Adam The God

@ChaserJ, @Pennant St Dee... apologies if I've forgotten anyone else.

These two things seem at odds to me:

I'm sorry, but what a dumb player. I didn't notice this at the time, but bloody hell, it's pretty clear, isn't it?

I reckon it's a pretty big indictment on Ross Lyon as a coach. Two of the best wingers in the game and Neale has been a star for a while now.

I'd be trading for zippy small pressure forwards before I'd be trading for another wingman. But that's just me.

If we were to play a team that was willing to counter us with the same system, it'd be about who could use the ball better on forward entry, and whether our CP game could give us an advantage. Obviously, this is on the basis that both teams bring the required work rate to implement their defensive systems.

Yeah, I don't see Oscar ever pressing high enough to get a chance to score. You might occasionally see our half backs like Hibberd get a chance to score, but the defenders don't press that high anymore. It's mostly the mids and forwards.

If they do go for the dire contested game you discuss, I'd be inclined to match it with our strangle system and sit the zone way back, pick them off and then use the ball way better going inside 50 this week than last. It's basically a counter attacking game from the middle of the ground. Yep, good call mate. Now that you mention it, I've noted other teams doing it too. The automated reload. Yeah, interesting point. It's difficult to work out how to beat us if we're switched on though. If it's to switch the ball repeatedly ala Bulldogs, IMV this doesn't work if we cover the the ground properly. If it's to go the corridor, you want to be sure that your players can execute repeatedly or it could be very dangerous on the counter.

The Sydney match up is a fascinating one from a tactical point of view. Do we go with our aggressive three wall game or do we go for the Geelong/West Coast control defensive/smother game? Sydney have struggled to get the ball on the outside this year and they like to keep it contested. We need to ensure we utilise the likes of Langdon and our other mids to get it on the outside on the spread. I'd be inclined to go with the aggressive three wall game in the first quarter, go hard after CPs and see if we can break them early and get a lead on them. If it's absolutely not working then I'd revert to the control defensive/smother game after quarter time. Even if we get a bit of a lead early on, we could use the defensive/smother game to converse energy and make them force the game, from here we just have to use the ball well from back to front. Both styles have more methodical and considered ball movement than simply blasting it long inside 50, particularly if Sydney are able to delay our forward entries and slow the game through centre wing and half forward. We'll need to use the ball better going inside this time and this should be a major focus this week, to improve on our ball use, especially that kick that goes to half forward. We butchered it against St Kilda. Is this how others see it?

Not having a go mate, but I have Oliver 1st in the comp for pressure acts (bloody brilliant effort), Petracca 15th and Viney 21st. https://www.afl.com.au/stats/stats-pro#/?state=NobwRA1glgdgJmAXGAomANGADgQwC4AWSwYAzgKYA25AxnuXAMp74AyOARlWALqaUFSSMACV8sAOYACAAoB7WHiGYAToOEyV5UqQCuWqQEE6QgL7pw0eMLSZchYmSq16TFngDS5AJ69%2B65BVxGAl5RWUwNSFkLC0dfXJjJTBTHiA

The only reason we wouldn't play Kozzie against the Swans is if we're resting him. We won't be dropping him.

Yeah, Frost would be a shocking addition to our defensive system now. He doesn't understand how to maintain team structures, as evidenced by his headless chook routine in 2019, even when we'd stopped playing the aggressive press, he was still bolting out of defence like he was running the 100m sprint.

I disagree with this. I think it's opposition dependent and also dependent on how the midfield is functioning at any one given time. I'd also say Oliver is our best mid, but that's a difficult debate.

Hard to tell. He seemed really low on confidence in the first half. Steele was a good, consistent performer for them throughout the game and even though he didn't get high numbers, Sinclair burst from a few stoppages far too easily. The last goal of the second quarter came from very poor defending from Petracca that let Sinclair go. After that, whenever Trac went into the middle, he was all over Sinclair. Hill's another match up that was interesting, because he was brilliant in the last quarter in particular and was being shadowed by Langdon at times, and then other times, I've no idea who was playing on him. I think we kind of backed Langdon to do more damage, but he tried to tighten up on Hill in the last 10 minutes or so, still Hill was dominant. I think Oliver, Gus, Petracca and occasionally Viney still don't know what it takes to gut run a full four quarters. I don't think any of their work rate let us down last night, but I could be wrong. That first quarter point to Membrey (was it?) that came from when they cut us up off half back was poorly defended by the whole team, but I reckon the mids pushed up too high and then didn't push back hard enough. Outside of that, we seemed to be all over them and their goals came from silly little turn overs from us. I noticed one of the St Kilda supporters on Bigfooty said they essentially failed to create any scores themselves and that their goals came from our errors. Tidy up those errors, which will hopefully happen the longer we play this new system, and we'll give up very few chances for the opposition to score. When Viney gave away that soft free kick to Phillips in the second, we totally had that play covered and it was pretty much the first time we let them through the zone at centre wing/half forward. Lots of room for improvement and our mids absolutely have to lead the way here. Gut-running in midfield needs to be a prerequisite for playing at Melbourne.

Are they looking at releasing him, mate?

I like him playing deep. He's so strong in the core and has great balance, that he scares opponents deep (like Martin does), because they know he's going to stand his ground and stay on his feet. It causes panic. He's a genuine super star in the making. I think we should use him precisely how Richmond use Martin, which is that he plays wherever we need him. This is where our midfield depth moving forward is going to be devastating for opposition's if we can keep the group together. Last night, we could afford to have Petracca play forward more, because we had Brayshaw, Viney and Oliver playing midfield. With Viney as stopper, I think it worked well. We have Harmes waiting in the wings too.

That to me looks like about 12 metres.

I agree that it would bite the old Melbourne that was almost completely reliant on stoppage dominance and contested possession. Our game is actually not that reliant on tackling though. It's about cutting off angles, corralling, denying the opposition dangerous areas by guarding space or manning the mark on the corridor side, forcing teams down the line to our set ups, or across the ground, where the zone moves across (with work rate like last night) and denies teams the easy exit. We've a stronger focus on around the ground stoppages than centre bounce stoppages when we're playing teams that can hurt us on the outside with pace. I think we've shown great flexibility with game style from Round 2 onwards. We haven't always executed, but to me we have two very clear styles that we can flick between now, depending on the opposition. This might be more appropriate in @binman's tactics thread but... 1) is the game that works against chaos and speed - the zone sits back, the front half corralls and forces the down the line kick or the switch, the zone moves with the switch and on it goes. and 2) is the three wall forward half game that is more aggressive, but not an 18 man headless chook press (like 2018) and is about a front half territory game. I reckon we're more likely to play "2" versus the lower sides and the sides where we can get on top with CPs and centre stoppages, and we're more likely to revert to the more defensive "1" system for teams on our level that play with speed and control. I'd love to play Geelong or Richmond again. If we bring the work rate, tackling's important, particularly in midfield, but two-way running to ensure we cover the ground properly is more important, and I think we'd give both of those teams a real crack. I'm in agreement with the sentiment that we need to get more out of our forwards, but I'm not sure how to balance that. I'd certainly play Harmes forward. I think he may well come in for Jones or Vandenberg. We also need to find a bit more centre stoppage connection between Max (who is clearly still not 100% fit in my mind) and the mids. We played more defensive in our stoppage set ups last night, which I really liked, very basketball-like. That said, we lost almost all the centre clearances, so it wasn't working to fully neutralise the opposition. We were far better with around the ground stoppages though, where we could clog up the space and ensure the opposition mids couldn't get it on the outside. This is development! And I'm glad we're finally making progress on it. There's no doubt we still need to work on "1" though, because the ball use from back to front last night was horrendous at times. Get this right and we'll defensively strangle teams and then smash them on the scoreboard. A work in progress.

Someone else mentioned this, but Stevie May getting around Clarry straight away after Clarry had coughed up that goal from the defensive stoppage in the 3rd quarter. LOVE that leadership, Stevie.

Righto.

I think one of the most important adjustments to our game has been the ability to maintain our forward structure, ie not push everyone up into midfield so that when we win it, we have no one forward of the ball to kick it to.

I'd have Vandenberg in my team ahead of Fritsch most weeks. One is combative, one is just happy kicking his one goal a game and being an AFL footballer. That said, Fritsch will definitely come back in. I worry about balance in our forwardline and accept that we haven't found the right mix or required consistency yet.

It was one. The second one being attributed to Jones was absolutely Clarry's fault. A soft effort going back with one hand. He goes back with two hands and he marks it. Jones made the right call there. Partly having a go at those saying Fritsch being dropped would hurt the team, but I don't believe we can play Melksham and Fritsch in the same team anymore. Neither bring enough pressure. They made the call with TMac. They need to make the call on these two. I'd be keeping Melksham personally because he's a much smarter decision maker than Fritsch.

I watched the final two minutes again on the AFL website and I don't know what people are talking about on this. Didn't look 15m at all.

His chances are very low, but a few of the commentators were wraps on him. Think he's going to be a beauty for us. Taylor just nails those picks in the 20s and early 30s. And he's got another of those this year. ?