Adam The God

People will hate it, but Selwyn Griffith said on the Demonland podcast, that by this stage, players are starting to fatigue badly. Layer on the possibility that we're targeting the Collingwood game to be blistering (think that St Kilda game in Round 8 last year), we could well be managing players that fatigues them in the Freo and Carlton games and causes 15-20 intercept mark spills, suddenly poor accuracy and poor disposal and decision making...

Nor what we've put into practice for the first 10 rounds either.

Agreed. 👍

I love Rivers as a shut down / intercept defender, even occasionally as a running defender, but I think he's started to chew off far too much with his kicking.

Today we played like 2022. We played safe, long, slow, predictable footy. That hasn't been the way we've played this year.

Here's the thing though. It's all well and good to be frustrated. I thought we were pathetic today, but I find it easier to look at the bigger picture and history is an important reminder in AFL footy (and anything really). We're top 4, with a softer draw coming up in the second half of the year, with less 8 point games than our other top 4 competitors. Many parts of our game are in good shape (our turnover game, our scoring sources), and others (stoppages) need some work. The stoppages issue IMV has much scope for improvement when we start to throw our better mids through the contest more often, plus I'm sure we'll have some tactical tweaks too. So that's personnel and tactics that you don't necessarily want to show in the first ten rounds. The history side of it however is more telling. Many supporters seem to have this expectation that having won 2021, we'd be winning flags over and over in the same way. We've had to change the way we're playing because the competition adapted to our intercept game in 2021. But no team in the modern era has gone through seasons like our 2021 season repeatedly. They've all had ups and downs. It's very similar for Richmond's 4 year period, but let's look at the Hawthorn threepeat team as a prime example. 2013 was their 2021. They won 19 games and aside from their strong qualifying final win over Sydney, won their prelim and GF by a combined 4 goals. Their finals series that season was nothing like the dominance of ours in 2021. And maybe this, plus the fact they'd fallen after their 2008 flag, kept them hungry going into 2014. But still, 2014 saw them finish second on 17 wins. To Round 10, they were 6 and 3 (there was a bye at Round 9). Those three losses were to Sydney (who finished above them in 1st), Geelong (who finished one place below them in 3rd) and 5th placed Port. Plus, they fell over the line to Essendon (who finished 7th) by 4 points in Round 2, and some of their wins were big wins over the likes of the new and young Suns, eventual wooden spooners St Kilda and struggling Brisbane who finished in the bottom 4. If that was our start, we'd have been saying all the same things. Oh, we can't beat the sides around us, our competitors, but we have no trouble beating up the lowly sides. We're flattrack bullies etc etc. Their 2014 finals campaign was better than their 2013 finals series, winning two finals easily, but only won their prelim against Port on the MCG by 3 points. Again, nowhere near as good as our 2021 finals series. Moving on to 2015, and this time, they finished 3rd on 16 wins. They went the first 10 rounds 6-4. To Round 10, they lost to Essendon (who would finish 4th bottom), Port (who would finish 9th), GWS (who finished 11th) and one of their main competitors Sydney (who finished 4th, one place below Hawthorn that year). Meanwhile, they beat Geelong (who would miss the 8 that year), us (who were very ordinary in our second year under Roos - we finished 13th), the 16th placed Suns and the 14th placed St Kilda. Again, a season to Round 10, nothing to write home about. And their finals campaign in 2015 saw them lose their qualifying final and having to go the long way to win it. Why did I bother with all this? Well, perspective is a funny thing. And it's bizarre how quickly we forget things. We've forgotten how powerful and abnormal our 2021 finals campaign was. Expecting us to replicate that was always folly. As for it's all over by Round 10 or 11, well, history shows us that is simply not the case and that if you're in the hunt for the top 4 and injury-free come the last few rounds, that's the goal. Just because we're not the clear premiership standout by Round 10, doesn't mean we won't win it, because we know how that one goes, don't we Melbourne fans (*cough* 10-0 in 2022 *cough*).

Reckon Collingwood might beg to differ. This is how they've played for 12 months. Sure, you need multiple avenues to goal, and we need to stop allowing too many goals from stoppage, however it's our sloppiness as you say that let us down.

Adelaide win tomorrow and it's back to thank you Peter Bell for a top 10 pick. 🤣

Again, have you listened to the podcast with our own fitness boss...?

Yep, agreed. Tomlinson to McKay, May to Curnow and Lever gets to play interceptor. He'd better be a hell of a lot cleaner next week than he was today though. All of that said, Rivers has worried me for weeks with ball in hand. He misses targets as much as he hits them.

No team can take unrelenting pressure. There is nothing insightful about that as a take mate. That's essentially how you win any team sport and certainly AFL football...

Funny you say Hunter, because if you look at our inability to convert our defensive half turnovers into scores, yes, inaccuracy was a huge factor, but I think we missed Hunter more than we might have imagined. He's a very smart player and usually hits targets and makes good decisions.

Possibly, although I'm not a huge fan of Gus with ball in hand, but perhaps I should give him greater credit? Who knows? I think we'll see him behind the ball next week anyway and Hunter back on that wing opposite Lingers.

Thanks. Interesting given the bit below the bit I quoted on the AFL ap said: "While Walyalup outscored Narrm by 12 from stoppages throughout the game, it was their third quarter where they outscored Narrm by 25 points from stoppages- that set up the significant victory". It's also intrresting to note the next bit mentioned by the AFL ap: "Angus Brayshaw misses a crucial set shot at goal, from a Walyalup turnover. It's Narrm's first score of the match from a forward-50 intercept chain." In other words, we couldn't turn the ball over in the forward half of the ground today, but our defensive half turn overs should still have resulted in a significant score, somewhere up or over 100 points. So lots of room for improvement.

I hold the view that it's very likely that most teams treat playing us like a final because we were premiers only 18 months ago and still finished top 2 last year, and are in the top 4 again this year.

It means we didn't capitalise on our scoring chains from. defensive half turnovers. Instead of kicking, say 5.2, we kicked 2.5...

Agree with this entirely. And I derps up the first bit, apologies.

Posted this in the Post Game thread, but this is from the AFL ap breakdown of the game. "Narrm ultimately lost the match against Walyalup by failing to capitalise on their defensive-half scoring chain prowess. Narrm only managed to score 2.5 (17) from defensive-half scoring chains for the entire match, despite averaging 40.8 points per game in 2023 - ranked first in the league." That's the game right there. We need to use each other and the ball better on slingshot. Simple as that.

This is from the AFL ap breakdown of the game. "Narrm ultimately lost the match against Walyalup by failing to capitalise on their defensive-half scoring chain prowess. Narrm only managed to score 2.5 (17) from defensive-half scoring chains for the entire match, despite averaging 40.8 points per game in 2023 - ranked first in the league." That's the game right there. We need to use each other and the ball better on slingshot. Simple as that.

It felt like Freo were at 200 most of the game. Possibly dropped off in the third and early in the first, but otherwise, they brought the heat.

Have you listened to the Demonland podcast with our fitness boss...?

We watch a different game at times mate. McVee better than Spargo? Judd has struggled since approximately the Gold Coast match, when really he ideally should have been rested. The last two weeks in particular he's become a liability. He's a young player and he's learning, but today he offered very little. Was tentative at the contest, hardly touched it and the one time he ran and carried it, he kicked it straight down the throat of two waiting Freo players. With Salem back now, I wouldn't be against bringing in Tomlinson to play lockdown (McKay), May to play second tall (Curnow) and Lever intercept 3rd tall, giving Judd a week off to freshen up for the Collingwood match if we feel there's a match up for him.

We're also still in the game... We're top 4 FFS at Round 11 with the best percentage in the league. Anyone would think we're on the cusp of the 8.

Are you suggesting that Yze and Chaplin stay but take different areas of the ground?

I think we set up really well behind the ball, but Gawn, May and Lever dropped at least 15 intercept marks between them. That undoes all your hard work and invited most of the scores against. I've never seen a game where so many intercept marks were dropped and many of them not particularly difficult.