Adam The God

Thanks mate. Jeepers. I presume 'Defensive' would mean 'team defence', particularly if Chaplin is 'Backline'. It's precisely our team defence that has been so woefully off this year. No wonder he's not happy.

Hmm, I find Jennings' position in all of this fascinating. Many of our innovative moves over the past 2+ years were attributed to him. Certainly the Demon Diamond and the mids off the back of the centre square, which the rest of the competition then employed. I'm not sure who was responsible for the no wingers versus Hawthorn last year, but we were innovators and pretty much since that Hawthorn loss, we've continued an aggressive press, but with very little innovation. Is he saving up the rest of his goodies for a senior coaching gig? I hope we see more innovation from our mob soon.

I have no idea why McCartney was ever moved out of simply being a development coach. He is the best in the business and we have seen incredible development in the likes of our midfielders Brayshaw, Harmes, Oliver and even Gawn under his tutelage. I don't want to lose McCartney, because we finally have a guy that knows how to develop talent properly. But why in hell is he a defensive line coach? It makes no sense, unless we have no faith in Chaplin and we've placed him there out of desperation...? Can anyone else confirm McCartney is actually the defensive line coach?

I know one Melbourne player who said McCartney is pushing the players so hard it's giving them the [censored], but who knows how deep that goes. The interesting point in this article is that McCartney is one of the men responsible for our defence.

We'll know come Wednesday 10.30pm. I'm betting we play a ridiculously aggressive and high press that Richmond break down by midway through the second quarter and end up 7 to 8 goal winners in a canter. If this is the case, Goodwin will need a jolly good flogging. Cue the big fella.

And if you turn it over by foot in your back half, it results in an almost certain goal against. McDonald's kicking is a liability in defence.

It would now seem that way. Of course, it could be bad luck. Jetta certainly came off second best early on in the game, but to me, he looked unfit to play the first time he went near it.

It's pretty significant to go from limping around for most of the game (he didn't look fit from the outset) to an 8-10 week injury. Are we managing players here? It seems pretty incredible.

How the hell can you be missing for 12+ weeks with a groin injury? I'm loathed to speculate with innuendo, but I can't help myself here. Is there more to this injury than meets the eye? I was all for recruiting Lever and May, but given what we've paid for them, and their output on field, it's a diabolic fail thus far. At least, Lever turned up to training with professional standards, but WTF is happening with May? Does anyone have any insight into this?

It seems I'm not quite as pessimistic (?perhaps that's not fair?) as you seem to be. This post makes it seem like we're in more trouble than I think we are. Although, I do see what you mean about Hibberd and Jetta, and having to replace them soon. Agree completely with the forward problems. But I reckon we've got our inside midfield set. We need to get some leg speed like Collingwood and now even Carlton have. If Lever recovers, which I think he will long term, we've got a real general there and someone to build a defence around. I'm more excited by Petty than you seem to be, but time will tell. I also think Weideman will be a good player, but there's no doubt that we have some holes at both ends of the ground and through our midfield given the lack of pace through there.

I haven't rated SOS and have been vocal about it. I certainly didn't rate much of what he did at GWS with the gold he had at his disposal, but he's certainly done a good job the last 3-4 years. I'd argue Cripps is their Oliver. I reckon we need a Walsh type to compliment our Oliver though. Maybe we'll get him with our [censored] 2019? A nice breakdown of their outside mid talent though. It's quite Collingwood-esque (jeez, I really am going mad with all the Collingwood love at the moment). We'd kill for that. All those quick, nicely skilled back flankers that can roll through their midfield. I'd also argue McKay feels more like a Daniher/Buddy type, but we'll see. I think Weideman will be a good/very good player, but Carlton cleaned up that 2015 draft with Curnow and McKay as mid to late first rounders. They were a bit lucky due to the depth of KPPs that year, but they managed to almost entirely sort out their spine in one draft year (Weitering at one end of the ground and the other two at the other end). It's a bit like the 2004 draft for Hawthorn with Roughead and Franklin in the top 5.

Petrevski-Seton is exactly the sort of player our midfield is lacking. The closest thing we've got to him is Harmes.

Look, TBH, I'm right there with you, mate. Not sure if you're joking, but if you're not, I reckon the Blues have fixed their spine in the last 3 years (their forwardline is going to be seriously dangerous in 2-3 years). I have major questions over their engine room, but they have just about the best mid in the game and unlike us, they have some zip to their midfield. I wonder how much having Roos in control for the time we had him, played into our drafting for certain needs. Surely it had a huge impact. The one knock on Sydney for years has been their lack of pace and you'd have to say we've gone hard after a certain type of inside bull and neglected pace. Sydney were always thereabouts, but they only won two flags (of course I'd take this record!) and missed a bunch of times, despite finishing in the top 4 for however many years. It's worth questioning this Roos influence. I don't believe you need an array of A graders with pace on your list. I believe you need role players that offer the team a bit of balance though. We clearly don't have this. We've been able to paper over our leg-speed deficiencies because it's more about speed of ball movement, but in actual fact, the modern game still requires great leg-speed. @Redleg If you look at how Richmond implement their forward half pressure, it's all about speedy smalls. If you look at how Collingwood implement their control style from the back, it's all about having players that have the pace to get into space on the wide expanses of the MCG. But let's be up front about this here. It'll make me feel better. Where are the holes in our list that you see, @rjay?

Yep, if Roos actually said on the post game last night that what Goodwin is implementing is an extension of what he was putting in place, I just don't buy that. Goodwin almost immediately implemented this ridiculous aggressive defensive press, which with complete midfield dominance, can and does lock the ball inside our 50 for an extended length of time. However, this almost always leads to easy opposition goals out the back. It also means that without us converting every clutch chance under pressure in our own crowded forward half, this game style has the propensity to break our back psychologically. Whenever we have dominance over a team and we fail to score in our crowded forwardline, seeing the opposition slingshot down the other end for an easy goal, is soul destroying and undoes a lot of our hard work. The game style sets us up for failure more often than not and relies on such little margin for error that it is so clearly unsustainable. This is year 3 of the aggressive press and it doesn't work without, as you say mate, world record midfield dominance. That's unsustainable. You can't expect that every week and every season. I want sustained success and I'm sure the club does too.

He played on a wing last year too.

The post is spot on, but obvious.

Because Tom McDonald isn't a good backman. In fact, he's ordinary. With ball in hand in the back half, he more than not [censored] it up. I'm certainly lost as to why they keep playing a clearly injured McDonald. I can only think they're trying to protest Weideman.

Yep, I dread to think what Richmond and Hawthorn will do to us the next two weeks.

Game style is done. Time to change tact. We don't have the personnel or coaching nous to make chaos footy work on the most important ground in the game. 2019 is done and dusted. Start trying some things for 2020 and play man on man, throw the press out and start again. I'll back Goodwin to turn it around, but if he sticks with the game style we won't be getting off the bottom of the ladder. The forward 50 efficiency was disgraceful today.

Oscar should not have been beaten either. Is your point Oscar and Jones are both ordinary? If so, I'd agree with you. It was the ease with which he was pushed off the contest that is what's concerning.

Just watching the replay again. Gets muscled off it by Heeney and the ball slingshots back for a Sydney goal to Ronke. He'll be too slow to play forward on the 'G too.

I disagree. He's a KPF who's played less than 25 games. He's a beautiful set shot kick and has a nice pair of hands. I agree with the forwardline being a major weakness, but the midfield is also a weakness to our defence. It's not just the forwards role to lock the ball inside our attacking 50.

Things can change very quickly. Richmond showed that you don't need more than 4 or 5 guns and the rest, simple role players. We have built a core group of guns (Gawn, Oliver, Brayshaw, Viney, Lever, May and Harmes, with an emerging KPF in Weideman) and over one simple off season, Geelong have shown that by injecting pace into areas like the forwardline, you can turn things around pretty quickly. I partly agree with your comments about VFL level talents (Oscar, Frost, Josh Wagner and possibly Fritsch) and those over the hill (Jones and probably Lewis), but our core is still just as strong as any other side in the comp on their day. It's just getting to their day that's the problem and with fitness not on our side, and our pathetic defence, we need to go back to the drawing board, RE: game style.

I think it was always a case of deciding whether we'd continue to back in our system (and that maybe we just had an off day in the Prelim) or it was about making some tweaks to the system to ensure that the control style wouldn't win out against us. Unfortunately, it seems we haven't made any adjustments and that's pretty incredible when you think of what the FD are paid and the professionalism required in the AFL. It was interesting seeing even Essendon try the control style / keepings off a bit tonight and actually, usually it came unstuck due to their own terrible disposal, but it's pretty clear that the league has worked out that control over chaos football will eventually win out. And certainly, this is the key to beating us, because our defence is so poor, we have very little ability to properly counter-attack. I think the answer to short to mid term success is a mixture of both styles. I liked that we started going backwards and sideways off some of our centre clearances. This showed a greater value for possession, which I called for at the end of last week, but we simply didn't do it enough. I'm thinking we need to do this more, not all the time, but where appropriate, we need to use the wings or the increased space afforded in the centre square due to the 6-6-6 rule, to ensure we get the most value for our midfield dominance and from our centre clearances in general. If we start playing more tempo and control off some clearances, I think we'll get better conversion and it'll mean the opposition has less time to impact on the scoreboard going the other way. So there's a bit of a twofold improvement possibility there. It's also pretty clear that the zone defence and aggressive press is a double-edged sword. We're not quick enough to play the bombing it long and crumbing chaos style that Richmond made so successful across 2017 and 2018, but we're also too slow not to play at least a soft zone defence to cover for runners out the back. Defensively, I'm at a loss as to how to solve the lack of 1v1 wins, but if we tidy up our offence, that will become a form of defence, because teams won't be able to slingshot on us as easily. I'm wondering where the inventive mind of Craig Jennings has gone.

If he can't get a game this year, I'd say he'll be delisted. We desperately need outside run, so it'll say everything if he can't get into the team.