Its Time for Another

Hmmmm!!! This from Chip Le Grand in The Australian today. When he took over Cricket Australia in 2001, its total revenue was about $50 million a year. That figure is now about $500m a year According to Cricket Australia records, 436,000 people played cricket in some form in the 2000-01 financial year. Total participation in cricket now stands at 1,429,523 — about one in every 20 Australians. The important number for ­Sutherland is 135,223. This is the number of primary school-aged girls and boys who play the game. Nearly 36,000 of them are ­enrolled in Milo Cricket and 20,567 play T20 Blast. Neither ­program existed in 2001. A further 79,000 play junior club cricket. Also record attendances at Tests last summer.

Won't have the draft currency next year either. That's the cost of throwing away this year's first rounder on Lever. It costs us this year and also stops us from trading it away next year. We have to use next year's first rounder as it's our last chance to satisfy the requirement to use a first rounder every four years. So we have to use ours next year can't trade it away.

A prime example of the jobs for the boys standards of the AFL head office and the industry in general. Directly involved in blatantly fraudulently hiding extra under the table payments and draft deals with Tippett and gets 6 mths and a recommendation from Head Office that he's welcome into the industry anytime. Dean Bailey does something far less significant that many others in the industry did and gets a full 12mths ban and tainted forever. And don't get me started on how Connelly was treated. Don't care how good this bloke is. It's a no from me.

Accchhh!! Another stuffed up draft selection. We picked up a dud the pick before he went and got O Mac when we could have had him. But seriously this was definitely one of the better trade and draft periods we've ever had. Traded pick 23 for Frost and what became ANB and O Mac in the draft. That's got to be one of the great trades of all time. I'm happy to admit I was one squealing at the time that we'd given up pick 23 for Frost who was on our radar but for a much later pick. But what they did with the picks40 & 53 we got as well was sensational. Both expected to go in the 2nd round. Also traded in Garlett & 83 for picks 61 79 Also upgraded a player who had been delisted and redrafted onto the rookie list............... ........Neville Jetta. Interestingly Pat McKenna is only one of 4 up to Langdon's pick 54 in his 2014 draft who hasn't played a game yet. Not to mention drafting a couple of handy players with our original picks 2,3 & 40, Petracca, Brayshaw & Stretch.

This business of the AFL dictating the CEO's of the MFC to the Board is a furphy. I've spoken to several Board members over the journey who are adamant the Board made the final decision on PJ not the AFL. Demetrio found him and put him forward after being asked by the Board for any suggestions but they had the capacity to go with someone else if they wanted to. Having said that, I'm sure if the AFL thought their choice was bad they would have said something. Luckily for us the Board listened to them. Given the footy dept looks very settled hopefully for the next 5-10 years the major job of the next CEO will be ensuring the long term financial security of the Club. First decision which will effect the next 20-30 yrs will be how they utilise the money from the Bentleigh Club and the Leighoak etc. The second will be growing memberships and sponsorships. That is going to require very smart marketing knowledge. Is Mahoney the right man for that? I'd be guessing de Crepny would be more skilled in that area. Maybe after that's all setup you can go back to a footy based CEO for the future transition of the footy dept.

This is a massive membership burst for this time of year compared to last year where there was only about 120 new members in this period. This year its over 1000. On the basis of previous years increases at this time of year we were heading for 43,500 but now it could hit 45,000. Love PJ to go out on a 45000 membership. What a crowning achievement that would be to his reign and his legacy for the future of the Club.

I rang a couple of days ago organising a couple of things and it was quite a long wait, they said they're sorry for the wait but they are flat out signing up new members. Yeh......

On the club website under the Membership tag at the top of the screen. It has the updated number there.

That's what this Forum is all about. It's a lot more effective than paying for some professional psychologist to try and treat your MFCSS attacks when no one other than members on here have a clue about or know how to treat.

This is interesting. I saw the opposite on the weekend. I thought in the first month the team was just frantically playing on at all cost in the corridor and over handballing even when there weren't options in the clear resulting in the opposition getting the ball. In the last month they have progressively minimised handballs in the contest by getting the ball out in the open and switching outside the corridor and running the ball down the wings in space and then having the time to do proper delivery inside 50. They are only using the corridor where they have options in space in there. I'm guessing our turnovers resulting in scores for the opposition has significantly dropped off in the past month.

I thought this as well. They could be a lot smarter about how they use him in games. Even rest him in the forward line more if we are comfortably dominating or our other ruckmen are being effective and we're still winning centre clearances.

Good OP. Misson said in his last update that Balic has a Planta Facia problem but that he's pain free now and should be back in a week. I hear he was looking very promising at Casey. I have a sneaking suspicion Gaff is heading our way. Only real reason I think that is because we so willingly gave away this year's first rounder for Lever. I figured it wasn't as important to the Club because they had something else brewing this year. Who knows. Everyone talks about him heading back to Vic but his long term girlfriend or wife. I don't know which is from Perth so not sure how significant the game home factor is. I agree with others suggestion that Hunt could be the internal solution. I'm really surprised he hasn't been used there already. Maybe because his kicks into the forward 50 are so bad.

Good point.

Making a point jnrmac. I'd say you've got your point across. I certainly get your point. This post has put a full stop on the discussion. It's hard to argue against this point. I've seen a few dot points in my time but this one is the most to the point. The clearest most succinct point made on here for a long time.

I saw two key structural improvements. Firstly OMac is now playing in a position where he's the last player between the play and the goals instead of getting sucked up the ground which was allowing teams to open us up over the top. Think N Riewaldt there a couple of seasons ago. This time he was finally picking off opposition kicks several uncontested. It's made the whole backline play better especially Lever. Also Wagner kept being the 3rd defender jumping up into contests and stuffing it up for the other 2 and leaving his opponent to lick up the crumbs. His absence has eradicated both these problems so they look much better collectively. Forward line is structurally much better collectively. They are not getting in each other anyway and are leaving space for forwards to lead into. Improved upfield options spreading into space started last week and continued. All big steps forward. Enjoyed all of that but like others frustrated by a wasted rare percentage opportunity against a team with one player on the bench for the last half of the last quarter. GC are good I'm not underestimating them. They will be a greater challenge. Hope to see an even better performance for 4 quarters. We're heading in the right direction.

See the link in a post about 13 hours ago

Hemingway, live your work but have a rare disagreement on this one. I love Jack Watts, I wish him the best and hope he does well at his new club. I agree with you about people denigrating him. It’s disappointing. However, I am interested in our list now and part of that is the ins and outs and Fritsch is the player we got with the pick for Watts. It is interesting to see what Fritsch has brought into he team and what we lost with Watts. These stats give a good indication of that and they paint a very good picture

From this point last year to the close of memberships we increased by only another 3,000. At the moment we are tracking about 1,000 more members than last year. Although it sounds great to have reached the 40,000 nearly a month earlier than last year it looks like we'll end up around 43,200. No doubt wins in the next two weeks would push that a bit more but even so unfortunately looks like 45,000 won't be reached this year. Wonder what the Club has to do to get to 50,000. Obviously finals will help but I wonder what else.

This is really a conversation for a different topic about defences but I'm not sure that's quite right about not using a zone. You very rarely see their backmen one on one. There's nearly always a third up helping out and always other defenders around them to receive the clearing handball. They work as an incredible unit and don't really have any exceptional players they just have role players. Rampe at only 189cm follows in the footsteps of over a decade and a half of undersized Swans key backmen. It was RIchards before him who started as a slightly built half back flanker, before RIchards was Craig Bolton who was similar. Before Bolton was Leo Barry. It goes back to before Roosy started coaching them. They've always had a system for covering the key positions with numbers. The thing that really stands out about the Swans defence versus ours is that there are always a line of three defenders between the forwards and the goals no matter how far up the ground the forwards go, so on transition they are probably the fastest team to get back and cover the forwards. I noticed Hawks do the same thing. Our defence seems to get sucked too far up the ground as they all run forward of the forwards when they are attacking and we then get opened up on transition when the ball is kicked over their heads. This seems to operate in reverse for our forwards who this season are rarely ahead of their backmen as they run into the forward 50. I think you'll find this is a product of forwards generally taking front position and bad forward 50 entry kicks coming in over their heads into the arms of defenders.

Agree with you about teams getting the ball into their forward lines as quickly as possible. If the forward line is open this is great and we did it well at times last year. The issue is what to do when the forward line isn't open. I live in Sydney and go to all the Swans games. They are masters at punching holes through zones with patient short kicks and looking for leads in the forward line and looking for leads in the forward line . Watched it last weekend. Also watched Hawks doing it the last two weeks. Their game plan is still very much about controlling the ball and being patient. You don't see them continually randomly bombing it into the forward line like we have been doing. When Swans are forced to do this and even with Buddy it rarely works. They are much better at being patient and finding the holes. Lateral kicks is one suggestion there must be plenty of others other than bombing long unless we have air superiority and lots of small crumbers running to front and centre to pick up the crumbs but we haven't been doing that either.

This is exactly why I raised the option of moving the ball around laterally on the 50m fringe to open up the play and creating those options. You don't kick it laterally to contests you kick it to space and then punch holes in the zone. The good teams work their way through zones by chip kicking not kicking long to contests where it just comes back.

I have to say up front that I've always been a ruckman advocate while others including some significant ex players have strong views that they are a waste of time. I've always believed that you have to at least have a competitive ruckman even if they are a lot weaker than their opponent but no ruckman at all is a massive disadvantage. However, our run last year when Gawny was injured and we had no real ruckman and were being thrashed in hitouts but winning clearances made me sit back and think a lot harder about ruckmen's influence. I had time to kill today while waiting for the better half and pulled out the following stats on the last round's hitouts and clearances for the 6 games that had well known ruckmen. What they tell me and what I learnt from our ruckmenless run last year is that winning hitouts is not as significant as I thought. Of course clearances are the key to stoppages but as it turns out dominance in hitouts don't often lead to dominance in clearances. Have a look. Of course all stat's are only as good as their interpretation. You might have a great ruckman but a crap midfield or visa versa or the opposition might have one of those combinations, so the stat's alone don't provide the whole picture but they're still interesting. At the moment we're not so great on converting Max's hitout dominance into clearances. He had more than double the hitouts but we broke even on clearances. Interestingly Eagles had almost the same amount of hitouts as us and very similar amount of clearances and even more interestingly their ratio of doubling the opposition hitouts but only matching clearances was virtually the same. So it tells me our much vaunted midfield is not firing yet. Stef Martin's hitout dominance resulted in a higher percentage of clearances but surprisingly Port had 50% more clearances than hitouts. Funnily enough Hawks and Tigers and Freo and Suns had almost exactly the same clearances as hitouts. Suggesting every hitout resulted in a clearance. It wouldn't have probably been like that but interesting. Ruck Hitouts v Clearances Rd 3 2018 Melb v Nth 52-24 Hitouts 37-36 Clearances Lions v Port 55-22 Hitouts 41-33 Clearances Eagles v Cats 56-27 Hitouts 40-39 Clearances Hawks v Tigers 42-30 Hitouts 39-30 Clearances Freo v Suns 38 - 29 Hitouts 37-29 Clearances

At one stage Roosy had the Swans pinging the ball around the 50 metre circle laterally like in basketball until a clear option became available. Sometimes that involved doing set plays where forwards blocked defenders and created avenues for other forwards to lead into. Not sure why teams don't do this nowadays it worked very well for them back then. It's a great way of breaking up zones

It will never be better than a low pass to a lead. It’s always a bail out kick when nothing better is available. Like the bail out kick to the line out of defence. The 2011 GF is an interesting example of this. In the first quarter the Cats kept bombing it long because they had multiple tall targets. It wasn’t working and the ball just kept rebounding out. Podsiadly went down which forced them to stop bombing and start putting their heads down and doing low passes to leading forwards. Ironically Podsiadly going down was the turning point in the game for them. It’s s a prime example against bombing it in.

Exactly! Needs a good one of these from Goody.