Its Time for Another

You're on to something here. I spoke to Jordy McKenzie at the 2011 B & F and asked him what big difference did he notice playing against the top teams like Geelong. I kid you not, he said their butts. They are just so big through the hips and [censored] you just bounce off them when you try to tackle them and they mow through you. Hopefully people don't take this as an opportunity to take pot shots at an ex player.

As long as it’s not the dreaded 426 he’ll be fine. Hunt didn’t just get back to his previous best last season he far exceeded it

44,903 this morning They are expecting to crack 45000 today. Puts this year about 7 weeks ahead of last year.

I couldn’t find anything to argue with.

I love a man of few words.

Never been an armpit man but each to their own. As for a football moment. Agree. None better except the couple before it maybe.

Nah just footy output. He could look like Mark Jackson for all I care.

I'm a supporter. I don't love Oliver's face.

This membership table comes from the HS on 19 Feb. West Coast had the most members last year and are probably on top at this point. We are having our best year ever and are 9th. A bit of a reality check about the relative strengths of the Clubs and where we sit. Richmond 84,948 Collingwood 70,000 Carlton 67,928 Essendon 60,678 Hawthorn 60,100 Port Adelaide 52,164 Geelong 49,055 St Kilda 43,500 Melbourne 43,000 Adelaide 40,000 + Fremantle 40,000 Western Bulldogs 38,824 North Melbourne 38,756 Sydney Swans 35,722 Brisbane Lions 29,318 GWS Giants 25,094 Gold Coast 8,721

It makes sense to me that when you have a settled forward line and a good connection into the forward line that logically you are going to be more attacking. We were still tinkering with the forward line set up right to the end of the season. It's no surprise as this became more settled that the scoring started going up. It's likely that having that set up meant that the philosophy changed rather than the other way around. This season we will be starting with the best most settled forward line we've had since back in the Neater days but with a much better midfield and a preseason to perfect the system and delivery. I'd say that's why Goody mentioned at the Forum that we will be more attacking this season.

I think whatever the cause it's still interesting we were 13th for accuracy. As you say one reason for that is where we are taking the shots from and the other is how accurate individual players are. Very interesting analysis of why we were having so many shots from the pockets but clearly it's not optimal. An enormous amount of work has to go into Hopefully now there appears to more of a settled front 6 they can start to work better on forward systems of play to create leading avenues in a better position than the pocket. This requires the whole 6 and midfielders coming in to work together to open those corridors so that there is an understanding who is going to lead where and who is going to work as decoys to draw defenders away. Then an understanding with the players delivering the ball to them to know which is the set option. I expect all of that to have been happening this pre season in a way we haven't been able till now. Oliver kicked 11.18 last season (3.1 2020). Viney 4.7 (3.1 2020) Harmes 7.10 (3.1 2020) Brayshaw 3.7 Gawn 16.17 Weid played 5 games and only kicked 3.4. Jordan 6.6 There's great scope for improvement if this group's goal kicking is improved over the summer. As a comparison Trac kicked 29.19 (15.14 2020). Fritsch 59.24 (22.24 2020) BBB 25.13 ANB 15.11 (7.0 2020) Kossie 40.28 (7.13 2020) Jacko 16.9 (3.2 2020)

That's an impressive stat. How did you work it out? I'm still trying to find the best sites for stats.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall and hear what aspects of the game the coach's decide to improve on over the summer. I put together the table below of the % goal kicking accuracy and also goals per i50. I've only calculated the % of goals i50 not also points. The AFL i50 efficiency stat is based on goals and points. I don't see the point of that. I've only done them as %'s not totals because of the different number of games played by different teams. In summary we were 13th for goal kicking accuracy. That puts us at the bottom of last year's final 8. We were 7th for goals scored from i50's. Only Port and Cats in last year's 8 were worse than us which I find interesting because they both had key power forwards and much more settled forward lines during the season than us. Stat's are only as useful as the quality of analysis applied to them so my analysis is probably pretty low standard. Nevertheless I think these two are pretty straight forward but the causes and cures for them are not. My first comment is that if you were to take these stat's from round 17 when BBB came back in and stayed in the forward line I'm sure they would be considerably improved. But the rd 20 98 pt blow out v Suns would skewer this stat. In the Grand Final our goal kicking accuracy was 60% and i50's per goal was down to 3.05. That puts us comfortably ahead of any other team's season averages. I'm not sure how representative these stats are in the bigger picture as the game was such a blow out. For our 3 game finals series goal kicking accuracy was 57.11% and goals per i50 were 3.53. They are both comfortably ahead of the rest of the competition's averages. But again there were 2 blow outs and a comfortable win in those 3 games. So also probably not representative other than to say wow what a sensational finals series against the 3 other best teams. Looking ahead to this season interesting that Swans were ranked 1 for accuracy and 2 for goals per i50. Lions ranked 2 for accuracy and 1 for goals per i50. Dogs 10 for accuracy 4 for goals per i50.

You're elevating my MFCSS fear he's going to do a Hogan. Show me the 5 year contract extension to calm the nerves.

Brilliant analysis. Thanks AOB. I played a bit of ruck in my time and you are so right. When you are looking up towards the sky to tap the ball you obviously can’t see the ground until after the hitout. This is Jacko’s point of difference. His speed of switching from looking up to his awareness of what’s going on at ground level and being able to impact is unique. Gerard Healey apparently thinks he is going to change the way the game is played. Or I assume at least the ruck. I wonder if this will impact the trend of getting taller and taller rucks to going back to hybrids like Jacko. Although his vertical leap more than compensates for his lack of height. As we saw in Bang Bang Bang all he or Gawny have to do is be a post hitout physical presence to create blocks and open corridors to take us to another level in 50/50 contests.

@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.