Adam The God

Fair enough. I don't think you can really play a forward half game when you're sitting your defence as deep as we have this year, so agree to disagree.

I'd be just tempering our expectations a bit. If he can make a hit or two, and lay 3 or 4 tackles, I think that'd be a great debut.

We still tried to play forward half in most games last year except Rounds 19-21, where we played from the back more.

So why is ANB not on the above list then? Weird.

Weitering the Melbourne supporter you mean? 😜 I thought he'd recently extended, but happy to hear he could be on the market post 2025. Would be the perfect May replacement and since he gives his bank details away to anyone, he might need the extra cash.

Caleb has been really good and I really like him as a player, but the hype on here (and elsewhere) is astronomical IMO.

Have you seen stats around this or is it the eye test thing?

Disagree. Let's see who's right as the season goes on mate.

Our system wouldn't allow that now anyway. As long as we cut off the first handball, we set our defence so deep now, there's far less space in behind.

I'm happy with us losing clearance/stoppage, ground ball, inside 50 differential, but winning on the scoreboard. Maybe I've rose-coloured glasses on or I'm being conspiratorial, but I reckon Goody would be perfectly happy keeping things as they are and he's playing a few games in his presser today. (ie he doesn't want to completely let on to opposition analysts how we're looking to win this year) If we win too much clearance and have the ball locked in our front half too often, it means we've got to be perfect to find space or a target inside 50. To me, that's unsustainable as a strategy nowadays. Teams are highly inefficient, us especially, when we play forward half. Perhaps we'd prefer to be defending most plays through the centre corridor and the wings, and turning the ball over earlier (higher up the ground/closer to our own goal) rather than playing from our D50, but ultimately most top 8 teams won't give up too many points from their own defensive half consistently. I do concur with Goody though that we'd probably want a greater inside 50 differential than against say Port (-21). You're asking way too much of your defensive system and defenders to defend that sort of differential.

Never heard of him. Interesting. Ta.

Very true. Perhaps it was more of a personnel limitation in the past? It may also have been Collingwood winning that sped up our shift to playing the deeper style. I remember in that QF last year when we were dominating territory and there was 100m open for Collingwood to work back into. Even though we were dominating territory, it felt like they were super dangerous defending from their own defensive half. We may have taken heavily from them or it may be a natural evolution to maximise our defensive system and lower the likelihood of teams slingshotting against us (ie combating the game style that was, as @binman says, developed to beat our 2021 defensive set up). I'm looking forward to watching closely how our mids set up on Thursday night. It's not even so much the set up, but how we attack the ball. In the two games I've seen live this year, it's been relatively obvious that we only send one mid to win possession, the others spread or take up defensive positions. This probably speaks to why we're losing clearance on net. Be fascinating to see how we approach this as the season progresses.

Just be careful, PF. You said 'um'. We don't tolerate that around here.

My wife was quite surprised with my reaction, which was something like that's a terrible song, we don't sing that in this house. 🤣 I'm like you do realise you're married to a nuffy that lives the MFC, so much so that I went to the footy the day after our wedding, and planned the date around the footy. Ya silly sauage wifey.

Uber creepy, Bitters.

Nah, I like the length. Thanks very much.

Wasn't sure where to put this, but my son came home from pre school today singing the [censored] Carlton song. He said one of his friends was singing it. It also came up on the kids algorithm on Spotify when my wife was driving him home. I suppose it's possible to push the theme song out on Spotify. It's actually a very clever way of potentially getting new supporters. We should do this. Push Grand Old Flag on socials and Spotify.

The only thing I learnt here is that little nuffy Tom Morris has managed to land another job.

But I am dealing with the MCC ones...

I like Turner, but I think his issue at this stage is he struggles on the gorillas, so I'd be having him play on the big boys at VFL level. Take the biggest opposition forward. It's why I tend to agree with @Ollie fan and @Jaded No More that he's more likely to replace Lever or Howes. This is not to say he won't be a good KPB when he puts on more muscle and gains greater strength.

Exactly, but I see binners corrects it above.

I'm confused by this, binners. They became the Brisbane Lions at the end of 1996. Fitzroy folded at the end of 1996. So they did become Brisbane Lions from the get go. Agreed to a large extent, but I think we started this quicker transition (albeit not anywhere near as well) in the second half of 2023. When you think of our game against Brisbane in Round 18 last year, that was an out and out shoot out. Our game the following week against Adelaide was also a shoot out. And Round 20 against Richmond we showed a similar flair from front to back. But you're largely right, the sample size for opposition fans is smaller and they're more likely to have our 2023 finals in their heads, which were forward half territory games.

Nah, IMO they're smarmy.

But we've also had the support of our mids and high half forwards to clog up the defensive 50, and since we're happy playing in our defensive half, those ground balls are less dangerous to May and Lever as they have higher protection. There is now a trend of losing ground ball and winning on the scoreboard. In fact, the only time we've won ground ball (+11) was against Sydney. Now the conditions may have made that a greater necessity, but it also meant the game wasn't being played on our own terms. Conversely, we lost ground ball in all our wins. -13 against the Bulldogs (R1), -1 against Hawthorn, -22 against Port and -3 against Adelaide. I'd still like a greater sample size, but IMO it appears to be down to the way we are setting up. So whilst @Axis of Bob points out we've been protecting our A grade defence instead of providing our forwards with more assistance, I'd argue we're now providing both ends of the ground more assistance. The defenders have most of the team back defending plays and stoppages now, which eases ball movement as it's easier to hit targets in space, and provides more space in our own forward line.

Good post mate, it's what I and others have been writing about with the sagging defensive set up that enables us to slingshot in behind. But I'm not convinced McQualter's arrival is forcing us to play in a different way, because that makes it sound like we didn't identify him, as well as areas of our game that we understood we needed to improve. As well as centre clearance, we are now comfortable losing ground ball too. In some ways it's been a significant shift and in another way, it's merely tweaks.