Adam The God

I don't mind the set up mate, but Richo's history with list management is pretty poor IMO. Ratten did more in one off season to fix their problems than Richo did in many years IMV. But I like him as the GM, I just wonder about that bit.

AFL isn't a big enough business for Fenway. Would love them to own both my football teams though.

I think it's pretty clear he changed the game plan from an 18 man aggressive press to a different style, but whatever. I think the players have brought a horrible inconsistency to this year, but I have to admit, the system is completely out of whack, when you can have 6 or 7 players regularly not registering a tackle and that's even if we're winning. It's not throw the baby out with the bath water time IMO, but we need to sort out some areas. FORWARDLINE We need to really look at our forwardline over the off season. We need to get genuine goal kickers in there. It's not going to do, to simply have pace, or have pressure. We actually need goal kickers to keep the scoreboard ticking. Weideman is a tick for this year, but has faded in the last two games when there hasn't been an adequate foil for him. So Jackson or Petty needs to play. MIDFIELD We need to examine the dynamics in midfield. I've said it before, I wouldn't be against letting Viney walk as a FA, but we won't. So get him forward or get him playing differently in midfield. We need to get Harmes in there too, it's ridiculous. And I think Angus needs to be in there as well. I don't know what to do with Max. He's clearly carrying something, but he's been terrible since he's been back. I'd even consider trading him (I'll wait for the backlash on that one). Need to work hard on those stoppage set ups and the way we move the ball from midfield to attack. BACKLINE The backline needs to shed Oscar McDonald and Joel Smith, but otherwise I think we've got a really solid group to work with back there. It's the one area of the ground I'm comfortable with. May, Lever, Salem, Rivers, Hibberd, Lockhart, Petty and Tomlinson. I'd have all those guys in my team.

Looking at the way we've gone about our last two games, it actually looks like Goodwin has lost the players.

It's bizarre, isn't it? I can only assume the club thought it had done enough to play finals and rested on its laurels a bit. The "kicking wide and to small players" tells me there was no system. It's a ridiculous plan to kick to smalls. We even kicked to Viney on a lead a number of times early. The guy is a garden gnome in the stature stakes. Even that Rivers kick out into the middle of the ground. It didn't seem planned. It seemed desperate. We didn't get numbers around the contest and Fremantle, like most of the night, mopped up the ground ball off the contest. I too figured the St Kilda win would be a defining moment for us. It appears I was very wrong. As for you @Half forward flank, you've no idea if you think there was system to that game tonight.

I'm not interested in turning this very thoughtful thread into a Goodwin bashing zone, but I couldn't see any system tonight. I was worried when the wind was up and about today, and then it started pouring early. The lack of work rate for most of the match made it difficult to judge, but I legitimately could not work out what we were trying to do. Ben Gibson talked about using the far side of the ground to transition the ball and ensuring we were careful with our ball movement down the opposite side of the ground. I saw nothing of that. Outside of that Collingwood win in the rain earlier in the year, I cannot actually remember the last game we won in the wet. Our game style breaks down terribly when we play in the wet, because it relies on handball from clearance or the back half. We need to be able to identify the conditions or the likely conditions the game will be played in and have solutions and a clear plan for the game. I'm not saying for a second that we sat around in Cairns for 3 days doing nothing, but Fremantle owned the far side and the corridor, were cleaner in possession, had better ball use and kicked to the right spots inside 50. Our midfield mix is not getting the job done either and our forwardline has really struggled when Weideman has struggled. It seems like the players are more haphazard with their delivery to him, the less contests he gets to or halves. It's going to be a long off season.

Yep, hard to defend anyone tonight. Pathetic effort from the players, to the coaches, to the selections. But there was no system tonight. And why throw the magnets around after being so consistent on team defence all year? The players looked tired. The guys they brought in gave us very little. Cerra and Brayshaw gave our mids a lesson. Embarrassing. They were cleaner, they used the ball better, they used the right side of the ground more often and it all seemed too hard for us. Max seems to be playing injured, but sides appear to have worked him out. He's a good intercept player in defence playing by himself, but very ordinary in the ruck. It's a funny old season. We looked certain to make finals a week or so ago. Now we'll almost certainly miss and if we do, Goodwin should probably go.

Gee, the bar is low then. Flirted with pressure all night and got a goal at the expense of Langdon's incredible work.

You can't play AFL football when you're as weak at the contest as Fritsch is.

Cerra and Brayshaw have given our mids an absolute bath.

How was that play? Petracca the only mod pressuring and the rest of them jogging.

What a disappointing first season Kozzie has had. Yeah, he brings some pressure, but very little goal sense.

Pathetic Max. And how was Fritsch there?

Why do we keep using the same side of the ground?

We clearly didn't listen to Benny on Before the Bounce. The two major take aways were make sure when we're kicking to the flank (from the left hand side of screen) to avoid kicking it out on the full like we did last game. What happens? May's very first kick out goes out on the full. The second major take away and is the far side of the ground. What do we do? We let Fremantle own that side of the ground and we also let them use the corridor whenever they liked. There's no work rate or structure today. No plan for ball movement that I can see. We have players handballing when they should be kicking, we have players trying to pick it up when they should be kicking it off the ground. Another horrible display. I really thought we'd make finals. Turns out... no.

I'd take a look mate. Good suggestion. He did play forward-mid early on. He's got a bit of that zip and creativity that we lack around the ball and inside 50 (outside of Pickett).

Disagree mate. Although one-dimensional, St Kilda are a good side and we were half a kick from beating Geelong and Brisbane, two top 4 sides. No, I don't. I think our mental fragility is based around a lack of experience. The players haven't got it to click regularly, not because the game plan is too hard to sustain (as I had previously thought), but because they haven't worked out yet how to bring consistent performance and what that feels like. The automation of that and the mental preparation that it takes to bring consistent elite performance in system based sport hasn't been discovered yet.

Completely agree. We always do know whether we're on or not in the first few minutes.

We're playing completely different zones to 2018. If we didn't lay tackles with our aggressive 18 man press we were [censored]. We no longer play an 18 man press. Tackling around the contest to ensure we break up the opposition's clearance work is far more important in the style we play IMV. On that stat, Oliver is equal 5th in the league. But once again, I don't subscribe to the tackle metric being necessarily the best way to view our work rate. I'd almost prefer the opposition's score as the best indicator of work rate over tackle count anyway. If we're restricting opposition scores without a high tackle count that tells you that there is something else going on that is preventing that scoring (ie work rate to implement the zone).

Haha, I was joking. I think they're the most dangerous top 5 side, particularly as the Grand Final won't be played at Optus Stadium (ie West Coast).

Such strong culture. I'm just not sure they'll win the flag anymore. Culture is so important.

Yeah, you're missing my point. You keep linking tackle stats with work rate and I'm saying our zone does the work of making the opposition give the ball up (on the most part). We don't have to tackle to regain possession. The stats in our most dominant wins bear this fact out. The stat that might be more relevant, which I don't have access to is failed tackles.

I don't think tackles or 1%ers are necessarily relevant, because they're not constant attributes of our wins, when we clearly bring work rate.

To be fair, Goodwin gave a massive spray at half time against Sydney and we were better in the second half. Langdon kicks that goal from 15m out directly in front and it's less than two goals with plenty of time left.

I think that's more a reflection on you and your posts, which to your credit have remained consistent, but you have no idea about the internal culture. You're basing culture in this post on tackle count, which tells me you're still stuck in 2005 with your analysis of the game. If we use evidence here rather than a nebulous guess on your behalf of our "culture", you'd see that even when we work extremely hard, our zone and corralling does the work of defence and our tackle counts are still much less than the opposition. So if we'd brought the required work rate every game this season, we'd still likely be near the bottom for a metric like tackling. Some of our players are in the top echelon for 1%ers though. Once again, I am not saying our team isn't mentally fragile, I'm just refusing to put it down to something like culture. That's far too easy.