Akum

Just keeps getting better!

Me too. Are we in China already???

It's really hard to plan for Cox. He's a project player, and there's no point in including, say, Pedersen in the team (along with Frost) just to counter what he might do, which means taking the risk that he just might have a huge influence in his first game, which is highly unlikely to happen. It is highly unlikely, isn't it??????

I reckon if there's no photo of his guns, he wasn't there (just jokin' Saty!)

The form of inexperienced sides can fluctuate more from game to game too.

Nobody's expecting us to win except for DLanders getting way ahead of ourselves. No offence guys, but I'd back the betting odds against DLanders' expectations any day. This is NOT a game we're expected to win.

Agree, but our problem is that our form against Norf is as relevant as our form against the Druggies. Stating the obvious, there's still too much difference between our best and our worst. If we get everything nearly right, we can match anybody. But if we get one or two things wrong, we're poo. Last year we got a few things wrong the first time we played them. Bucks got away with playing Oxley loose in defence and he was BOG, as well as Cloke popping goals from both boundary lines on the 50m arc, from 60m out and from a ball that bounced on its point back into his hands right in front. The second time we played them, we got pretty much everything right and nailed them. If we're on top of our game, we'll beat them. We can again expect Bucks to try to nullify Gawn & Viney & probably Hogan. Goldie did us a favour by trying to beat Gawn fair & square, but this week there will be heaps of holding & pushing & double-teaming of Gawn at stoppages without much concern about where the ball is; their mids will expect this and be ready to pounce on a neutral ball, and Gawn will get no help whatsoever from umpires. Bucks doesn't like tagging, but we rely so heavily on Viney at stoppages that he's now a target, and can expect to wear someone like McCaffer who will be focussed only on pushing or holding Viney away from stoppages, again without any intervention from umpires except when Viney pushes back. Clearances are so important in this match. Like I said before the Essendon game, I don't want to see us a few goals behind halfway through the third quarter scratching our heads wondering why we're getting smashed in clearances when we should be winning them. The Pies will be planning their whole game strategy on being able to nullify Gawn & Viney (for example, they'll plan for the ball landing at the ruck men's feet at just about every stoppage, and they'll be swarming on the ball & getting first hands & blocking & digging it out, while the taps to advantage that we're waiting for just aren't coming) and we need to anticipate before the game what we're going to do if they manage to do it. For example, if McCaffer's wearing Viney like lycra, Viney doesn't try to win the clearance but tries to block another Collingwood mid (say, Treloar) at stoppages, thus taking two opponents (Treloar & McCaffer) out; or move Viney to full forward, where against a mid-tagger his greater strength will be extremely dangerous and harder to counter.

Fair enough. He certainly didn't look all at sea, like Strauss looked in his first few games, for example. My guess is that he's been brought to the club because they think he can play zone defence well. And (speaking for myself) it's harder to assess a "zone defence" performance because I'm used to defenders being more about match-ups and one-on-one. So if his positioning and use of space and covering of space and decoy running was good, that's what the coaches will be looking for. But as yet they're not the things I'm attuned to notice about a defender's performance. It may well be that Garland & Grimes struggle more with a zone defence too. And for a zone defence, it's more important to get the "mix" of 7 or 8 players who might play through there right, rather than to just pick the top 7 or 8 defenders at the club. Still think 3 kicks & 5 handballs is just "OK", even in a first game, but not opposed to giving him another go, especially as we already have 2 enforced changes, which is probably enough.

More "facts", from AFL website: Goldie only spent 1% of his time on the ground in the forward line on Sunday. So he spent just about all of his 93% TOG in Sunday's game on the ball. Max is on the ball for 98% of the time that he's on the ground this season. So his 89% TOG on Sunday was also just about all on the ball. You'd expect that for just about all of that time they would have been opposed to each other. Both coaches would have wanted to limit the amount of the time that the other ruck was on the ground unopposed. Neither Brown nor Petrie got a single hitout. But Max was double-teamed a few times too, because the likes of Wells, dal Santo and Cunnington did get hitouts. Sorry Steve.

I would have thought that such a perceptive poster as yourself could get the distinction here. Nobody is saying that Goldie wasn't the most influential player on Sunday, and as such deservedly BOG. But when he and Gawn were directly opposed, as they were for at least 80% of the game, Max "killed" him, measured by both number and effectiveness of hitouts. Goldie holds the record in both - 65 hitouts, 27 to advantage - playing against GWS in a game in which Mumford either didn't play or was injured early, and he was against nobodies the whole game. Gawn got his stats against the reigning AA & No.1 ruckman in top form. Goldie was effective mainly when he managed to get away from Max, and all credit to him for that. And they were directly opposed for a huge slice of the game. Max had 89% TOG, and Goldie 93%, so Goldie was only off the ground for 7% of the game, and Gawn would have been off for just about all of that too. My impression watching the game was that Goldie was opposed to Frost etc far more often that Gawn was opposed to Brown or Petrie (tho' ICBF to check it). But there's no doubt that when Goldie was opposed to Frost, Norf won a lot more clearances and got on top. And it's obvious that Brown & Petrie are far better opposition than Frost and whoever else. The number one ruck in the comp got BOG but was smashed in ruck contests by his direct opponent who nearly broke the relevant records. And Gawn put on one of the best individual performances ever, but his direct opponent still got BOG. It could well be argued, without hyperbole, that this was the greatest ruck contest in the history of the game, though it's gone by largely unrecognised as yet. But back to the distinction between winning the one-on-one contests, which Max won hands down, and having the most influence on the game, which Goldie won and was unanimously BOG. Most posters seem to have had no trouble getting this. Steve, most of your posts are right off the top shelf. But some of us are struggling to work out why you, of all posters, seem so keen to undersell Gawn's performance by pushing a fiction that it was done against lesser opponents.

Thought he did "OK" rather than "well". There weren't the steady stream of clangers that were a problem in NAB, so perhaps one could say that playing him in preseason games may have been a good move. We've got three promising young HBFs - Wagner, Hunt & White. Wagner seems to have been fast-tracked, though the others had interrupted pre-seasons and are playing back to full fitness. As things stand now, I can't see why Wagner deserves a game (let alone a number of games) ahead of Hunt & White on their late-2015 form. Your "form permitting" qualifier is the crux. His performance needs to be 5/10 at the very least, and so far he's not got there. Another 3/10 game this weekend, especially if there's a couple of clangers and it's close, won't do him as much good as a stand-out performance for Casey would. I'm 50/50 about him being in the team this weekend, but if he's picked in such a hugely important game for both sides, he'll really be under the pump to perform.

Wagner seems to have the right stuff and should become a good player. But I think posters are seeing stuff that wasn't there on Sunday. One great pass, one great tackle ... and that's it. What he did was good, but he simply didn't do very much at all. I admit I didn't pick up on how he did defensively. It was a fast open game, Norf had some forwards that over performed (Harvey, Waite) and some that under performed (Thomas, Petrie), and the defence was zoning and playing as a unit, so it's hard to assess how well he did defensively. While I think it's harsh to say that the selection of Wagner lost us the Norf game, I just don't think he's ready yet. My concern is that if the Pies game is close and he does a few clangers, it could really set him back. He'd benefit more from a few games at Casey to see how he stacks up against other rivals for his spot such as Hunt and White and, yes, Grimes and Garland.

Stretch is one of our youngest & lightest players with a handful of games. By refusing to duck or dive or in any other way to stage for a free, he put himself far ahead of Harvey, Waite, del Santo, McMillan, Ziebell, Cunnington, Thomas and the rest of Norf - not to mention their perpetually whinging coach - in the character stakes.

OK, fair enough. I didn't explain it well. What I meant was that TOG% will now have to be taken into consideration in selection decisions, because it's going to be harder for sides to carry too many players who can only manage 70% TOG or less. If, with a similar team to Sunday, we get an early injury, we could collectively really struggle to run out the game, if a number of senior players are having to play more TOG% than they can comfortably manage. Perhaps Roos was referring to this when he named "tiredness" as a factor in our poor performance against the Druggies, and dropped Brayshaw to emphasize the point. Whoever replaces Vince, who often gets close to 90% TOG, must be able to comfortably do the same. So that counts out Brayshaw, and if Jeffy isn't fully fit, it won't be him either. Or if we don't actually have anyone to bring in who can come close to Vince's TOG (and the only one I can think of who could is Grimes), the only solution is to drop (say) Wagner too, to make up for Vince's-87%-plus-Wagner's-63% by bringing in 2 players who can both play 75%. And if this week we keep all of Harmes, Tyson, Oliver & Wagner, we probably can't afford bring in Petracca. It also makes the likes of Harmes & Wagner much more vulnerable to being dropped, compared to say Bugg or Matt Jones, who can manage more TOG and not place extra burden on their teammates.

The average TOG% per player needs to be just under 82% across the team. There are 18 positions (you could think about it as 18 EFT) to be shared among 22 players. (18 x 100)/22 = 81.8181 ... So these are significantly below that, requiring others to play more to compensate. This will become a more important stat with the interchange changes.

Fair enough. But in that case, the predictable outcome would have been the other player gets off & Bernie gets cited for staging or some other charge that doesn't yet exist. The tribunal still can't escape the perception, held almost universally, that there's one rule for some & another rule for others. This case only bears it out. The only thing about that tribunal that's consistent & predictable is its inconsistency.

How about: "I'm concerned about the number of frees paid against us in our match against North, and I need to be able to instruct my players how to avoid making the same mistakes ever again. I'm sure that we all want to see less free kicks given. Could I go through every free given against us against Norf with the umpires' boss and the umpires who officiated? "Oh, and by the way, can the umpires' boss help us in our training to practice how to correctly tackle players who duck and dive?"

You must have amazing definition on your TV to tell that.

I have a lot of time for Goldie; he's much better than either Sandi or Nic Nat. But Max absolutely smashed Goldstein in one-on-one contests between them. Goldstein was certainly effective (arguably even BOG in terms of influencing the result), but only when he was able to get away from Max for one reason or another. Goldstein holds the game records for total-hitouts and hitouts-to-advantage, but IIRC this was against a team that had no ruckman for most of the game. Maxy almost took both those records off him playing against him. Another 3 of both and Goldie could have had the distinction of being BOG in a game where his opponent broke these records in one of the best displays of ruck work of all time.

I have a lot of time for Goldie; he's much better than either Sandi or Nic Nat. But Max absolutely smashed Goldstein in one-on-one contests between them. Goldstein was certainly effective (arguably even BOG in terms of influencing the result), but only when he was able to get away from Max for one reason or another. Goldstein holds the game records for total-hitouts and hitouts-to-advantage, but IIRC this was against a team that had no ruckman for most of the game. Maxy almost took both those records off him playing against him. Another 3 of both and Goldie could have had the distinction of being BOG in a game where his opponent broke these records in one of the best displays of ruck work of all time.

Does Goldie fend off Stretch with a raised right forearm?

Was this before or after The Mark?

Thought Roos said something really interesting in his presser: "I think what I’ve learned for this team is we have to be really educational and solution-based. We’re still a very, very young team. "You can rev-up older teams and they flick a switch a bit, but our young guys want solutions. They want to know why are we up, why are we down, why are we playing well, why are we playing poorly, so that’s something the coaching group have made a big focus of." (quoted from the AFL website) In contrast to last week, really liked the coaching this week, seemed to get the right balance between defence & attack.* Perhaps coach & team are just connecting a bit better. It's interesting too that the team seems to be able to improve their performance more effectively by being able to work out what they're doing wrong, rather than by revving them up. They need to figure it out, rather than to be revved up - in other words, just pushing them to try harder when they can't figure out where they're going wrong & how they need to fix it just isn't going to work. * The one quibble I have this week is not having a hard tag on Harvey. But on the other hand, perhaps a zone defence rather than man-on-man means that we rebound better & get more goals as a result, so it has a better nett effect.

Great post Mr Leg. And I'd like to add ... This game shows how you guys look so much better, as team and as individuals, when you take the game on and take risks (intelligent risks). If going for it means you might make more mistakes ... then go for it anyway!

Fair enough.