Watson11

WC, Richmond, Adelaide, and Collingwood have peaked too early.

Should challenge, but they are pretty tough when you have an alternative. May could have easily just pushed him over with his little finger.

There are some ripper clashes at training too. Goody treated this like a practice game. If he didn’t he would have picked his strongest lineup but he had more important things to try. The lions looked quick because our forward 50 is a bit of a shambles with no offensive or defensive structure and the ball comes out too easily. We’ve had 3 practice matches and the forward 50 has been different every time. You would expect to see far more intensity from us in week 1, and as long as our forward structure is perfect by finals I don’t care too much about JLT, and will even forget about a few frustrating days during the season proper.

And WC lost to Freo 39-101 in JLT2 last year. It looked like we treated the JLT like training sessions. As soon as we get our forward and mid pressure to the level needed we will be fine. I’ll back that intensity to be back in round 1.

I thought our performance was the worst JLT performance since West Coast got clobbered by Freo by 62 points in JLT2 last year.

At least we are having the same issues we had for most of last season - too easy to run it out of our forward 50 resulting in easy scores the other way. So we know it can be fixed. Stats - we score from 35% of I50, they score from almost 50%

AFL will be happy with Port v Norf scoring fest. At one stage North kicked 5 goals in 5 minutes from 5 consecutive centre clearances.

Adelaide look ok. Top 4 quality with easy draw. Only real weakness is the ruck.

Macca, If you're really Ron Barassi in disguise then even you couldn't prevent the deplorable years.

From 6 disposals

One poor game in 39C heat for a 6ft 9"" goliath and plenty writing him off for the season. Quote from articles on heat stroke " The largest athletes are the most heat-sensitive." Another " Large people have lower surface area to volume ratios than smaller people. Evaporative surface area is relatively small in large folks so they have higher risk of developing heat stroke than smaller people." Not surprised that Preuss was cooked after the first qtr, or TMac had a shocker. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly.

A lot of times you need to look at the differentials as game style skews overall rankings. ie For 1, we were ranked number 1 in contested mark differential, so it is the complete opposite of what you had assumed. We just don't chip the ball around like other teams in the back half which is mostly a positive, as we were first for scoring from defensive 50. For 3, we are 13th on tackle differential. Magpies were 1st. Our tackling can tend to go missing at times. We know Goody would hate this stat, hence why not much patience with those who don't tackle. More interesting stats that we have to be better at this year are: 1. Ranked 14th for disposal efficiency and 12th for disposal efficiency differential. For a side that was 4th for most handballs and 11th for kicks that is pretty poor. 2. Ranked 9th from scores conceded from D50 entries. 9th flatters us, as we are 1% from being 16th but 6% from being top 4. 3. We rank 1st for centre clearance differential but 12th for stoppage clearance differential. My view is we are at our worst in the forward half of the ground, especially when Max dropped a kick behind and we pinch hit. Probably why Goody wants Max and Pruess to spend time in the forward half. We ranked 5th for inside 50 scoring efficiency which surprised me. Against top 8 teams this dropped to 39% which would have ranked us 17th. We definitely need to improve our scoring efficiency against good teams. I suspect some of this is we bomb, and are pretty good at creating stoppages, but we are lousy at defending stoppages in the F50. I think our terrible F50 stoppage work is directly related to our leaking goals at the other end. Most but not all of the issues above were fixed up in the last 5 weeks (save for the prelim). But they are far more significant than the stats that we are 17th and 18th in.

Oliver is super quick. He'll win a brownlow when he uses his pace on the outside a bit more and kicks as much as he handballs. He could win two or three when that happens.

Game is in Port Pirie which is even hotter. And they schedule the Tasmanian game for the evening!

I really like the little I have seen and heard of Chandler. We seem to be drafting players that have had to work bloody hard to get a chance (AVB, Frisch, Sparrow), and with pretty good results. Chandler seems to also fit that bill.

Counterbalanced by Mick. We must be a certainty to play in the GF, as Mick never even picks the grand finalists in the top 8, let alone the premier. His 2017 prediction: MICK MALTHOUSE TOP EIGHT: GWS Giants Hawthorn Geelong St Kilda Sydney Collingwood Western Bulldogs West Coast PREMIER: GWS Giants WOODEN SPOON: Brisbane Lions CLIMBER: St Kilda SLIDER: Adelaide BROWNLOW: Max Gawn

Micks 2019 predictions are on par with his 2018 ones MICK MALTHOUSE (The Herald Sun) Top 8 1. GWS Giants 2. Adelaide Crows 3. Essendon 4. Port Adelaide 5. Geelong Cats 6. Melbourne 7. Richmond 8. Sydney Swans Premiers: GWS Giants Wooden Spoon: North Melbourne Brownlow Medal: Joe Daniher (Essendon)

It won’t even be as bad as Port Pirie which is where the JLT showdown is.

??? Lachie Neale Lyon has been talking about opening it up since 2013. As soon as Freo have a bad loss or two he reverts back to what he trusts. If they were playing us in round 1 the new game style would only last a week.

Consider it training in case of another prelim in Perth.

The problem with your setup is rotations. Gawn, Tmac, and especially Weid need rest, so they’ll be off the ground for a cumulative total of up to 60% of game time (last years prelim). So for about half the game the talls would be one of Tmac or Weid, plus Hannan. Is that your intended setup? Compare this to West Coast. They never had 3 tall forwards on the ground at the same time. They rotated so they always had 2 tall forwards, for 100% of game time.

For those questioning 2 rucks, are you happy with a single ruck, and just one tall in the forward 6? If not and you want a ruck and 2 talls, for how much of the game? Some stats from the prelim last year based on time on ground. West Coasts grand final figures are probably similar. West Coast had a ruck and 2 tall forwards for 98% of the game, and a ruck and 1 tall forward for 2% if the game. Melbourne had a ruck and 1 tall forward for 60% of the game, and a ruck and 2 tall forwards for 40%. For most of the game, with our bomb it long tendency, one tall forward does not cut it. Yesterday was a scratch match with shortened quarters and trying things. I hope Preuss ends up spending limited minutes forward, but rucks for decent spells. Max still needs less minutes in 2019. I personally think we shoot ourselves in the foot in periods of dominance when we have 1 tall target.

“The 2015 NAB AFL Rising Star has impressed during recent match simulation, particularly when working his opponent up the ground and doubling back to find space” If he relies on this method to kick goals at Freo he is in for a tough year.

I don’t agree with George. The centre setup probably plays out 20-40 times a game. All of the tactics mentioned to limit centre clearances were already tried in 2018 plus putting an extra or two in defence plus extras on the square. I don’t have last years stats but from a year or two ago there were scores from 23% of centre bounces. With 6-6-6 this will definitely increase this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if this went up to 30% or 35%. Compare this to scoring chains from kick ins. We were the number 1 team at scoring chains from kickins last year at around 13%. The average was single figures. We probably only had to defend an average of maybe 12 or 13 behinds last year. Even doubling the best teams scoring chain efficiency is less than a goal per game.

Do you think the 12.8% other for Richmond was 7-7-4 or 9-6-3?