DeeSpencer

Interesting. I wonder if we'll see a harsh call on Salem. Vince back to the midfield seems likely. I get the feeling there will be a few changes.

He's in the leadership group, he nearly won the B+F last year, he gets talked up as the best trainer and the leader of the young players. Conditions should suit. Ziebell, Cunnington and Swallow are all what I'd describe as very solid but not spectacular players. Within the limits of the game plan I'd assign someone like ANB to mind Wells for part of the game. I know Viney will always give his best but if he's to be a champion player this is a great opportunity to do what the champs do and not play 2 bad games in a row.

It's a big week for Viney, Tyson and whichever other young mids (Oliver, ANB etc) get centre square time. If they can't break even then I don't think we can afford Vince or Jones to do any thing more than rest for 5 minutes a quarter at half back. Of course that means we no longer have the positives of Vince's skills at half back, so it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, but I guess the midfield should still be priority number 1. Massive week for Jack Viney in particular. And Gawn against the leagues best.

The Dogs have Wallis, Libba, the Bont (who moves smoothly but isn't lightning), Koby Stevens, Picken etc in their midfield. They aren't exactly speed machines. Same for the Hawks with Hodge, Mitchell, Lewis, Shiel. The secret is to have fast players in the spots that really matter (wing and flanks), play fast and skillful footy and have options to cover faster inside mids. Jack Viney has burst speed and determination to cover anyone. Tyson, Oliver and Brayshaw aren't fast. But all are still building their bodies. I think Brayshaw often looks like he's moving slowly when he can run and hunt down opponents as well as burn them off. We've seen Oliver's side step and agility in action. Then of course there's Petracca. We need more half forwards, wingmen and at least 1 half back with real dash. That's obvious. I think we can develop speed in the forwards we have now (Watts, Vanders, Ben Ken, Harmes, Kent etc), they just need to play better. The wings is a bit up in air besides Billy Stretch we don't have a lot of options and it's Lumumba or Hunt for down back. But mostly we need to move the ball faster besides from getting a couple of extra speedy types. I think he's flat wrong on Hogan. He has the potential for great endurance, solid speed and really good smarts to turn and beat any quicker opponent. I think he could easily play as a midfielder when on his game. He's clearly not at his best right now and I don't know if it's preparation, form, confidence, the role in the team or what it is but you don't lose athletic potential overnight.

The saints NAB challenge game was our best 4 quarter effort of our game plan. We defended and attacked very well with good balance. Defending: The forwards and midfield suck towards the player with the ball to trap them in their half and the backline push up and corridor side of their opponents. The risk is an opposition wingman can get free with a really good switch but if the side is awake as they were for a lot of the saints game they can spread over and cover that player and force the next kick to a contest. Attacking: Turning the ball over in good places leads to instant attack. If you get the ball in the forward half then kick it straight to a forward. If you get the ball at half back there should be space to attack, generally out the other side before the other team is in place. Watts was receiving a tonne of switches in that Saints game getting out to the open wing/forward flank. GWS opened us up from a lot of set plays. Particularly kick outs where they would stack one side of the field then run down the lines with run and carry. We simply weren't fast, smart or worked hard enough to counter this game plan. In some ways I wasn't too upset because GWS are a fantastic side at this plan. Their issue is plan B. Essendon smashed us everywhere. They ran rings around us on the ground. Dominate the air up forward (Daniher) and stacked numbers behind the ball when we attacked slowly. They overloaded the switch and we just didn't have nearly enough numbers for it. They also then always had our switches walled off with an extra man. I'm hoping this was mostly just really poor effort. Otherwise some of it will be teething pains. When you spend 4 years (2 Neeld, 2 Roos) playing very uncreative football it's going to be hard to be bold and aim to open the game up. My major concerns with our attacking game plan is: 1. We don't create by hand enough yet. There's simply not enough players who can get on the end of handballs and link up to move the ball that way. So that means we'll be kicking a bit and we still aren't good at that. We need to work much harder to have options so a kick can be followed up by another quick kick before space closes up. 2. Our forwards seem so keen to get the ball running back inside 50 and sitting deep when I'd love to see more leading up. Even if they start leading back to goal if they can turn and lead sideways or back to the ball carrier Otherwise it's work rate and skill that will cause the issues more than game plan. We simply have to cut out the unforced errors like long kicks down the line that go to a little guy instead of to Gawn or another talls advantage. The lack of mental application is staggering.

Ever played or watched basketball? Almost any basketball team has talls who mainly rebound and shoot in close, and smalls who are traditionally outside shooters and run and pass, then on defense smalls cover the smalls and talls defend their opponent and often cover the rim. Yet basketball has the type of defending that AFL teams are implementing and has had for years. Not in a traditional basketball zone defense which is a fixed zone with guys in positions but in the way players cover their opponents and guard space at the same time. As it's a non contact spot you can't be physically holding your opponent so you have to play off them and you have to do things like rotate opponents and help other team mates. It works best when you have guys who are versatile who can defend big or small, but AFL teams have that as well. The best team in basketball right now is Golden State who have the luxury of defenders who can switch match ups all the time. Every AFL team would love that. A bunch of guys who can defend the biggest talls, but also play up the ground and use their skills and gather the ball. It's part of Hawthorn's success with Gibson, Birchall, Burgoyne, Stratton, Hodge etc at half back. But no AFL team will probably find 6 amazing defenders who are all 190-195cm and can stop bigs, smalls and rebound with skill. Hence why the Hawks have Frawley and why GSW still play Bogut. In basketball if every man just plays tight against their similar sized opponent one on one then there's half a chance 4 guys will drag their opponent to one side of the court, a player will beat his opponent or fire off a clever pass to a guy who gets open and in his goes for a dunk or lay up. So a tall usually covers the rim and other players try and play between the ball and their opponent. The good teams know when a tall needs to swap to make sure a tall is covered and are awake to it. They make sure they don't get beat over the back. And they stay aggressive to force errors or turnovers.

Daniher took mark after mark opposed to Garland and McDonald, often both! It wasn't like he was one on one against Jetta all that often if at all. What made us look outcoached was the way Essendon rebounded from half back and waltzed through our midfield so easily. Some of that might have been due to a zone set up, but most of it was surely due to terrible effort. The shortest Hawthorn defender is Taylor Duryea listed at 179cm and he's a back flanker. Every other defender is above 185cm, similarly every West Coast defender is above 185cm and strong in the air. So with pressure up the ground kicks are likely to either favour the defensive player who can then mark or punch from good position or be high up and unders that allows a tall to come across and mark/punch. We'll likely play 3 talls and Jetta, Lumumba, Vince, Salem who are all good in the air for their size and shouldn't be outmarked when they are in best position. Mainly though it's what I've said before. Talls still take talls, smalls still take smalls, just they then off their opponents in zoned positions

You do know the centre bounce zone changes as soon as the centre bounce passage of play is finished? And I haven't seen us concede a goal directly from a centre bounce yet. We might have, but it's not like we are being out marked straight away. 2 half back flankers come up to the centre square on either side and can then choose to attack or defend depending on who wins the clearance. That tactic has been working well. 2 tall defenders stand on either side 30m out to contest the high rushed kick. The 2 remaining defenders than match up opponents standing in places that make sure the tall defenders can give them aerial coverage whilst every forward is accounted for. In general play our defenders each take a man but will zone from that man to spots where by they can attack and defend equally. Ie. they stand corridor side and in front of their opponents if the ball is up the field. It's a sensible tactic and only puts you at a slight disadvantage defensively in order to provide a theoretical strong advantage in attack. The part of our zone defending that got opened up with ease by Essendon was leaving the spare man free on the switch to ensure greater pressure on the kick down the line and take away the corridor kick. It's a tactic Hawthorn, West Coast and the Dogs all had great success with last year, but it requires a high work rate from the entire team to then run over and cover the switch kick. It also requires really good coordination from the backline as to when the fat side wingman should push up to cover the switch and then the flanker cover the next man and so on as the rest of the defending side 'rolls over' to cover off each others man one by one. It's why Lumumba could potentially be a vital player to this set up due to his speed and work rate, as well as a versatile height. Unfortunately he's very unsure what to do with the ball and I think that feeds in to his doubts without the footy. Same goes for Bernie Vince who not only provides more skill but is a good mark. Hopefully he has the on field smarts as well because we need someone to lead the defensive group and give them more confidence in the zone. It certainly doesn't work without pressure up the field which is why I expect most of the changes this week (getting back on topic) to focus on players with a high work rate capable of pressuring their opponents. So I think Frost, ANB and Stretch are all in line for a recall. Grimes might be as well.

No idea why you've bumped this but anyway. 4 games in the VFL seniors. 22 and 23 touches in his last two. Bailey talking about how well he's done to manage his time and that he'll be managed. Far out we really screwed the pooch on this one by letting the narrative get out of control that he was the Queens Birthday messiah. Shows how distrustful and weak our senior players were as well that they couldn't support Jack. Watts has let himself down over the years, but the club did him no favours. And as they say history is written by the victors, if we want to move on from such calamities we need to find a way to start winning.

I'm a conspiracy theorist. Mainly because this is the AFL and clubs and the league always have interfering forces at play.

I'd say might, not will. Same thing was said of Nick Riewoldt, even more so when the Suns came in to the comp and could offer him the Earth. I truly think he won't leave if we are successful. The travel for Perth sides is terrible and the AFLPA keep pushing for longer holidays. There's every chance he could spend all of October until after Christmas in WA as a senior player. There's also the reality of him going from a boy to a man and if that means finding a partner from Melbourne he might not be going anywhere. Win a good share of games this year, sign him on to 2019/2020 and worry about the rest later is what I'm hoping for.

Round 5 or 6 sounds good to me. 20 touches in 65 minutes. Probably 80-90 minutes this week, let's hope he can have 20+ again and maybe hit the scoreboard.

Looks like we missed one. But he's small and not overly fast compared to most AFL smalls, hard to make it with that physical profile so he'd have to be very good, which he looks so far. I'd like to see Sydney lose a game to see if he gets near it! Small forwards usually do well when you're winning, the best back it up when their side are down. Although he looks to have that top quality level of footy smarts that separates good players without the best attributes from the rest. This is cynical but I get the feeling Sydney took him partly to soften the blow of getting knock backed by Josh Dunkley. They seem to get a lot of luck like that, but I guess it's about making the most of it.

What proof is there that Brayshaw or Oliver are ready as of right now? Neither looked fit enough for AFL footy on the weekend. That they have strong bodies and can impact on games doesn't mean they are learning to be better players. Sydney had a much better team that we did but they left Tom Mitchell in the reserves for a long time to improve his defensive work rate and skills. In the VFL they can learn how to be the star players against men and how to win games. They have enough of the ball in time and space to work on skills. You don't learn how to kick the ball better if you only have 5 kicks a week. Nor do you learn how to run and spread both ways around the ground if you are so fatigued from chasing. Brayshaw looked a mile off it. He should be dropped to get match fitness. Oliver might get another week. But if he's not playing more than 60% game time and fatiguing then I really think he'd learn more in the VFL where he's at the level physically and can then work on his skill development.

Depends on his fitness and role I guess. But overall I think we've tried that strategy for too long. Young players who show good signs so continue to play at the top level when what they need are chances to develop. Did Brayshaw improve much last year? Or did he just get progressively tired and then started preseason injured? He played as a defensive forward for most of the year and averaged 13 disposals when he could've had 30+ each week at Casey. He wasn't using his left foot, he wasn't playing big midfield minutes etc. When we drafted Oliver we probably would've taken 10 games of AFL for the year and a couple of them anywhere near as good as his round 1 game. I think for once we should stick to that plan.

What does below VFL standard mean? They've all played very well in the VFL. Dunn has 'competed' at AFL for a long time. In fact I'd say he's probably been the rough standard for typical AFL key defender the last two years in a pretty ordinary team. Oscar's played 3 games and is 20 years old. Hunt hasn't debut yet. He was a project player. Good clubs have plenty of these who you've never heard of until they debut and play games after years in the system. Stretch is the type of young player good sides have in spades as well. Professional. Hard worked. Knows his role and can already perform it decently for a young player in a struggling side. Sydney have Ted Richards who's about 40 years old and Michael Talia who just got injured as key backs. They'd love to borrow Dunn from us. And I suspect they'd like to look of Oscar as well. I'm tipping Geelong wouldn't mind Billy Stretch. They took Blease as a possible outside runner. Stretch in his first year looked more composed and efficient than Blease ever did.

Still very happy with Oliver. Just wish we had a Zaharakis and/or Zach Merrett. Clarry showed his class on numerous occasions on the weekend, including a clever 4th quarter goal to give us some chance. But the deck was stacked against him and he did look tired. We know he isn't going to have the fitness base of a kid who's been in the elite academies all the way through. Some time at Casey to let him work on his outside running and getting more uncontested possessions, kicking the footy more (with both feet) and handballing on his left will do wonders for Oliver's development in my opinion. He could average close to 20 touches at AFL level just on sheer ability but he'll wear down and maybe not learn all that much.

He certainly isn't chasing with as much vigour as last year. I had my concerns as was loudly shouted down when I said I was worried about talk of bulking him up, particularly in light of other key forwards slimming down and given he apparently returned a touch out of shape. Hmmm

I'd play Hogan at CHB or in the ruck before I'd drop him. In fact the former might well be an option. No one works harder and competes better despite being out numbered than Drew Petrie. In fact it's pretty much North's game plan. Long down the line to Petrie who gives his all to bring it to ground where Harvey, Higgins and co swoop on it. If we aren't dealing with Hogan's issues seriously then our coaches are derelict, but I'd be shocked if dropping him is the right answer. He won us the game last week. His issues aren't so bad for that to be forgotten. CHF for the first half of this week. If it's all going terribly then put him to CHB and Tom McDonald to CHF for the 2nd half.

On Kent, I watched him pretty closely after half time after I saw his stats at the main break. I saw him running free with a gap on his man forward of the ball at least 5 times that I can remember only for team mates (Lumumba, Matt Jones etc) to take other options. Our game plan is very much to get the ball over the top, yet we failed to pull the trigger on those kicks. Personally I think our game plan is out of sync and needs to have more forwards leading up at the ball and/or overlapping with midfielders, particularly on a windy day on the big spaces of the G when we don't have many players with the ability or confidence to hit targets. But you can't blame someone for following orders. I thought Watts, Hogan, Garlett and Kent all sat too deep, whilst Vanders and Ben Kennedy got more of the ball leading up and getting involved in play. I'm all for the Garlett over the top play from kick outs or deep turnovers but in general play I wasn't impressed by what I think is a structural issue as much as poor play. Our best piece of play for day was Jones and Vince getting the ball to the wing and then Watts hitting up before turning and kicking to Hogan coming towards the ball. The point is I'm not opposed to Kent getting another chance, and for that matter letting Hogan off for some of his poor play if the coaches put their hands up and say the game plan just wasn't working on the weekend. It certainly could've been lazy/greedy forwards trying to get it over the back but it seemed to happen too many times just for that and I question if the forwards were instructed wrong and/or the mids and backs weren't on the same page at all.

Maybe the only reason why I'd play the Weed would be to have him lead up non stop and maybe Hogan might get the hint. That said, our coaches seem to refuse to play Hogan up the ground anyway.

1 first year player - Parish (Oliver) 1 second year player - Langford (Brayshaw) 2 third year players - Merrett, Fantasia (Salem, Hogan) A couple of mature recruits in their first and second games but they were guys who had been in the AFL or VFL system for years. They were older and had played more games that we had. We can debate what Lumumba, Garland and Pedersen are giving us but overall we are young enough with the group we have and need to start getting better now, not just throwing more youth in.

Daniher - 5 games McCartin - 6 games Boyd - 9 games Moore - 9 games I'm not buying the 'other teams throw their kids in' when talking about key forwards. Hogan and Watts have looked dangerous when we've moved the ball. They need to work better with the midfield and rest of the team to find the ball. Certainly Watts isn't perfect and Hogan has a few issues right now but I think they can be fixed. I don't think an 18 year old will be any better. We could chuck him in along with those 2 so we've got 3 talls, but are we going to ruck him? (Or Hogan or Watts)? I don't think so. That's asking for an injury. Patience for this year, see if he keeps playing well. His time will come but it's not now.

The main reason is they are just going to keep him anyway so almost a waste of time to complain about it but I think more his run and defensive coverage should make some kind of impact without the ball. He has the ability to cover off and then it's hard to imagine him being worse than today with the ball. Maybe he picks up the tempo and for once uses the first option. I spent most of today yelling at him but the main reason we lost was the complete lack of outside run so that's the focus for this week. The dreadful turnovers and momentum killing certainly don't help but we can't have a team walking through us at will.

Out: Brayshaw, Oliver, Harmes In: Dunn, Stretch, ANB FB: Garland Dunn Jetta HB: Salem McDonald Lumumba C: Stretch Vince M Jones HF: Kent Hogan Garlett FF: Kennedy Pedersen Watts Foll: Gawn Jones Viney Int: Vanders Tyson ANB Bugg 1 more week for Lumumba and Kent (for speed), Pedersen (ruck), Garland (Waite) and Bugg (Harvey) The 3 dropped will be back pretty soon but they need fitness (Brayshaw), a rest (Oliver) and I think Harmes needs to add more strings to his bow although he could take Kent's spot, bit of either or there. Besides Trengove and Tracc getting closer to getting games I think whole sale changes with youth coming in like Weideman, Oscar Mc, Hunt/White/Wagner etc are all possible but I'm hoping the more senior guys can step up with another chance.