Watson11

That is such a joke. He does not even deserve to be in the team. His stats were boosted by cheap goals against north, west coast, and Essendon (4.0 per game). Against decent sides he was average at best. 16 goals from 8 games against finalists (2.0 per game). Just as well they didn’t have our draw and play 11 games against top 8 teams. Yet rewarded with captaincy. Joke.

Thanks @WheeloRatings Such great data. One small issue that probably skews the data every year is the draw and double-up games. Because of how uncompetitive North and the Eagles have been this year, it is even worse. As an example, for inside 50 differential Geelong were approximately +50 and +40 against North and the Eagles the second time they played them. If you removed those 2 games from their averages, their i50 differential drops from 5.7 (ranked #1) to ~1.7 (ranked ~#5). Same for raw i50s and probably a host of other stats. But great data so thanks.

Harmes did a really good and underrated job. Bailey is probably their most dangerous mid and he kicked 0.0 and only had 2 score involvements.

We are pretty much unbeatable when our forward and midfield pressure is elite, and that’s mainly down to Viney and our role players. In 150 games, ANB has probably been top 4 or 5 for pressure and defensive acts in 90% of his games. Friday was no exception.

By started do you mean at the first bounce below? Zach Bailey was tagged by Harmes and spent most of the night on the wing.

As per my post above. I forgot to mention that despite their only way to stay in games is the risky transition from d50, which relies on great foot skills, they are ranked #18 for kicking efficiency. Feel free to bump these posts if they win a final.

It’s not weird. They won 10 in a row which was a great run, and 11/12. But 6 were by less than a goal against bottom 8 teams, 2 against us during our 4w-6L run, 2 against Carlton during their 4w-8l run, and Freo during their 4w-5l run. They have had a charmed draw. Their midfield is useless and they need to pretty much play kamikaze from defensive 50 because it’s the only chance they have to stay in games. Sydney are the only decent team to make their defenders accountable and destroyed them on turnover. If Geelong don’t do the same I’ll be surprised. But it is Geelong. I would love us to play the pies.

Playing Collingwood is the easiest matchup in all the finals. That would be a gift. But it would be so Geelong like to lose to them. But logic tells me Geelong thump them by 60 points, and then Freo or dogs see them out in straight sets.

Concussion apparently

If you rate the draw on how many games against top 8 sides then it is identical. Last year 10. This year 9 (10th tonight). Same for top 4 matchups (4 each season). The difference this year we only played 1 game against a current top 8 team in our first 10, and will have played 9/12 in the run home. So not an ideal way to plan loading :-) The other difference is against top 8 sides only one team kicked more than 80 points against us last year (Dogs in their win). This years it’s been 4 (3 over 90 points). We have been more up and down defensively.

Not really getting by as we are 5-6 since round 11. The defensive drop is stark. In 38 games prior to rd 11, we conceded shots at goal from >50% of opponents i50s just twice. Since rd 11, it’s been 6 times and we lost every time except Carlton. I would not say we are getting by on coaching. If we fix it the coaches will be geniuses, but on the last 11 weeks it is looking like a fail. I think they can fix it.

If you are interested in planning for olympics it’s a great listen. Matthew Innes is high performance manager at the Dogs but he also was part of the Malaysian cycling program who won Malaysia’s first silver medal at the Tokyo games. Fascinating listen. Burgo chimes in with his Gold Coast fact just after the 49min mark. There is no context or planning. Just a factual statement.

I’ll have to dig through his podcasts again but I’ll find it. From memory they were talking about power output which is a combination of factors that are combined to produce what is intended to equate to physical effort.

Good podcast. @binman I have unashamedly posted on loading as a thing before. But considering your strong conviction that it is still a factor, I have a few questions. Burgo is on the record as saying our best physical output last year was r20 against Gold Coast, and collectively it was almost 20% better than our next best. How can Burgo have got the timing of peak performance so wrong last year? How much would we have beaten the dogs by if Burgo got it right? Burgo is more experienced than Selwyn. Is there any chance Selwyn has the timing even worse and we peak in November?

Burgos resilience idea was not about knees and ankles. One podcast where he spoke about it was about his time at Arsenal and how they had masses of data (10 years or so), and he hired a data analyst who went back through it all to see if there was any correlation between player management (resting or not), and soft tissue injury. It turned out there was no benefit to resting, hence Burgo’s next job was with us and he adopted a strategy of not letting players have sessions off if they were tired or sore or needed to be managed. There is also plenty of other stuff in his podcasts talking about soft tissue injuries, and there are only a couple of factors proven to be linked to them. One is variation in training loads. So he adopted the theory that resting players make them more likely to suffer soft tissue injuries when they came back to full training. But I have never heard Burgo or others apply the same to joint injuries. That is an entirely separate debate to what Burgo actually proposed.

That article is missing the real cause of our poor defence. It’s our forward line (and mids) forward pressure and defensive structure. Using last week as an example, the pies scored 6 goals from chains that started in defensive 50. If we apply forward 50 pressure like last year, then they score maybe 1 goal from those chains and we score 3 goals on forward half turnover. We end up with 16 goals and they end up with 10. That’s what our games looked like last year. Most of our losses have been the same (we have given up too many easy goals from lack of pressure upfield) that has been exposed since teams have started taking on risky kicks out of defensive 50.

Wave or not I don’t think they are that good. Macrae spent a long time at Richmond and has implemented their gameplan at Collingwood but they have half the talent Richmond had (or we have). They have a pretty good defence and bring forward 50 pressure, but their midfield is pedestrian and if they don’t get quick movement into their f50 (or f50 free kicks) they find it hard to score. They are bottom 4 in contested possessions, bottom 2 in clearance differential, and bottom 8 in inside 50 differential, so they rely on intercepting (ranked #1) and counterattacking. But their kicking efficiency is ranked #18 so they don’t even have the skills to implement their game plan well. I rate Longmire as one of the more astute coaches and so expect Sydney to be the team that brings forward 50 pressure against them this week. I’m not sure how they cope when that happens. If they deal with Sydney I’ll pay them some respect.

I’ll reserve my judgement on the Pies as I think they are just making up numbers. An 11 game winning streak is impressive, but it started with a super impressive win over Freo, but since has included us twice, blues, and 7 of the bottom 8 (by an average margin of 6 points). Considering we and the Blues are 4w-6l in that period, I would argue they have scraped over 9 of the bottom 10 teams based on current form. I think the Swans will thump them this week but if that doesn’t happen, they are a very remote chance to beat 3 top sides in a row considering they concede so much field position.

If you do the same thing again and again, teams work it out and come up with plans to address it. On Friday, Collingwood expected the kick to the pocket and always counterattacked from the subsequent stoppage (or intercept) to the other side and always had the outnumber and overlap on the far wing (Langdons wing). We did nothing to address it and gave up 5 easy goals due to that switch (we also gave up 1 goal from a switch to Jordan’s wing). That’s incredibly poor coaching by Goodwin and the support coaches. The dogs game was just as bad. I think we should stick with the kick to the pocket as it is the percentage play, but we need to setup to stop the counterattack to the other wing. It seems an easy thing to fix.

Is it really individuals or a change to our system. Brown and Fritsch (and Gawn) were all there last year. Why are we dead last for forward 50 pressure this year. To me it looks intentional and for the first 10 games no one except Hawthorn took our system on. Now almost everyone takes it on, and if they don’t we make them look average and if they do we struggle.

I’m still dumbfounded that we lost last night, and thought I would bump this. My opinion is our coaches are getting it horribly wrong this year and I’m not sure why. Especially against Collingwood that are an ordinary team (watch Sydney pull them apart next week). We seem to have made a conscious tactic to let sides have space in our inside 50 and we drop back to try and apply a zone. I think it’s confusing players who are caught in 2 mindsets ie do I pressure or zone back. For kickins it just hasn’t worked either. Collingwood had zero chance last night if we apply forward half pressure. They lose the territory battle every week, even against bottom teams (their last nine wins are against us twice and 7 of the bottom 8 by an average of 6 points), yet we made it easy for them. Longmire is too astute to allow them to do that against Sydney. We obviously had 65 i50s to 41, and shots at goal from 45% of our i50s is not too bad. But they scored from 56% of i50s with reminded me of 2018/19 when sides just transitioned too easily. It’s a complete reversal from last year. The disposal efficiency stats tell the story. Their defenders had 8 out of their 9 highest efficiency ratings. They just weren’t pressured. This has been a tactic all year, and has seen us continually picked apart since Hawthorn exposed it. Freo didn’t do it last week which was a surprise and they paid for it. The question is whether our problems are really this simple, and if they are why doesn’t the coaching group change it up. I actually think we will win the flag if we make this tactical tweak.

Fixed it for you...

I think the club needs to seek clarification before Monday on the holding the ball rule. Is their March decree still current? I guess we find out Monday. https://amp.abc.net.au/article/100908150 “Free kicks will be awarded against players who duck their heads prior to being tackled and do not dispose of the ball correctly. Some of the red flags for umpires will include players evading, fending, ducking, having a prior option and not taking it, being balanced and steady, or driving their head.”

I would also add athletes often have heavy/light blocks when loading, so you would expect the high performance team to ease off in the weeks that we have tough games and load in weeks against teams that are lower on the ladder. Might explain our great efforts against Brisbane and Port last year which were surrounded by sub par efforts last year. Also, our 4th qtr stats support the loading theory. In that round 11 to 18 period last year we were 3w-5l in 4th qtrs, but we were 14w-3l in 4th qtrs for the rest of the season (losses were 1 point, 4 points and 6 points). This year we were 7w-3l in 4th qtrs for weeks 1-10 and so far are 0w-2l for the "loading period". We have not looked as fit this year as last, so we probably need the loading period even more. The only concern this year is it's a lot tougher draw in that period. And our pressure has been down from week 1 so we have a lot of work to do. Final thing to add, is with a 10-0 or 9-1 start I think you can start loading and preparing for September. I doubt Sydney felt the same way as they were only 1 game inside the 8.

Interested to hear where everyone thinks we are at tactically and what adjustments are needed. A few sobering stats. Intercepts are way down and for the last 2 weeks have been bottom 4 in the afl level. Scores from opposition inside 50s have been at bottom of the afl level. These stats we were #1 in last year by a long way, and #1 or 2 this year until a few weeks ago, so we have dropped to bottom 4 level pretty quickly. I think we have a rock solid game plan and structures, but our pressure (and probably motivation) has not been super high. For the first 10 weeks, it seems no teams tweaked that we were not the 2021 version of ourselves, and other than Hawthorn played into our hands with slow ball movement. Fast ball movement against the 2021 version of ourselves (#1 for score from turnover) would be suicide. But Freo, and Sydney tweaked that our pressure is substandard this year and did a couple of things that have exposed us. First, at stoppages they seem to not rush with very few dump kicks forward and are getting much deeper and better clearances than what happened against us last year. Second, from backward of centre they are taking the game on and running it out and moving the ball quickly, a lot through the corridor, and getting deep inside 50s to one on one’s. Freo we’re the big surprise here, as they were ranked #17 in the afl for speed of ball movement but in the 2nd half they moved the ball super quick. Both of these tactics have taken Lever’s intercepting out of the game. Not helped by May out either. We have been down by 8 and 12 intercepts per game versus last years and the early season average for us and exposed our defence. I’m not sure how you get an entire team that all played full ground defence to perfection last year to suddenly flick the switch. Should Jordan go back into the midfield. He was our best tackler and defensive mid for the first half of last year. Should Brayshaw go back to the wing? Interested in thoughts.