Its Time for Another

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.

I started going every week in '73. I had followed them as a little tacker since '63 but don't remember those early days including '64. We lost 22 games in a row but every week you could see Parkes at CHF and Hardeman at CHB. Probably to this day the most exiting combo in those two positions. The centreline was Alves Wells and first year Robbie Flower who was a star the minute he walked out for the first time. It was Ditterich's first year with us. Crackers Keenan and a few of the others used to congregate on the outside of the 3/4 time huddle smoking ciggies and looking up at the scoreboard to see the results at the races. It was still a great era of players despite the misery of the results.

I have a feeling Jacko could have a much more significant role to play in this game than people realise. Most focus in media etc has been on Gawny, Clarry and Trac. Gawny's dominance in the ruck in the previous games hasn't translated to clearances. So do we lose much by putting Jacko in much more of the ruck contests and free up Gawny to create a match up nightmare in the forward line or dropping back to chop out in defence. It might even work against the Doggies system if the ruck contests are more even and they can't shark off us as much. They would potentially get caught between setting up for winning contests themselves not just defensively sharking off us. If it is neutralised then Jacko becomes even more of a clearance weapon once it hits the ground and he can then run Martin into the ground. He'll be cooked before the last quarter. Also have a feeling Vines is going to have a blinder. This game will be tailor made for his manic attack on the ball and player at stoppages which is where the Doggies must win to have a chance of winning the game.

I agree with all of this especially about round 19 but my point is all things being equal if we'd kicked straight we would have won that game even though we were flat, they had Bruce, won frees 25 to 11 and had some very lucky breaks. We can predict and plan for almost everything except for not kicking accurately.