Dr. Gonzo

On 360 they showed a compilation of Dogs "throws" from the weekend. There was only one that was a throw, I think it was Dahlhaus scooping it out the back to Bont. The rest were fine, just very quick hands. There was one where the older (Hunter?) held the ball for a handball and punched with the top of his knuckles instead of the thumb side of his fist. There is nothing wrong with this according to the rules as the rules state you must hold the ball in one hand and hit it with a clenched fist from the other. It doesn't say which side of the fist you must hit with. It's essentially a modified flick pass but with the laws of the game. I also agree the dropping the knees searching for a high tackle is dicing with severe injury. There is a reason the high tackle is banned it is to protect the player going for the ball. The rules state that a player with the ball who drives his head into a stationary or near stationary target will be deemed to have had prior opportunity. Pay a couple of holding the balls against these players (Dylan Grimes is another culprit) and they'll stop doing it. Someone will get injured/paralysed playing for free kicks and the AFL will have noone to blame but themselves.

Interestingly there's nothing there about the aesthetics of the game when over the last decade the AFL has used the umpires for this precise purpose. Not to ensure the match is played in a fair manner and protect the player going for the ball but to make sure the game flows and looks nice. Where in the rules does it give them the mandate to do that?

We are playing the long game. We could do a Terry Wallace and come up with a style to beat the top team in round 6 or 21 but which won't get us to finals let alone win a flag. Should we focus on getting our structures right and trying to get the players to learn to play the game on their terms or panic and fold when things don't go our way and play to the oppositions strengths? We are looking to implement a sustainable system that can get us to finals, GF's and hopefully premierships. Sacrificing that to try to win a game in round 8 that we would be a good chance to lose anyway won't benefit us. Bottom line is we'd be stupid to not mix things up or have a "plan B / C" but we also need to drill the way we want to play into our players. We are the youngest team in the comp- Petracca Oliver Hunt Wagner haven't even played 5 games. Another chunk haven't made 50 yet including Viney, Gawn and Hogan. We all want success now but the fact we are even trying something innovative is heartening, I'm not sure I've ever seen that from a Demons coach/team, maybe Balme's handball/possession game he brought over from SA but even that wasn't original as other teams had already implemented something similar, notably the Crows.

They've also played terrible/out of form teams the last month - Freo, Essendon, Collingwood & Port. A couple of OK wins but I think they'll come back to Earth pretty quickly over the next couple of weeks (North and Geelong).

Have faith mate - what do you think all these coaches do with their time? They're not gonna rest on their laurels. Hell, I haven't even seen any evidence that we start with this structure at every centre bounce but I'll keep an eye out for it the next game I watch.

If Dawes leaves his salary should go a long way to making that possible.

It's not unwritten, see my previous post.

It's not - rule "15.2.4 Application - Specific instances where play shall continue" states For the avoidance of doubt, the field umpire shall allow play to continue when (a) a player is bumped and the football falls from the players hands (b) a players arm is knocked which causes the player to lose possession of the football

Yep they are a very well drilled team and had clearly done their homework. Beveridge looks the goods. Step 1 for them was nullifying Gawn to reduce our ability to win the clearances. Step 2 was to lock the ball up if we did gain first possession so we couldn't get it out cleanly (despite more numbers around the ball) and try to force it back to a 50/50 contest or turnover. Where we came undone was our inability to match their pressure around the contest/stoppages - how many times did we tackle them and/or a pack was formed only for them to get the ball out the back into space just before a ball up was called? This allowed them to go from a 50/50 in congestion to controlling the play in space. Their players immediately streamed forward in waves and at speed with our players struggling to run back with them to cover an opponent. The other area they killed us was defensive running when we had the ball coming out of the backline. Again, if we won the midfield contest and kicked forward the ball rebounded out at speed (if it wasn't marked) due to their willingness firstly win the disputed ball and then gut run back up the ground. If we won the ball in our backline via a turnover they had already covered space across the midfield before we really even had a chance to move the ball forward or look up for options in a version of "Clarko's Cluster". Bottom line is they attacked the contest harder, ran harder and were more disciplined in regards to their structures than us which is why they won the game.

BS - styles/game plans are getting pretty sophisticated now. They will fall down on occasion but in the long run a team will be better off for being drilled in a specific structure and will win more often than they lose. Look at the innovation of coaches like Roos, Craig, Clarkson, Thompson, Malthouse etc just over the last decade.

With the extra two numbers around the ball in the midfield we are; 1) backing our players to win the clearance 2) backing our players to provide enough pressure to/blocking space in front of the ball carrier if the opposition win the clearance that they can't hit a pinpoint wormburner to a leading forward The strategy seems to be that if we lose the clearance the opposition will either have to kick a blind long bomb forward where our "diamond" will converge to squeeze the marking options and either mark the footy or kill the contest or be forced wide out to the wings/flanks where we can then reset and block space in the corridor forcing them wide to the pockets. Where it seems to break down is if teams get out the back quickly (ala the Dogs) and work the ball around until they can hit up a leading forward around the 45-50m mark. This is still a relatively low % shot at goal which may account for the seeming inaccuracy of our opposition.

I couldn't believe it was even a free kick - I thought you'd actually have to, you know, hit someone above the shoulder to be given a free kick against.

Any vision of the Jetta incident? If it's as explained (a punch to the stomach) those have been let off time and again over the last few seasons. EDIT: Just watched, yeah he got him high but it was not intentional, was clearly reckless/careless if anything. Surely with Jetta's history of concussion there would be enough to say he saw someone come from the side and acted instinctively to defend himself and get it downgraded to a warning or fine. I guess they figure would rather just sit him out for the Lions game than risk an extra week and miss Port but really sometimes you have to stand by your principles.

Haha, I'm similar although I'm a left footer - I write right-handed and play tennis, bowl right handed but bat in cricket/baseball and play golf left handed. Playing basketball I shoot left-handed with two hands but shoot right-handed with one hand (like a lay up). Don't know what's going on there I just tell everyone it's because I use both hemispheres of my brain

Yep, the problem with Bailey's team wasn't so much the gameplan as the lazy/unfit squad at his disposal. To be expected when you let the players dictate when and how hard they can train.

Yep, if we lose the hitout we should have numbers around the ball to force a quick kick forward under pressure. This will either go to the left or right side where we have two "outriders" to get to the drop of the ball first or straight down the middle where all four players will converge to create a pack making it impossible for an opposition player to mark the ball. Even if the opposition win an easy clearance hopefully our flankers will be pushing up to prevent a shot from 50 or an easy hit up to a leading forward.

It also relies heavily on forward pressure, locking the ball in to our forward 50 and repeated sprints up and down the ground. Against the Dogs we'd win the clearance, hoof it forward and if it wasn't marked the Dogs got numbers around to win the ball, get it into space and swing it back to their forward line with speed. Meanwhile our players were caught in no man's land watching the ball go back over their heads.

The way the media works is to get as many people viewing their product as possible. Carlton and Richmond have more supporters than us so it is better to name them as "frontrunners " while mentioning us as an afterthought. He's definitely leaving GC and I would say we are the frontrunner assuming we want him and he's willing to come at the right price.

Really? Maybe I only saw the last few shots he took but I saw him miss at least 3 relatively easy shots (within 40) during the warm up.

He missed every shot I saw him take in the warmup too on Sunday.

Most of his misses came from around the 50 too. If he marks it ~45 out I assume he'll miss as the effort to get the ball the extra 5 metres means it swings offline.

We were definitely flat today on more ways than one. I've seen us run hard this year so don't think it's laziness, we just looked out on our feet a bit today and caught in no man's land too often. We had a couple of weak links who refused to play in front or run hard and that made the whole team look slow.

In a way yes as they dominated play but we wasted many opportunities ourselves- Gawns snap and Hogan's set shot right in front two that would usually be converted.

He may be but he comes across as an arrogant [censored] in the media