Adam The God

Could be. Interesting idea. It's not like Fritsch brings great ground level intensity. In fact, I'd argue that when Weideman is really switched on, he's actually a pretty ferocious tackler. It may well be Weideman for Fritsch if he has another down game. Fritsch could then get back in the side if a Melksham struggles in the high half forward role. That said, Melksham had limited midfield minutes, but did bring some reasonable ground level pressure that Fritsch couldn't, so Fritsch really needs to ensure his offence is so strong that it papers over his defensive and contested deficiencies. I'm enjoying your sass in this thread, Nash.

It wasn't. I counted it on the replay. I counted 11 steps. Was he though? Watching live, Rampe certainly didn't go to him or double team him and watching the replay, I didn't notice it either.

McLean is a good young player and has 7kgs on Petty.

What's this nonsense about Petty being shaky? Sure, he was a little shaky against Hawthorn, but he was solid the other night. May and Lever have also had their share of shaky moments this season too. It happens when you're playing in defence and the pressure comes or players infer pressure. I think Harry was out-marked twice up the ground and didn't quite hit the kick to McDonald that cost us an early goal - that play was a little unlucky, but sloppy. He did however take an important intercept mark when the Swans were coming and was never exposed deep. He also played our deepest anchor role at times (see First Crack and On The Couch). Petty will get better from here with more continuity and become an important cog in our team defence. The more he settles in now, the better he'll be, and the better our team defence will be, come the pointy end of the season.

Harmes has the flexibility to play the same role Viney was playing, which is high half forward and midfield rotation. I think we need Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Harmes and Jordon all in. Sparrow replaces Jordon when his form dips or he tires.

Fritsch was horrendous, but we can handle one down week. He'll be back next week.

Imagine us around the contest sans Viney and Petracca. They won't rest Petracca with a corky. We're not playing under 12s here. Players have to play through corkies.

How was Petty poor? Have you watched the replay? It can be good to watch the game when the emotion is taken out of it...

I'll play here. How would you play on the wing instead? I'd take Brayshaw over Baker every day of the week. Tom McDonald is playing too well forward to play him on a wing or could this be the week that we try McDonald on the wing and bring in Weideman?

Harmes is on the fringes after 31 disposals (21 of them contested), 7 tackles and 5 score involvements? His DE was a bit low at 61% and he started the game fumbly, but I think he'll be much better for the run. As I mentioned in another thread, I'd have him tagging Walsh this week.

I remember the North team well. They were full of experienced players who got the job done on some pretty weak teams in those first 9 rounds. You were just waiting for them to get found out. They had nothing of the defensive system that we have. Provided we continue bringing the work rate, our system will win finals. It's nothing like North's.

And I think the players taking on some more responsibility to get the job done is a big factor to the buy in. The players and Goodwin often talk about this being built off the back of the back half of 2020. No doubt Choco and Yze are having a massive influence though. Great quote mate. This is why I don't think we're peaking too early. Sort out our inconsistent midfield connection and get the most dynamic and complimentary forward set up, and look out.

Yep, completely concur and it was clear having tried to dissect every centre bounce against Sydney that when we have Oliver, Petracca and Jordon at the bounce, we are aiming for the most potent, effective clearance. It would be the same when Viney is in there. But there is some flexibility to this philosophy and it's partly situational (what's happening on the scoreboard and how deep into the game or quarter the play is) and partly personnel. For example, when ANB goes into a centre stoppage, he's happy to bang it on the boot if he gets a look at a clearance, but if it were Oliver or Petracca, they might look for a player in a more dangerous outside position to get most bang for buck from the clearance. I think our players have been taught to play within their limits. See ANB and think of the 'our game plan is simpler this year' type quotes we've heard from the players. I also think they've been told to take the game on whether it's taking on the tackler, which we still do a lot, or looking for that extra handball to get it to the outside of the contest. It's important to note this greater blend of contested and uncontested footy is relatively new to us. We only started getting it to click a bit with the arrival of Langdon last year, and have taken it to a new level by utilising Hunt's pace and receive role this year. We'll get better with time/experience at knowing when to go for the uncontested play and when to get it forward and take territory. I agree with what @It's Timeis saying (across this thread and the centre stoppage thread) in that we need to maximise our centre clearance work in order to take our game to the next level, but perhaps I disagree that it's necessary to do so in order to beat the likes of Port, Bulldogs or Brisbane. Despite their last quarter comeback, the Bulldogs are defensively vulnerable and the whole competition now knows it. If we play our way and bring the pressure game you talk about @binman, I think we strangle the Bulldogs. If we're on, I think our current defensive system will take care of anyone, irrespective of centre clearances. However, the value of around the ground clearances cannot be underestimated though. This is a fundamental mechanism of our team defence. Being able to take territory our way and taking pressure off our defence reverts the pressure back onto the opposition and allows us to set up behind the ball to intercept.

LJ certainly did and surely Kozzie did, although he was nowhere near as good last year and this year.

Well done, JJ! That's terrific and very well deserved. Oliver, Jackson, Salem and Jordon are our cleanest players below their feet. JJ is a beauty though. Not only is his defensive good, but that cleanness makes him a real weapon.

Gotcha, it must be a clean clearance untouched by a defender. So the clearance leading to Sinclair's goal was initially spoiled by May. On The Couch showed the same stats tonight and compared our 1 point to 21 points given up by Carlton with the similar clearance losses. Sunday's game should be fascinating.

Agree with most of this mate. The only thing I'd say is Petracca did his fair share of 'defensive mid' positioning at centre stoppages.

Petracca's man got three of the first 5 centre clearances of the game. He needs to defend better without the ball.

They definitely got at least one goal almost straight out of the middle. Sinclair's goal at the start of the fourth is an example.

I absolutely agree mate that we are placing a greater priority on winning the cleaner, better directed clearance, rather than rushed kick that lacks direction and is intercepted, but I think we're still failing to defend the centre stoppage properly. So there were too many times in the Sydney game and certainly too many in the North game, where our starting mids failed prevent an easy exit.

I'd run Harmes with Walsh all day. Go to stoppages with him and then run with him around the ground. Harmes has the tank and the defensive side to go with Walsh and then hurt him going the other way. Agree Cripps isn't having the same influence, but he usually plays well against us and is still a top 30 player. Yeah, we didn't lack a defensive sweeper. I'm not sure what people are watching. We always had a mid defensive side of the contest. Sometimes that was the wide mid, but most often that was the mid closest to our ruckman. Inside sliders that come off the back of the square don't really look to impact like they did across 2017-2019, because it leaves holes in your defence. Completely agree.

Love it mate. Haha, I hadn't read the thread when I wrote mine. I promise! Yep, this is certainly what happened the other night, particularly in that first quarter. I don't mind this idea, but there are question marks over Daw's ability to run out a game, so having a ruckman that doesn't get to all the contests and can't get it done around the ground is a recipe for disaster. I think they'll keep playing Max. The other out of the box idea could be playing McDonald as a permanent ruck in a few weeks time and giving Max a rest then. I wouldn't move Tom at the moment though as he's in career best form IMO.

Disagree. Most of their clearances were on Sydney's defensive side of the ball up. This meant that many of their rushed clearances failed to penetrate our defensive 50. And Hardwick under Choco and Clarko. There is definitely a precedence for the better sides giving up centre clearances and counter attacking, Geelong did this under Scott for years. Is it a big problem though? The majority of those clearances against are rushed clearances that we can either defend and neutralise or get on our terms and counter attack. The likes of Petracca have to get better defensively in centre clearances. Simple as that. Too much ball watching and gambling. It's a free hit if the clearances are clean and deep. If they're shallow, IMO, it plays into our hands. Just like we want teams to kick down the line to contests against us. We want rushed shallow clearances that our half backs and mids can push up to, swarm and release to outside players like Hunt, Langdon et al. Even in these situations we hold our defensive back 3 quite deep and as David King showed on First Crack last night, we actually hold our anchor defender way deeper than most other defences.

My feeling at the ground was that we were far more likely to win the stoppage when LJ was in there rather than Max, but having analysed every centre stoppage, I think it's more a case of our mids gambling more when Max is in and being more defensive and diligent when LJ is in there. Max's real asset IMO is his around the ground work. He's a good tap ruckman, but he's elite because what he does elsewhere. The last two weeks he hasn't done enough around the ground and his opponent has outdone him. I think he might be carrying something, because he doesn't quite seem there. This is predicated on Max being able to pick and choose when he wins taps under pressure. He and Hickey was a great ruck contest. They probably split the spoils from the centre bounce taps. Hickey got the cleaner taps to his mids though and probably marginally got Max on the outside too. I'd be measuring Yze by what we do around the ground stoppage wise and the work rate and coverage of our mids around the ground. It would be good to get more dominance in centre clearances though, given Oliver and Petracca's contested ability. Disagree. As long as our midfield transitions properly if we lose the clearance, we should have an outnumber behind the ball. Our defensive system is insanely good. Like Richmond level good. It was this mid starting wider of the contest (it wasn't always Oliver) who looked more likely to win the clearance and often did. It's the right strategy. The other mids have to be on though. You only need one player to be off and the rope a dope is on and a clean clearance against is almost guaranteed. We/Max actually did this quite a bit against Sydney, but as you say he does have a variety to his taps, so he tried all sorts of things. I think the centre clearance breakdown is mostly psychological rather than set ups or personnel.

Night shift with a newborn may as well be utilised. ;)