Adam The God

If Mahoney goes, I wonder whether Richardson would be a good candidate to take the Head of FD.

How about this beauty from you? "When we win, we win despite Goodwin, not because of him." You're not holding anyone to account mate. You're not inside the club. They're not listening to you. You're on a football forum. It's not match committee.

There's also difficulty comparing the difference between how the game changes in finals football, versus the home & away season too. Do you need to win more UPs during the regular season, and win more CPs to win finals? I wonder if this points to how, say, a Geelong seems to capitulate in finals, but always makes them? I think it was @titan_uranus that mentioned St Kilda's game style the other day and questioned whether it would hold up in the pressure cooker of finals. It may well be their focus on UPs that could be the defining factor....? Whilst I do think we get done on the outside in our loses, this has certainly been a trend longer than just this season and my feeling is (without any data to back it up) that we've closed the gap a bit on the UP differential this year, even in our losses. When we play well, we can shut down the exits to the quicker teams and prevent them from spreading from the contest and getting it on the outside. So I don't think it necessarily translates that teams just need to get it to the outside and they'll beat us. I think that has certainly been the problem for us in the past, but now with the defensive system we're beginning to see it gives our backs a bit more cover and we leak less goals. Bulldogs got it on the outside a lot, but we still managed to stay in the game for the vast majority of it. @Canary M Burns's post was great and I wonder how the club measures its strengths and weaknesses with regards to the stats on hand. Would love to see whether our UP differential this season is better than the last 3 or 4. That might point to a sign of improvement and strength in the system that we're trying to play. Alternative measures other than tackles and pressure acts would be fascinating to analyse. Is it simply a case of the midfielders not two-way-running to stop teams spreading? Or is it that the sliders and additional mids aren't blocking off the exits from the contest? Or is it both? Or some other factor? I'm sure there is something in the forward imbalance too. Not only did it take us a long time to work out a reasonable mix, until finally settling on something through that Hawthorn/Gold Coast/Brisbane stretch, I'm still not sure they know what the correct balance should be. I'm inclined to agree with the idea that we should be playing a similar style in our forward 50 that fits with the combative style of the midfield and half back line. It'll be interesting to see how they set up the forwardline this week with Jones fit to take his place. UPs will be the go for St Kilda if they're on song, so it'll come down to can our half forwards and mids bring enough pressure off half back and at the contest, to prevent them generating scores, and can we use the ball well from stoppage and convert Max's work?

Only problem with this, and no, I'm not a Libertarian, is you only need a Peter Dutton in charge of this stuff and the laws become very easy to warp.

I appreciate it mate, but the idea was jumped on by the misinformation crowd and my business will be fine.

Yep, I think that may well be the problem. Where's the balance? I think it lies with the forwardline we could play this weekend, if we wanted to know that Jones has been passed as fit - Jones, Harmes and Viney in the forwardline.

Agreed.

This is not a Charlie Spargo issue necessarily. This is a forwardline-wide issue. @Axis of Bob pointed this out brilliantly in the tactics thread.

It'd be multilayered. It's educating the players on the way the coach wants to play. It's encouraging and nurturing the assets each player has. It's holding the players to account when they don't deliver. It's helping players become better players and better people. It's managing the mental health implications of a COVID world and the impact this has on work/life balance. I'm sure it's a myriad of things greater than simply making sure the players rock up. Where's the player accountability in that? Goodwin will be judged on his team's output at the end of every season. We can also judge him game to game, quarter to quarter if we want. But let's not pretend the coach simply motivates and ensures players are ready on game day. It's far more varied and complex than that.

@Elegt the Reactionary. Spargo fits into our system nicely when everyone is playing their role. He's a link player who gets involved in a lot of our scores when we're up and about.

I think this is tongue in cheek here, mate, but Len Thompson played a long time ago. In the early part of this thread, a few posters talked about the autocratic coach being from a bygone era. It's close to irrelevant in the modern game IMV. I'm not convinced we'll see another autocratic coach again. I get what you're saying though. I'd argue the coach's job is partly to motivate and inspire, but with the systems in place these days, it's just as much about teaching and reassuring players of their roles and efforts within the systems.

I don't think you understand the role of the modern coach...

That's not the plan. They just want the safety net of being able to lock down an additional two weeks. Once you force the community transmission to zero, hopefully in 2-3 weeks time, you then look for two weeks of no community transmission and then you can open things back up to stage 3, otherwise the whole thing is for nought. I get that it's frustrating, I'm trying to operate a business too, but for the sake of my parents, their friends and other vulnerable people over 70 or otherwise, it's a sacrifice worth making. Mind you, I doubt it'll pass parliament.

Great post mate. It makes no sense to me that we continue to play Viney in our midfield (crowding out the better, cleaner users) and Harmes at half back, when both could be put to great use up forward. St Kilda will do exactly what the Bulldogs did unless we do something about our tackling...

Couple of things about this. 1) Ball use makes conversion from forwards easier. 2) Do you know the pressure point stat differential between Melbourne and Collingwood? I know the tackling tackling stat differential. Collingwood were +2. We were +3 for 1%ers. Hardly a team who couldn't apply any pressure. There was nothing good about the Port game and the Dogs game, our ball use wasn't much worse than theirs. 4% difference between DE and we went at 70%, which is 1% lower than our average. We're 9th in the league for ball use by the way. Was ball use our problem in those games or was the bigger problem our lack of work rate? The ball use stat is hyperbolised on Demonland. Our ball use could get better from stoppage and entering forward 50, absolutely, but that's not where either of those games were lost.

Didn't like our ball use in the previous game, mate? 16.4 was pretty bloody good.

Haha, being a Melbourne supporter is character-building, mate.

Jeepers. Your partner cares what happens with the second tier comp in the AFL? Or was she just going 'yes, Action Jackson, darling, I'm listening'. My wife doesn't even care when her Hawks are playing. She knows more about Demonland internal politics than football. And that's the way I like it. Very easy to convince her who our son in the womb should support.

This is massive. I'm just thinking the additional expenditure to fly VFL teams around the country... frankly I find it baffling. This bit struck me too: "The Victorian clubs as well as Sydney, GWS, Brisbane and Gold Coast will be allowed to either field their own teams in the new VFL, align with an existing team or spread their players across multiple clubs." So the current alignments are void or? I'm trying to work out how the AFL saves money here. Another thing: "while Northern Club Academies (Sydney Swans, GWS GIANTS, Brisbane Lions, Gold Coast SUNS) will be provided with greater responsibility and investment." So more investment for the Northern clubs. And interesting to see that the AFL Talent Committee is pretty much Clarkson and most of his former associates. • AFL Talent Committee – Alastair Clarkson, Luke Beveridge, Chris Fagan, Damien Hardwick, Stephen Wells, Jason McCartney and Ned Guy

Out: Sparrow, Hannan, McDonald, Preuss In: Rivers, Bennell, Jones, Gawn Melksham very lucky. I'd play Harmes, Jones and Viney as pressure forwards. Demand that Kozzie and Spargo bring the heat too for 4 quarters. Rivers takes Harmes' half back possie and Bennell plays between forward and centre wing. Fritsch takes the second tall role, with a licence to play higher up the ground. Preuss for Gawn. If Jones doesn't get up, Hannan is lucky too.

Absolutely. They're interesting stats, because it's like clockwork that you look down at the stat sheet and see almost all our forwards or at least a number of our players registering zero tackles. Against Collingwood, when our pressure was high, we laid less tackles than against the Bulldogs and the following players from our forward or mid system had zero or one tackle each: Melksham, Vandenberg, Fritsch, Weideman, Petracca, Pickett. It's not like the rest of the forwards laid a stack either. Jones, Spargo and McDonald only laid two tackles each. Successful tackling pressure isn't necessarily the best measurement, clearly. How do these stack up against pressure acts? Whatever the result, it's clear that we're not getting the most out of all of our forwards. Another thing that has been noticeable over the last few weeks is our want to keep our forward structure and always keep one or two forwards deep. "Currently the balance of the forward line doesn't seem quite right, IMHO, because our highest quality forwards are of a different style to the midfield and defence." - This is great. Agreed. That's why I'd be playing Viney, Harmes and Jones, the same style as our mids, as forwards. They don't have to be defensive forwards necessarily either. Each can hit the scoreboard and I'd argue Viney and Harmes are quite quick.

This is outstanding analysis, Bob. I'd be up for reverting to the one key tall as I've discussed elsewhere. Our forward entries have been markedly better than they were during the West Coast, Geelong and Richmond games. When Weideman's been switched on in the early part of his career, he's often tackled well playing up the ground. I think he has the capacity to evolve his defensive game to a Lynch level. I think when Jackson's fit again, I don't think there'd a question about whether we'd play two talls, he'd be straight in for mine. But until he returns, I'd look at mixing it up too. Fritsch, for whatever reason, is a turnover merchant at half back, but in the forward half of the ground, he's far more accurate. Maybe this is something he can improve on, having already played down there? I like Melksham as the defensive forward, but it means we need another connector, leading up half forward, otherwise the chances the second defender drops off and isolates Weideman in a two on one is very high. That lead up forward at this stage (if Melksham is playing defensive forward) is probably Fritsch IMV. I'd then play mids around this. All great for food thought though.

Bennell?

Great post @Axis of Bob. Agree with that too. So what would you do with our forward make up this year?

No one is saying Robert should get a pass. But it's far too easy to right off his experiences with, 'well, he did himself no favours'. Do we talk about Leigh Matthews or Dermie that way? No. Why is that? It's exactly the sort of problem our society continues to have, at both sides of the political spectrum. Some people assume our experiences must be everyone else's. Well, no. They're not.