Watson11

West Coast statistically take the most difficult shots in the league according to Champion data. They don’t rely on out the back gimmes.

Sunday was the first I remember that we lost inside 50s and were right in it and would have won bar poor kicking for goal (and great kicking for goal by WC). The forward 50 look completely different. I rate Rawlings and hope he is having an impact. Too small a sample so far but good signs. Our worst losses including this year were both poor inside 50 conversion AND leaking goals at the other end. Even the prelim was 31 scoring shots from 52 inside 50s to West Coast. Nearly everyone put the weakest link as our defence which obviously the club did too. Bringing in May and Lever are genuine list changes. The issues you pointed out re structure around stoppages last year are still popping up and are just a giant fail on the coaching department and players. Compare to Richmond, who are the best structured team in the comp. They are just as lacking outside pace and skill as us but they are 10x better structurally and going forward and sit top 4 despite a bad run with injuries. I don’t buy it is our list. It can always be improved, but if we had addressed the issues you pointed out and our goal kicking we would be in the 8 now.

We have crucified our forwards this year. It must be tactics going forward. Stats from a few weeks ago on fox footy showed we on average take the easiest shots of all 18 teams, but have almost the worst conversion. On a level of difficulty, West Coast take the hardest, but have the best conversion. Watch the difference this week going i50. West coast spread defences to every inch of the i50 area, and end up scoring from around 1in 2 i50s. We try and always get the ball into a direct in front corridor, or pass off to team mates in better positions, and score from less than one in three i50s. Reminds me of how champion basketball teams can hurt opponents with 3 pointers, and as a result end up with the best FG percentage. They stretch defences. We are the equivalent of a basketball team always going for the easy layup or shot from the key. Too easy to defend against. That and practice goalkicking.

Freo obviously.

He not only kicked 2, but even with a messed up shoulder another 2 in the last qtr came directly from stoppages where he just monstered Reid and then Aliir out of ruck contests. His worth 2 or 3 goals a game even if he doesn’t kick any.

For dogs

Even with one arm our last two goals came from stoppages where Preuss monstered Alliir and Reid.

That’s not what Freo did. They just flooded back and setup in the defensive half. Rolling flood is more like the high press Melbourne and Richmond play which has been picked apart by WC and Collingwood. 666 is overhyped. There are more scores from centre clearances this year, but it is still a small percentage of overall scores.

Yes and Freo totally blunted it. Last night, after WCE the first 5 goals from 13 inside 50s they scored 5 more from 38. In the first 6 minutes of the 2nd qtr WCE had 30 uncontested marks in the back half. They just didn’t know what to do, and the dockers didn’t allow the eagles to play how they wanted. Freo should have won but for poor kicking for goal. Yet the eagles had almost 80% disposal efficiency versus freo 65%.

Thought it was worth bumping this after last night Freo v WC game. I thought Lyon showed how to beat the control and possession game plan after qtr time. After the first qtr Freo seemed to allow WC uncontested possessions in the back half when they lost the ball. They played something resembling the old flood. They did not press or waste energy trying to shut down WC forward of centre. If they had better skills the Dockers would have won. WC won uncontested possessions by 72, marks by 54, stoppage clearances by 13, but didn’t look like they knew what to do once they got it forward of centre because the flood of Freo players cut all of WCs space. Dockets were +13 in intercepts, probably mostly in defensive half and were effective in getting the ball back forward. Is this what we’ll start seeing to counter the WC type game plan.

Ideally we’ll kick 25 and concede 6...

You’re a bit hard to read Beezle. I seem to recall you were rather upset after we kicked 18 goals against Essendon, yet we’re ecstatic after our 10 goal effort against Geelong last September.

The reality is if we get the ball inside 50 60 times, and score 20 goals which is a great conversion rate, we still need to defend 40 times. No point kicking 18 goals if we leak 20 goals 10 the other way

In fairness to Prodee his argument was pretty prophetic, in that he argued we need to apply really good forward 50 pressure. It’s been our biggest problem for 3.5 games, but who would have thought the problem was worse without Preuss.

4. Our forward 50 stoppages work and we can score from them or if we don’t score can defend them. Preuss, just because of his size, seems to be as good or better than Gawn at stoppages. Small sample so far, but in the Pies practice game and Thursday he has kicked a goal in each game from a boundary throw in. I don’t recall us kicking a goal in the first 3 games from a stoppage, but I recall plenty where opposition easily ran it out down the other end for a goal.

Sorry but don’t agree and think it’s structural. If we apply intense pressure in the forward 50 then we force turnovers and the opposition uncontested numbers are down. Second half was good. First half was like first 3 games. Forward 6 need more time to gel defensively.

Nor does three losses a winter footy season make. Despite our terrible form, I’m still having us up there in contention in Sep. I’ll panic when we have 9 losses for the season. Second half showed how important the forward 6 are to our defence. I’d like to see Goody settle on Tracc, Weid, Preuss, Melk, Hunt, Tmac, and JSmith, AVB when fit as our forward 6 and rotations. If we can settle our forward 6 and they click defensively then we will be very very hard to beat from July on. Love Spargo but he needs time to build strength so his tackles stick. Preuss is really important. He stopped the leakage from forward 50 stoppages last night.

I missed a bit of the game, but what I did see we looked a lot better team with Preuss contesting stoppages in the forward 50. We won stoppage clearances by a mile tonight, and looked like we could have scored from most of the ones I saw. Contrast last 3 weeks where our forward 50 stoppages were more likely to result in goals at the other end.

Compare that to % of scores we concede from inside 50s. We are well over 50% defensively. We have also lost contested possession every game which is our strength. The fact Port and Essendon didn’t smash us, and Geelong only put us to the sword from half way though the 3rd quarter after 1 1/2 quarters of our forward time dominance without scoring, is because we actually have a champion midfield (even if they are not in great form). Our problems in the prelim last year were so different (smashed in contested possession and we turned it over in our defensive half and midfield). This year it has been all our forward 50 dysfunction that has started our problems. Ben Guthrie summed it up perfectly. We are not winning contests down there and terrible structures are leaving free opponents everywhere. Has been the issue from JLT1. https://m.afl.com.au/news/2019-04-07/nine-things-we-learned-from-round-three We will win a flag when our structures allow us to beat teams even when we lose contested possession.

You need defensive leaders to make the mids and forwards accountable. Lewis, Lever, May are natural leaders with the authority to tear shreds off those up the field when they don’t do their defensive job. Right now none of our back 6 seem to have that. Consequence are these sickening runs of bags of goals.

Gloomy place demonland these days. About tonight. I can imagine what both coaches did all week. Essendon - Looked at the tape against Geelong and know we bomb it to 20m 9/10 times. They’ll have their defensive tactics sorted and have 3 defenders dropping back, and the others spreading to get outside leaving plenty of Melbourne players free (as we never take the best options) Melbourne - Looked at the tape against Geelong and know we bombed long 9/10 times despite plenty of free players in our forward 50. Directed to always take the free option. If we win contested possession and clearance (expected) and do what Goody is asking and take free options heading inside 50 we’ll win easily. If Essendon lose contested possession (expected) they need to pressure our mids so we bomb. They are a good chance if that happens. Hopefully tonight is the start of a turnaround.

Another idea. If plan A doesn’t work, make sure we get a stoppage, and then instead of 10 of our players going in to win the ball, we structure up properly and make sure there are no easy kicks coming out. Most scoring comes from turnovers. At the moment we can’t create them.

Optimist in me says we are only one game behind the really good sides, and our structural flaws are so obvious that we can’t not rectify them. We are more likely to be in form by August because of yesterday than if we’d had a full team in and a couple of scrappy wins based on winning contested possession but hiding our structural issues.

Until we get a system around the ball, we’ll struggle, as even when we halve contested possession we will get smashed as our disposal forward is rushed and hacked and we still just leave so much space on the outside. It’s almost like players don’t know their roles, and all are trying to get contested numbers. I’m not convinced we’ll hit our straps until quite a few weeks from now. I can just imagine the coaching group coming down on the players like a ton of bricks for losing the contest, and just compounding our disorganisation.

Knees, ankles, broken bones etc are just bad luck. But I had an interesting chat with a conditioning coach at an unnamed AFL club over preseason. He shared what they were doing quite openly. Hopefully he didn’t think it was confidential. I won’t name the club just in case. This club had an horrendous injury list last year. I asked him the same question re bad luck, and his view is it’s a combination of bad management and bad luck. He told me they did a massive review in the middle of last year and changed lots of things. They have always been like most clubs measuring GPS stuff and looking st loads. But they have taken the science stuff to a new level. Players muscle strength is now measured using some kind of machines before every training session and compared to normal. They do pin [censored] blood tests regularly as apparently they can tell when muscles are more vulnerable. They measure players sleep patterns. They video players running at training and it automatically measures gait to look for overstriding so they can correct it. All the data is reviewed all the time to try and work out when to drop training loads. He said they are working with a Uni to have AI analyse all the data, and believes in 5 years they’ll be even better than their current interpretation of the data. I was interested to see that they went into the season without a single soft tissue injury. I’ll be interested to see over the season if that was just good luck or whether all of this sports science they are doing so far is making a difference. We have had a lot of soft tissue injuries over summer. And really bad history with feet. Potentially it’s time for Melbourne to get new ideas in. Or maybe it’s just bad luck. I don’t know.