Port, the common thing is that they play the minimum number of non-defensive tall forwards they can whilst still being able to stop the opposition marking the high ball. Geelong only need one because Hawkins is enormous, and Richmond and West Coast can play two because their second forwards (Darling and Riewoldt) are excellent defensively. I would be trying to do the same thing, where I have the minimum number of non-defending talls up forward whilst still bringing the ball to ground. Weideman can do this with another player who also has a secondary role - that could be either Jackson (forward ruck) or Fritsch (tall / medium). I actually think that we should be looking at getting Fritsch into a half back role to use his marking, and kicking whilst being protected by a defensive zone, whilst giving Jackson the second tall forward role (or McDonald doing the same until Jackson returns). After that you can have Melksham playing as a defensive medium (which he has done more effectively prior to 2020), Kossie and then a choice of the best performing of Spargo, Bedford, ANB (who is by far our best defensive forward), C Wagner or Chandler. I've always liked the idea of Viney forward, but I think the issue is with the types of player in the forward line (and balance) rather than the specific personnel.

This is what I think is most important. We have a game plan that relies of the contest and defence. We have a big, brutal defence and a big, brutal midfield. They thrive on the contest and drive the ball forward. We have a silky, attacking forward line that is good at turning chances into goals .... but they're mismatched with the rest of our side. We have two tall forwards (Weid and TMac), three mediums (Fritsch, Hannan and Melksham) and two smalls (Kossie and Spargo) rotating through over the course of a game. This works just fine against teams where we can defend easily with our midfield/defenders (like we have the last 3 weeks) because these players are very good at turning this dominance into goals. But when you play these 7 forwards then you are effectively playing with 4 non-tackling forwards (Weid, TMac, Fritsch and Melksham) and our ability to slow down the opposition's attacks is really compromised. We currently have a bifurcated team: forwards and everyone else. We win games when we can make the game a slog, because we have a real advantage in the hard, contested football. We don't win shootouts, and haven't for a while because we have drafted and selected a team of big, brawling bruisers. This highest score we've conceded in a win this year was 63 against Gold Coast. In our others wins we conceded only 53, 48, 37, 35 and 44. Our losses in low scoring contests (against Brisbane and Geelong) were by 4 points and 3 points. So we should be trying to make each contests a contested slog, because we are well placed for that but we have selected a forward line for a free flowing, high scoring match. It's trying to have your cake and eat it too rather than doubling down on your core strengths and bludgeoning your opponent into submission week in and week out by selecting a fast, high pressure forward line that can play the same high pressure game as the rest of our team. That might mean that we have to leave some of our better players out of the side and bring in some clearly less talented players to play more defensive roles in order to help our team play more cohesively.

This isn't a great sign for Richmond, TBH. Some ageing footballers who have lost a bit of their youthful zip get frustrated because things are harder for them than they used to be. That's when you see little things like Ablett Jnr give a couple of little sneaky one where he never used to. It's usually an indicator that the veteran is just hanging on and they know they're not as good as their brain instinctively remembers itself to be. Richmond have had some pretty dodgy moments this year. I dare say that things aren't as easy as they used to be and they're feeling very vulnerable. I think Dimma has just given about 8 other clubs a real shot of confidence with those (hilariously stupid) comments.

Why do I have to be the creepy looking one? ?

You certainly need to be able to do all aspects of the game, but there are some things you do better than other teams and you need to ensure that your strategy exploits that. Richmond does that with their forward pressure by drafting and playing a bunch of quick, agile small forwards. West Coast does a lot of different things well, but their success is mostly based on Hurn, McGovern, Shepperd and Barrass marking the ball at half back, so they defend very aggressively and rebound before the zone can set up by going for intercept marks more than other teams. We are, generally, about setting up strongly behind the ball with our gun talls (May, Max, Jake) to force teams to slow down and chip to a team mate. That usually leads to slow play and a long kick to a contest which we can kill out of bounds or ball up (or win a fall of the ball contest). This then allows us to play our one wood, by getting Max and our big mids together, where we have a big advantage and can use that to win games. It has taken time to get us strong enough behind the ball to let us use our strength in this way, but our strong defence allows us to use our biggest strength more often to win games. You would love to be perfect at everything, but you've only got a certain amount of draft/trade/financial resources to spend on players so you have to prioritise your strategy to give you competitive advantages that you can use consistently.

I'd argue that all successful modern AFL coaches are your 'type one', but the development of the game plan can either be done taking account of your players or not. But this is done over the course of many seasons of drafting/trading rather than season to season. A coach will come in to a club with a long term plan of what they want to do to win a flag. But you need to have a competitive advantage in order to win a flag. For Richmond it's defensive pressure, and Dustin Martin. For West Coast it's intercept marking and Nic Naitanui. Brisbane have excellent small, buzzy attacking midfielders, Charlie Cameron and Harris Andrews. Ultimately, you're committed to playing the style you you have envisioned because you are building the list according to that plan. We've clearly built a game around our best players (ie, Gawn, Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Brayshaw) and then gone about trying to find the players that would allow us to maximise their dominance. Playing Brisbane's short possession style wouldn't suit us, but we haven't recruited for that either. I suppose my point is that I think all successful modern coaches are type one, because it's just so hard to win a flag that you you don't win on in season tactics but rather on the culmination of a longer strategic plan involving identifying the game style based on your strengths and recruiting over time to maximise your ability to execute it.

In an era of free agency and player driven trades, your perception as a club int he AFL industry is really important. We should be giving Jones a chance to get to 300, especially if his form is there or thereabouts. I'd happily give him an extra year next year to do so, as he's a positive role model around the club, effectively only takes up the last pick in the draft and demonstrates to the AFL industry (players, agents, coaches, administrators etc) that we are a club that looks after our players whilst and that you/your client would be better off being part of our club than you would at another. Plus he deserves it.

Those number show a total of 20 centre bounces: 20 ruckman attendances (13 LJ, 6 TM, 1 SW) and 60 midfielder attendances. There were 4 bounces to start the quarters and there were 18 goals ..... but there were goals kicked after the siren in the first (Larkey) and second (Weideman) quarters, which didn't result in centre bounces. Edit: SNAP!!

I just went back to look at his stats from the start of his career: Game 1: First ruck against Paul Salmon and Nathan Thompson. No recognised ruck backup. Game 2: First ruck against Shaun Rehn and Matthew Clarke. No recognised ruck backup. Game 3: First ruck against Matthew Allan and Trent Hotton. No recognised ruck backup. Game 4: First ruck against Greg Stafford and Adam Goodes. No recognised ruck backup. Game 5: First ruck against Scott Wynd and Luke Darcy. By this time they finally brought in Stunning Steve McKee as backup. McKee was backup from rounds 5 to 10. Fraser then rucked solo (with only Anthony Rocca as part time backup) in every game for the rest of the season, aside from round 18. This was during a time where nearly every club had two recognised mature ruckmen in their team, whilst Collingwood had a precious skinny 18 year old pick 1 'once in a generation' ruck .... and they absolutely destroyed him. It was criminal.

I think I still get harrowing visions of Josh Fraser being physically belted for 100 minutes a week every time I see an 18 year old being thrown into the centre bounce!

He's a smart player but he's not the high ball competitor that we need. Jackson has been admirable in this facet since he's come in, which is a string that you could easily imagine him not having as a first year ruck. I think we saw the forward line as being TMac and Weid, with Jackson getting a few games for development and Brown being a solid back up if our more mature bodied keys forwards were injured. We've been fortunate that Weid has been fit and productive, and Jackson has been so competitive as a forward/ruck in his first season (coming from basketball too). Effectively TMac has become the backup to Weid and Jackson, which is a luxury at the moment. I don't think Preuss is redundant because I'm sure they'd rather use him as a battering ram to protect Jackson early in his career if Gawn is injured. The ruck is a brutal slog of a position and Jackson is worth protecting.

I can only assume that you're talking about a cross between Voss and Mitchell ..... because Voss and Mitchell are nothing like each other as players!