Akum

Great post whatever thread it's in!

It works fine if the ball is bombed into the forward line. It's a good basic plan but it needs to be tweaked to adjust to different situations. I guess we study "tweaking" in Semester 2.

When Frost plays for Casey, they play him in defence - right where we need a tall defender in the firsts. Either this means they've abandoned the "Frost-as-a-forward" experiment (which they should!), or they still want him to play as a forward, in which case they're doing him no favours by not letting him play there for Casey. What I don't understand is that they're happy to play one tall short in defence, but keep three talls in the forward line, as well as Gawn drifting down there. Surely it would be better if we don't have enough talls that we play a shorter forward line, rather than a shorter defence. Perhaps it's time to leave the forward line to Watts & Hogan & four "smalls", rather than play a third tall forward and leave us too short in defence.

Wasn't there someone recently who got a blatant hit that was originally graded "intentional" downgraded to "careless" because of the implication that they weren't the sort of player who would hit anyone intentionally and that it was an unfair smear on their character? Nev would have as much grounds as anybody in the AFL for that kind of challenge. Or is that only valid if you're a Seventh Day Adventist or similar??

On the one hand, the result is disappointing. On the other hand, to be so comprehensively outplayed & have so many problems all over the ground through the whole match and only go down by 5 goals to a possibly top 4 side means that it's not a total disaster. At the very least, it's 11 goals better than being comprehensively outplayed by the same team last year. We've said in a few of our losses that the "final score flattered us". Against Essendon scores were level with 6 minutes to play, despite them being by far the better team the whole match. Against Saints we played as badly as we possibly could, got a third less disposals than them and our defence went MIA & we lost by 6 goals, not 16 as it should have been. On each occasion we were severely unbalanced by selection failures - went in too tall against Dons, too short against Saints & Dogs - and got punished for it. But even last year a "bad" loss was 10-15 goals. This year a "bad" loss is 5-7 goals. That says something - I'm not sure what, but it says something.

I guess what annoys me about this rule is that more frees seem to be gained by either gaming the umpire or appealing to the umpire as are paid on merit. And teams that play to the umpires in this are the ones who are doing well by it. It seems that umpires are instructed to pay only what they can be certain about. So it all comes down to being able to create (false) uncertainty that you've infringed (e.g. by "disguising" a throw) or to creating (false) certainty that you've been infringed against (e.g. by ducking & diving & throwing your head back). These are much more reliable ways of getting frees than actually earning one. So I disagree about the "too much interpretation" theme - I think it's getting very predictable what you can get away with & what you can't, providing your acting skills are top-notch. The aim isn't to get a "fair" decision; it's much easier and more reliable to get an unfair decision by gaming the umpire. North, Geelong, Dogs doing very well out of it indeed.

What more reason do you need???

That's not 'nervous', that's just ... ew!! 'Nervous' is colonoscopy without the bowel prep. (Hope yours went OK, pre-med or not!)

There seem to be a lot of Sandy players from the Saints side that beat us a couple of weeks ago. Even if, like us, they take 4 out for subs.

It also makes more sense if what he said was in answer to a question such as: "You're out of contract at the end of the year - does that put you under extra pressure to do well?" Or "What are your aims for this season, considering you're out of contract when it finishes?" And he's just trying to express that his motivation to do well and to stay a Demon comes from inside, not because of the contract (or any other external pressure), although the contract is inevitably there in the back of his mind, but it's not a major issue. Perhaps there's a subtext that he's also trying to convey, of not being the sort of player who puts in extra effort in the last year of his contract, and then hits the cruise button when he's been rewarded. You made the same point, Sku, while using a whole lot less words ... and a punctuation lesson!

Gawn is far and away the biggest danger to the Dogs, so he'll be the main target for their brains trust. Roughhead & Campbell will have spent the whole week doing nothing else other than practising throw-ins & ball-ups: first, leaning into their opponent or pushing him away, while keeping their eyes fixed on the ball; and second, tying up their opponent's arms, without gripping him (as long as it's done without flexed or curved fingers, the umps seem to let it go), while keeping their eyes fixed on the ball; and third, of course, third-man-up plays. What umps look for is looking at your opponent, and flexed fingers indicating a grip; as long as you keep your hands flat and your eyes fixed on the ball, they don't seem to penalise pushing or restricting your opponent's arms. Their rucks won't have the slightest intention of winning the hit-out themselves; their whole effort will be to nullify Gawn by making sure that HE doesn't get an effective hit-out at throw-ins and ball-ups. They won't be able to do it at centre bounces, but they'll have another strategy to stop us getting clearances - maybe having someone running full pace off the back of the square. It worked perfectly (for them) in our 100 point loss last year, because our mids played the whole game as if Gawn wasn't nullified. I just hope that with Craig Jennings on board our brains trust will be able to anticipate their tactics against Gawn and counter them effectively. We simply have to win the (effective) clearances to have any chance of winning. They'll also have a strategy for Viney, but that's another story.

We'll win IF ... ... IF we can match them or even beat them in clearances. ... IF we can stop their chains of uncontested possessions out of defence. They WILL nullify Gawn. Bevo tried it last year when they smashed us, and also in the NAB pre-season when we just beat their reserves. Their aim is to get the ball to land at Gawn's feet where they swarm on it, and their ruckman won't be trying to win taps, he'll just be trying to stop Gawn winning them, and Gawn will get no help from the umpires, Pannell or not. We have to at least match them in clearances when Gawn is nullified and can't give our mids an armchair ride. And Bevo WILL play a loose man in defence, knowing that Roos is the one coach in the AFL who will let it cut us to shreds the whole game and not man them up. The Dogs have good stats defensively because they rarely turn over the ball in their defence, let alone allow pressure to build by repeat entries - once they win the ball in defence, they're great at moving the ball a long way from their defensive zone by chains of uncontested possessions. When we've played well, we've been good at getting forward-line turnovers and repeat forward entries (why does that sound so wrong???), but if they have an extra man, it will be much harder (wrong too??). If they have a spare man in defence and we man them up (7-on-7), it congests our forward line and makes turnovers more likely than if it was 6-on-6. and makes it harder for them to initiate chains of possession from the half back line. So, we'll win IF we just don't play into their hands. Otherwise, we'll get smashed.

Love the way that this time the "All the Goals" takes 11 whole minutes to get through. There have been games not so long ago when it's been a very short video indeed!

Any chance they might give Bugg first crack on Stringer? Would help with some of the other match-ups. By far the most important thing is to get our structures and planning right. For that reason, they'll bring H back in, our run out of defence will be incredibly important and we need as much as we can possibly find. I'll allow H getting out marked 2-3 times by the likes of Redpath, if in return H can manage to run off him 6-8 times and set us up through the corridor. And - as I say before every game that we play against a coach who plans really well, like Bevo did the second time we played them last year - we MUST anticipate that they will succeed in nullifying Gawn by getting the main ruckman to wrestle him & pin his arms (illegally, maybe, but they won't get pinged for it) while a third man comes over the top, or while their mids just wait in numbers for the ball to land at his feet, while our mids are hanging back waiting for him to tap it to advantage, which he won't be allowed to do. And we MUST anticipate that they'll have someone whose entire role for the whole game will be to keep Viney away from the contests, even if it means turning their back on the play and putting their body in the way. If we anticipate these tactics against our two most players this year and plan for it, we can easily turn it against them. If we don't anticipate it and don't plan for it, they'll absolutely carve us up from the stoppages, we'll be chasing tail the whole game. And Roos will give another of those pressers of "we lost it at selection" or "we got our structures all wrong". It goes without saying that if we keep trying to bomb it onto Hogan's head, we'll be playing right into their hands and they'll tear us to shreds attacking from defence. We can win this if we get our planning & structures right. If we don't, we could be in for an absolute demolition.

Truck 12 CPs in his second game. Clarry 13 CPs in his 5th (?) game.

What's hard for players like Newton (and ANB and Michie) is that they star on the ball at a lower level and when they get promoted are played HFF & can't get into it, especially if it's one of those games where it's just not coming down much).

You mean ... even rich enough to get a tax cut????

How many players have kicked their first goal in AFL from 60 metres? That was just a great kick - low, hard & straight. Thought he should have run in, but he knew what he was doing. And the second goal - at full pace, degree of difficulty off the scale, two precise touches. Two pieces of absolute top-drawer brilliance. From a bloke in his second farnarkling game!!!!

This. And it'a currently the main thing holding us back. I thought we got in Craig Jennings to help us with this situation. Is he not up to it? Or not being listened to?

Lol's at those sticking it to the first-gamer.

Riewoldt has just worked out that we're playing zone defence, so he just puts himself in the "zone" of Jetta, Salem or Jones. Pretty easy to figure it out, but when they figure it out, we need to adjust. And we haven't. And don't get me started about playing someone loose in defence. This is our Achilles heel - when an oppo coach works out how to stifle our game, we don't seem to be able to respond, in the box or on the field.

Which explains the photo.

You want useful now??!! Useless facts aren't useful unless they're useless. And anyway, Cameroonians aren't into jolly good floggings. Unless it's Nigerians on the receiving end.

Thought you'd never ask! Cameroon has over 300 different cultural groups, so technically they don't have a national costume as such. However, in international events they generally adopt the costume of the area around Bamenda, the largest city in the English-speaking part (Cameroon being, of course, about 70% Francophone & 30% Anglophone). Who says DL can't be educational??!!

So what's he most looking forward to? His first kick? First effective possession? First score involvement? First goal? First specky??? NO!!! This is what he says ... “I can’t wait to get out there and get a first tackle and really play to be honest." Just gotta love this kid!