titan_uranus

That is a good article and it is spot on. At both ends of the ground our zone work is poor. It has been for years, and it can't stay the way it is if we want to climb the ladder. I'm not sure whether developing our own defence will necessarily translate into being better able to work it out of opponent's zones, but that might be the case. Either way we really do suck at bringing the ball through a zone from the kick-in, and our defensive zones don't work as well as others do. Where we have excelled recently is on the turnover, where the other side doesn't get the time to set the zone up and they turn it over around half back. But that's pretty easy and we need to develop a better way to get the ball out from our kick ins.

Just with regards to Demonland Mk 2, we've got 14 now which is good but I'll wait till the weekend before I close it, we might still get to 16. Seems like the generic settings for team size is different to what the Demonland 1 league is using. JA do you think your settings are better than the generic ones, and thus should I change it? If you think there are some good things that you know about that I should alter let me know.

I hope you and WJ are joking (I think you are). Clearly there is no need for a clash strip when it is patently obvious which team is which. Given everyone wears white in Test cricket it's not hard to work out.

India would sorely be ruing that one-short from Munaf Patel off the last ball of their innings...

Looks like I can steal some tips for how to run Mk 2's draft. For example, 5 minutes per pick.

Another strong performance from an Associate, this time Ireland pushing Bangladesh to the brink. Yes, it's only Bangladesh, but they're in good form, at home, with 100% of the crowd on their side. Ireland have some talented players, I can easily see them knocking off the Windies or England.

That sums it up nicely. Hopefully by mid-season/end of the year, these guys will know each other a lot better than they do now, and we'll have a forward line.

13 now in Demonland Mk 2. 1 more will do, but 3 would be nice to get to the full 16.

I get your point, but I don't think that bombing the ball long into the 50 is going to be a premiership-winning strategy. Even if we leave Jurrah, Dunn and Watts there, it's too easy for opposition teams to float one or two back, zone off, read the play and clear with ease. However, I do think that, with these forward targets, a releasing option of a long kick to the forward line is more than viable these days. That is, if we're in trouble, just bang it forward.

I like the bolded bit. Corey is much better than you give him credit for. Ling was, during Geelong's dominant years, the competition's premier tagger. It might be easier to tag someone when the ball is often in your team's possession but its unarguable that he did it time and time again.

1) We are overhyped (but most of us knew that already) 2) Our midfield needs more work than our forward line 3) Maric may yet surprise me (I still doubt it, but less so than I did before last night)

Good post. When he plays at his best, though, he still dominates through the clearances, via that break the tackles kind of play. But when he's even a little off, he can be a bit of a slow liability. More talented than Jones, for example, but in a similar boat. If (hopefully when) the youth comes on his spot will be less certain.

Not if there's no foreseeable upside. I just don't see in Jones what others do. He makes poor decisions, and doesn't execute them well anyway. He tries to take on multiple opponents and thus gets caught with the ball regularly. He's strong and he's a good bullocker, but that's about it, and it's all a bit one-dimensional. Why persevere with him when we have players like Blease, Tapscott, McKenzie and Gysberts? Does Jones have the talent of Ling, Bartel or Corey? No.

I thought they looked redder at the time, but I wasn't sure if the new ones had come in or not.

Putting it bluntly, Jones is not in my best 22.

Moloney makes up for his slowness with more aggression and skill by foot. Jones is very limited, unfortunately. What annoys me from last night is the ineffectiveness at the stoppages. We're not going to win many games this year with such a low clearance rate (which leads to a low inside-50 count).

Oops.

I'm sure they are looking to win. But do they really care if Petterd tells Essendon he's not playing? No. Well, I would assume no, and I'd be surprised if indeed the FD was concerned with Ricky tweeting over a NAB Cup game.

Lol fail on my behalf. Ok I fixed it now I think. At the moment it's Sunday 20th March at 10:00am, with 1 hour for each pick. But once we've finalised the size of the league we can all decide on draft deets.

Agreed. If this was a real match you definitely wouldn't want a named player telling the other team he's not playing. But this is just NAB Cup.

Yeah I will, but first things first let's give it a week or so and see if we can't fill it up. Then I'll put it to the rest of the league to see what makes people happy. Might bring it forward by a week too.

How about that Luke Butterworth! 99 and 6-for in the same match. Nice work.

Nice, Demonland Mk 2 is up to 10 teams! I've also moved the draft date back to the 20th of March, but that can be changed too. It's the last weekend before the start of the season.

Don't think Morton played. Not with his broken finger.

ten Doeschate has 4 centuries in 28 games, that's a lot better than I would have thought (even if most of those games are against other associate teams). The associate debate is interesting. I'd prefer to have them in World Cups, it is, after all, a World Cup, and when an associate beats a full member it's always great fun. I get the argument that most of the time the games are too easy and don't offer competition but cricket should be aiming to develop world wide, and cutting the associates out of the World Cup restricts their development severely. I mean, outside of a World Cup, when is Australia ever going to play the Netherlands? Or Kenya? Or Afghanistan? And if we did, we'd send a second-rate (or worse) side to do it.