Watson11

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.

Richmond had the 2nd most inside 50s last year because even though they lost centre clearances, they would intercept and transition quickly to their forward 50 and then lock it in. They zone up and pressure well when sides are trying to transition out of defence and create lots of intercepts and repeat inside 50s. Watching last night, Collingwood just picked their zone apart repeatedly and Cox and Rance were not the reason. In fact, Rance would have made zero difference last night as Richmond’s defence last night was defending a lot of uncontested kicks into the forward 50.

If you think back to early 2000’s control footy started at Port Adelaide when Clarkson was an assistant. Port consistently finished top after home and away playing it, but consistently bombed out in finals. Back in those days there was no such thing as zones, it was all man on man defence. Port had to develop extra plans to win the flag, and they did. Is man on man defence a better counter to the control game plan. Definitely sides would need to work harder to defend.

Not since 2015. Haven’t won a final.

Richmond, us, and a few other teams rely heavily on zone defence. Richmond have been by far the best at it, but last night they were completely dismantled by Collingwoods game plan to counter it. Did Collingwood just have an amazing night, or will good teams now consistently dismantle zone defences?

Bad luck for him. Collingwood getting overconfident with knees maybe because Goldsack came back so quickly? Happy for Lever to take 12 months to get back. Even 13 months if needed

I'm loving all this media. More of this sort of stuff the better.

This week can’t come around fast enough. How they respond to mistakes and challenges will define the team, coaches, and the players.

A 108kg giant can’t run out a game in 39C heat and that is the reason he is out of favour. I wouldn’t think so. He was ok when it was 25C the week before. If he is out of favour he would have specific things Goody wants him to work on. Personally, I’d play Preuss just for his stoppage work. From the limited body of evidence I have he is miles behind Max at centre bounces, but probably as good at stoppages. And our forward 50 stoppages have been an embarrassment except for the Collingwood practice game.

So if we play Port again, and if they go with 3 tall forwards 197cm and taller again, would you still go with an undersized 3rd defender.

The Tigers were 15th in uncontested possessions last year. They excel in intercepts because the opposition ball carrier is always under pressure.

I’d say the exact same about Richmond. One or two super quick players like us. But otherwise not a quick team but not slow. They just never, ever look slow because they structure up so well.

I’ve got a much more useful stat. The team that is 3-0 in the last 3 games of the year is 100% guaranteed to win the flag.

Malcolm Blight did this in 1997 and 1998, co-incidentally Goody's first 2 years as a player. He killed them in pre-season. Both seasons they started poorly and were 2w 4l after 6 rounds. Both seasons they were not guaranteed of a finals spot until round 21 or 22, but despite this he did a 4 week training block leading up to finals to make sure they were the fittest team going into September. Both seasons they ended 13-9 (edit 14-8 in 97) and that suicide block could have backfired. With 5 games left they were either percentage or a single game from being outside the 8. But both times he had them at their peak in September and the rest was history. They really pinched those 2 flags, but after being the bridesmaid 4x at Geelong, it was all or nothing for Blighty.

Tmac is surely being managed as well. He played 80% game time which is low for him. Wied played 93%. Wied was good in the first quarter. But he doesn’t have the tank to play those minutes, even on a cool day.

Disposal is super important but we get sucked into the contest too easily. That’s why we chase tail. When a 50-50 ball doesn’t go our way, we have 4 or 5 players within a few metres of it, and well coached teams have players free on the outside. If we have a good day with contested posssesion and ball movement, you don’t see it and our biggest defect is masked over. I’d like to see us improve kicking efficiency and set up better for when we don’t win 50-50 ball. Same happens at stoppages. Interesting stat, if we had scored the same as Port from stoppages on Saturday we would have won.

@rjay We got sucked into the contest for nearly all of last season. We were just as rubbish as Saturday for long periods of lots of games. It gets masked when we smash contested possession. It was not realistic that we would have no games like that this season. When we get sucked into the contest and halve contested possession the symptoms are: 1. Our tackle count is way down. You can’t tackle players on the outside when they are 10m away. 2. The ball transitions out of our forward 50 way too easily and makes our defence look hopeless. 3. Our intercepts are way down. Saturday we had the lowest number of intercepts since round 1 last year. I trust that Goody and the coaches can fix it like they did at the end of last year. I hope training reports this week show this issue is being worked on. Our list is the best it’s ever been and is not the issue. If injuries have impacted, it is simply that players have not had enough time to work on their connection and understanding around the ball yet.

There is so much MFCSS overreaction going on. I don’t see any major holes or excuses with the list. And surgeries is an excuse. We should have been 10 goals up by the time conditioning became a factor, and Port were always going to come home strong if it was close. And our gameplan is fine. It stands up in finals and big games. It’s simply our players are not well drilled enough to carry it out properly yet. We get sucked into the contest and leave free players on the outside, and it hurts us when teams split contested possession. We need to fix this. And we showed Port no respect. The coaches went in overconfident when they didn’t pick a second ruck, went in with Hore against the 3rd Port 199cm tall (Hore is 189cm), and didn’t send Harmes to tag Rockliff. And the overconfidence spread to the players after the first 3 goals. Hibbard trying to drill a 50m pass to the outer wing where we were outnumbered resulted in their first goal. Ryder against Weid from a throw in resulted in the second. We should have been 6 or 7 goals to zip at qtr time but were 4 to 2. For me, yesterday is the kick up the [censored] the coaches and players obviously need to get them back on track.

The only way 6-6-6 could have negatively affected us was if the 15x out of 24 we won the centre clearance, it rebounded back out so quickly that our defenders were still 6 on 6.

It’s easy to point to lack of work rate etc but I can assure you if there is one player who’s GPS and heart rate monitor numbers show they didn’t put in effort they won’t play again for the season, let alone next week. Perhaps some are underdone but to me it just looked like our effort is good but we just have poor defensive setup around the ball. Just need to play smarter. Contested possessions are everything and too many players chased the ball rather than closing down the loose Port player. Happens at stoppages all over the ground, in our forward 50, and sometimes but less often in our defensive 50. I thought we had fixed this flaw after week 21 last year but it is back with a vengeance. On the narrower ground next week I have a feeling we will smash it.

They killed us from stoppages also. Outscored us by 30 points from this source. Exhibit 1 was Ryder uncontested out of the ruck against Weids to Boak in Q1. Our stoppages, especially in the forward 50 were horrendous.

But we easily won centre clearances so 6-6-6 didn’t seem to impact. Our forward pressure was abysmal because we have no forward or stoppage structure and chased the ball like schoolboys again. Same as JLT. Every team in the league knows our forwards don’t defend well. It shouldn’t be too hard for our coaches to fix it and go man on man and become a forward 50 pressure team. If we do fix it and lock it in, we need to sort out stoppages. Port scored 30 more points from stoppages than us today. That’s the game just as much as being hurt on the outside. The contrast between the way they kicked in after points and the way we did was ridiculous. We just conceded and let them run it to 20-30m and go bang. But Port didn’t give us an inch after their points. You’re never as good as you think you are after a win, and you’re never as bad as others think you are after a loss. Prediction, we’ll beat Geelong.

Cameron Mooney’s comments about the Port 3 qtr time comment interesting. “Melbournes forwards don’t defend well” Enough said,

That’s where your wrong. May graded as medium impact. Jones graded as low impact.