Axis of Bob

Just because we didn't counterattack well (we really lost a lot of run from the back half with Salem hobbled, Bowey out, and Rivers and Hunt offering very little offensive punch this year) doesn't mean that having the opposition kick inside 50 slow and short is bad defending. This was especially obvious when Brayshaw went back into the midfield. Also our pressure around the ball was down on last year, which means that it's a lot easier for the opposition to avoid being counterattacked. Hard disagree. They will want him spending a lot less time in the ruck than this year, not more, given that he's a 31 year old behemoth that's had 3 knee reconstructions. Keeping Max going as long as possible would surely be the number 1 priority, and having him be smashed in the ruck for 80% of the game is the worst way to do that. Getting a big brawler to bully the ruck contests means that we can protect Max and use him to dominate the highest leverage aerial contests (wherever they may be).

I know that you're talking about this like it's a bad thing but I see it as the opposite. We are forcing teams that are used to playing a particular way, to play a way that's different to how they want to play. If we are forcing Geelong to kick the ball away from Hawkins and Cameron then that's a win. It also means that we are forcing shallower entries and slower entries, which helps us to counterattack more easily. What Max allows us to do is to troubleshoot. If we are dominating the defensive aerial contest or struggling up forward then we can swing him forward, and vice versa. Max has gravity - wherever he goes the opposition's focus will follow. By bringing in a big ruckman to bully the ruck contest it allows us to use Max to exploit his league leading asset .... his contested marking ability.

Mason Cox has kicked 6 goals in 16 games this year, whilst averaging about 40% ruck time. He averages 0.7 marks inside 50 per game, whilst Max has averaged 1.1. Max is top 50 for marks inside 50 despite being a primary ruckman (23), with Darcy Cameron the next best on 16 and Tim English on 14 being the next highest rated primary ruckmen. The other thing it allows us to do is we can play fewer tall forwards when we know that we won't get beaten in an aerial contest. This allows us to play smaller forward lines where Kozzie can be a more attacking small forward or we can play more creative players like Laurie. Currently we need to play multiple talls because Brown can't reliably bring the ball to ground without a supporting tall to hold the pack. A kick to Lynch, McKay or Hawkins is , at worst, a crumbing opportunity because they won't be outmarked. This allows you to play more mobile players that can cause matchup problems (eg, Cameron, Curnow etc). We have the mobile forwards to make this work, but we need Max to take advantage of it.

http://dfsaustralia.com/ That's where I got it from.

He attended 56% of all ruck contests against Sydney. That's basically the same as his 53% rate for 2022 and 58% in 2021. He averages 89% game time in 2022, which means that he spends about 35% of his time on the field NOT as the primary ruck. This also includes the times where he is just playing behind the ball. Gawn is the best contested mark in the league and teams absolutely wet themselves when the ball is kicked near him. The leading patterns required of a footballer 20 years ago (or even 5 years ago) are very different to now .... since 2017 nobody has even kicked 70 goals, let alone 100. Brendan Fevola was the last player to even surpass 80 goals, which was in 2009. You don't need to be able to lead for the ball anymore because you don't play as much one on one with a zone defence. What you do need is a player that can take advantage of a weakness in the zone (eg, a weaker opponent nearby) or to be able to mark/influence a contest against a set defence. Max does both of those.

Being an early pick is not the same as having huge potential.

All these things were true on draft day in 2015. Since that day 7 years ago he has provided a mountain of evidence across multiple clubs of why he's not an AFL footballer.

We have Oliver, Petracca, Brayshaw and Salem all signed up for at least 5 years, with the first two signed up even longer. That's the period we need to be looking at for our success. Whilst Oliver and Petracca are on the list, we are a chance at winning the flag. With Max still around we would be near-favourites. We should be maximising our ability to win flags over the next 6 years or so, whilst we have our best players playing their best footy. If that means that we have a moderately bad team after Petracca and Oliver retire, then so be it. The difference between finishing 10th and 16th in 2030 is not really important.

Imagine Hawthorn supporters' disgust at drafting Buddy from WA (pick 5), then leaving Hawthorn in the middle of his career for an interstate team .... when they could have had John Meesen (pick 8) for his entire career! At least you would have been happy that we had a whole career of Jack Watts, rather than that West Australian Nic Naitanui. What a terrible, terrible post.

Your mail isn't worth the paper that you flushed.

Rucks tend to play on longer than most. This is especially true for those that don't rely on leaping. I imagine, based on his big bodied bullocking style, that Grundy will still be effective at 34-35.

Don't be silly, old. He was clearly referring to Darren Bradshaw, who is Daniel's younger brother. He's only 41 now.

To be fair, I was referring to writing a blog without receiving feedback. Supermercado clearly gets more than enough of his human interaction from the African start-up community.

I see pessimists as not seeing the forest for the trees. Can you look past the individual faults to see the strength of the whole? It's incredibly easy to see things that are wrong. As humans we are hardwired to be pessimists because we respond to threats far more strongly than we do to opportunities. That's because misjudging a threat often led to being eaten by a lion whereas misjudging an opportunity might have resulted in a meal of nuts rather than meat. The consequences of our failures were very different, so humans erred strongly on the side of caution .... on pessimism. It's easy to point out the individual flaws in a bigger plan because it makes you sound smart and other people are more likely to react positively to the pessimism because they are hardwired to do so. The challenge for us all is to acknowledge that those possible threats exist but also to understand that we are inherently biased towards being influenced by those threats. Overall we are an excellent team who has a proven finals record and several of the best players in the league. And if that is too difficult, because it is genuinely very hard to do, then think about it from the opposition's perspective: If there was one team that you didn't want to play in finals this year, who would it be? The answer is, obviously, Melbourne.

The counter to that is that if you don't want feedback on your comments then start a blog. This is an online community. If you choose to engage with the community then you will have to accept that you will receive feedback from the community. This is one such item of feedback. Because blogs are boring.

McLean is a tall forward, not a ruck. Since he was dropped back to Sydney's VFL team he's amassed 23 hitouts in 8 games - that's fewer than 3 per game. He's been decent up forward in the VFL, with 18 goals from 8 games. Weideman has kicked 14 goals in 6 games and JVR has kicked 28 in 13 games. My point here is that we need to evaluate these players properly. We tend to look at other teams' players and imagine their very best once they join the Dees. There's a lot of overrating of opposition players that goes on just because we don't see very much of them.

Hayden McLean: 197cm, 23 years old, 10 goals, 35 hitouts, 8 games. Sam Weideman: 195cm, 25 years old, 13 goals, 29 hitouts, 10 games.

Not having a good ruck division is fine ..... if you set up your team to not rely on good rucks. But we have Max Gawn, one of the best rucks in recent memory. We have set up a game around his ability to win contests and help others win contests. So we have set up a team around his ability to dominate the ball in the air where other teams cannot. It's one of our great advantages as a team. A lot of great rucks haven't won flags because their teams haven't been good enough to exploit their skills in a way that wins flags. We don't. We rely on Max's ability to win big contests when we're out of options, which allows us to play defensively. Our game needs good rucks and the FD seem to be doubling down on that. Max is the best ruckman in the game. He has won a flag.

I'm just going to quote myself because I'm a terrible person .... These transformations in teams have been really interesting but there is a value in zigging when the others are zagging. This works for a couple of reasons but a lot of it has to do with the idea that everyone is setting themselves up to win against the prevailing style. This also leaves some quality players for a different style as being very undervalued. In the NBA, there are a lot of players who are excellent finals players because they are able to hit the 'low value' mid range 2 pointers. The analytics say that this is bad basketball but the opposition defence is entirely geared around preventing 3 pointers and shots at the basket, so a good mid-range shooter can find the seams in the defence to beat them in a game they're not set up to play. The same with baseball, where big hitting pull hitters are able to lay down low risk bunts to get on base because the defence is playing so deep and shifting. In the AFL, Hawthorn found low cost kickers when the game was being dominated by the scrappers of Sydney, who actually found value in scrappers during the Brisbane/West Coast/Port midfield skill period. Richmond got value in role players when everyone was searching for the high skill players of the Hawthorn era. Now everyone is going to be looking for dominant contested midfielders from our era, so there will be value to be had elsewhere. That's just a thought bubble, I think! 😄

It's good to see this sort on analysis as it's sorely missing in AFL coverage. The first question is ..... what do you do with that information? And the second is .... how does the probability change when the opposition knows what you are trying to do? Baseball and basketball have, as binman says, undergone a transformation in how the game is played due to analytics. Baseball was all about base hits and sacrifice bunts ('small-ball'), whilst Michael Jordan feasted on a steady diet of mid-range two pointers. Now baseball is about the three true outcomes (strikeouts, walks and home runs) whilst basketball is about three pointers and shots at the rim. But the difference between these games and footy is that they both have distinct, predictable and repeatable phases of play that can be measured specifically. In baseball, a pitcher starts the play by pitching a ball to a waiting batter so you can measure the outcomes based on that. In basketball the ball is (almost always) given to a player deep in their defensive half and the team must score against a waiting defence, so you can measure an outcome from there. Footy is different. The ground is so big and there are so many ways to play the game, most of which is based on physical contests. You can measure the contests won/lost, but not all contests are equal. A contested mark next to the boundary in defence is far less valuable than that same mark taken in your attacking goalsquare. Or a centre clearance won by running the ball forward is far more valuable than one where you shuffle it back and dump it forward. A contest you win 1 vs 3 is far more valuable than one you win 3 vs 1. A contest won in the centre with a player free in the goalsquare is more valuable than one where there's nobody else to kick to. So what do we do with the information? We try to kick more scores! But is winning a function of valuing scoring shots over goal kicking, or is increased scoring shots a function of a more holistic dominance of a football team over their opponents? I think the limitation of those stats is that they are really crude measures. And that's totally reasonable because we don't have much information to go on and it's ridiculously difficult to quantify what creates wins in a sport where not all numbers mean the same thing. You can set up your team to win a statistical category but that doesn't have the same impact on the result as a lot of other sports.

I was too harsh in this post and I can see a role for him if we get him. It just needs some planets to align before it's possible. The contract is a huge one. It would also require Grundy to change his play a bit to fit in with our style. He probably wouldn't be allowed/encouraged to play the same way as he has at Collingwood. He's a massive body who could play well into his 30s as a sort of premium Jarrod Witts. He gives a great contest in the ruck and competes long and hard. Gawn is a better player and we need Gawn around as long as humanly possible. Grundy would be great at soaking up those minutes allowing Gawn to play as a tall marking forward for a number of years, with shorter ruck stints. Grundy would need to play more as a conventional, wrestling, down the line ruckman, transitioning away from the 'extra midielder' role he's played historically. He can do it because he's huge, but he's always tended towards the easy ball around the ground rather than being happy to just compete for the long ball. He's not a great contested mark for his size but we would only really require him to stand under the ball, compete and halve those contests. Grundy would be playing first ruck, with Max giving him a chop out. The contract would need to be sorted out (!!!!!!!) and he'd need to 100% buy in to what we need him to do but anything that keeps Gawn around for longer is extremely tempting.

Grundy is a box filler. He doesn't win the important possessions that you need a ruck to win for your team to be successful. He's a hard worker who you can plug into the ruck all day and get an honest contest, but he's the smallest 203cm 108kg player that you could ever see. More important than that, though, is that his contract makes him completely untradable to a contender. Hard pass.

That's genuinely funny. Everything about it is so incredibly embarrassing. All the other articles on the page actually make the whole thing even better .... WAFL oval conditions, Rory Lobb yawning, 1 year extension for peripheral veteran ..... and even managed to get their contractually obliged mention of Naitanui into the paper. Chef's kiss. 😘

It amazes me how someone could have such high conviction for something based on almost no information. The information we have on Brayshaw's contract is: It is over a term of 6 years. ............. How can anyone have such strong opinions based off such little information? Is that the level of evidence needed for you to be convinced that all of these (proven) competent football people are actually idiots? Is that the level of evidence you have for your other strongly held opinions too?

Freo has one tall forward on its primary list under the age of 29 ..... Jye Amiss. Freo probably aren't going to trade that player away.