Axis of Bob

Alternatively, instead of the disclaimer, you cold just add it to one of the many other Scully threads. That gives us less threads that we have to ignore. How about this one:

bb59: There is clearly more than one way to skin a cat. Does Collingwood drop men off the back of a contest to create a loose man in defence? I suggest that you watch the way they play next time you get the opportunity. What about Geelong? They always try to get Scarlett loose in defence because he creates so much drive for them. Also, Carlton also had a loose man in defence. Did they win? How were they able to win with a loose man in defence? Clay: So you have no trouble standing in front of your mates and agreeing with what they say? Well done, tough guy. That’s very brave. I hear stories about the strong, brave soldiers who were captured and then heroically agreed with whatever their captors said. They were the real heroes.

Essendon, round 18 - 2008. 26 possessions, 3 goals and 2 Brownlow votes in a losing game. West Coast, round 20 - 2008. 30 possessions, 1 goal and 2 Brownlow votes. So that is 2 break out games in the first year.

I have posted 15 times in the past month. 6 of these have been in the thread I created about contested possessions. I have posted 5 times tonight. Those 9 posts must have really struck a nerve with you. If you find them so hard to read then maybe you should stop re-reading them, since that's the only way you could find them "day in and day out"!! :D I'm sorry that you aren't man enough to stand up to your mates. I'm sorry that you are ashamed of being a Melbourne supporter. I'm sorry that you see my "type of supporter" as being the equivalent of not putting my body on the line. I'm sorry that you don't understand what irony is. I'm not sorry to be holding an opposing view to yours. PS- Again ..... who were those senior players that Bailey could have brought in last week?

I think that Gawn's development, even though he hasn't played an AFL game yet, has been a major positive. I expected a year of development at Casey as he treid to get some continuity of play and experience at VFL level. For him to be talked about as possibly debuting after comprehensively beating a good AFL ruckman in Ben Hudson is a massive positive. Bail's improvement has also been really good. His running ability is fantastic. Evans has also showed that he is a really good gut runner and has good pace. A real bonus off the rookie list.

In the dossier that Prendergast did on Jack Watts mentioned that Watts had to learn how to use his pace in a match because he may have been losing some of his pace due to his work rate. Against Gold Coast they played him as a sub and then managed to take some contested marks and use his pace really well in the last quarter when he came on. Since then he has played with a whole lot more confidence which, could reasonably be argued, came from that time playing as a sub against the Suns. By having the fresh legs against less experienced players he was able to have a really good quarter and has used that as a platform for some really good form. Everything is not always as simple as it appears ... or as you want it to be. PS- Who are the senior players that Bailey could have played last week?

We lost the contested possession count pretty comfortably on the weekend. Sylvia won 13 and McKenzie won 15. Other than that nobody for Melbourne were in double figures. Conversely, for Carlton, Judd won 12, Robinson 14, Scotland 10, McLean 14, Ellard 16, O'hAilpin 10 and Hampson 12. Overall, we have zero players in the top 50 for average contested possessions in the league. McKenzie is our best at 53rd with 11 per game (afteronly 2 games). The picture it paints is pretty clear. We can't get our hands on the footy. We will struggle to implement any game plan without the ability to get our hands on the footy. Maturity will improve our ability to get our hands on the ball.

How about that soft, tall, skinny young outside midfielder ...... Brendan Goddard. Ask St Kilda supporters whether they would have traded him 5 years after he was drafted.

We didn't use the ball well going forward, Scoop. Bailey mentioned after the game that the forwards pushed too far up the ground and weren't prepared to work hard enough back into defence. When your forwards aren't working hard enough and you use th ball badly going forward then you are going to be in a lot of trouble!! It was the same sort of players doing it too. Petterd, Jurrah, Bate .... all of the mobile taller players. We have recruited a lot of hard running taller players, like Howe, Cook, McDonald etc. No doubt they have been recruited to play the role that Bate etc have proven they cannot play. These guys need to be able to push up the ground and then push really hard back towards goal, but they were unable to do that on Friday at all. Hannabal: If you don't care what anyone thinks, then why are you here? I don't believe that you don't care what others think, because you clearly crave recognition more than anything else in the world. It's about 50% funny.

Given the lack of emotion after a friday night game, I can only assume that everyone was pretty happy with the effort.

No prizes for guessing what Jon Ralph was told to do by his boss. "Ralphy, Melbourne have a tough run of games coming up against Carlton, Essendon and Collingwood and they are all in primetimeso everyone will see it. We need you to write some destabilising articles in the lead up so that we can run the 'Dees in crisis, sack Bailey' story for acouple of weeks." The problem is that Ralph's articles have been so poor that it hasn't made any impact yet. But I can guarantee that the papers will follow this line because that's the way the footy media works. Especially in a low level tabloid like the Herald Sun.

I'd be surprised if Bailey's cards are marked. Given that we are 9th and have a horrendous injury list with many of our most important players on the sidelines .... I don't see it. I do see a lot of impatient supporters, though. *cue 'blah blah blah 40 years since a flag' narrow minded 'woe is me' irrelevence*

Pendlebury has signed for one year, so he's still well within the reach of GWS. If he was that committed to Collingwood then he'd sign for 2 years and get out of their reach. My guess is that he's going to stay at Collingwood for a year while they are going to have a high likelihood of success and then head up to GWS for the cash a year later.

Essendon's top contested midfield ball winners are Watson, Hocking, Howlett and Lonergan. They are 26, 23, 22 and 24 respectively, and have mature bodies. Watson is probably the form player in the AFL at the moment, Our top midfield ball winners are Moloney, Trengove, Sylvia, Jones and Gysberts. They are 27, 19, 25, 23 and 19 respectively. Probably our two best are Scully and McKenzie, who are 19 and 20. In other words our midfield is based around Moloney, Sylvia and Jones. Any midfield that relies on these three is stuffed because, as Snoopy said, they just aren't that good. Let's see how Essendon's midfield goes this week without Watson and Hocking. Their game against Richmond will be an interesting game to analyse. As an aside, Richmond's top 5 contested possession winners are Cotchin, Jackson, Foley, Deledio and Martin who are 21, 25, 25, 24 and 19 years old respectively.

I had a squiz at the highlights of the game on the website (and that is ALL, so take my comments for what they are), and there were some things to like about it. Hopefully Blease will find the happy place between attack and defence, because his ability to run with the ball simply can't be taught. He could really do some damage once he gets a real fitness base and a better knowledge of how to play the game at the top level. Howe did some really nice things, and won the ball in different ways. I was surprised to see the quality of some of his gives under pressure, which augurs well for the next level. We all know he can take a catch, but it's these other bits that will make him a good AFL player. Kelvin Lawrence has that movement about him where he can ghost his way into space. Very smooth. Made some good defensive efforts that resulted in goals. Hopefully he develops consistency, because he looks to have talent. And Jordie, with just a few snippets, showed his importance to our side. Gave some really good handballs while under pressure winning the hard ball. That composure in close is important, and those gives were a class above VFL. From the review, I am looking forward to seeing Davis play.

That's a pretty impressive list of experienced Essendon players, Snoopy, most of whom are having really good seasons. I have just been watching a few games from last year to see how our games have changed, if at all, in light of everyone's expectations for the year. One thing that I noticed was in our older players. Despite Bruce's limitations, he was very solid across half back. Nullified his man and won a lot of one on one contests to rebound. Junior was still effective around the packs too. We are missing these two players, and their mature bodies, this year. Players like Moloney, Sylvia and Jones didn't necessarily have the impact that they're having for us now, which is an improvement. The other thing I noticed was that when we were really up and running our best contested ball winners were Scully, McKenzie and Trengove. The first two haven't played a game yet and Trengove didn't play last week. I looked at the stats and Scully averaged 9.1 contested possessions a game in his career (1 year), McKenzie averages 10.4 and Trengove averages 10.3. Also interesting is that Gysberts averages 9.0 in his five games this year despite having bad games against West Coast and Gold Coast. As those kids mature you could imagine them being dominant contested ball winners. So I actually go into the future with great optimism, as our contested ball winners are around but just aren't playing at the moment.

Sorry Demon16, but this is the emotive rubbish that I was trying to avoid on this thread. If you want to do that then there are any number of other thread where people will be falling over each other trying to congratulate you for your 'passionate' response. This is not such a thread. Please stick to the topic of whether we need to bring in mature players to improve our team development (through improved contested possession) or whether we should stick to youth by itself. Thanks.

The size of players we have drafted is something that could be questioned. Does it affect the ability to win contested footy? Certainly that was the theory several years ago when any kid under 180 was virtually undraftable due to their inability to compete one on one and against bigger bodies. Of late there have been more and more drafted, such as Dion Prestia last year. J Blair of Collingwood is about 170cm, but he is a stocky build that lets him win those possessions. In relation to Snoopy’s point about the senior players, what do we do about it? Our senior players aren’t that good, and there aren’t enough of them to cover for their lack of class. Is now the time where we should be chasing a Judd type? Maybe not to that extreme level, but a good AFL midfielder to take the pressure off. The other factors here are to do with salary cap, since any player we bring in will be paid more than market rate. How do we help the side to develop their contested ball winning best to win a flag? Our best at it are still kids who will get better and better, but they will still need time before they become good enough to take us where we want to be. Do we need to trade in some older players to help allow the kids to play the game at a higher level rather than simply be swamped by big bodies? Or do we just stick with the kids and just wait out the time until they are good?

Ahhh, I think that this thread just had my eye out!! Although one could argue that it was selfinflicted after I attempted to rake my own eyes out while ready this thread.

It is, however, a decent starting point when you don't yet have the evidence of seeing him play on him. We'll only know when we see it happen, which is why I said I'd like to see it happen.

Regardless of the joke, it was about St Kilda. I think that every rational person is able to agree with the reasons why we need to give Bailey time and why the list needs time to develop. However humans are emotional beings. In fact decision making, at its very essence, is emotional. That's why we have the emotional responses to the coach sacking threads that proliferate. But people need to recognise that these are emotional responses rather than rational thought. I am sure that the board recognises this and takes the right path, regardless of whether or not the supporters like it. After all, ask Collingwood supporters in the mid/late 2000s about sacking Malthouse, or Geelong supporters about Thompson. Short memories.

I wouldn't have thought that Josh Hunt could be that sort of player either.

OK, I first would like to show you all the following ranking of AFL sides: Collingwood West Coast Essendon Carlton Western Bulldogs Geelong Port Adelaide Melbourne Fremantle Hawthorn Adelaide Gold Coast Richmond North Melbourne St Kilda Sydney Brisbane While not perfect, I think that you’d agree that this list seems to generally reflect the ladder, or at least how teams seem to be travelling. What metric do you think this ranking is using? The contested possession differential. The first 2 teams are well in front and the next two have a bit of distance on them too. Melbourne have 4 players that average over 10 contested possessions per game (Moloney – 12.4, Trengove – 10.3, Jamar – 10.2 and Sylvia – 10.1). As a comparison, Collingwood have 9 players who average over 10 contested possessions per game (Pendlebury – 15.9, Ball – 14.0, Swan – 13.4, Dawes – 10.4, Thomas – 10.4, Blair – 10.4, Sidebottom – 10.1 and Wellingham – 10.1). Against Adelaide it was clear to see that we employed a forward press. The only difference between the Adelaide game and the others was that against Adelaide we were actually able to get the ball inside 50 and apply enough pressure to hold it there. That’s the secret. Without the pressure the forward press breaks down. And the way to get the ball there is to win contested possession. That’s why the 3 best pressing teams have the highest contested possession differential. Against Adelaide we had 9 players with 10 or more contested possessions So how do we improve this? Contested possessions come with time, and additional body size. So a large element of our improvement will come from natural improvement from our young players. Look at the players on the lists of top contested possession winners I put up: almost all are midfielders and all are seasoned players with good bodies, aside from Trengove, Sidebottom and Blair. As our youngsters gain experience and body hardness they will naturally improve. But, in addition to that, we have some of our best inside ball winners out of the side. Especially I refer to Scully and McKenzie. In the future you could reasonably expect these two to be the top two or three of our contested ball winners. Our senior players are, generally, outside type players (Moloney and Jamar excepted) so a lot of this inside ball winning has fallen to the younger players who simply aren’t ready to compete with the big boys yet. I know that emotions on here run week to week, but I hope that we can see that patience is required. But, as a question to think about, how do we improve our ability to win contested possessions? Should we bring in older players that are less talented but have 'heart'? If so, who do we bring in? Should we trade for one at the end of the year, forgoing drafting a kid? Or do we ride out the peaks and troughs of the youngsters and wait for them to slowly build up their ball winning ability?

"...Do you want to know what F.W. stands for?" Champagne comedy!

I would be interested in seeing this, not just because I'd like to see the %$#@ist smashed and leave the ground in a number of pieces that exceeds five, but because I really would like Tapscott to be able to handle these small clever forwards in the future. I want to see that he has the pace and agility to shut these players down. If he can then he's a huge weapon because we can start playing him on their most dangerous players and force them to play defensively on him when he rebounds, or simply get him to rebound on their poorest defensive forward regardless of how dangerous they are. Is he up to it yet? Who knows.