I watched it on television, which might explain my different impressions, but I didn't think overuse of the hand ball was our fundamental problem here, kicking wasn't getting us anywhere either. The Footscray defence was very well drilled, which meant finding an uncontested mark or a good one on one was nigh on impossible in the 30 near goal, and they were playing a slignshot game - they clogged up our forward line to make it hard to find a target and then relied on moving it quickly and getting it out the back to score from pretty much point blank in broken play. It only came off for them about 25% of the time, but when it did it nearly always ended in a goal as we battered ourselves senseless against a brick wall.
We had to fight the wind all day with medium range kicks whereas their goals tended to come from close in - I'm not sure their game plan would have held up on Etihad or in decent conditions, but on a windy day on a suburban ground it worked pretty well. The inside 50s count I doubt bothered their coaching box at all, they wanted as many of our players as they could get up the ground.
Somebody with more tactical smarts than me (our coaches, perhaps?) would know how to combat this, but I suspect it's hard to adjust to on game day.