Lord Nev

They may prefer to do the right thing by their families. Personally, I wouldn't blame them.

Both have new babies.

If we end up playing the Suns in NT, and then go over to Perth, will we do so without TMac and Lever?

Haha yeah probably getting into real 'if you went back in time and met yourself' territory hey?

Geez, I reckon you're selling it a bit hard when your team is clearly out of form and your captain is coming out with: “The expected score, which Champion Data does, had us in front by the end of the game"...

If one of those points becomes a goal, or vice versa, the rest of the game changes so there wouldn't be the same scoring scenario for the rest of the game. ie - If the first point becomes a goal then the ball goes back into the middle and a different play ensues from the one that happens from the point kick in. There's close to zero chance the game then ends up with the same scoring shots. Follow me now?

It's not really that simple though. We had more marks inside 50 (despite having less inside 50s). Where abouts? How hard were the shots on goal? Dogs got 6 goals from stoppages. Also, as mentioned earlier in the thread, if one of those scores is changed then the whole context of the next possession and all future possessions changes. So it doesn't add up to think that if some of those points were goals the game would be different. Also, someone else might know for sure, but out of bounds on the full are counted as free kicks right? I reckon we had at least 6-7 of those during the game which skews that free kick count. The umpiring complaining from this game is so overdone. A few poor calls, but nowhere near the impact on the game some are making out.

Yeah, would definitely be having some kind of impact, agree on that 100%, just hard to tell how much given so many of the senior blokes have issues at the moment. Jacko is the main one for me impact wise. Seems to be rucking less lately and IMO we really need him rucking more to give us a bit more unpredictability there, but that's also due to possibly the form of the stoppage crew. Tricky. We'll see some kind of change with Jacko this week. He'll either have a rest or he'll ruck a lot more.

Reading into it a bit much I reckon guys. Don't know about you, but I'm pretty picky with my insta given the way the algorithm works for the feed, and I've definitely 'unfollowed' people from previous jobs or that I don't know that well anymore. Doesn't mean I had a falling out though.

Agree the younger players may be struggling, but I believe our performance has been more influenced by senior players like Salem, Gawn, Petracca, Viney, Harmes, ANB, Brown, Hibberd, Langdon and TMac - for differing reasons. In the context of the specific stats raised in the OP article, I don't reckon those young blokes have a massive impact in those particular areas comparatively.

That might be true of a team that isn't in such bad form for stoppage clearances and ranked poorly for tackles inside 50. Do you have a stat to back up you assertion that we get extra shots at goal from boundary throw ins inside 50? But you're kind of backing up my point mate, I'm saying we should be aiming for higher percentage shots, but you're seemingly saying we should go for harder shots so that we can keep trying to kick a goal from more difficult opportunities. It would seem, that's what we're doing at the moment and it's not working.

The difference is though, in basketball you use the three point shot for two reasons: - The extra point. - Spreading the floor. We don't get extra points for shots from the boundary, and because we're not looking into the middle enough it's not having the effect of spreading the space for us inside 50. It's like if you went to a 3 point shooter in the corner almost every play - difficult shot, easy to defend.

If we're using the basketball analogy though - If you were a poor three point shooting team; you wouldn't set up a game plan where a lot of your scoring opportunities were three pointers. You would look for plays to get you some easier shots and make the most of your time in possession. Sure, you would look to try and improve that weakness; but you wouldn't build your game plan around a weakness.

Was just being a bit cheeky, not having a crack legend. Always love your work. Just reckon you're being a bit harsh on old mate. He's not employed by MFC, would be writing articles on different clubs, players, potential draftees and stacks more every week, I thought there was enough in there given all that and it's certainly got us Dees fans talking about what's in it. Gives us a bit more than 'Sliding Doors with Damo' anyways...

To be fair, he at least used stats and data. I personally find "Cam" (better known as Callum) one of the best footy journos out there. Might be a bit 'dry' for some I suppose, but we can't have cracks at Dermie, Cornes and the like for their editorializing and then critique Cam for not doing it. For me, I get more out of the stats type articles than the opinion ones. I guess it's our job as fans to pull out the "I thought", "I reckon", "seems to be" kinda comments hey?

I guess my long winded post was in a way saying - Yes, our set shot goal kicking is bad, but it was already pretty bad when we were undefeated. It's gotten worse obviously, but it's not gone from great to horrible, whereas some of our other forward key stats have. There's a lot to it hey? So many factors, and that's just the forward line. Frustrates me no end that we have all these 'pressure players' like Viney, Harmes and ANB, which should mean Spargo, Kozzy, Trac are doing more delivery forward; just isn't working like that. Just feels like everyone's role is purely pressure at the sacrifice of skill. I guess the good news is that our problems aren't a mystery so the coaches can spend more time implementing the solution without a ton of analysis first.

I think goal accuracy as far as impact on results is better measured comparatively rather than from an overall percentage. Sure, we've dropped off in set shot accuracy, absolutely no argument there that it's a big big problem, but as far as the league standard goes, the teams we play against weekly, it's not as bad as many fans seem to want to make it in how it's regressed as the year has gone on. My suggestion is that saying things like 'kick straight and we win' are a gross over simplification of our forward issues. The big drops in kick retention rate and goal per inside 50 should also illustrate that the quality of the entries and opportunities is also a factor. My personal belief is that we generally only have two types of inside 50 delivery at the moment: Long to a pack deep inside 50. Very wide to the pocket to a leading player. The long packs are very rarely successful for us as we don't have that type of forward IMO, and the very wide marks inside 50 obviously result in a more difficult shot at goal. There's of course exceptions, but I'm talking generally. For mine, the solution is looking more shallow inside 50 more often. Easy to say, I know, but we had shown good signs of that last year and early this year but it's dropped off in the second half of this year - about the same time we changed our midfield mix. Players aren't all of a sudden going to change their technique, fix the yips etc this late in the year, so I think we need to work harder on easier opportunities. There's a lot too it all, and a lot of different problems at the moment, but that's my opinion on the forward half issues as they stand.

I'm mean, sure, most of your comments on Demonland are 3 times as long, but thought the stats it raised were interesting... ;)

Interesting to note our goals per inside 50 rating has massively dropped compared to our set shot accuracy. Many on Demonland seem to think if we 'kicked straight' we would have won more, but perhaps it's not as simple as that hey?

For reference, average disposals this year: Kozzy - 12.4 Spargo - 11.3

They're not always a big hitout team, but against us they had 18 hitouts to our 67. In their previous games they had 46, 31, 25, 25 and 35. In our last match the hitouts were Dees 38, Dogs 26. Definitely seems like a big enough change to justify thinking it's a deliberate strategy. They average 10 tackles inside 50 this year, against us they had 15. Also, they average over 13 marks inside 50 per game this year. Against us they had 6. Yep, but playing him in a different role took away that advantage we had last time. The quality of their clearances was WAY up this time as opposed to round 11. They kicked 6 of their 13 goals from stoppages. My view is they did both. They maximized what they're good at while also having a plan to take away some of our strengths and challenge our weaknesses.

Maybe, but it's also coincided with Viney coming back and Gus playing more midfield.

100%. Kozzy in the middle gives us that little bit of unpredictability too, which we desperately need. Not sure why we stopped doing that.

You wouldn't know this without being in the inner sanctum of course, but gut feel is they decided to let Gawn win the hitouts without even really trying so that they could predict the stoppages better. They then dominated stoppage clearances and kicked 6 goals from them. Seemingly they were also more than happy to have some 'chaos ball' in their forward 50 knowing it takes May and Lever out of the equation and puts pressure on out of form players like Hibberd, Rivers and Salem. Seemed Goody tried to combat that with Spargo in the back half but that didn't really work. Also, he played Libba more on the outside this time instead of just in the guts like round 11. On top of that, it looked like they tried to disrupt the tag by putting other players to Harmes and/or Viney. In the end, it seemed like either we gave up on that tag or the taggers did a poor job.

I don't mind him keeping ANB if he's bringing the consistent pressure etc tbh, but I think where we're falling down a bit is we haven't evened up the balance of quality ball use. It would probably be not so bad if Spargo was getting the ball more, but as it stands we have Spargo, ANB, Harmes and Viney all providing 'pressure' without enough quality delivery or scoreboard impact, so when Oliver, Petracca, Langdon and Gus don't deliver to their absolute peak (as we're seeing currently) we fall down a bit in the forward half. Get Melksham in, get Viney back to forward/mid, get Harmes out, get Spargo more involved with the ball and I think that could lead to more goals, and maybe even some super easy set shots that will help to build confidence in our goal kicking. Then all we have to worry about is the midfield disconnect and the problems in the back half when the ball is on the deck...