Lord Nev

You're missing so much of the context there though. - Clearly we have a fair few players carrying niggles and soreness. - That would impact their ability to run out games as well as train. - The performance manager and fitness staff would make recommendations and provide updates on fitness, but ultimately team selection and how hard the players are pushed is up to the selection committee. - As recently as earlier this year we had examples of how hard Goody pushes the players and what influence he expects to have on fitness decisions. This is not purely a fitness staff matter, there is far more happening here, I find it really interesting how people can't see the big picture.

Burgess was more than just a performance manager for us, he was practically an assistant coach and Goody's right hand man. That's why he was quite vocal on the bench during games and why we paid him an absolute truck load (which he deserved). I'm sure Griffith is a very capable performance manager, but Burgess is an entirely different beast.

As per my previous comment, I have no doubt Griffith knows the science, but how much sway he holds over selection is an entirely different matter, and I doubt he would have as much say as Burgess would have.

Absolutely, but Burgess isn't at the club anymore and I wouldn't think Griffith is anywhere near the strong personality Burgess is and wouldn't have as much say in selection.

I raised impact injuries to show our injuries weren't the result of the performance manager - ie not soft tissue injuries. For sure, the club doctor would provide recommendations on injury management, but given what we know of Goody's history with such matters, how much of a bearing do you think it would have on selection? I don't think it would be the main one tbh.

Why is it all on the fitness department? We've continually selected players carrying niggles and soreness, that's on the selection committee. I don't recall many of our injuries being soft tissue ones, more impact related injuries, that's not on the fitness staff at all. Those injuries would clearly have impacted our training ability which in turn obviously effects how we run out games. Highly doubt Griffith is under "extreme pressure".

Right side is attacking side.

Might need him even more then if we make the Grand Final...

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Turnovers.

Spot on. It was the planning involved in making us pay for turnovers and Longmire knowing we can be vulnerable on the rebound. Sydney had more turnovers than us, but they had clearly planned their game around it and made us pay.

Yeah I went back to edit the post but it was too late, already chucked up a post to correct the backline numbers. My mistake.

Just to add to this - too late to edit the post - I've either checked footywire too early or just looked at the wrong numbers, but Petty, Lever and Hibberd only had a couple of turnovers or so each, not the numbers above. Apologies.

It's not a defence of the 'bottom 6' players, again I didn't say any of them played well, but the impact those players generally have on our results is minor, the main impact on the game was the 70 points from turnovers, so yes, players with more turnovers fed into that factor. Melksham and ANB had more time and space? What game were you watching? That's completely off the mark. If you want to make the argument that stoppage players have more turnovers, which I agreed with in another post, then you need to compare that to normal: Brayshaw - 11 turnovers, season average 5.2 Viney - 9 turnovers, season average 5.3 Gawn - 7 turnovers, season average 4.3 The season average for our stoppage players is around the 5 mark, so yes, 9 turnovers and 11 turnovers is an unusually high number. You're missing the point of the turnovers - again, Sydney scored 70 POINTS from turnovers, if you want to talk about their turnovers then tell me how much we scored from turnovers? That's where the game was decided. Sydney actually had more turnovers than us, but the points from turnovers was the difference. With the backline players, I originally got my stats from footywire and they seem to have updated since my post, so you're correct there, they now have it as the numbers you've listed.

The thing I wonder about fitness wise this year is if we've maybe not got the balance right between resilience and recovery. We've clearly played players when they've had niggles, every team does to an extent, but could we have pushed it too far and ended up with it impacting our fitness at the pointy end of the season?

Within the context of this particular game, where the Swans scored 70 points from turnovers, of course the turnovers outweigh the 'other ways' players contributed. We lost due to scores from turnovers. And again, I'm not defending the performance of the "bottom 6", but they didn't cost us this game IMO. There's multiple factors surrounding the turnovers, and I'm not being critical of those players as a whole, but in this game turnovers are the biggest reason we lost. By far.

You expect turnovers to go up somewhat when playing midfield, but since moving there Gus averages almost twice as many as Viney and Oliver who are our number 1 and 2 for average turnovers for the year (Gus is 3rd for the year).

Everyone's going after ANB - he had 1 turnover from 14 disposals, that's 7%. Gus had 11 turnovers from 20 disposals, that's 55%.

Brayshaw - 11 turnovers Viney - 9 turnovers Gawn - 7 turnovers Petty - 7 turnovers Lever - 6 turnovers Hibberd - 6 turnovers Sparrow, ANB, Spargo and Melksham combined for 5 turnovers total. Sydney scored 70 points from turnovers. That's the game right there. Not saying those 4 played well by any stretch, but they're not the reason we lost.

To be clear, not saying everything else is perfect and that's the sole factor preventing us playing well. IMO there's a ton of issues of different sizes, I just think this is one of them.

For sure, every team would have some kind of niggles they carry through, I just think ours have been worse and more impactful to our performance than they were in 2021.

Disagree with this slightly. We've had a decent year with games lost to injury, but that's in part due to us playing players through existing niggles. IMO that has impacted our performance at times and was a factor in last night's loss as well (albeit not the main one).