Axis of Bob

old, is the 'man on man zone' where you play man on man and then ask the opposition to stand still in a zone formation? Brilliant if you could get it to work!

Snap.

Hannabal: For someone who constant states how he only ever cares about a premiership, you certainly seem to care a disproportional amount about the minutia of our game plan in 2011. Do you think the 2014 flag will be won with the same gameplan that Collingwood uses now? I remember way back in early 2008 when Bailey was asked if he had a gameplan to beat Geelong. He was that it didn't matter about beating Geelong's plan, it was about beating Hawthorn's because the game was evolving. Remember the crap that Malthouse used to get about his gameplan? The supporters hated it because they constantly went around the boundary and never attacked through the corridor like all the other teams. They wanted him sacked and it resulted in the Buckley coach transition. Malthouse resisted the temptation to play Thomspn's Geelong plan and Clarkson's Hawthorn plan, but instead devised a way to defeat it and picked players to suit that style. Different doesn't necessarily mean bad.

While I'm not sure Gys had a better game on the weekend, I agree with the rest of what demoniac wrote. The quality of Gys' clearances is much much higher. Much cleaner and much better vision.

Hurley has 31 games averaging 15.5 possession per game and 0.8 goals per game. Watts has 20 games averaging 12.2 possessions per game and 0.7 goals per game. Watts turned 20 eight days ago. Hurley turned 20 ten months ago. I'm not sure that there's anything more conclusive in those stats than that they are both very early into their careers, but it's still interesting.

Akum, I think that yours is a really good post and gives insight into the OP’s data. Collingwood was the master of the defensive press last year, and their breakdown of scores from Forward Pressure/Stoppages/Transition was 16/75/7. Ours is 10/50/34. What that says, to me, is that we really struggle to win any quality football from stoppages. The ones we do win are scrappy and we don’t win enough of them. I ran a quick bit of research myself, and worked out how many points each team has scored against them per inside 50 they concede. This should tell you how effective a defence is at defending. Overall we are the 7th most effective (ie, 7th lowest score per inside 50 conceded = 1.66 points/i50). Conversely, in an attacking sense, we are 6th best in turning inside 50s into scores (1.83 points/i50). To me that says that we are effective at each end of the ground, but we are not having the ball at our end of the ground enough. It also gives an insight into how we play and how the opposition’s press works. The press works on territory rather than possession. Keeping the ball at one end of the ground. Our system tends to allow this to happen, as we push number into our backline to win the ball. We tend to win the ball in defence a lot more than we do in the forward line and midfield (as shown in the OP’s data). This is part of why people get frustrated that there’s no forward line, because they push back to defend. It can be hard to break through the press, so the ball gets turned over a bit. But because we have numbers back we are able to cover most of the opportunities that are presented to the opposition and defend against them. However, eventually the ball breaks through the press and, when it does, we are very fast and usually beat the opposition’s defenders into our forward 50 – so we can score quite easily. That’s why we score so well from transition. We don’t have a lumbering forward, and even those that we have drafted (Cook, Howe etc) are all athletic and really good endurance runners. But these players also need to be able to contest that first kick coming from defence in order to move through the press or, at least, neutralise the situation and create a dead ball where we have the potential to move it through the zone. This is the contest we’re not getting enough of at the moment (probably because it’s only Jamar competing for it). What we need is the body size around the footy. This will give us clean takeaways from stoppages to help us score and also help to force more stoppages when being caught up in the press to create more opportunities. It’s a game that involves a lot of hard running, but we have drafted accordingly. Scully, Trengove, Morton, Grimes, Gysberts, McKenzie are all midfielders with top level endurance. If we start having games where we are level for inside 50s then we’re probably winning by 10 goals.

Your assumption is that the game plan is behind. Does different = outdated, or is that just what you have heard?

RobbieF, are you sure that the story about Cook and Beamer is correct. Could you provide a reference for it? I say this because you've confused the story and mixed it up with something else, and then used that incorrect story to come to a poorly thought out conclusion. So ...... care to back it up?

"We're going to win a premiership" is not a defeatist attitude. In fact it's the opposite. But emotions don't like hearing that sort of stuff when they can only see each week in isolation.

The ones chosen are our best midfielders. Our older, more experienced, ones are nowhere near as good.

I see that a few posters are getting caught up in meaningless minutia (eg, how good Moloney is, how far away Scully and Jordie are, how many good quarters we played in the game etc.) so I'll try to bring it back on track. It was clear yesterday that the main thing that we lacked was an ability to get our hands on the ball. In the stoppages we were facing Mitchell and Sewell, with another in like Rioli or similar. Mitchell won 11 contested possessions, Sewell 11 (Combining for 14 clearances) and Rioli with 13 (Roughead also won 13). For us, Moloney won 11, Sylvia 12 (combining for 11 clearances) .... but then it's Tapscott (9), Watts, Martin and Bail (8 each). In the midfield we had Moloney and Sylvia and then nothing. What's more is that neither of these are particularly adept defensive midfielders (Moloney 2 tackles and Sylvia 3). This means that when we lose a contest it gets cleared very easily. McKenzie becomes very important here. No surprise that these are our two biggest bodied (and most experienced) midfielders. We saw with the Gold Coast that had a midfield of Ablett, Rischitelli and Harris (plus the physically developed Swallow) got absolutely smashed because of the sheer discrepancy in physical size and experience. To relate to the 2001 Superdraft and Geelong, it took 6 years to bear fruit. Drafting 18 year olds, this means that they were 23 or 24. Our 'Superdraft' was probably 2009 (Scully, Trengove, Gysberts, Tapscott, Bennell, Jurrah, McKenzie). So that probably equates to about 2015. Will we be better earlier? I don't know, but history shows that it can take time. We may get unexpected development earlier, but this would be a bonus rather than expected. Scully is still a skinny kid, as Gysberts. Trengove is bigger, but still much less than he will be, similar with McKenzie. Imagine the difference between Trengove now and Trengove built like Lenny Hayes!! Or Gysberts now and Joel Corey!! I just hope that the Gold Coast game shows everyone the difference that games of experience and years of development bring.

I like threads like this. They keep the simpletons in an easily identifiable, and avoidable, area.

I think Jetta will be the sub, due to his ability to run through midfield.

The good doctor is right. Gawn is promising but is still quite a way off being an AFL ruckman. If he gets a game then we are either: a- Stuffed, or b- Giving him a 'taste' right at the very end of the year purely for the sake of development. Spencer is currently miles ahead of him.

I think that it's part of player development. Dean is wanting to give the players, especially young players, immediate feedback on what they're doing well and not so well. As Viney said, we haven't concentrated a huge amount on tactics etc, since the focus is still on player development. Bailey will receive all the important information from assistants in the box. But it's better for him to speak to, say, Luke Tapscott when he comes to the nech to give him feedback on positioning, ball use etc, so that he can immediately go back out and use that information to learn. It's better than waiting until the review a day or so later and not be able to try it out for another week. That said, if it was 2015 and we were in a preliminary final, I'm undecided as to whether or not it's still the right thing to do.

How were we exposed for height down back? They only had two tall players take marks inside 50: Goodes (3) and Reid (2). By comparison we had four talls mark inside 50: Jurrah (3), Dunn (2), Watts (1) and Jamar (1). Once Garland shut out Goodes I don't think we were exposed at all. The damage was done by the smaller forwards in Bolton and McGlynn.

Warnock never played on Rose.

Frawley hasn't played a single game and has been out for 8 weeks. I'd be surprised if he played next week considering there are now only 3 on the bench. Even Hodge played a whole game at Box Hill this week. It's hard to carry unfit players with a 3 man bench. It's even harder when people are picking him to play on Buddy in his first game. I wouldn't be surprised if Warnock is brought in for Roughead, with Rivers taking Hale and Garland getting Buddy.

Easy. We have fast players in our forward line that will almost always beat their opponents back into the forward 50. We kick a lot of goals like that and it's hard to defend against. We just have to make sure we run the ball once we get it forward of centre. This setup works especially well when we don't have strong bodies up forward. Sure, once Watts fills out into a man's body then we can start doing that. But he's still getting rag dolled and Jurrah isn't anything special one on one in a wrestle. There isn't one single way of setting up the forward line. We'll use a variety of ways to kick goals.

The problem is not with Watts, but rather supporter expectations of Watts. On two points: 1 - That he would make an immediate impact. 2 - The style of player he is. When he was drafted he was called a key forward, so everybody imagined that he was a Wayne Carey/Dermott Brereton/Jonathan Brown type player. He isn't. That's not his style. So when he doesn't come out barrel chested, shrug a tackle and commit a sexual assualt everyone screams how he doesn't "play like a man". It is more of a reflection on the person making the comment than it is on Watts.

At least we aren't South Africa! I usually think Peter Roebuck writes shallow emotional rubbish, but he made a good point today in his article. We simply weren't good enough but other teams still feared us. Not because we could bat or bowl, because we couldn't, but because we were Australia and teams knew that we would fight and fight. We fought, but it wasn't enough because we just weren't good enough. Not being good enough is not a problem South Africa has. But they still can't win.

But they didn't need to constrict them, they needed wickets. Last two recognised batsmen at the crease so we needed to break that partnership quickly.

That's what Tait is there for. Picking up a well set Tendulkar who is on 50 during the middle overs. Sure, he's spraying it, but it's tough to find someone that can do that.

If you look at how the team is selected it sends out a very clear message: "We aren't good enough to win the World Cup so we're going to have to fluke it" If we picked a team that had our most solid, effective bowlers and our most clinical batsmen, then we still wouldn't be good enough to beat South Africa. By picking Tait, White, Smith, Krezja etc, we are still unlikely, but if one of them comes off then we are a real chance. Given that, White stays in the team no matter how badly he's hitting it. Why? Because if he does rediscover form in a game then he can single handedly win us a game a la Symonds in 2003. We won't drop Tait for Hastings, (or Bollinger when he was there) because Tait could possibly single handedly win us a game against South Africa if he clicks. Basically we aren't good enough, but if we throw a Hail Mary or two then our chances increase from 0% to something above 0%. Albeit not far above 0%!!

A comparison with Hurley? Hurley was a man when he was an under 18. He was an old fashioned footballer with a strong body in under 18s and so the level of development he needed to compete at AFL level was not particularly high. His game is about being smart and being strong, with his major weakness being that he is slow. Compared with Watts, who was pencil thin and had a game based upon athleticism and ball use. He has played some very good games when pushing up the ground (which suits his skinny frame and athleticism). He is now pushing deeper into attack and showing some good signs, but is still being pushed around by bigger defenders which he is struggling with. These are two completely different players. For two people that play the same position, I'd struggle to think of two people that were more different in style. What sort of development do the two have left in them? Hurley might get a little bit stronger, which will mean he can do the same thing he does now a little bit better. He's a pretty good player now and he should make some improvement. Watts will get stronger and it will allow him to play the game completely differently. With added strength he can play deeper to goal and compete under the high ball. That's his biggest problem at the moment, but he's getting much better at it. Plus he's still going to be able to push up the ground and turn his man around like he does now, so you can't just play a gorilla on him. The real time when Watts will become hugely dangerous is when he starts getting too strong for at opposition's most mobile tall defender. Then he'll force the opposition to make a decision between mobility and strength, the way Riewoldt does. This will take some time, since he is only 19 years old. It may not happen until he is 23. Look at Goddard, who is a different player but had a similar issue. He was a tall midfielder/flanker but very skinny. For years he was said to underperform. Then, when he finally grew into his frame and became physically on par (and even superior) among his peers, he was able to dominate and play all over the ground. It took Goddard a long time, but we all know how that turned out.