Stu

In previous weeks we may have bemoaned the fact we can only score 60. Tonight we actually got to the magical 100 first (but still somehow lost despite that being a statistical improbability). Call me naive but I imagine that if the FD wanted that game to be low scoring and defensive, it would have been. Don’t get me wrong, I’m upset we lost and my night is ruined, but have some faith in the club. We may not win the flag this year, but let’s not sell the farm before the final game of the season. The Tigers went into the 2018 finals series in read hot form… how did that work out for them? I appreciate the next few games will give us an idea of where the team is at, but let’s give them the opportunity to prove themselves before we write them off.

But 7 goal leads are their kryptonite 😜

Good points. The benefit of our smaller forward line is the added pressure the smaller forwards can provide. I expect to see us either lock it in our forward 50 for longer, or successfully pressure them into coughing it up at half forward/wing by cutting off options. Given their taller forward line in Naughton, Bruce, and JUH we may have some success rebounding if we prevent marks inside D50.

Agreed! It’s an exceptional circumstance where a 20 year old ruck is being offered over $1 mil a year. Therefore it’s not unreasonable to expect the trade details to be similarly exceptional.

😂 Scott would complain about how unusually wide the ground is and how the AFL should set maximum dimensions (but not minimum as that would impact their under 10’s sized field).

I can't agree more. If (and this is the big IF) we can maintain our best through the last rounds and the finals I think we're a cut above the rest. The evenness of this season is only possible by our form drop since after Round 10. Before that it was "the Demons by how much". Should we get our best back in time for the finals, I strongly believe it will be too good for any of the teams rated as contenders.

When considering the Cats, I always remember that they have a very experienced (aka "old") team. That experience brings consistency and, to me explains the Cats regular season sustained success. As a result, the gap between their best and worst is smaller than any other team. The question you need to ask is: when the finals begin and other teams go up a level, do the cats have further to go? Or is what we've seen the last few weeks the best they have? Further, Scott's approach to games (willing to modify his game plan to get wins) means that they look great in any given game. However, that comes at the expense of the type of muscle memory you saw from Dees players last September. This is the same as the Swans where Longmire changes things quite significantly in order to win any given name, least of all the Freo game this round. The Cats do look great right now, and seem to be in the best position to win the flag for some time. I guess we will get an answer to whether a tactical coach (Longmire / Scott) can best a system coach (Goodwin / Longmuir / Fagan). For the Cats, you feel that it will soon be... now or never.

Great show guys – I loved the passion and robust conversation, all done in a respectful way. Reading through the replies on this thread, it made me think of that fast disclaimer at the end of superannuation and investment ads… “Past performance is not an indicator of future performance”. I don’t assume @binman and others are implying that because we went through a similar form drop last year, that it must mean this year we are a certainty to improve as we did across the final seven games in 2021. But to highlight that the football department knows how to peak at the right time, and that they may likely do the same again this year. MAY. Not WILL. In all team sports that have a post-season, the teams expecting to be there at the pointy end, all have periods where they look toward the finals / playoffs beginning. In the NBA (82 games) and MLB (162 games) there are periods where they accept that losses will occur due to fixturing and the need to rest and then load up the fitness of key players across a long season. Across foreign and domestic competitions like these, you need a greater than 70 percent winning rate to guarantee optimal post-season conditions (home ground advantage in US sports / double chance in AFL). Further, there is no additional benefit to running at an 85, 90, or 100 percent winning record once you guarantee the double chance. Now in an AFL season with only 22 games, you couldn’t guarantee this earlier than round 16 (going 16-0). The question becomes - do you do everything to bank those 16 wins as early as possible and then begin preparing for finals and risk it being too late? Or make judgement calls in season to prepare for the finals in the best possible way while also doing your best to (first) qualify and then finish top 4? Reading through this forum in the off-season, the collective wisdom of users identified that we would become ‘The Hunted’, that opposition coaches will be studying our style and dissecting it, and coming up with strategies to beat us. If we worked that out than so too did the football department. They would likely have looked at the fixture and considered each game through that lens. They would have developed a strategy on how to manage the teams mental and emotional energy given that we would be a lot of teams ‘grand final’. They would have set targets for where they aimed to be at certain points in the season, and how they would adjust various fitness and player management schedules based on those metrics, e.g. aim to be 7-2 (or better) at round 9 to implement an aggressive loading schedule versus a record of 5-4 where a more moderate loading schedule would be applied. This strategy would be tweaked and changed based on injuries, team form, and the quality of opposition we face. That is why it is risky to compare 2021 to 2022 too closely. In 2021 we (mostly) played poorly against bad sides whereas in 2022 we have only lost to top sides. Firstly, our fixture is different and secondly, we’re the benchmark in 2022 when we weren’t in 2021. I’m sure this is highly biased as a dee’s supporter, but it has felt as though most teams this year have really brought the heat against us for at least a half (relative to their overall quality). I can’t be the only one who has felt that. You don’t want to exhaust the team mentally and emotionally by trying to raise the stakes for our players (across 22 games) to the same level that opposition players have instinctively purely because they are playing the reigning premiers. No coach or player wants to lose any given game of football. However, the FD will have what they are willing to change and risk in order to win any given game, based on their season strategy. If a team is so superior in quality and application that it can juggle it’s finals preparation objectives while also winning 22 straight games, I imagine that is what would happen. Goodwin and the FD will plan for, and go into each match with a plan they think gives them the best chance to win the game within the context of the larger season objectives. They will have things they plan to try / test out in game, and small tweaks to the gameday tactics they will utilize to win that game. What they can’t account for is the oppositions desire and application, and the changes in tactics they implement to wrestle back control of the game. Goody may or may not have had answers to the tactics Geelong used to control and win Thursday nights game. However, what he now has is additional tactics that Geelong and other teams might use to beat us in the remaining (up to) 10 rounds of the season. What opposition coaches do not have is the counter measures Goodwin may employ to counter those tactics. Whether that is by chance or by design is (almost) irrelevant because the opportunities it presents are the same in either scenario. The Bulldogs played an almost perfect 1.5 quarters in the Grand Final and got 19 points up. Goodwin had faith that our preparation would allow us to weather the storm and eventually wrestle back momentum. And that when we did, we’d have the explosiveness to pull away. At this point in the season, we will soon learn whether there is method in the madness of our form slump, or if we’re just not as good as we hoped we would be this year. But while we’re in 2nd and with more points For and fewer Against than at the same time last season, I’ll put faith in the FD that delivered us a premiership.

I got the impression the ground was very wet and heavy. There were a few closer shots showing how dug up the ground was. The weather had been dry in the few days before the game, which made me wonder… did they water the ground to make it slower and heavier? They train on it so they’d have a much better feel for how it “played” after a few sessions, and that would take away our explosive midfield edge. It’s a wild theory, but it aligns to the idea that they set themselves for this game (and clearly played like they set themselves for it).

It would have been a nice exclamation mark for his game tonight. Either way, play like that for the next few weeks and he'll keep his spot.

Well said! While I'm sad we didn't win by 90 points, it's almost a silver lining of our inaccuracy. We'll get the kudos of a strong win against the ladder leader, but it won't come with the over-the-top media spin that a complete flogging would have 😄

Sam played a great game tonight. Many may look at the stats and think he didn't kick enough goals or take enough marks. But his ruck work and taps to advantage were fantastic. He was rarely out marked and often brought the ball to ground. Further, he blocked for team mates to allow them to mark the ball and he checked many leads once he realised others were in a better position to present. He also ran both ways, showing up many times in screen when another player marked the ball. If you feel he hasn't shown mongrel and desire in the past, he certainly showed that tonight.

Spot on @binman! For the doubters...from Round 10 to 13 we had four games in Melbourne with mostly seven day breaks, and that's after a game against an historically poor Eagles team (round 9). After a game of Aussie Rules football, players have run 10 to 15 km's (or more) so there's a lot of recovery needed to get players back to square one. To load during seasons involves using the training sessions right in the middle of games so there's enough time to recover after the preceding game and before the next fixture. A series of seven day breaks in your home state offers the best environment to do that. From here we play in Adelaide, Geelong, and Alice Springs. So what would you choose round 9-13 or rounds 15 to 18? The FD took a risk. If Lever holds back from the marking contest against Freo and May ISN'T concussed it's at least 50/50 that we win that game from 30 points up. From there we likely win the Swans game and maybe the Pies too. Either way, we've been leading by at least 22 points against each of those teams in the last three weeks, and perhaps haven't quite done enough to put the result beyond doubt and suffered the consequence. We may have lost three in a row, but I firmly believe that tonight's game shows that Goodwin and the FD has been playing the long game. From here we go 6-2 and finish 17-5 😎.

If you want to know why that looked like a Melbourne game, it's because the players had the endurance and capacity to play that way. If you want to know why Melbourne looked so much better than any other team in September it's in part because of our fitness and conditioning. Our ability to score is tied intrinsically to our pressure and ability to run both ways. We may lose next week against Adelaide and win against Geelong (because of the vagaries of the fixture and nothing more) but it's with the bigger picture in mind.

They’ll be announced around 6:30 tomorrow (Wednesday) might.

About 15 years ago I worked with someone who was a fairly accomplish amateur / semi-pro road (motor) bike rider (e.g. Superbikes). At the time when I worked with him, he mentored young up and coming riders. He said a big focus was on the concept of having $1 dollar of mental energy to spend. They'd assign a cost to things like gear changes (5 cents), cornering (10 cents), transitioning between turns (20 cents). He'd get them to rate it after 5 laps and than again after 25. The cost would always be higher the more fatigued they were. The learning for them was to get better and better at those skills to reduce the cost to properly execute them. This meant that fatigue had less impact resulting in a more consistent performance from start to finish. By way of comparison, this Dees team has had issues with delivery into the F50. With coaching and a lot of practise they've improved, but at their core they remain somewhat unskilled or inconsistent in this area. During a period of heavy loading players have less mental energy and focus due to fatigue, so unless they're naturally very gifted at F50 entries the quality of decision making is likely to be impacted. Unless it's second nature (from skill formed at a young age), fatigue will impact the execution and decision making with any aspect of the game. We saw very poor F50 entries happen during the Collingwood and GWS game last year, and we've seen it in the second half against Freo and Sydney, and most of the game last week.

You've mentioned it in the pod many times the last few weeks but I similarly look to the fitness during the first 8 rounds to remind myself that we're clearly loading. In Round 4, Sparrow getting the ball at half back and ending with him beating multiple GWS players inside 50 to slap the ball to Fritsch for a goal. In the same play a GWS player falls down to his knees from exhaustion at the goal line and he was closer to goal then Sparrow was when the play started. In Round 8, late in the fourth quarter with the game won, Spargo makes two tackles in about 5 seconds and another Dees player (can't remember) makes similar repeat efforts that thwarts an attempted forward entry. You don't lose that level of fitness in a few weeks.

I was a bit ham-fisted with my explanation. In Olympic sports that are of an endurance nature, I've heard commentators call out why a particular athlete has gone out extremely hard and/or faded heavily in races (even predicting it on occasions). They'll mention that they're trying to peak for a particular event (maybe the World Championships or Olympics) and they'll sacrifice their performance in that event to use it as a way to get in some load training whilst in a competitive environment. The aim may be to improve a particular section within the race, like starting or finishing more aggressively. With team sports, this becomes more complex but offers the opportunity to spread loading across different players and in different ways to try to maintain competitiveness. Given the 5 day breaks in between the Lions and Cats games, any heavier loading in the lead up to those games would increase the chances of soft tissue injuries occurring. However, if the time on ground (TOG) and the intensity during the game is modified players could essentially receive a loading session within the game. This could be a player playing with really high intensity in Q2 and Q3 and then spending less TOG or in a more passive role at other times. Players could also tag team where one of them is at high intensity, while the other is resting. There may be evidence of this last year where the TOG for players was quite variable through the second block of loading. The 9 and 10 day breaks after those two games then allows for heavier loading between those games so players are getting consistent high intensity aerobic sessions around 4 or 5 days apart. Speaking of Olympic sport commentators, it's so nice to hear the insider knowledge of former athletes about loading and preparation. About 95% of footy commentators are ex-players but none of them offer that sort of insight.

I agree that against the Pies he was invisible. He performed better against the Swans (4 marks and a goal assist) and was better than the other Brown. But the main reason I think he'll be included (as we now have confirmation that Daw is injured) is that the FD don't like to change the structure (2 talls, Fritsch, and 3 small pressure forwards). They could include JVR and I'd personally be excited to see that, but I just doubt they'll do that at this stage of the year. They have often spoke about trying to be calm across the entire FD and we haven't seen reactive team changes for a long time. Goodwin constantly talks about belief in the 'system' - for this reason I can't see him changing the forward structure and/or bringing in a first year player with less than 10 VFL games under his belt.

If Daw is injured or unavailable for selection, I imagine we will go with May in for Turner, Weed in for Gawn, and Tomlinson in as sub. This will keep our structure consistent with how it has been all year. Weed will play Jackson’s usual role of second ruck/resting forward like he did against the Hawks. If Daw is selected I believe Weed will come in to replace Mitch Brown. Further, if Daw is suffering from mental health concerns right now, I’m really happy for the club to give him all the time and support he needs. The guy has literally stood at the precipice and stared down his own existence. The result of a game of sport pales into insignificance.

I imagine the FD saw us at 8-0 coming up against an historically terrible Eagles, followed by 4 straight games in Melbourne to lead into the bye and determined it was best to try to make use of those fixtures to begin their loading regime. There was a lot of 7 day breaks and then the 9 day break into the QB game. Enough time to have the heavy training sessions right in the middle between games and hope that the fatigue levels were manageable. Like you, @binman, I think it's a certainty to continue after the bye. However given our two non-consecutive Thursday night games I imagine we'll see something like: Players returning tomorrow from the break, makes it tough to load up and not be fatigued for Thursday night. I imagine a more moderate training into the game vs the Lions The 9 day break into Round 16 vs Crows offers more time to have a heavier training load The 5 day break into Round 17 vs Cats will likely see an easier week on the training track, as the game itself will act as a heavy training session being so close to the previous game. The 10 day break into Round 18 vs Port again offers enough time to load up once again Their is then a 6 day break into the Round 19 game vs the Doggies - this one could go either way. The coincidence of playing the Dogs for a second time in Round 19 exactly like last year is an amazing coincidence! I think we will see energised performances against the Lions and Cats, and sluggish performances against the Crows and Port, and possible the Dogs. We could win or lose any of them but that's just my guess as to how the team will look during those games.

That's what I keep reasoning on... we're 10-3 (and 10-0) despite dropping down the ratings of pressure and defence. It means that if / when we improve those areas of our game we will be humming. I'm of the belief that our lack of pressure is by design due to the shorter pre-season and the quirks of the fixture, and that the style from last year will be reintroduced in the last third of the year.

In the VFL game on Sunday he was flat footed at contests (like he can often be) but instead of just letting his opponent mark it, he lunged desperately into 3 contests (that I saw) and effected the spoil. Two of those occasions led directly to goals. I imagine that’s the “big man” game type stuff Goody has instructed him to work on. Hopefully he can replicate that at AFL level.

Matt Taberner is an interesting comparison. Is 28 and is averaging 2.3 goals this season, much better than any of his previous years. He also showed glimpses of quality at times and similarly frustrated Freo supports by his lack of consistency.

Great analogy! Burgess left Liverpool FC because he felt there wasn’t much for him to do as they were playing a game every 3-4 days most weeks keeping them match sharp with minimal training. The recovery was also more gentle than compared to AFL (game length and ground size being shorter, and less physicality). Basically once the season started things took care of themselves more or less. With AFL, the break between games is tougher to manage the balance between recovery and keeping players fitness at the required level. Hence the impact of loading to get players back to peak fitness at the right time of year.