Watson11

If port split clearances the dogs will be in strife. Port have gone tall this week with Dixon, Georgiades, Marshall and Ladhams. Hinkley is just playing them into form in preparation for the kindergarten sized dogs defence.

If the dogs get rolled, they could be playing for a top 4 spot against Port. Brisbane are currently 2 games behind them. Charlie Dixon will have a field day if the dogs play like this.

Dogs are an ordinary side if they don’t win clearances. Hawks splitting them so far.

This is what the MRP will calculate. I would argue intentional which is 2 weeks reduced to 1.

And Harmes and Viney were #1 and #2 for pressure acts.

Harmes tagged Rowell and kept him to "zero" clearances. Also, it's not that surprising that the club rated Harmes and Viney in the best 7. Harmes was number 1 for pressure acts, with Viney second. Between Harmes, Viney, and ANB they accounted for almost 30% of our total pressure acts. Those 3 also had 1/3 our our tackles. Those stats may not be rated by demonlanders, but they would be valued really highly by the coaches and club.

Lions would be happy to escape with a draw against the Hawks.

Surely the critical stat is we have gone from 1st in score from turnover to 12th. That’s a 16 point drop off, and if that hadn’t happened we would be undefeated. And scoring from turnover usually occurs from forward or midfield turnovers and our drop off in pressure has seen that dry up. And our young players affect that pressure just as much as the leaders.

Casey flogged Box Hill by 52 points in April, so we should have the talent to to bring in some players to take on half that Box Hill side last week.

We lost 1 last quarter in the first 9 rounds. We have lost 6 last quarters of the last 9. Our run at the end of games has gone missing. Bont played 88% game time tonight. He played the last 15 minutes and won the game for them. Petracca played 98% game time. He played the last 15 minutes and did nothing.

Its probably a measure of whether a team has a defensive mindset or an offensive mindset. If you have an offensive strategy you can smash teams, but also get exposed badly. I don’t have time to do it, but would be interesting to see the @Pollyanna analysis for the dogs and cats. I suspect that if they lose clearances they are toast. They both tend to run offensively. Geelong ridiculously at times.

Does anyone know what is happening with our training loads? Elite athletes in heavy training do 1 week heavy training/1 week backed off, and peak their loads 4-5 weeks before their competition. I’m wondering if Burgo is following this type of program to have us peak by finals, but has modified a bit according to the fixture (heavy weeks against bottom teams). I have noticed that in all of our poor games, I have expected us to outrun our opponents in the final quarter, but we have had nothing. Compare this to our wins, where most games could probably go either way at 3/4 time but we have been all over the opposition in the final quarter. We probably won’t know until finals.

Three. We put Hawthorn a game and percentage above North, so screwed their plan to draft Jason Horne.

In 2019 Ben Brown covered more kms than anyone in the AFL. Averaged 15.6km a game.

Great post. Since round 9, Oliver, Max, Tracc and Langdon are being flogged. They are usually over 90% game time. I’d argue our poor pressure recently starts in the centre square. The dogs key mids have not had a single game with over 90% TOG. The lions rarely do it (once this year). Our difficulty scoring is likely due to a drop off in pressure (less turnovers in dangerous positions), and a recent habit of not taking the game on with quick movement when we do turn it over. In the last few weeks, so many of our unsuccessful forward 50 entries start in our defensive 50. It’s always hard to score from D50. The players are no doubt wanting to perform every week, and at the elite level if you are off 1% anywhere it looks bad but there is a reason behind it. I hope the coaches can work out the reason. Or maybe the players are being flogged on purpose and will start being managed better soon in some cunning plan to have them primed come September. Blight did it at the crows in 97-98 (Goodys first years). Olympians do a 4 week taper after heavy training. I hope this is the case, but only time will tell.

You don’t ‘rest’ anywhere these days. If you do the team is a man down. Same for Gawn. If he is resting then we are not playing at max. His drop off in skills etc seems to coincide with increased game time.

@kev martin In defence of Trac, he didn’t select which clips got broadcast. Who knows what the club is trying to show. As far as his form goes, my concern is that he is a power player, and should be playing 80%-85% game time. He is consistently over 90% game time. If you compare him to other elite power mids from other clubs it’s too much. I’m a bit concerned that he is not at his best right now, and will not be at his best come finals if he continues to get flogged. Same goes for Max.

Clearly our attitude was off in a big way. Max did not have his best game for sure but it seems he gets judged based on the efforts of his teammates. As captain maybe that’s fair. But he had 1/8th of our tackles yesterday. He had more tackles than Oliver, Trac, Brayshaw, and Jordan put together. How does that happen? He had the most contested marks on the ground as well.

If the umps called that play on they would be copping flak similar to the Cameron mark. You can see where it was kicked and marked below.

I thought Geelong on Thursday were very average and think the Lions are more a danger than them. On Thursday as soon as Port got on top around stoppages Geelong got carved up. They conceded 14 goals from 45 inside 50s and most in groups quite quickly, because they are running forward of the ball a lot. I’m looking forward to Geelong versus dogs next week. Whoever wins the ignorant media will be touting as flag favourites. Whoever loses will be the bigger threat as they ‘may’ fix their clear front running issues that will come unstuck big time in finals.

It’s pretty tough for Richmond as they are likely competing with Lions, Port, and Sydney for 4th who have similar runs home. Games against other top 8 teams remaining is below. Richmond - 3 Port - 3 Sydney - 3 Lions - 3 WC - 5 Geelong - 4 Melbourne - 4 Dogs - 5

If you did the survey they put their names to it. The Professor is widely published https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=joRKOIQAAAAJ&hl=en If you look at what he specialises in it seems to be leadership as related to sports. So I doubt they are trying to determine if my or your views are racist or not. I would suggest this survey is about the AFL and their leadership (or perhaps lack of) regarding racism. I for one have no clue whether the policy’s they quoted in the survey exist or not, and am ignorant about a few other things in the survey. Maybe I’ve missed it, but the AFL seem to react when there is an obvious incident, and do stuff so they can pat themselves on the back. But do they show leadership for the clubs and fans? Maybe that’s what the survey is about.

I’m glad he stayed on for the QB game. Only reason we lose is if we don’t turn up. I sometimes think it’s the week after with the caretaker coach that they play out of their skin. The clogged and confused thinking of why the team was underperforming is replaced by some new simple message that frees a team up. Then after a while, sometimes just 1 week, other coaches work out the new approach and its back to losing. Kind of like Carlton under Teague.

Thanks Titan for putting some hard data behind your argument. One issue for Weid this year is he came into a team that was 8-0 and a forward line that has mostly functioned really well, and especially defensively where they have played a huge part in us being so good at scoring from turnovers. As a consequence, he has been playing a role that is different to what was needed in 2019. In the last 3 weeks he has been an inside 50 target only 4.67x a game. This is really low, and has to be taken into account when comparing him to others, as just based on volume of opportunity his numbers will be lower. One thing that stands out a bit is how far behind say Darling he is in pressure acts. Darling is super fit. Last week I though Weid looked a bit slow in some of his chasing. That’s probably just due to his interrupted season. BB I thought looked even more off the pace defensively in his games.

I’m a bit on the fence on this one. Weid is not in great form with either marking or kicking but as others said he’s taking the best defender and competing, and his defensive game, although not perfect, is in front of BB this year. I was surprised that Fagan sent Andrew’s to Weid and Adam’s to TMac. Maybe Andrew’s has no tank. I find it hard to believe Fagan and other coaches rate Weid in front of TMac this year.