Watson11

I agree that he is deluded but not ungracious. I thought his presser showed he has no clue how to address the Richmond mauling, the mauling last night, 3 poor qtrs against Carlton, and the 1 poor qtr against Port when they got cut up. He seems to have the attitude that if his mids are being shut down, they’ll get a run on at some stage and kick 8 in a qtr. I’m heartened by that, as it won’t happen in finals against good defensive teams, and as long as Beveridge refuses to admit they have a problem then they won’t be the threat they could be for finals.

The dogs are dangerous if their mids get on top and can cut teams up, but if they only halve clearances they are struggling against most decent teams. They have a lot of selfish players running forward of the ball who look a million dollars when it comes off, but with pressure and turnovers leave a mediocre defence totally exposed (hence our highest score from turnovers this year). Bailey Smith is an overrated player imo. His was the least effectual 27 disposal game you will see, along with Macrae’s ineffectual high disposal effort. Bonts 30 possessions was ok but he got exposed several times and cost them goals. Treloar would not have impacted last night as he is another forward runner. Full credit to the coaches for the plan we had to stop Libba, cover the easy front runners to ensure they were not dangerous (Jordan to Smith), and then back Clarry and Trac to beat Bont and Macrae which they did. The Dogs are up against the Dockers away, Cats away, Eagles away over the next 3 weeks and have us again, Port, and Sydney in the mix. Will be interesting to see how they respond, or whether the other clubs go to town on how we stopped them.

The Player Rating model is a bit of a joke. Most of the best rated individual games in the list are forwards kicking bags when their side won by over 100 points. Oliver was herculean and would be sitting alone at the top if the system worked.

The reason we lost is we conceded 15 goals. Simple. Let’s face it, we treated Adelaide like a player development exercise and it showed. 40% of Adelaide’s scoring goes through Tex, and we don’t send May to him at the start. That was our mindset and it cost us a win.

I’d put Harmes to Macrae. He gets more of the ball than the others and has the best efficiency by foot. Bont is probably harder to stop so I’d put him head to head with Petracca. Oliver and Libba to go head to head. Smith is an interesting one as when he is rotated through he tends to run forward all the time. He looks a million dollars when on the end of chains, and is pretty good by foot. But IMO he is a weak link. Id like to see Jordan go to him when we want to negate clearances, and Kossie go to him if Max is feeling like he is getting clean taps to advantage.

Bont, Smith, MacRae are all excellent by foot. Treloar and Libba not so much. But the games I’ve watched they had far too much space on the outside from clearances. When Richmond shut that down they looked ineffective. I’m not convinced we will be able to shut it down next week, but hope by the end of the season with Viney back and more time to fix stuff we will be able to. If they lose clearances to us they are toast. If we lose clearances to them, we are still a chance. IMO that is a good position to be in at this time of year with a 9-0 record.

I thought the powers pressure was pretty good but miles off Richmonds, especially around the clearances. The dogs seemed to get outside too easily. Port had 1 quarter (2nd) of quality clearances and they carved up the dogs in that quarter. At one stage just before half time, the dogs had conceded 8 goals from 20 inside 50’s. If we can ensure the dogs don’t get easy clearances then I think we will have the dogs measure.

You’re suggesting we go back to our inside 50 plan from 2018-2019 which was so frustrating to watch, and resulted in a dreadful inside 50 to scoring conversion rate (against top 8 teams was 30% in 2018). We were also one of the easiest teams to score against on the rebound. Against Carlton we scored from 59% of our inside 50 entries. Sure the 1.7 in the last was not great but we are so much less predictable, its really difficult for opponents to get the ball out let alone score from a rebound, and is part of the structural change that is working. The change had to be due to the new coaches (and Richo) explaining to Goodwin why the strategy he stuck to for so long was garbage and so easily pulled apart by good teams. Full credit to Goodwin for listening to the logic and implementing it.

This is why we need to fix it up. In 2018 Richmond had their best home and away season of the last 4 years but were terrible in centre clearance, and it didn’t affect them until 1 bad quarter in a prelim that cost their season. They would have won 4 in a row if not for their centre clearance problem being exposed when it counted.

Not all. On SEN. Former Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy “absolutely loved” Pickett's aggression as the Demons announced themselves a premiership contender. “This is the young upstart, this is a team that is discovering who they are and what they might be, taking on the champs and not being overawed, and getting in their face, and being a little bit cocky, and being a little bit arrogant,” Murphy told SEN’s Bob and Andy. “That’s going to upset a lot of people, Melbourne have been in the doldrums for a long, long time, they’re trying to change who they are. “I absolutely loved it.”

I like the changes going inside 50. It’s just our set shot kicking is one of the basics we haven’t improved. In 2017 and 2018 we were the easiest team to defend against because it was obvious our plan was to go front and centre, and not only was our inside 50 to shots on goal ratio deplorable , but we were easily hurt on the rebound. This year we are having more shots from the pockets, but our inside 50 to shots on goal ratio is almost 50%. The pockets are also easier to stop the rebound. If we improve our accuracy then sides will have to start working out how to defend the pockets, and that will open up the centre more. We just need to improve our goal kicking.

I was looking down at Kossie for the full lead up to the incident. I was surprised a free wasn’t called well before it got out of hand as the umpire was looking. Basically Kossie was trying to create some leads and Mansell was pretty much retrying to rag doll him with scragging and hanging on, no matter which way Kossie tried to run. Went on for a full 20 seconds or so. Eventually Kossie just took the bait and it started.

The direction one is accuracy from each area. West coast are more likely to kick a goal from the boundary than we are when directly in front. Tigers data below. They publish a hot spot map for where shots are taken from as well. See https://www.statsinsider.com.au/afl/shot-charting

Let’s just hope we are better than a 50/50 chance when directly in front, as we have been this season. ps goal kicking stats for west coast and us this year are below.

No excuse. If we aren’t fitter than them now we never will be. Some of their key defenders have had poor preseasons. Just run them into the ground. And I’ll back Langdon and Tomlinson to outrun their opponents. Burgess loves heat training, so we would have done our fair share of extreme weather training over summer.

I could post all 17 of the other clubs promos if you’d like. I wonder if the other supporter boards are flying off and having a go at their clubs for an afl promo.

WC have had an interrupted preseason with their key backs (McGovern, Barrass), and a new midfield with Kelly in there that may take time to gel. Last year we flew to the Gold Coast then to Perth on a 6 day turnaround and should have beaten them despite our injuries and poor form. This year we have no excuses. We won’t get a better chance to win over there than round 1.

During the last 10 weeks of 2018 we became the number one defensive team in the AFL. Not hard to win games when you restrict teams to 46 points like Geelong were in the EF. There are some signs of the same in preseason. I think that’s what Goodwin is working on. In 2018 though we found it hard to score against the top teams. We still need to improve that.

Swedish concussion specialist below disagrees with the bolded bit above. No offence, but this is a sensitive issue and uninformed opinions are best kept to yourself. Concussion test: Tau Professor Henrik Zetterberg, a neurochemist from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, has been looking at indicators of axon damage that might meet the criteria of a marker for more subtle brain damage. He says that, so far, research has singled out two key candidates. The first, the protein tau, is already making a name for itself as a biological villain of other conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Research has shown that amateur boxers have higher levels of tau in the blood stream the week or so after a bout, even if they’re not knocked out. These levels then slowly return to normal around eight to 10 weeks after the impact, as long as the boxer doesn’t have any more head impacts during that time.

Is Oliver ready to step up. We clearly need him to lead in last quarters when games are on the line.

It would also be equally despicable if Freo had the discussions that they have now refuted. The report is damaging to Hogan but also to Freo. Bell is a lawyer. If he is 100% in the clear he should follow the example our President set in response to gutter WA journalism and start defamation proceedings if for no other reason than to get a public apology from Hagdorn along the lines of “his source was unreliable and the story was incorrect”. If Freo don’t follow that path the damaging speculation, which is not helping Hogan’s mental health, will continue.

They did a rebuild via the draft mainly and focussed on defenders first. Shanahan has led the rebuild and had a good assistant coach record, but as an offensive assistant. But every team at the bottom has tried rebuilding so doing it is not easy. The 49ers used most of their high draft picks on defence which goes against the grain a bit. This year it has really clicked and paid dividends and their defence is unbelievable. Their offensive team is good without being great. They run more than pass which is safer (less turnovers), whereas Kansas will pass more than run. The 49ers really rely on getting the ball back in good positions on the field and have done it really well. The turnaround has been faster than expected. Most preseason pundits had them at 10 Wins best case, 4 worst, and 6-8 likely. Then they got off to a flying start and the confidence just grew.

I’m not sure if many follow American football, but I’m a 49ers fan and the last 5 seasons before this one have been shockers, pretty much sitting last or close to it. Last year, out of 32 teams they had the equal 2nd worst win-loss record, the second worst defence, and a bottom 25% offence. Their turnaround this year has been staggering, especially the defence which are now feared. Here’s hoping for a good result tomorrow, and a good omen for the AFL team that finished second last in 2019.

I think we have a lot of lock down defenders, but aside from 2017 and Hibbard we have not had anyone that can play the Houli or Laird type role, where they pick up 25 to 30+ possessions and are damaging. My guess is that’s what they want Harmes to be and he is more than capable of it. He’s a great stopper while also getting the ball himself.

The why not us speech was before the Queens birthday game in 2018 wasn’t it? I’d argue we dropped off for 4-5 weeks, not because of lack of effort but from a worsening of structures due to an overhyped all in to get the ball mentality. It surprises me that supporters continually harp on about players not putting in consistent effort. That is 100% not the problem on game day. Every player has a GPS measuring every heartbeat, metres covered, accelerations etc etc. How to you think they hide their lack of effort from the fitness staff and coaches? I’ll answer for you they don’t. The staff know how well they prepare preseason - cue members forum and only 2 players doing more than 50% of preseason loads. Last year it was clear, especially in hindsight to supporters who attended the forum, the team was overall not fit, probably had diets that were detrimental to their endurance, and to my eye looked like they lost strength. We will see how the 4 qtr efforts are this year, but I would expect a return to 2018 where we were one of the best second half teams in the league, rather than the 2019 version where we were the worst.