Nairobi_Demon

On 11/04/2024 at 21:23, Nairobi_Demon said:

Watched the game on replay this evening and I thought we looked slow and indecisive from the beginning. So much so that I started wondering whether we decided to take advantage of our 4-1 start and the upcoming bye to put some extra miles into the legs during the week. I went through the Sunday and Wednesday training threads but I couldn’t find any suggestion that they were heavy sessions with extra loads. Do the stats confirm our fitness was down and, if so, do you think it was because it was their third game in 13 days or is it possible they were also assigned extra running outside of the two main training sessions this week?

Following on from my question:

Can the panel discuss whether there are alternative, better approaches or strategies to fully utilise the list for these matches during the season when we know our best 22 will be 10% or even 20% below their usual output because of the fixture. 

For example, the following players were available this week:

- Hunter (who has been best 22) was available, could he not have replaced Windsor who was understandably down on his past performance?

- Laurie also available, could he not have replaced a tired and indeed injured Oliver?

- He’s not “best 22” in normal circumstances, but could not Schache have come in for BBB who really looked exhausted this week (and that’s not to knock his performance the past few weeks)? 

You get the drift …  Given the importance of fitness to the outcome of games these days as well as how well everyone is drilled on our systems, I just wonder whether we could more strategically use our second string of players to manage the long season.  

Watched the game on replay this evening and I thought we looked slow and indecisive from the beginning. So much so that I started wondering whether we decided to take advantage of our 4-1 start and the upcoming bye to put some extra miles into the legs during the week. I went through the Sunday and Wednesday training threads but I couldn’t find any suggestion that they were heavy sessions with extra loads. Do the stats confirm our fitness was down and, if so, do you think it was because it was their third game in 13 days or is it possible they were also assigned extra running outside of the two main training sessions this week?

Could you discuss the loss of Yze in terms of his game day role in the box and how he seemed to complement Goodie in the sense that Goodwin seems a stronger strategist than tactician and perhaps Yze a stronger tactician?  

After a long hiatus over the summer (necessary to recover from last year’s disappointment), I’m now ready for the season and am more optimistic than I was two months ago. Not as bullish as I was last year—I had predicted top-2 and a GF berth last year—but confident we can make top-4 assuming an average injury run. 
 

Four questions :

1. Which team is our greatest threat this year?

2. Who do you think will be our top goal kicker and who our most reliable goal kicker (shots to goal ratio)?

3. What adjustments to our on-field and off-field load management strategy do you think we’ll make or should make to get through the long season and peak in September?

4. Finally, at what round and minimum ladder position should I consider investing in the GF guarantee? 😁

Thanks and looking foreword to another great season of the podcast!

In the past two years, we’ve taken the first practice match seriously fielding our best team for at the least the first four “quarters” and used the second match to try new players.  

I was unable to watch Sunday’s match but from the post-game thread it seems we used this match to try new players in new positions etc. Do you think we may have reversed our approach to this year’s practice matches and will use the Carlton match to field a stronger team and really see where we’re at?

Back up for May, not the third tall IMO. 

25 minutes ago, Bombay Airconditioning said:

One mate is messaging me saying Gawn is a late withdrawal.

Another is saying Yze has got the Richmond job. 

I hope Yze has got the job and thus can focus on this game. 
 

I think it was Sanderson that mentioned that he thought Goodie needed to visit the box last week so he could more quickly see how our shallow entries were allowing their rebound game. 
 

Made me think that perhaps Yze has been distracted with interview prep etc. the past few weeks.

I hope your friend is wrong Max 😬

7 hours ago, Bring-Back-Powell said:

Kozzy actually had a better game last week than I thought he did. Was in everything in the second quarter and could’ve had 2 goals on the board that quarter had Fritsch actually applied a shepherd on the goal line to prevent Murphy from touching it.

Wonder if he has a 3-4 goal performance because you’ll know he’ll probably have 3-4 shots at goal.

Salem is grossly out of form and may be paying the price for his interrupted pre season and knee injury in the early rounds.

I was bemoaning the absence of our small forwards at the end of the first quarter last week, but Kozzie was one of the first players to step up in the second quarter. I hope he has a big one and gets more reward on the score board 👍

7 minutes ago, No. 31 said:

Just saw this on Twitter, is this a legit account? [Edit - spelling of @ColLingwoodfc is suspicious]

The capital I in the account name looks suspicious, I suspect not legit 

I have three questions for the panel:

1. What happened to our pressure?  Finals demand pressure and so does our game style. Can we win with an average pressure of only 176 like last week and without hitting levels of 200 for at least some quarters, and from who and where on the ground do we need more pressure?

2. What was our plan to nullify their rebound off the half-back?  This is critical to the way they play, but our small defensive forwards seemed to be missing in action and our entries into our forward 50 seemed very shallow particularly in the first quarter or so, enabling them to waltz it out of defence and rebound multiple times in the first quarter.  If they hadn't missed some gettable set shots from these rebounds they would have been much further ahead in the first Q.

3. Where's the running in waves that we saw in previous seasons and the faster ball movement we saw at the beginning of this season including our better kicks such as Bowey, Hunter, Salem, etc. taking on the corridor? As ABG pointed out above, there were opportunities to move through the corridor and move the ball more quickly, but we often opted for the safety of moving along the boundary line and slowed down our movements into our forward 50 allowing them plenty of time to setup defensively.  Do you think we lowered our risk profile too much because of the weather which didn't seem to be as wet as predicted earlier in the week?

Really frustrating and emotionally draining game on many levels (I really hope Gus is okay) and thus very much looking forward to your excellent podcast.  And thankfully the weather looks perfect for our game against the Blues!  

8 hours ago, Demon Dynasty said:

Can you explain what your understanding is and what you mean by "a period of loading" please ND ?

By period I mean a period of time, probably a block of a 3-4 weeks. By loading I mean additional blocks of mostly aerobic exercise between matches.

This is the biggest conundrum for me - where was our pressure? 
 

This is our pressure for the KB game. It’s not super high but I remember us all discussing that it felt higher and it was also period of loading for both teams):

Here’s pressure from Thursday. We didn’t win one quarter and we never got above 182, in a final after a bye!

Our game style is built on pressure and finals demand high levels of pressure.   I can’t see how we can win if we can’t increase this from the start of the game. Thankfully this is something the team should be capable of rectifying for next week - only this (and some reversion to the mean on goal kicking) gives me hope. 

I suspect Hibberd would have played today if not concussed, and that Turner would have been pre-warned that he’d only have one week. 

And assuming Melksham is indeed injured, it would seem TMac will get the call up.

So Hibberd for Turner and TMac for Melksham  

But I do worry about TMac’s fitness. A long shot, but what do others think of Tomlinson playing forward instead of TMac?  He’s much fitter than TMac right now and would therefore have the tank to get up the ground to support our exits from D50 and kicks along the wing, like TMac did when he was fit.  Of course he hasn’t trained there all year - too much experimentation at this late stage in the season?

Good win - got the 4 points without exerting too much energy. That bodes well for next week but also keeps plenty of energy in the tank for finals. 

I can’t see Laurie staying in the side. He seemed to struggle with the faster AFL pace, which will only intensify further in finals. 
 

Spargo needs to return.

The way I see it, we still haven’t reached our full potential in those matches but have shown glimpses of those gears and what they can deliver. I’m confident we’ve got the fitness to use those gears come September this year. 
 

My biggest fear is a wet September 😬

10 hours ago, OhMyDees said:

Crucial non-calls that cost us dearly at the death aside from the Trac non-goal… 

- Oliver held at stoppage in the square. 

- Langdon held on half toward flank.

- JVR tunnelled on the half forward flank. 

Umpiring doesn’t alone cost you a game but I was frustrated with the way the umpires refused to make calls late in the game other than deliberate out of bounds…

Didn’t help either that I had a truly obnoxious Carlton fan next to me who ‘accidentally’ punched me in my leg while celebrating. 

Thanks again Andy, George and Binman for what I’m sure will be yet another amazing pod. 

- Clarry’s holding the ball that wasn’t at beginning of the second half that gave them a goal

- JVR clearly tripped in the last few minutes

Great show. One knock on effect of Goodies innovation and squad mentality this year (plus the inclusion of listener questions) is that there’s more to discuss and thus the podcast is now regularly 2+ hours - I’m happy with that, keeping me distracted for either two workouts or three dish washing assignments. Thanks for all your efforts and insights 👍

Bodes well for our game this weekend 😁

Fantastic and important win. I’d be curious for the panels thoughts on why and where we struggled in the third quarter. It seems we were beaten in the middle of the ground, were unable to move it forward and that we were only able to swing the momentum when Petracca moved to the middle late in the quarter. 

Just home from work and literally refreshing my podcast app every 5min waiting for my demonland pod fix 😁

8 minutes ago, binman said:

Yeah agree. I thought they were really intersting too.

A query I have about the pressure ratings is how well it captures the pressure from having all options for a kick blocked.

Sometimes the kicker was not under heaps of pressure, looked in board and/or for the switch and couldn't pull the trigger because we had players covering it.

With this structural and discipline  pressure we constantly forced them to go down the line

But i don't the above scenario would generate pressure points. But pressure is being applied by taking away the corridor and forcing them to kick to a contest.

That was critical.  I thought the other strategy we deployed was to really pressure everyone around the ball carrier. And I mean everyone.   I assume that only pressure acts directed at the ball carrier count towards the pressure rating so this might not show up in the stats. But the pressure to surrounding players really stifled their game and may have made it feel higher intensity than the ratings suggest.

1 hour ago, binman said:

Pressure

Q1: 176 - 180
Q2: 174 - 172
Q3: 201 - 206
Q4: 186 - 177
Tot: 183 - 186

 

 

 

Interesting - I thought our pressure ratings would have been higher than that, particularly surprised they were higher than us in the third quarter.

Were there any signs that they were more fatigued than us?  I couldn't find the pressure stats for the quarters, but I looked through the various tracker states on the AFL app and it seems we were pretty well matched with some notable differences:

• Total distance covered: 3 demons and 2 pies in top 5, but 4 demons and 1 pie at high speed
• Maximum speed: 1 demon (Kozzie) and 4 pies in top 5
• Average top speed: 2 demons and 3 pies
• Sprinting: 2 demons and 3 pies  in top 5
• Average speed in attack: 1 demon and 4 pies
• Average speed in defence: 5 demons!

It'd be interesting to look at the full team, but I can't find the data.  But my general take-aways are that they matched us in bursts, we had more endurance around the ground generally, and that they prioritize speed in attack but aren't fast enough in defence.

Just finished watching the game.  Fantastic stuff.  With the exception of the first 15min, we really dominated.  Suffocated their game.  Could have won by a lot more. A few observations:

• Our pressure and toughness was incredible, all around the ground. 
• We exposed them on the rebound but could have been more damaging
• Viney immense
• Gawn's marking back
• Fritsch clearly has gears
• Love having Salem back in the team
• Backline were in all in sync
• Loved Hibberd's work - clearly refreshed for this week
• Was it Sparrow who took N Daicos out of the game?
• Darcy Moore is very impressive

Did the Dees just lay down a blueprint for beating the Pies?  Will be interesting to see where they are at the end of round 19 after playing the Crows, Suns, Dogs, Dockers and Port.

I’ve not seen the Pies play but I often read that they bring 2 extras to the stoppage. From what positions do they usually take those players and who therefore is likely to be free for us and how damaging could they be, eg on the turnover/rebound?

In 2021, we tagged I think Libba in our first game against the Dogs. Harmes did the work if I recall correctly. It nullified his influence at the coal face and, IMHO, that win really solidified our contender credentials. Do you think we’ll look to tag/run with Daicos and who could do the job?