Watson11

But it’s not some unique Melbourne problem that will suddenly come good for us and not anyone else. It’s every team and relative and we are a relatively poor team when conditions don’t suit. https://www.afl.com.au/news/963488/data-reveals-startling-goalkicking-trend-as-winter-takes-hold

Maybe you would change ball movement based on the weather at this time of year. A lot of talk about Goodys game style going inside 50 is to minimise risk, create stoppages, then setup to score on turnover. Ie a high stoppage game plan. Its interesting that if we consider high stoppage games (>75 stoppages) to low stoppage games (<=75), we almost always lose high stoppage games (1w 5L) and almost always win low stoppage games (8w 1L). The outlier win was against the suns and the outlier loss was Port. I don’t really know what it all means other than I’m hoping there are less stoppages this week.

How about he instruct at least one to lead at the ball carrier and not all run to the same spot. Even better, how about he instruct them never to kick long to a pack, and always kick to advantage. If you want to see how it works when you have a mediocre bunch of roles players in your forward 50 go and watch Collingwood.

Forward coach at Richmond from 2017-2020 was Justin Leppitsch. Collingwood are luck to have him as forward coach now. Wish we had someone like him.

Just curious. Was the only team to have that dominance and not win by 50+ points also us?

Are you talking Goody and the forward coaches or the players?

For the record, I think loading happens but everyone does it. The crows and Blight started in in 97-98. It’s not new. But if it is being used as a reason for poor form it’s too easily misinterpreted as an excuse. On Thursday we were 2 goals down after conceding 3 goals in a row. Game on line. Atkins soccered it to a vacant wing. The photo below is a few moments after and we had 3 of the 4 closest players to the ball. By the time Hunter picked it up, Geelong had 4 players on him in an instant and we had no-one near Hunter. No one bothered to shepherd. No one bothered to run hard in case he fumbled. No one ran to receive a handball just in case. Max had jogged about 5 metres. Geelong scored from the turnover and game over. Burgo is notorious for 100x100’s in heat, and is on the record as saying it’s because players learn they always have more effort to give, no matter what. If Collingwood put in abysmal efforts like above in 4th qtrs regardless of loading, I can’t imagine what their players would cop from supporters but it wouldn’t be “jolly good effort, you’ll do better when you have finished loading.”

I may have missed where you addressed the topic, but I’m pretty sure that Isaac Smith spoke about the cats loading program and they had a staggered loading program with different groups loading at different times. They didn’t lose a game after round 9 (14 May), so managed to go undefeated through the loading period. Maybe we need to copy what they did, not what we did in 2021.

We definitely struggle more going forward in the middle part of the season. I’ll let binman explain one theory why. Mine is the weather nullifies our game plan (turnovers and scores). However, the game plan is sound and forward half turnovers (plus defending opposition i50s) are what wins flags. I’m not that worried about the loss overall but I’ll be worried if it’s wet for our first final. Our strengths (turnovers and running) are taken away when it’s wet and we don’t seem to adapt to the conditions. Question for the podcast is does the panel have any other theories about our poorer form in the wet.

This is such a myth. Burgo never had that philosophy. His philosophy is always to play/train through soreness and fatigue but not through injury. There is a big difference. I’m a bit worried about our fitness/medical department to be honest. Since the Burgo/Brukner package departed our high performance management has been sub standard. Last year cost us. Oliver is the most recent red flag.

A lot of anti Filth sentiment on this thread. Two of my best mates are pies supporters and very knowledgeable about the game. I went to the game with one on Monday and was telling him that I hoped his feral mates would behave. He just smiled and said, “you know it’s not fair that all pie’s supporters are tainted. It’s 99% that give the other 1% a bad name!”

I’m not really worried about our forward line. If we get forward half turnover we can really have anyone there. But the media (and half of demonland) go on about it as nauseum. And if we kicked straight the last 3 weeks no one would raise it as an issue. But the reason it’s been raised is our low goals per inside 50 the last 3 weeks (13%, 13%, 17%). I expect us to get back to our season average later in the season (24%).

Here’s my take on all the contenders: 1. Collingwood. Brisbane and now us have clearly shown how to dismantle them. Collingwood need to develop a plan B, but I don’t think they have the list to execute a plan B. 2. Port. Port have the worst one on one defending record in the afl. Like the dogs in 2021 they are vulnerable to bang-bang-bang. Hard to win 3 finals with a weakness like that. 3. Brisbane. Brisbane are poor runners. It’s why they struggle on the G. Even their one win last year at the G (against us) was playing a team of cripples who were running on the spot after half time. They have to pray for rain. 4. Melbourne. Our defending is back. Our forward line is the knock on us. If the El Niño prediction for a warmer dryer winter starting in July is correct, then I think Port and Brisbane are toast. Geelong/Dogs/Adelaide can cause some damage and get to a prelim as they have the tools to send one of port or brisbane out in straight sets. It really is wide open for us. We just need to hit September fit. I suspect our forward line connection issue will completely disappear with dryer Sep weather.

Crisp’s was from a boundary throw in.

@binman interested as to why you think Brisbane have shown running power all season. Statistically, they are at the bottom of running power and have only outrun Essendon this year. My guess is it’s why they struggle at the G. Also, the Hawks are actually a good running team and are the only team to match us in total distance and high speed distance this year. They are inconsistent like any young team though. So it’s probably not a surprise the hawks, despite being near the bottom, have beaten the Lions, who have been pushing for top 4, each of the last 3 years at the G. You could argue it cost the Lions a top 4 spot last year. It may cost them again this year.

This was what Brisbane did against them. After the game Fagan openly told every other coach how to beat the pies. For some reason either no other team has tried or it’s a lot harder than it sounds.

Not entirely. It’s the expected threat rating (y axis) that is skewed. The threat rating is relative so it compares players taking kicks from similar positions against the average. Ie the 0 threat measure is average. Bowey was low on both measures. He is a defender but it basically says he takes safe kicks and they result in scores to us less than the average. In my view, it would be better if expected threat also subtracted how often the kicks resulted in score to the opposition, and the threat did the same. I could imagine Frosty would look ok with just the offensive numbers, but if you included turnovers not so good.

Expected threat of 31 means that compared to every kick in his database (170000 kicks) when that player takes a kick from a similar position, to a similar area, under similar conditions, it would be expected to end up in a score 31% of the time. The threat rating of 18 means compared to the expected threat, the specific players actual kicks resulted in a score 18% more than expected. Chandlers kicks would be expected to result in a score fairly often (31% of the time) but actually result in a score 49% of the time. It would be far better if he also include the opposite ie turnovers and scores against by the same players.

These were the high speed numbers in 21 and 22. We did not drop off at all in 2021

Re 3 talls, I think Salem makes a huge difference to our ability to play 3 talls. He will take a while to get his touch back, but I watched him closely last week and his positioning is just elite. Whether it’s pushing up towards stoppages to stop the out the front exits from the opposition, or just being in an annoying position to mop up the scrubby kicks forward, he puts himself in positions that bring our interceptors into play. The last 2 weeks have been our statistically best defensive efforts this year, and Salem is a key reason (along with evening up the stoppage numbers since Clarry went down).

Can’t see Port winning it. Ranked 18th for one on one defending (36% loss ratio). Has any team that [censored] at defending ever won it?

It’s also much harder to win 10 of your last 11 h&a games. Has only been done 8x in 20 years. Of these, 5 went on to be premiers.

It’s hard to get to 10w after 11 rounds so full credit to Collingwood, but it’s not that uncommon. Has been done 15x over the last 20 seasons. 6 went on to be premiers. So more than likely pies won’t be premiers.

Your sport psych colleague didn’t suggest a team dinner and few wines at Entrocote did he/she?

@binman I read you entire post twice but didn’t actually find where you said what your hypothesis actually is. Or is that episode 2?