Adam The God

What do you mean purely on weight of games? He's got a career average of 4.2 score involvements per game. Miers has a career average of 5.6, in a side that has played consistently well for his entire career. You can't say the same for Charlie.

In Charlie's first season (2018), he had 93 score involvements. He had 110 score involvements in 2021, 101 score involvements in 2022 and 54 in 2023 where he played 14 games, so he didn't spend most of the year at Casey. This season, he has 30 score involvements from 7 full games and 1 as a sub with 18% TOG (so effectively 7 games). He's effectively going at 4.2 score involvements per game. With 13 games remaining, if he plays all of them and averages this, he'll finish 2025 with 84 or 85 score involvements. He's right on his career average of 4.2. Does he need to improve his form? Everyone can. Has Spargo's kicking always been poor? No. You've then decided to shift the goal posts now and claim he's just 'always been a poor kick' post 2023.

OD, I hope you're okay. I wrote 2 seasons of 100+ and one of 93. That's close enough to 3 seasons of 100 score involvements, which is a season behind Myers.

That player rating system @binman is broken. As if this wasn't an AA-rated game. He saved scores against, he creates score for. A huge game.

You don't have 2 seasons of 100+ score involvements and another season of 93 score involvements if you can't kick the footy. He's an elite distributor. For comparison, Geelong's Myers, someone regularly lauded as one of the best forward half users in the game, has had 4 seasons of 100+ score involvements. So basically one better season than Spargo. Spargo was injured practically all last season. I'd have Spargo in my team every week.

I recall our accuracy in 2018 was always pretty bloody good, because we took the majority of shots from inside 30. Quite like Collingwood in 2023. @WheeloRatings , do you have these sort of stats mate?

He was consistently a good player through that period. And statistically, has been an elite score involvement player earlier than 2021. Ironically, he did struggle in 2021.

Completely agree with all of this mate.

Not at all. He was huge in 2017-2018. Particularly '18. In the Hawthorn semi final in '18, he kicked that famous goal on his left late in the 4th to ice the game. There is a thread detailing our 100+ point win of Carlton in 2018, where he kicked a bag. He was also a major player in that West Coast win in 2018 that secured our first finals birth in over a decade...

He'd be a major upgrade on Sharp for instance... I'm also not convinced we're after him. But I could see why we would be.

The point of difference for our midfield is speed. And his ball use yips are vastly overstated. He goes at Will Day's 69% DE and the much vaunted D'Ambrosio goes at 70%.

Pretty obvious we need greater midfield depth and Worpel offers a bit of a point of difference to the rest of our midfield.

It's outstanding analysis, isn't it? Not sure about the coaching call though.

I know it's a few weeks out, but it will be interesting to see how we play Collingwood. I thought there was too much down the line against Brisbane, and not enough handball chaining, but we've shown remarkable tactical flexibility in recent weeks. Depending on the opposition we've shifted between lots of uncontested marks and lots of switching to widen the ground against some teams, but against others, we've been more than happy to go long down the line. I suspect that we were happier going down the line this week due to both Max's form and Brisbane's lack of leg speed, although they are much quicker than they were a few years ago. Against Collingwood, they're quick, and I think a long down the line strategy could ping back very quickly on rebound if that's the way we go. On KB 2023, we let Collingwood move the ball into our press and then tried to strangle them and get them on turnover. It worked a treat. It'll be interesting to see in 2025, if we simply go with frontal pressure and try not to allow any short kicks from half back, or whether we're happy to let them get to the central part of the ground and then press for a turnover, providing ourselves room to slingshot behind. Goody's tactics are definitely evolving and if Solomon was right on SEN (I wasn't in Brisbane to see the game live), pushing two extra forwards up to the ball draws their opponents up, congests the stoppage and puts the onus on our bulls to win stoppage. When they do, our forwards have more space to work into as there are only 4 forwards left inside 50. It's a hard move to counter, and if our mids win more of the stoppage, we can either chain it out or go forward quickly to more space and less contests. But Sydney is a different proposition. We have to match them in the stoppages and get that frontal pressure happening. Fascinating to watch how our tactics evolve over the coming weeks.

This has long been the question mark on Brisbane though. They're arrogant and downhill skiiers. And had they not come up against a mentality weak, choking Sydney, they'd still be flagless after playing so many finals series in recent memories, including in their home state during 2020 COVID. Brisbane have not only been blessed with Academy accesses, they've been blessed with father sons that can win Norm Smith's straight up. Their older group though is soft bellied. Think Zorko, Andrews and McCluggage.

Also, the bigger story there is St Kilda. What a mare. As for us, we've got to keep plugging away, getting better at the transition game, and ball retention. There are likely to be some blips along the way, but if we stay fit, we can definitely get on a run. Our pressure game is a non negotiable every week, otherwise what will be will be with our goalkicking. If the latter clicks, we are going to get our percentage back to a healthy spot.

As you probably know, I've been asking for Viney to play a forward role for 5 years, but they never do it. There's always a chance they start it this week.

I'd have Oliver play Heeney in stoppages and Viney accountable for Warner in stoppage. I wouldn't imagine either would be out and out tags. It'll be interesting to see.

This one's a difficult one too because those half backs get a lot of those short uncontested kicks that pad our their stats. But no doubt having guys that don't repeatedly hand the ball back to the opposition is absolutely gold. I thought we'd been trending upwards in this phase, but IMO we let ourselves down in the first half against Brisbane.

As I said, our forwards alone had 21 shots on goal for a return of 10.11. It's not how we're structuring up that's the problem, it's our finishing. Which I've said multiple times now.

Lots of work from the 22 is required. Too many mids and wingers miss goals, just a forwards do. But Kozzy is a good example. He usually turns 6 scoring shots into 3.3 or 4.2. I just said that.

I actually thought we went at about 40 or 50% of our potential yesterday. Our transition really struggled, we missed too many gettable shots on goal and our ball use from the back, particularly in the first half was very ordinary. The forwardline was looking good to me. It was the finishing that was lacking. Really good movement from our forwards made us very dangerous. Petty 0.2, Kozzy 2.4, Spargo on the full, LIndsay, Trac and Sharp all 0.1. That's a lot of missed opportunities.

It's not so much the forwardline, but goalkicking and our disposal at half back. In the first half we gave them all their scores from unforced errors and turnovers by foot. Take those out and the game wouldn't have been close at all.

Can you please post this in the Time to go Goody thread?

Their ball movement is superb when you don't get up in their faces. Same with Collingwood and Hawthorn. Pressure is the kryptonite to quelling that ball movement. And in the first half, we gave them the majority of their score from turnovers. Eradicate those turnovers, keep winning clearance, bring the pressure and the Premier on their home patch wouldn't be able to score. Same goes for those other teams.