Stu

With a normal 5-day break during the season, teams need to consider the next run of games. Thankfully for us, we have this game, then the Lions 7 days later, followed by a 13-day break into the Tigers game. It means we can be especially light on the track this week and not worry about long term fitness, given the larger break from our bye after round 5. @Bendigo_Demon’s insight about how light todays session was, makes me think the players will look pretty fresh on Thursday come the first bounce.

Winning this game and being 4-1 after three interstate games would be amazing. It leaves just four interstate games (excl. Alice Springs) for the remaining 18 rounds and one of those is against WCE 😊

They showed a stat on "On The Couch" that Port had allowed their opponents to score 50% of the time it went into Ports D50, which is pretty terrible for a team wanting to be Top 4. Luckily they've played the worst team in the league, and another that is likely to be bottom 6 (if not bottom 4) this year. If we get solid Inside 50 numbers, I can see us kicking a score they won't be able to defend.

From discussion recently about Goodwin's coaching style - is he a good strategist and planner but not a good gameday tactician, if plan A doesn't work there's no plan B etc, it raised a thought in my mind. I wanted to see how many times over the past three seasons where we were well out of games and knew we would lose well before the final siren. This is somewhat subjective but the parameters I used to determine when this occurred were: If we were four goals down by the halfway point of the last quarter. I also included games where the score was slightly closer (around 20/21 points down) at the same mark, but momentum and scoring was very much with the other team Probably not surprising to @binman, even though we lost 21 games over that period, there was only 5 games that met the above parameters: Fremantle, Round 11 2022 (May was subbed early with concussion, TMac was injured in the warmup, Petracca had the flu, and others were missing due to COVID) Sydney, Qualifying Final 2022 Brisbane, Round 2 2023 (Max went down early with a knee injury, and while we got within 10 points after the lights came back on, we deserved to lose by 40 points) Essendon, Round 5 2023 (Gather round) Sydney, Round 0 2024 Essentially, if Goodwin only has a Plan A, it either works or goes pretty close to working 72 times out of 77. P.S. I meant to add to this the game plan and tactics thread but I was having issues with the search function loading any results.

In the Kings Birthday game last year we showed teams that if you can get the ball outside of the contest you can outnumber the pies on the rebound. They throw a lot of players at the contest to win the ball back, but if they lose and the team can clear it, they're off. The aura Collingwood had meant that teams sometimes panicked when they had the overlap / outnumber going, and would often rush a kick either giving the ball straight back or allowing the Pies players to spoil, tackle etc. Further, last year teams statistically had their worst scoring accuracy against the Pies. It was an uncanny stat that almost all teams worst goalkicking performance came against Collingwood. This meant that when teams got momentum they weren't capitalising, giving the Pies a sniff. The confidence they had from all the close wins and comebacks meant they never lost belief. Conversely teams started to tighten up when they were 3 or 4 goals up half way through the last quarter fearing a Pies comeback. Now that teams have worked out how to pull apart Collingwood's game plan, the aura has started to fall and it is having the opposite compounding effect where the Collingwood players are feeling the pressure and making mistakes. The scrutiny premiers face the following season is intense, and I'm even more proud of the 10-0 start we had in 2022 in retrospect.

Pies play Saints next week and then Brisbane at the Gabba. Will likely be 1-3 and maybe even 0-4… what’s the emoji for pure glee?

When you’re the premiers but also seem to bring out the yips in every single team you play… last year they were clearly the 1st ranked team for opponents inaccuracy in front of goal. I’m hoping that eventually turns and they start losing more games that they deserve to.

Is there a scenario where they bring in Brown and Fullarton? Fullarton to play Ruck to give Gawn a rest and to ensure we have two tall forwards at all times? Or is that too tall? So for me, that would be Pickett, Hore, Brown, and Fullarton in for Bowey, Tomlinson, Schache and Laurie. If Lobb, Naughton, and JUH are proving too tall we could look to play Max behind the ball more and use Fullarton in the ruck forward of centre.

It’s important to remember that the injury that interrupted the last few weeks of pre-season was a toe injury in his other foot to the one he injured last year. His injured foot has been good to go for a while now and has held up throughout the rehab period for his more recent toe injury.

It really highlights how easily people are swayed by media sentiment. The bookies would be loving it.

SEN reported that the AFL has imposed a firm Tuesday 5:30pm(?) deadline for injury lists. It also must contain specific periods e.g., 4-6 weeks, to stop Geelong from going with “short term” etc. We should have a detailed injury list by next Tuesday night.

Many thanks supreme overload! 🙏

I had this one typed up but forgot to submit. If you can’t squeeze it in @Demonland I understand. Can ask it next week: Schache kicked 2.1, had 9 disposals and 4 marks. As @binman touched on last week, because he’s a great shot for goal he doesn’t need a lot of chances to impact the scoreboard. Would you be satisfied if he had 4 marks and kicked 2 goals every week?

He has very clean hands. Doesn’t seem to fumble or grab the ball awkwardly. He knows how to grab the ball to let him immediately dish off the handball.

Salem has fantastic spatial awareness and peripheral vision, that allows him to stop and use every fraction of a second he has free to assess his options before picking his kick. If used in the middle he won’t be hurried into dump kicks from perceived pressure which will only help our F50 connection.

I finished the podcast last night - it was fantastic to have you guys back! I also just wanted to comment that @binman's audio was really good - sounded well insulated and clear.

With our season spread over 25 weeks (23 games plus two byes), plus two additional on two weeks of practise games, the club has a long season to keep players fresh and uninjured. @binman does the approach to the weekends game show an evolving strategy to player management from the club, compared to previous years? There was some changes made last year following 2022 after a lot of players ended the year banged up and sore. This year's fixture presents more opportunities for extended rest and [looks over shoulder] loading, where '22 and '23 did not. This question is really a tee up for Binman to further soothe your MFCSS @Demonland - you shouldn't let the result or performance trigger you too badly.

What he showed (to me), is that he could realistically be a forward who kicks 30-40 goals in a year, which when combined with JVR, Fritsch, and Kossie’s output, we’d have a formidable forward line.

I might go out to Casey for next Friday’s session if I can get the morning off work!

I did some analysis and compared the break between games for our first 14 matches with those from last year. While we have two 5 day breaks compared to 1 in 2023, we have a 13 and 12 day break, along with 10 and 9 day breaks in there as well. Last year we had a lot more 6 day breaks, and the pitiful bye period of just 10 days. I'm interested to see if this helps keep our players fresh during the year, and opportunities for Selwyn to better manage player training loads. Having a large gap between our 1st and 2nd games, and then the gaps between our 6th, 7th & 8th games also allows periods for those with interrupted pre-seasons to catch up on conditioning. The table shows the breaks between our games this year and last year. The first column is the game number, not the round (because of 'round zero' and our bye after the ANZAC game). The location is for this years game, not last years.

I got super excited this weekend when I realised our first hit out is only two weeks away!

But did you see a single chair with a chain dangling nearby, and a large bucket overhead?

I know it’s been said many times already, but I felt compelled to say it again… your post brought a tear to my eye while I read it at work. Having heard him open up a little bit about how tough he has found the footy industry, I’m very sure he greatly appreciated what you said to him on our behalf. Thank you again for a truly beautiful post and a 10/10 training report 😊

We trade pick 6 to Hawks for pick 4 and our first round pick in 2024. We then trade pick 4 and 11 to WCE for pick 1 and take Reid :-)