Its Time for Another

@binman, @Axis of Bob, @Engorged Onion while we're on the topic of clearances. Any theory on Bang Bang Bang and what it might indicate for this season. My first observation is having worked my way through most of the season's games I realised that there were several games where we went Bang Bang Bang. The GF wasn't a unique one off. It's just that they didn't have the significance within the games or in the GF and maybe slipped under the covers. I went back over Bang Bang Bang literally frame by frame trying to understand what happened. My biggest observation and I might well be wrong was that because Treloar had done so well in the second quarter it looked like Bevo switched him from being the outside receiver at stoppages to being the in and under player and Liberatore the reverse. Some experts said the Bulldogs made a blunder by not putting a player on our side of the centre clearances to stop us getting the front side exit. Liberatore actually was there but at each of the centre bounces for BBB he couldn't help himself and ran into the contest instead of staying outside to block our exit. The result was Treloar wasn't effective at the drop of the ball and this deprived Bont being able to clear the ball because he was positioned as the outside receiver. I reckon there was an element of dumb luck with centimetre touches leading to clearances. Viney's attack at the fall of the ball was significant in two of the three and Jacko was able to create blocks which opened corridors in two of them and the actual handball clearance in one. I reckon the Doggies will fix the set up in round 1 and will get back to their usual excellent structure. I'm sure there was a lot more to and hopefully some of the wiser heads than mine can identify them.

Jackson looks to have significantly beefed up again this pre season. Maybe it’s my MFCSS kicking in but I can’t help thinking the Club would have tried to extend him some time ago rather than heading well into the last season of his contract. Hope and pray there’s not a risk of losing him. I’m sure Eagles and Freo will be throwing everything st him and can pay him as their prime marquee player something we won’t be able to match. Just hope the lure of the success over the next couple of years will be enough for him to stay. Agree about Hunt although I think Hibbo kept him out at the end not Bowey so I expect him to be straight back in the team for Hibbo. I didn’t realise how outstanding he was right from the beginning of the season till I went back and watched again. IMO the most improved right from the beginning. ANB the most improved over the whole season and Jacko building phenomenally. Im sure you’re right about Gus in the short term. I realised in going back that I didn’t understand what he was doing earlier in the season but it’s there to see from the beginning. However as good as he’s been I believe his best position is still on ball. He’s filled the wing role because we didn’t have anyone else. I think I’m a season or two when a more natural winger comes through maybe Howes I could see someone like Harmsey being under pressure from Gus for an on ball role. Don’t forget Howes in discussing future wingmen. Early indications for me are he’s come in as a natural step up from Rosman and Baker is now only a backup.

Hats off to Roosy. He was the first to do it in the AFL while still at the Swans. More and more are starting to do it now.

First of all, thanks again. As I've posted before this is my favourite Board on Demonland and the insights from you and others are fantastic. Funnily enough I have also been watching every game in order. I'm half way through the Suns game. The only game I couldn't bring myself to watch again was the QB loss. I have three takeaways. First is how much the backline structure stood out right from round 1 and how it saved us in a few of the early games. Secondly how disfunctional the forward line was for most of the season and how much that improved right at the end of the season when we got continuity once BBB was settled in the lineup. Thirdly how much the clearance work improved especially late in the season. Interesting what you're saying about different clearances for different purposes. One thing I feel very confident about is that no other team is going to have a ruckman like Jackson with the same post hitout impact. Gawny says he's working on it I suspect we are going to see more work with them creating corridors for the midfielders to clear the ball out. Jackson's work in Bang Bang Bang mostly was no more than doing that other than the beautiful clearance for Clarry. Out of interest do you see anyone possibly taking Gus's wing some of the time to free him up to perhaps do some clearance rotations. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Tommo now Petty is doing so well in his position in defence.

@binman, @Axis of Bob, @Engorged Onion et al, I would like to revisit the topic of clearances. If you stand still in this competition you are dead so what changes if any are we going to see this season. It seemed pretty clear as last season went on that there was a bit of a change towards working on winning clearances by the end of the season compared to the first half when it seemed the coaches were happy to concede clearances and rely on winning post clearance possessions. Yze said mid season you don't want to lose clearances because you don't want to concede territory to the opposition. That's a bit simplified but it seems to have been the trend. I've put together this table of clearance stat's for all 8 games against our finals competitors as a starting point for discussion on whether we can predict any new trends for this season. It's a shame I couldn't add in Post Clearance stat's as they are so highly rated by coaches. MFC stats are the first ones. First stand out stat for me is that we only lost 1 of the 8 games v Dogs in the wet when we went through our mini slump. Second observation is that on all these stats it appears the Lions are closest to us and the team we'll have to watch out for the most this season. Stats obviously have to be taken with a good measure of interpretation. For instance I'm not sure how much we learn for this season from the Dogs stats. The second game was in the wet during our slump and if we'd kicked straight we probably would have won anyway. Personally I don't believe the size of the GF blow out is a true guide of their competitiveness against us. We improved our Centre clearances against every team as the season progressed except v Cats in the Prelim where inexplicably we lost them 11-16, only won stoppages by 1 and lost total clearances by 4 yet had our biggest win of any of the games. We only lost Centre clearances in 2 games, the Prelim and rd 12 v Lions. We won contested possession in every game except rd 23 with Cats when we were even. Conversely we lost Uncontested possessions in every game except Rd 12 & the Prelim. The Cats were within 3 Hitouts of us in the Prelim and won Centre clearances 16-11. For what it's worth here's my predictions : I expect to see our Centre Clearance wins improve. Our Hitout domination didn't translate very often into an equivalent win in centre clearances. I expect to see Dogger more in the ruck this season so maybe our Hitout wins will decrease overall however our clearances will probably go up as his post hitout input is becoming so significant and Gawny in his book has flagged that Dogger has taught him to improve this aspect of his game. I expect stoppage clearances to continue to improve. I thought there was a significant improvement by the end of the season compared to the beginning and I think this will continue. As a result I expect to see our Uncontested possessions to increase. I expect the connection into the forward line to continue to improve as we have a more settled forward mix and more time to work together.

Youve triggered a thought. Why don’t support staff like at least coaches and assistant coaches get Premiership medallions. People like Burgess deserve them just as much as well.

Earl can you tell how they have been able to increase the size of the oval. Have they removed trees or have they just moved the old fence

@Dee Zephyr I'm sure you're right about the surgery mid Feb 2021.

Yes from memory you are correct about this, however, he then lost about 10+ weeks of training so I doubt the pre Christmas training would help by that point.

Roosy stated some years ago that if a player missed the pre Christmas pre season which was when the fitness base is built they would struggle to get full fitness for the rest of the season. It's safe to say the disastrous 2019 pre season shows enough evidence of how hard it is to recover competitiveness having missed large chunks of pre season. BBB did a great job overcoming his interrupted pre season. We have no idea how much his fitness was effected compared to Weid's or how long it took for each to get back to full function to be able to build the base. BBB is a lot more experienced and has a lot more proven form to rely on in building his confidence compared to Weid who is yet to cement his career.

Cold hard logic based on post 2018 performances no doubt justifies the pessimism about Weid's prospects. I remain a bit more optimistic based on the fact he has already shown in games he has all the skill, physique and footy smarts to compete with the best. I maintain the hope that his problem remains above the shoulders. Most of his preseasons have been cruelled by injuries and it seems to be extremely hard to build a tank and therefore be competitive and confident if you've missed big chunks and are starting with a low base of confidence. I'm hoping with a full pre season we will see the best competitive beast version knocking down the door for best 22.

As usual another journo who hasn't done their homework. Last pre season Weed was heading for surgery on both hips and BB was on a severely modified program still overcoming the knee surgery before coming to us. BB then had further knee surgery. So the players last pre season who were expected to be our two key forwards basically missed the whole pre season. From memory Clarry had further shoulder surgery and had a modified program for some time. There was quite a list of players in rehab at various stages last pre season. We are in way better shape this pre season. Even Tommo seems to be recovered enough from his ACL to be in full training and is expected to be available Rd 1.

Harris is looking unrecognisable compared to last season. Has improved her ground game enormously and is holding her contested pack marks again. Massive step up for our forward line. We seem to have gone backwards this year on goal kicking accuracy. It was a big focus for improvement last season and worked but seems to have gone backwards. Have to fix it. Hore has been off the last two games.

Interesting virtually every player in the GOAT conversation other than Ablett Jr didn’t win a Brownlow. As for not winning more B&F’s he explained that he missed games nearly every season and once you missed a couple of games it was very hard to win one.

We know who the top guy is. But who would know that the bottom one is Vincent van Gogh

I wonder if Toby is sitting there thinking Hmmm if this guy is any good he's going to be direct competition for me. Better lift my act. I guess 2022 is a make or break year for TB like a few others particularly on the Rookie list.

Brilliant thanks. I forgot I had the app on my phone already. Checked and they are there. Now to pass on to the others.

Thanks. Got the ticket email but not the tickets delivered by SMS. Wonder when that happens. I'll try downloading the app.

Toby Bedford ?

Has anyone got their actual ticket delivered yet. I have set up for SMS tickets but haven't received anything. Went through hell to get them. Did everything and had best 7 seats in the house and pressed the final button and it came up as Timed Out. Infuriating. Had entered 7 different names and mobile numbers. Chucked a few things around the room. Started the whole process again. Got to the end pressed final button and it said wrong type of phone number then wouldn't correct it no matter what I tried. So timed out again. Did it again and it then wouldn't allow 7 tickets only 3. Ended up only getting 3 tickets. Hate Ticketek. Now haven't received any tickets or SMS access etc.

Mustn't be any good or AFL would have found a way to stop us getting him like with Mac Andrew and stripping our northern zone and giving it to Suns etc etc. Reminds me in a few ways of Gavin Wanganeen. Seems to have a very cool under pressure disposition despite saying he was nervous before the game and like him looks to have relatively short legs compared to his body so looks like he's buzzing along with a very rapid short stride.

This was my hope however WC starts 20 July 2023 in 19 months time. That’s probably barely enough time to build it if they started now but there will be a long process that has to be gone through before they can even start. First all stakeholders have to agree to it. This obviously hasn’t happened yet. Then it has to go through a whole planning process starting with Public consultation because it is public land. Before then going through the planning approval. All of that would normally take a year or more. Unfortunately can’t see it happening in time for WC.

We can’t tell how he’s going to go in the big time from his highlights but we can tell that he’s already got a beautiful kicking technique for goal and dobs them from everywhere.

Selwyn Griffiths. Had a lot of press on how good he was at the Lions and instrumental in their great run up the ladder with fitness and injuries then came to us the end of last season I assume as part of a succession plan to take over from Burgess now.

Thanks for more of your detailed analysis AOB. Interesting hitouts are down more than clearances. What's your theory on that. I would have thought hitouts went hand in hand with clearances unless I guess there's no clear hitout but interesting this stat has got worse. I would argue none of these are very significant changes and it's hard to know for sure what is causing them. There are often evolutions of the game naturally which I'm sure would cause a variance in stat's like this over two seasons. There could be other causes such as the increase in the distance for the kickouts or the reduction in the interchange which was meant to impact these stat's more than the standing on the mark rule which was mostly meant to impact scoring. One thing is for sure and that is that it has failed utterly in increasing scoring despite the fact that players having a set shot from around the 50 get a free probably 10 metres at least closer to goal which IMO is a major flaw in the rule that should be fixed. So if the rules main purpose has failed why have such a significant change to the game. What is your opinion of why it hasn't helped scoring. I have no idea. Out of interest where do you get your stat's from I'm always looking for sources for stats.