Binmans PA

You may be right, but you can't do this in finals.

I've never minded Dougal Howard too much, but never watched him closely. My Saints mates think he's a deadset liability. Haha.

Remember in the direct post siren flurry on King's Birthday it was Maynard breaking up Cox from Trac? I can therefore assume it was Max that left the room...?

Well, Jack has his hand around Maynard's throat in response, so I'm not sure we want to be dredging that headbutt moment up too much.

I said immediately after it happened that we have to introduce a red card for acts like this. If one player is lost for the other team, then it's only fair that the team with the player who commits the red cardable offence be down a player too.

Agreed. Our midfield hasn't been good enough in first quarters the last 6 weeks. Ir all starts there.

I think the media are legit scared about the personal backlash they'll receive if they go against Collingwood supporters. Seriously. Who's one guy that could speak his mind and not get ravaged? A bloke who won them one of their two premierships in the last multiple decades.

Agreed. It can't happen again this year if we want to win anything. Six weeks in a row we've lost 5 of 6 first quarters and the one win we did have was against a wayward Sydney. We need to come out with intent, hardness and aggression. Put goals on the board early and everything else will flow from there.

Psychology is a big part of footy and the modern game relies on an ability to work through your emotions. As Goody often claims, you need to be able to 're-set' both in game and from week to week. I think we'll take care of Carlton, but the main variable, if you like, is the psychological fall out from the QF. It can go one of two ways. Trac said the players were obviously flat after the game, which was certainly mirrored by the supporter sentiment and my own emotions. Now, if we use that hurt and flatness, the second chance that we have, it could be the re-set that we need to kick start our way to a 14th flag. Backs against the wall, have to go the toughest route now, like the Bulldogs in 2021, and missing Petty, Melksham, JVR and now Gus (possibly forever). But unlike the Bulldogs in 2021, who IMV we had the measure of that year, if we can get to a Granny against Collingwood, I reckon our guys would be supremely confident and want to make amends. The alternative, of course, is we are rocked by Gus' likely retirement, we're a little bit banged up ourselves after a bruising QF and Carlton running on emotion like we were in 2018, with the crowd on their side, gets it over us. IMO, we start the first quarter well, get a small lead and convert all our gettable opportunities, and we won't be beaten. However, how much do you guys think the psychology of losing the QF and losing Gus will play into the result this week?

I meant our zone, not theirs. He's a vital part of our press as a half forward and occasionally a half forward +1 that sags off the front of the contest goalside. Thoughts on why he wouldn't be playing?

It's the weekend mate.

Can anyone share this vision, if accessible please? Thanks.

If you watch that play to the end, a handball would have seen Trac cut off by a quickly closing Quaynor.

Handball to Petracca? He had a player right on his hammer and was backing off towards that player as well.

Not exactly happy with it, but I don't think chipping it around the arc against a high press, speedy transition team was thw answer either. I keep reading that our method is off or that we need do better forward, but nothing I've read so far has said how. We are a contest winning team. We're the number one winning contest team. So it means we dominate territory, which means the entire opposition is in our forward half, making it hugely difficult to score etc etc. I'd like to hear how you'd improve forward connection if we're constantly winning contest and therefore usually entering our 50 when it's congested. We chained out of contests by hand for months, but unless you move the ball quickly by foot and get it inside 50, you will not beat the modern defensive zone.

We then lose a major bounce from half back. Unless, of course, we shift Salem into the Rivers intercept role and lose some speed, but keep the ball use and decision-making in Salem, plus get him into the game.

In that same game, IMV he cost us at least one goal and the way they transitioned that night from front to back when he was a half forward was alarming. It's not just on him, but you do only need one weak link in the chain. He needs to get fitter and understand his positioning better.

He gets lost in the zone and press. He'll be a handy player, but not this year IMO. Now watch him get selected this week. 😄

We could win by more, I agree that we could do better, but our method still turned the ball over/won the ball back and got two shots within 35m (slight/to no angle) for both Fritta and TMac (arguably our best kicks at goal). Kick them, and we win. If you do not convert regulation set shots (ie less pressure than shots from open play), you will not win finals. Look at 3 of the 4 finals in week one. The teams that kicked straighter won, and the teams that started well, won. I'm not denying there's huge scope for improvement with our ball movement, forward craft and forward half play, but despite this, the method still generated more scoring shots that expected score calculated should lead to a comfortable win. That's method succeeding and execution failing. So it's not on the coaches or even the players behind the ball or through the middle of the ground, it's that those taking shots and missing gettable shots, cost us the game.

No, it doesn't. We had 3 more scoring shots than them, plus 7 on the full ons. That's 10 scoring shots and expected score suggests many were more than gettable and we should have won. We kicked 3.7.25 to 6.4.40 from turnover when we average 58.1 points from turnover a game and concede 41 points. That's the game right there. Our inability to convert our chances from turnover lost us the game. Not our method.

Having just read all 22 pages, I'm glad I stayed off this thread for 48 hours. The amount of wrist slashing and doom and gloom is hilariously Demonland on the Saturday night of this posting, but would have been frustratingly mind melting any time before this. I've now processed some of my frustration from Thursday night and am ready to dig a little a deeper. I do want to remind some Demonlanders though of the lead up to the QF, where there was hardly a negative word written and people were supremely confident of a win. I thought we'd win and am shattered that we didn't, but the way some have hugely flipflopped based on one result is truly emotional muppetry. Maybe set more realistic expectations going into this week? Despite this, I can certainly understand the frustration, hence staying out of this thread for so long myself. However, if we can make the GF and it's against Collingwood, IMO we have them covered providing we kick straight. The atmosphere in the last quarter was very similar to much of the KB game in that Collingwood supporters were clearly packing themselves, because they saw their team being mauled at the contest and us generating multiple inside 50s and very good (and gettable) chances that should have been taken. But what's done is done and we have a chance to redeem ourselves next week. I'm hoping we can conjure a bit of the 2015 Premiers about us this finals series (ie, lose the QF, run rampant in the SF, beat an interstate side away from home in the PF and smash the original winner of the QF in the GF). I'm more worried though about getting past Carlton than I am playing Brisbane, but Brisbane would be a tough test too. One week at a time though. Selection will be fascinating again. My initial instinct was we'd have to bring in Grundy, but we may just resort to bringing in another runner (Jordon at this point) and bringing in Turner to play forward or back. And does Spargo come in for Chandler or Laurie? (don't bother answering this one, Picket) What I'd like most of all is, and I don't think we can win the flag unless this starts to happen, is for us to start the game properly. And I mean, we need our midfield, our engine room to start the game hard, fast and on from the first bounce. It's been at least 6 games since we started well. Our first quarters against Richmond (R20 with 3.5 to 5.4), North (R21 with 1.3 to 5.5!), Carlton (R22 with 1.0 to 1.3, but only due to our amazing defence and defensive system rather than our midfield winning clearance and territory), Hawthorn (R23 with 3.2 to 4.2), Sydney (R24 with 3.2 to 2.5) and then Collingwood (1.0 to 4.2). So we've won 1 first quarter in six weeks and that was arguably due to Sydney's inaccurate kicking. I can cop that in the H&A season, particularly if you know you've got fitness on your side and you're eventually running over teams, but in finals football, the pressure on every play is different and you don't want to spend the whole game chasing. Think back to the 2021 finals series. In the QF against Brisbane, we were 5.4 to 4.2 at quarter time. In the PF against Geelong, we were 5.3 to 1.0, and in the GF, we were 4.5 to 1.2. So we won all first quarters. That is what you need to do in finals. Simple as that. If we're going to go any further this year, we need to start doing two major things. 1) We need to start winning first quarters and putting early scoreboard pressure on our opposition. This puts them under more pressure to score, knowing how difficult we are to break down defensively, and that in turn, increases our scoring chances from turnover. Which, btw, we kept Collingwood to 1 point less than our average of 41 points conceded from turnover. So our defence and defensive system was exceptional on Thursday night. Which brings me to... 2) Where we let ourselves down against Collingwood, and if we're to go further this year, is we need to convert our scoring chances from turnover. We've averaged 51.8 points from turnover this season and on Thursday, we kicked 3.7.25 (!) from turnover to Collingwood's 6.4.40. We lost the game in conversion from turnover. So our method is strong, there is no need to panic in terms of wholesale personnel changes. We have the two forced changes and possibly whether we could get more out of Spargo than we did Chandler, but I'm not convinced on that front and will trust the FD there. If we win the first quarter and we convert our chances, we will be extremely difficult to beat and I'll go as far as saying, we won't be beaten if we do this. Apologies for the book. Lap it up. And thanks to @WheeloRatings for his brilliant score source stats in the Stats thread.

If you want to boil it down simplistically, you kick a winning score, based on method. The method is how you get there. And the method got us there 16 times on a season. The method isn't the problem. It's the execution. Fritsch, TMac both missed multiple gettable shots they'd usually get, that's the game right there, before we even mention the 6 other on the fulls.

Nice analysis.

Our strength is clearly contested ball and therefore our ability to get it inside 50. We are number 1 for both in the comp and have been for years. Even 2019. So it was always about getting strength behind the ball and team defence to ensure we could lock it in and play territory. We've done that now and finished top 4 three years in a row and won a flag within that (and still in it this year), and the next step IMV is improving the forwardline personnel. And since territory derived from winning the contest is our strength, we're number one for stopping defensive transition and conceding scores from it. Injury has meant our method hasn't so far been able to go to the next level in the forward half (our main targets Fritta, Petty, BB and Tmac all missing huge chunks of the season), but despite all these injuries, our system has seen us finish in the top 4. So yes, I'd say we're maximising our strengths.

Agreed that it's likely Gus retires now, so we will need to find someone else and it's not JJ. I wouldn't mind trying McVee in Rivers' role next year and shifting Rivers into the midfield. You then have Oliver, Petracca, Viney, Sparrow, Rivers and hopefully Gus can get back. If he goes retire, that would change my position. In the middle of the year, I wasn't sold on Gus being in my 22 at the end of this year, but he proved how important he was at the back end of 23 IMO. So it's a huge hole, if he does hang up the boots.