FlashInThePan

This is getting a little silly. We need to give the B team a chance

These boys are looking really sharp considering how shortened our preseason has been. We look like we are just picking up where we left off in November.

That is SO TRUE!

I can’t wait for this. It will be my first visit to Casey and my first live game since the Carlton game last year. Go Dees!

We can all speculate but there is one simple, obvious fact. There is a new CBA coming mid year and no manager worth his salt would let their player sign a new long term deal without knowing what is in it. The media are going to have a feeding frenzy because that is what sells papers and draws clicks/page views. They will conveniently ignore or play this down because Gus being gettable is a far bigger headline than ‘nothing to see here’. Another thing we know is that, unless he is a brilliant actor, he loves the club and has extremely close ties to players and coaches here. He has been a huge part of building this group that, fingers crossed, are about to experience sustained success. He clearly has a head on his shoulders and is very articulate. He will almost certainly have a career either in the media or in coaching. He is not in the position that some players are in where they need their payday now as there is little waiting for them on the other side of footy. Lastly, Gus is a jet. I know, when you think you might lose a player it hurts less to point at all their flaws and reasons why you don’t need them but he is a great player. No Gus = No GF, as simple as that. If you back and look at the replays for the whole year you will see how important he has been to our game strategy. Our wings and last line defence were our biggest problems even during 2018 and certainly post. May and Lever shored up our last line and Langdon and Brayshaw fixed our wings. If we can maintain things this year we should cement ourselves as a system based team. Once you reach that point, literally no one is irreplaceable. If you can lose an Ablett or a a Franklin and maintain your winning system it is solid proof that a system trumps individuals. I’m hoping that for all the reasons above Gus signs in the back half of the year to a deal that looks after both him and the club. magic eight ball says ‘all signs are positive’, despite media click bait.

Let’s hope he is just waiting for the new CBA. Some people like to criticise his disposal but I think they are just displaying their confirmation bias… or maybe I am when I see him turn onto either foot and get the ball forward to advantage. To me he is a heart and soul, team man. Of course everyone is replaceable, but I would hate to lose him.

If Binman’s analysis is correct then we are happy to trade off a certain reduction in scoring efficiency in order to control the play more effectively. Lower score for us but even lower score for our opponents as we spend more time defending in our forward half. I tend to think he may be onto something here. So much of our game relies on closing down the size of the field and establishing an impenetrable zone. This forces the long kick to a pack or a risky switch, which we are very comfortable shifting our zone rapidly to block. As he mentioned, going to the pocket closes down the amount of space we need to guard on turnover. Obviously, it also means a lower percentage shot in goal if we mark or gain possession. We do still have our second quarter yips. Where we have opportunities to close out the game entirely but we kick a string of points rather than goals and leave the door open. I’m hoping that as our self belief and confidence grows, this will happen less and less.

There is a lot of interesting data in here. The most obvious problem has been pointed out by a number of people. Champion Data have some work to do on their modelling. These ratings look very much like they aggregate some arbitrary stats (someone’s best guess at what constitutes elite) along with some weighting. I’m sure it is more sophisticated than that but it clearly doesn’t stack up against reality. Most data scientists would call this a starting point and establish some base truths about the status of players over a number of years to assess their key stats and train their model against. I’m not worried by these ratings, they are obviously extremely suspect and really only useful for click bait and generating heated discussion (as evidenced by this thread it is very successful 😊 ). What does worry me is the immaturity of the data science underlying this. I am hoping this is just the low grade rubbish that they give to the non-paying general public and not what clubs are using.

They were different kinds of problems but moving them on was key to our premiership. From a purely trade perspective watts gave us Fritsch and hogan gave us May, I don’t think anyone would argue how pivotal they both were to the outcome last year. More than that they both sucked oxygen from the team. I’m not blaming them as people, they both seemed like good guys from what I could tell from a distance, but everything was always about them and not the team. Every year there was a discussion about Jesse going back to WA. Every year we had to talk about how watts needed x or y to reach his full potential. They share that they were both talented footballers who’s leaving did so much more for the team than their presence ever did.

How good is this guy at spin?! It takes a very special talent to say that illness is not an excuse and that the better team won while still leaving the clear impression that illness is why you lost. Hats off to you Chris Scott, chapeaux!

Those front exit clearances coming from a left or right tap to either Clarrie or Trac on the burst look like a set play to me. I was watching the port game last night and we did exactly the same thing in the 3rd when they started to get a run on. Good luck stopping either of them when they take the ball at pace, with not only their natural strength but also a ton of momentum.

I’m in the area Wiz, I’ll keep a close weather eye out for any smugness. Let it rip, God know we’ve earned it!

I think this is the point that the Mongrel Punt are trying to make. If Oliver gets 10+ clearances then we are extremely likely to win. Meaning his clearances are more damaging than most. Certainly from the look of games in 2021 the same is true for Petracca.

He, along with his team, have built this team and clearly have their trust. I think he has earned the right to coach this group through their premiership window. The duration is likely to be 3-5 years, I’m not fussed by the actual number, the important thing is that he is treated with the respect he has earned. We don’t need to rehash things that went wrong 3 years ago, they have been reviewed and the lessons learned are part of what made this team what it is. He is undeniably a very good coach. Not only did he coach us to a premiership, he won the award for the best coach, so his peers obviously rate him as well.

Honestly, I thought we were done with all this tripe. It feels like before the gf, half the posts on this forum were complaining about or having a whack at Goody. Probably one coach in ten or one in twenty coaches a team to a grand final victory. Simon Goodwin is the one. Fifty seven years we waited for this, whatever contract terms he wants, if they don’t cripple the club, he should get. We just built an outstanding premiership team, they absolutely demolished everyone they faced in the finals and we could well be looking at a dynasty 🤞. You can’t build that over night or by snapping your fingers. You have to put it together piece by piece and develop those kids. You are going to lose games, your are going to backslide sometimes and have to relearn what you should have already learned. You have to build relationships and trust and a coaching panel that covers all the right areas. On top of that we were coming from an incredibly low base. To nitpick and complain about those development years, seeing what they built for us, is just the absolute height of ingaratitude. You could just delete this whole post and replace it with 2 words… thank you

It seems to be the football media in general, certainly the bulk of TV football journalism. Look at the footy show on channel 9. Constantly spouting sexist or racist comments, thinly disguised as humour. People like Sam Newman and BT are encouraged to be ‘edgy’ so that the station can create controversy and if there is s backlash they throw their hands in the air ‘of course we don’t support these views’.

I guess because we are deep in the off season and on a demons fan forum. Watching the GF replay and exploring hypotheticals around the draft is about all that we have for the next few weeks 🙁 My post about Amiss was not intended to imply that we made some kind of mistake at the draft table, just looking at the only other comparable tall in the first round.

Yeah, this should be interesting to watch and compare. I was very taken with Amiss based on his incredible accuracy. Knowing little about Van Rooyen I didn’t really have an opinion of him. If the mark I saw in the practice match footage is anything to go by though, he looks the real deal.

Oh the horror! 😁

Yeah, I feel like I have to post on this thread. I have been guilty in the past of thinking of JV as to one dimensional and of driving some of the behaviours that I thought were holding us back. Ball hunting, trying to take everyone on with brute strength rather than look for a block to get someone clear. This final series was a different Viney, he played a much more complete role, breaking the oppositions stoppage structures and either freeing trac or clarrie for the extraction or doing it himself. I’ve never posted in criticism of him, that’s not really my style but I apologise for some of the things that I was thinking. Thank God I’m not in charge of list management!

Significant other 😉

I don’t mind your definition 😁 I was thinking of Hipwood and McStay as well as Rayner. In that prelim they pretty much had just Daniher as a tall, who was totally ineffectual.

There is no one out there that we should be afraid of. There are a few we need to respect. The lions, with an intact forward line are significantly more potent than team we rolled over in the prelim. The Dogs are the other that I think are going to test us if they can get Jamar UH and/or Darcy on the field and firing. More than their forward line and their ruck, they need to fix up their defensive structure though. The third team I’m thinking of is Port. With Rozee, Butters and Dursma all back they will be a significantly better team than the one that rolled in their backs for a tummy rub from the Doggies.

OMG is that a mullet coming out the back of Spargo’s cap?! Say it isn’t so!

We have been opened up a few times by ground balls in our defensive 50. If I recall correctly goody referenced that in an interview as the reason why we brought Bowey into the team. We have a pretty damn good defensive system (stating the obvious) but again Cameron kept the lions in it all on his own and showed other teams that the way to open us up is to get the ball in there quickly and bring it to ground. I’m hoping that Bowey’s natural improvement with experience will help in this area. I think we risk too much by changing the height balance to have more coverage on the ground.