Adam The God

Agree with this, but I don't want to see our best ball movement in Round 23 against Hawthorn at the MCG. I want to see it in September. I also think losing Petty has robbed us of going quickly to a long contest. We're more likely to try and work by hand and short quick kicks, but we pieced together 4 or 5 good chains today. We still haven't quite found the balance of attack v defence. Let's see how we go now that we're guaranteed a double chance. Ps. I think if a side goes to work on Rivers, we might struggle to move the ball from back to front quickly. He's become our Daicos over the last few weeks. He chips and handball receives and kicks with such penetration, we get great territory. As evidenced by his 496 metres gained. (our most today)

He's doing well, but he's playing as a +1 behind the ball. It's very unlikely teams will let him get away with that in the finals series. This is why we want more offence out of Salo and Bowser, so it's not just Riv. He's so explosive though, he's very exciting off half back and his kicking has such great depth, so if he gets handball receives through the corridor and anywhere within 75m, he's able to hit up dangerous areas by foot from distance. Unlike the Daicos boys, he's a really solid contested player too, so he has some strings to his bow does our bloke.

I thought Tomlinson was a liability on many occasions. Took a couple of good marks, but was constantly trailing his opponent because he's not an elite reader of the game, and he's certainly not quick. I think today gives our MC a tough conundrum. Do you play Smith back now and play Melksham forward, alongside Fritta? If it were me, this is potentially the way I'd be leaning. And this is from someone who believes Smith is a worry in defence. But at least he's got pace to get across and impact. Tomlinson was a constant concern out the back. Schache was considered insurance for Max, I'm sure. It would have allowed JVR to go into the ruck and for Schache to take JVRs place and potentially give him a chop out in the ruck too.

Lever, Rivers, Smith, Melksham, JVR, Viney early, Sparrow, Gus and McVee were our best. It was good to win comfortably in the end, without our midfield playing particularly well. Really interesting and evident at the ground early was our forward structure. On slow plays, we held a 25m high line and kicked it on top of Hawthorn defenders heads, which gave Melksham, JVR and Smith a spot to hit up, and either take the mark or bring the ball to ground. It was very effective as it nullified Siciliy, who I thought was a non entity today, after all the mid week build up to how well he'd been playing. He was so ineffective, that he was moved into the middle. Melksham didn't always go to him and interestingly Laurie started on him at the first centre bounce of the match, but I felt he had his colours lowered today. Good coaching and good play by Melksham and our other forwards. On faster plays we held a deep forward, usually JVR, and had the rest of the forwards push high up at CHF. I noticed another set play off a free kick to us at CHB. It was like a good old fashioned cluster in the middle of the ground. Tomlinson had the kick and simply kicked long and wide to the wing and hit up one of our guys. Be interesting to see if we try something like this again in finals. Perfect day to test stuff like this, I thought, and a fair bit of experimentation went on today. I'm hoping that win and locking in top 4 releases the shackles a bit and we can play with more dare and attack next week. Playing in a hostile territory in Round 24 could he a very good dress rehearsal if we end up finishing higher than 4th. And that's 3 top 4 finishes, in 3 years. I wonder when Goody will start to get a bit of credit? I hope when he's holding up his second premiership cup in a few weeks time.

You can't really have an opinion on whether someone's possessions lead to goals or not. They either do or they don't. You said you thought every possession lead to a turnover or goal against. Nonsense. Bowser was run down from behind as a result of a Rivers handball, both players lacked awareness there. And the other goal Bowser gave up was a coughed up handball from a midfield press via a centre stoppage win out the front of the stoppage, with little midfield pressure (read no midfield pressure) applied to Hawthorn's players. I'd like our defenders to be tighter and not give up any goals, but mistakes are going to happen, particularly when Rivers, Bowey and Salem are being given plenty of licence to try and create play from back there. The issue we're going to have with our back 7 is Tomlinson is too slow to play in the zone. Smith may have to go back and Melksham stays in alongside Fritta...

He had some shakey moments, as did Salem and Rivers, and many others. But all three played good enough games. Your first point is nonsense btw.

And they beat Brisbane too...

We'll see, but Gawndy worked well on KB.

So you think we'd go with just Max against Cox and Cameron...?

"Mac Andrew takes his fourth intercept mark for the match - two more than any other player on the ground. He has now taken four intercept marks in four of his last five games." - AFL ap. He would be nice cover for Petty up one end in a few years time.

Not sure which JJ you're talking about. He certainly doesn't have pace.

If this was the case, that'd mean we're gonna play Grundy in finals, but not in R23 or R24. Surely not?

Which IMV, would still be folly given we've got a fresher Max than we would have without Gawndy and given Max's injury earlier in the year, we may well have struggled far more without Grundy.

What's bizarre is why did we never try (not once), Gawn behind the ball with Grundy rucking? It's really one of the great mysteries to 2023 and it's annoying me. :P

A bit of Bowey 21 about it. Hope he does well. Caulfield Grammarian.

I agree. This is the way forward IMO.

This data is skewed by when we played smaller players. We played the three smalls against Collingwood on KB. I don't think we get exposed for height very often. Particularly, when you've got Max at almost every kick down the line. The post 2022 game style requires more smalls. I guess I'm saying I disagree.

Yep, that's what I'd go with.

I didn't say it was. In fact, I said playing different personnel would allow us to play I'm fine with playing a different game depending on who we play. The personnel shuffle (ie Grundy and Laurie) is not what's ideal IMO. Agree with all this. 👍 Agreed. And with a multi million dollar contract. Agreed. Think Richmond circa 2017. JVR, Smith and Fritta surrounded by Kozzy, Trac and Chandler.

I do. How do you gif?

That's not what Goody said at all, he was cagey about Grundy. And since @Dannyz has said Grundy is out and Smith is forward, take that to the bank.

I think a lot of people are going on what we expect to happen, not necessarily what we would do. And what it may also come down to is Max or Grundy, and we know which way we'll bend on that point.

Just getting around to the podders now, my essential weekly listening. Now, Binners, I'm gonna disagree with you on where we lost the game being in the forward 50 tackles stakes, unless you think we lost it tactically. The first half saw us playing Kozzy higher up the ground and allowed them to come at us up the ground from kick outs. It meant we were quite happy to have the ball leave our attacking 50 by design, as this would leave more space in behind for us to attack back the other way. It would also mean that forward 50 tackles would be reduced by this. At the time, I actually thought it was the right tactical play. I'm playing a similar style with a junior team I coach at the moment and it's strangling teams and leading to heavy scoring for us, because it becomes almost always about fast break away, uncontested play off the sling shot once we cause turnovers or intercept. As soon as you win possession via intercept or winning a 1v1, you go quickly. This was clearly our plan. You allude to this, but I think it was lost because they won intercept and they were better/more effective at it. Part of this was a function of their extremely aggressive forward half press that enabled them to get repeated re-entries from higher intercepts than we were. When we managed to intercept deep in defence or even off half back and in the corridor, we mucked up at least 2 or 3 opportunities on the fast break that should have been scores at the very least, if not goals on the counter. When Oliver went down earlier in the season, we started to shift away from demanding a forward half game and seemed to be more open to the idea of playing on the counter from D50, the one major advantage of this is obviously a less crowded forward half to enter. This was also the blueprint to beat Collingwood, although arguably we wanted to create turnovers slightly higher up the field than D50. We've also seen in 2023, probably more than any other season, Goody experiment with winning in different ways. Winning in shoot outs, winning in overly defensive contested matches, winning via back half intercepts, winning via forward half intercepts (relaxing or constricting the press), allowing games to open up and then deliberately playing overly contested, forward half games etc etc. And I just wonder if we treated this game (the first half at least) as a bit of an experiment again. To see if we could beat our own system with a more Collingwoodesque slingshot game. We don't take the same risks as them by foot though, which meant it was always going to be a dour affair if Carlton brought the heat. Which they did. I'd argue therefore that it was a tactical mistake (the experiment notwithstanding) to slacken the forward press and look to sit back and hit them on the counter. By half time, it was clear that Goody and co agreed with this view, because we made an adjustment in our forward half by playing Kozzy deeper, rather than higher as per the first half, and we started to lay inside 50 tackles and try to lock the ball in our forward half. At the very least, we forced them to kick to contests outside our A50. I have no idea what Chandler's role was on the night, but given he was pretty much a non entity, I think this robbed us of forward half pressure too, it can't always land on Kozzy's shoulders. And I just wonder if Chandler was playing the higher half forward role that Spargo should be playing, and as a result was too high up the ground to be applying the necessary pressure inside A50...? I said soon after the game finished that I felt our forward mix was off. It wasn't just Grundy, because he actually did a neat thing or two in the forward half (despite lacking the forward craft), and I agree with you that he was better in the ruck than Max, but the other thing that threw our balance off was, I think, the extra mid instead of the extra speed forward in Spargo. If you play Spargo alongside ANB to defend closer to D50 and through the middle of the ground, all of a sudden you can play Kozzy, Chandler and Trac deep forward, add Smith into that mix and you've got forward pressure through the roof. It means you can slacken your zone too and not lose that important ability to lock the ball in forward half and play territory. Now that Clarry has a game under his belt, I hope we revert to this forward set up this week and drop the extra mid (JJ).

So you're thinking Grundy for Tomlinson and Smith forward...? RE the May, Lever and Tomlinson record, I had to go back and double check this as I thought they'd dropped a game together last year or even this year, but spot on. That's a crazy record. It might partly be a result of the MC picking Tomlinson for very specific roles where he doesn't get exposed and allows the other two to intercept/win their roles, this could equally be wholly unfair to Tomlinson. But it is interesting we're clearly concerned about something there. He definitely held up, as did the May/Lever/Tomlinson partnership on King's Birthday. In fact, the entire team from the KB game will be available as of next week via Fritta (Petty didn't play), and I had thought for the majority of the season that minus Smith up forward, we'd basically go with that set up for the finals. However, with Petty's injury, it's opened up Smith as his replacement. I think there's definitely room for Grundy, but I reckon the MC have put a line through him now. That means, I think the forwardline we'll go with for finals (assuming TMac and BB are done - this seems likely) is JVR, Fritta, Smith, ANB, Kozzy, Chandler and Spargo. While the defensive set up could well be the same as KB (with Bowey missing out) - May, Lever, Tomlinson, Salem, McVee, Rivers and Hibbo (except Hibbo was tactical sub that day). This means Clarry would replace JJ from that KB team, leaving Max, Clarry, Trac, Viney, Brayshaw, Sparrow, plus Langdon and Hunter. The tactical sub choice could then come from either Grundy (as strange as that sounds), JJ, Harmes or Bowey. I know @old55 wouldn't have Spargo, so if you left Charlie out, you could play an extra mid or fit Bowey at the back. Equally, if you left Hibbo out, you could fit Bowey at the back. Here is the team as above. To me, it's a little short in the front half, but as we saw with the ball movement on KB, this isn't such a problem if we move it quickly and turn the ball over/intercept in the middle of the ground. McVee May Hibbo Lever Tomlinson Salem Langdon Oliver Hunter Petracca Smith ANB Fritta JVR Kozzy Gawn Viney Brayshaw Rivers Sparrow Spargo Chandler There's also a chance they could pretty much play this team against Hawthorn minus Fritta for the extra mid in JJ.

Injury List: Deebauched - TBC, brain injury resulting in cooked cancer takes