titan_uranus

Have just realised that Joel Smith broke his own career record by playing a 5th straight game for the first time in his career. Sadly, he may well be the first ever player to not record a stat after being subbed on.

Despite their inability to rotate, they had more possessions and tackles than in the fourth quarter. I'm confident someone will say we were fatigued.

An important 4 points to get given the ladder positions. Can’t be relying on opponents only being able to have 52 interchange rotations though (we had 69 for comparison).

Things I am desperate to see: A win No injuries Things I want to see but will forego if I get the above: Better accuracy More fluent ball movement A lesser forward half press with defenders sitting further back A reduction in our desire to have repeat stoppages in the forward 50 Pickett and Brown to look a million bucks

Agree with all of this. FWIW, LN’s rumour on BigFooty is slightly different to what everyone’s saying here. But it should be treated with a massive lump of salt because of who is spreading it. Thing is Luci, before his injury Petty was a forward. So was it really his spot in defence? Last year I’d have fully agreed with you that Petty was an automatic lock for ohr backline. This year, I challenge that notion. In part because he spent most of his time pre-injury as a forward, in part because I just don’t think he’s been that good this year. No doubt Tomlinson was picked as a short term cover option but his form on KB was well above what should be considered good enough to hold his spot. Petty, IMO, should have come back via Casey or into the forward line where he’d actually shown a bit of form vs Hawthorn before his injury.

Add me to the perplexed and disappointed camp. Fritsch out so we drop Smith as well, and the only replacement is Melksham, who as sub played nearly the whole game last week for 6 touches. Spargo’s barely played football since being dropped but gets recalled. Being picked off reputation not form is not right. I support Jordon’s recall though. We all cry out for VFL form to be rewarded and Jordon’s VFL form completely warrants selection.

Do they? Who? I feel like most/all posters acknowledge that he talks in cliches and gives very little away.

So who do we think Woewodin's replacing? Harmes? Surely not Fritsch, so someone else has to come out, whilst someone else comes into the forward line (should be JVR but I'm not confident after that non-committal presser today).

No I’m not putting the entire blame on Oliver. I’m not even saying he’s responsible for anything. I’m just saying that without being a doctor or physio and without knowing what actually happened, it’s not fair or reasonable to say the club’s stuffed up. It doesn’t have to be the club’s fault or Oliver’s fault.

Big fan of this. Let’s see what difference we can get with a fresh face in the side, particularly someone who has worked hard at VFL level.

Yes you do. You don’t know what impact playing out the 4th had. You don’t know what Clarry reported at the time. You don’t know what impact running on it days later had. You don’t know (or mention) what impact being immobile in hospital had. You don’t know what the doctors asked him to do or what he did in response. You don’t know where he’s currently at or how “bad” things are now.

You two are doctors/physios? No? Then perhaps re-think posts like this.

I agree. Another stat I'd love to see (maybe @WheeloRatings can help us out) is our percentage of scoring chains from the back half vs from the front half. It feels like recently our scores are coming from forward half turnovers/stoppages a lot more than earlier in the year when we were able to generate more scores from our back half. If you look at our xScore maps from our earlier games, we were taking a similar spread of shots but were nailing the easier shots. For example, we were efficient vs GC:

Have we really had an OK run with injuries? Gawn missed 5 games, Oliver's missed 5 games, Petty missed 5 games, Salem missed 9 games, Brown got injured after kicking 8 goals in two weeks, TMac can't get fit, Hibberd's been good when fit but ruptured his kidney, Dunstan got injured right when he was in form. Collingwood and Geelong are considered to have had bad runs with injuries this year - they've used 34 players compared to our 33, so we're not exactly shooting the lights out by comparison. Obviously we're not at West Coast levels, and it could definitely be worse, but I'd argue we've struggled to get continuity due to injuries at inopportune times, and particularly to key players. PS: I still think we have had enough quality and continuity to make top 4 so I don't disagree with the overall argument that top 4 is where we should be finishing.

I agree. But this is intentional. This is what Goodwin wants - a strong forward press, domination of the territory game, and repeat entries. Whilst I've said before that I don't believe Goodwin's press conferences reveal everything he's thinking or working on, he is consistent with his messaging that we are doing largely everything right and that if we work harder, the forward connection will come. But as you've pointed out, we're trying to score goals from messy entries in a congested forward half.

Here's the AFLxScore map of shots: Both our arguments are supported IMO. We're taking too many shots from too far out on angles - look how many shots are wider than 40 degree angles. But we're also missing too many shots from which we should be doing better - we missed three shots that the numbers say we should kick more often than not (one of which is rated over 5, which is a disaster to have missed), compared to GWS' one. With the number of shots we had, and with the amount of the game spent in our forward half/50, we should have scored far more than 45 points.

It’s both. The expected score metric tells you that we’re not scoring what we’re expected to score based from the shots we’re generating. We’re taking too many shots on angles, but we’re missing too many shots that aren’t so hard.

Brown had more touches than Melksham and Smith combined. He also had more touches than Riccardi and Hogan - obviously we had more ball and time in forward half but still, it shows he was working hard to get involved in conditions which weren't ideal at all. There is zero point to bringing him back for that game, getting that performance, and then dropping him for a game at Marvel. It would outrank the decisions to drop Tomlinson and JVR. He will play this weekend, with JVR either taking Fritsch's spot or replacing Smith. We need to see if a Brown-JVR combo can work.

The 2021 slump spanned 7 weeks: Rounds 13-19. We lost to the Dogs (runner up), GWS (won a final) and Collingwood (second-bottom), drew with Hawthorn (14th) and beat Essendon (finalist) and Port (2nd in the H&A and made a prelim). The 2023 slump currently spans 7 weeks: Rounds 10-16. We have lost to Port Adelaide (2nd), Fremantle (not in the top 8), Geelong (not in the top 8) and GWS (not in the top 8), whilst beating Collingwood (1st) and Carlton (not in the top 8). W-L wise the only difference is the draw in 2021 as opposed to an extra loss in 2023. But the opponents in the 2021 slump were, on the whole, far stronger than this season's (unless two of Fremantle, Geelong and GWS make the finals - not out of the question but not likely), which gives me more cause for concern.

Don’t lump me in with others who perhaps approach the topic with “shallow” analysis. I’ve done my best to post my views in detail and with reference to the same material that is used to argue we must necessarily have engaged in a heavy loading phase over the last few weeks. It feels to me as though you are reasoning backwards. Your subsequent post to this one takes our last 5 scores and says “look at these low scores, that clearly shows we are fatigued”. There’s a link missing in between. As I’ve said before, I fully accept that we carefully structure our training loads week to week. What I don’t presently accept is that we’ve engaged in a loading block to such an extent that it significantly explains our poor performances of late. In your view, is it consistent with loading/fatigue as a significant factor that we dominated time in possession, CPs, clearances, time in forward half, forward half turnovers, and scoring shots? When I said “it’s not loading”, I meant it. Our biggest issue right now isn’t loading. It’s how we choose to structure and play.

Pickett's going nowhere. He's not playing as well as he can, but is also not playing as poorly as many are suggesting. The question on my mind is whether we can afford to drop ANB, ask others to cover his defensive aspect, and find a replacement who can perhaps hit the scoreboard or at least be more involved offensively. We also, IMO, need to move on from Harmes as our attempt to change up our midfield. That spot is ripe for someone else to be given a go. Time to see what Woewodin, or Howes, or Dunstan, or someone else from Casey, can offer. Neither Jordon nor Harmes have seized it this year. I also think the major mistake of dropping Tomlinson after KB to bring back an underdone Petty is now stifling us. We never should have done it and should have either brought Petty back via Casey or into the forward line. Now we're stuck with an in-form Tomlinson having nowhere to play and Petty squeezed out of the forward line given it makes no sense whatsoever to go back to Brown for one game in the wet and then drop him for a game under the roof at Marvel.

Not really on the players though. They were continuing to defend the way we set up to defend, by pressing up into the forward half. Absent a coaching directive, they weren't going to drop back into the D50 and have no influence unless GWS got the ball that deep. They were always going to sit high. IMO we press too high but once you accept that press, I think the blame for how sides score out the back is a coaching one, not a leadership or player one.

Not sure the final paragraph makes the argument you're trying to make. The WC-St Kilda stat says a lot more about those clubs' respective defences than their offences.

Bairstow was out. The English reaction is disgusting and so hypocritical given the Starc catch saga yesterday. But it is helping them try to win the match. They are heaping the pressure on us and Stokes has taken the liberty. Can't bowl Green if he's going to bowl like that, but we can't afford not to bowl Green without Lyon. We really needed Starc to hold that catch off Green's bowling to get rid of Stokes. We might not get another chance and if he keeps striking it like he has been, we are a bowler down and only going to offer up more bad balls. Truth be told, it's been an incredible performance for us to even have had this enormous lead. We've batted in the worst conditions and bowled in the best batting conditions, all whilst being a bowler down. England never should have fallen this far behind. But by virtue of how far behind they fell, if they do get up and win from here (they're nearly favourites right now given Stokes' form), they are going to ride the "injustice" of the Bairstow dismissal and the high of coming from behind all through the series. The Ashes is almost certainly going to be decided in the next 2 hours.