Akum

Sorry bub, I haven't been ignoring you about this, just a busy day at work. His official title is something like "Game Analyst & Education Co-ordinator", which is a bit meaningless. He's actually really highly regarded for his strategic nous and his ability to work out an opponent's weakness and also what we need to tweak in the course of a game to be more effective. I know for sure the Dogs didn't want to see him go. My Bulldog mates are (both) pretty sure that the period early in the season when we had those good games against top teams with all our injuries had CJ's influence written all over it. So it's interesting to hear a number of times in the media during the course of this year about how highly regarded he is within the industry. Which to me begs the question of what happened in the latter part of the season when our game strategy & planning seemed to be all over the place, except perhaps for the Saints & Port games. Which is why I'm anxious at the prospect of CJ being poached.

Very much hope he's happy with us and stays.

Someone told me there was apparently a caller on SEN this morning who said that CJ (Craig Jennings) will be at the Pies next year. If so, to lose him is IMO just about the worst thing that could happen to us in the off-season. Hope it's just a run-of-the-mill SEN call (though why pick out CJ?)

Yeah hard to know exactly what it means, isn't it? I suppose in general terms, we just really need to improve in uncontested footy. We are very very good at contested ball and pressure acts etc, but improving this even more isn't necessarily going to get us further up the ladder. To do that, we need to work on dramatically improving what we do with the ball once we've won it.

Good series of posts here about Goody. I think he's got the great majority of it right, and I think he has it in him to be a very good coach. If so, this could be the stinger that spurs him to a very successful coaching career with us. As long as he listens to the right people & not the wrong people.

Agree entirely. Furthermore, if we planned as well for games we're expected to win as we do for games we're expected to lose, the choking would be less likely to happen. We're still a young & inexperienced team that hasn't yet "gelled" in a way that we can do things automatically like Sydney & Hawthorn, so we seem to play better when each player has simple specific instructions. Agree with this too. At the start of the season, we were great at taking the game on. We played a game style that was so attacking that we were prepared to leak a few bad goals out the back because it would allow us to score a lot more. But at the end of the season this attitude completely vanished, and I agree that we were trying not to lose rather than trying to take the game on no matter what. The coaches collectively dropped the ball on this, and probably reinforced this defensive mindset, but Goody is good enough to take stock & work it out if he listens to the right people.

Easy. They're supposed to bomb it to within 20m of goal, and Hogan & Watts have to get to the fall of the ball and make a contest, together with their own direct opponents and the two unmarked HBFs whose Dee opponents have just run off the back of the centre square. Hogan & Watts must contest the mark, on no account are they allowed to lead into space, even if the defenders are fully prepared for this and know they only have to guard the space 20-30m out from goal and can safely leave every other part of their d50 unguarded.

Agree. Astute oppositions worked out the strengths & weaknesses of our game plan long ago. They worked out how we move the ball and how to draw turnovers from us. There is a lot of good about our game plan, but it needs some intelligent tweaking & flexibility and less predictability - "more diverse", as you say.

Our game plan has been found out, most other teams have worked out what to do to try to counter it. Most of it stood u pretty well, but there were a few parts that needed a tweak. Which they never got.

Maintain that rage!

Thread should be re-titled "The Scapegoat Thread". Grab a bat and have a swing.

Totally agree with all the sentiments here OD. But I hope the club doesn't MOVE ON without learning all the lessons from this debacle that need to be learned, whatever they are. I don't mean witch-hunt, just careful analysis. And I'm a bit concerned for Goody who in his first year as senior coach has ended up missing the finals by the lowest margin in AFL history in the last few minutes of the season. I hope he's got good people around him.

Gotta love the minimalism. Makes me want to see the unedited version tho.

Give up the customary goal on the siren.

Agree. We did earlier in the season, but not now.

Not confident

Sounds like they're setting him up for a Jack Redpath special. All it needs now is for someone from the club to say something helpful like they did with Clarry in the Schofield thing - like, say, "Yeah, Wattsy gets too frustrated when someone plays him close, he has to do better on that" - and we won't have to worry about whether to select him for next week and the first 2 weeks of next season.

After tonight, Swans are clearly the AFL-nominated premiers. Their path is being well & truly smoothed and we'll be the first speed bump to get levelled out.

Ever noticed how the teams that Maxy (if he's anywhere near full fitness) struggles against are usually the teams that don't have a good ruck, like Saints & Dogs & Pies? Those teams know they're not going to beat him, but know they can nullify him all game, and pound him physically, by just jumping into him and making a token effort to go for the ball. And they know they'll go completely unpunished by the umpires who, all being little guys, know nothing whatsoever about ruck contests, so they just look for something like "straight arm". So when we're playing one of these teams, Maxy knows that Hickey or Longer or whoever they put against him is going to use these tactics. And when he puts his arm up to protect himself, he's now all of a sudden infringing? So what do the AFL (and some posters) expect him to do? Just take the hits all game every game?

I remember Brad Scott saying after beating us in 2010 or 2011 that all they had to do to beat Melbourne was to apply a little physical pressure and we'd fold, no matter where we are on the ladder. Sadly, we've proved this to be true every time since.

Reminds me of a Monty Python version of a John Denver song.

The other thing is that Jetta would have easily broken the tackle and continued running if Dixon hadn't hit him high and knocked him to the ground. Dixon doesn't have the strength to hold on.

Chook, ever seen the movie "Go Trabi Go!" The Osties DO (or did) have a sense of humour after all.

Don't have to see the incident, can reliably predict the penalty just by knowing which players are involved.

OK, so now it matters how hard the contact was? Was "incidental"?? And how do we know it hasn't been tolerated? First, because there's no evidence for it. Because there's no reason for the AFL to do anything about it now that any possible PR fallout has been "managed". And because nothing ever changes for the AFL unless they're held to account for it in public. And because "getting past it" or "just moving on" has done absolutely nothing for us this season. And when did I say that the club can "kick, scream, yell" and so on? How about a simple but firm statement about players being contacted by spectators during the game is not acceptable? Nobody actually said that yet. In fact, Goody said they'd look at it before commenting, but their silence is eloquent. Yeah, Goody's presser was great, and today the club (not the coach) had a great opportunity to back up Goody's words with acts, but we just don't have the 'nads for it.