binman

10 minutes ago, Binmans PA said:

Yeah, I heard that on the replay too, but at the game, it looked even to me.

Really, playing one down at stoppages has only been made possible by having generational players in maxy, tracc, clarry and jack.

And as you've noted the clever tactic of having a high half forward, usually nibbla sitting of the contest.

I reckon Jones, who played in that system, meant even numbers not an extra. 

Again, what drives me nuts is their lack of explanation about the impacts of that decision.

For one thing, we use the spare created by playing one down at stoppages behind the ball in an intercepting role.

Which would help explain why we didn't do that well in terms intercept and intercept marks differentials, basically breaking even whereas in past seasons we routinely smashed teams for intercepts, particularly intercept marks.

21 minutes ago, Binmans PA said:

I think our stoppage set up last night was purely for Essendon. They like to chain out of the stoppage with hand balls. By setting up on the defensive side of the stoppage, we constantly nullified their quick exits and chaining.

I must admit, I'm not convinced we brought up an extra to the stoppage, I'm pretty sure we played even numbers. (happy to be corrected on that front)

Jones said we were doing so on the coverage.

Maybe he meant an extra in the sense we are normally one down?

That's to say even numbers. 

He also said the high half forwards were pushing up to to stoppages too. 

It drives me nuts they don't show graphics with the set ups and all ground structure.

The coverage of afl feels as if it hasn't improved or changed in 20 years.

That used to he true of cricket, but coverage of cricket is brilliant now with fantastic use of special comments  graphics and video. It's adds so much to my understanding of a game I love and know well.

23 minutes ago, Red and Bluebeard said:

Oh and if Disco's form remains this hot, does that mean we have a Disco Inferno? 😃

I'll steal that!

46 minutes ago, whatwhat say what said:

based on today's vfl game, the only change i'd be considering if gawn doesn't come up is ben brown in for harry petty

if woey 2.0 is injured then it'll probably be howes as next man up

Watching the case game, I thought don't sleep on Benny Brown.

Looked in good nick and did some nice thing's. 

1 hour ago, titan_uranus said:

Agree with this but query the last paragraph.

The fact that it worked this week vs Draper doesn't mean it's going to work next week vs Darcy/Jackson.

The threat they pose at stoppage with their clearance work, and around the ground (both are much better than Draper), means the task next week is a step up at least. Plus it rained last night, which I'm going to assume won't be the case next week.

Plus JVR's just played a game in the ruck and has to get on a plane to Perth. 

There are plenty of reasons why, despite it working this week, we may need to reconsider it for next week.

Agree, and goody said as much ie next week is a different challenge. 

I'm not arguing we should stick with jvr, roo and turner - though I suspect we will - just suggesting goody implied that we have good reason to.

That said,  before this game i said i totally got the logic of going with jvr, petts and disco.

And i see the logic in doing so again. Yes they have two excellent rucks, but if they run with roo against Darcy roo can exploit Darcy's lack of pace and run off him hard.

And whilst petts can't cover Jackson's leap, petts had the strength to match him at around the ground stoppages. Disco too.

Having just watched the Casey game I really can't see Fullarton offering anything more in the ruck than petty, and certainly less in around the ground marking and up forward.

Ditto Verrell.

7 minutes ago, The heart beats true said:

Maybe I should have said inexperienced. I reckon they are looking ok. Their game plan is better suited to Marvel, but that makes sense. Scott is a smart operator.

Agree.

The bombers were pretty impressive. 

The scoreline flattered us a bit, as evidenced by the x score - 71.3 dees to 75.5 bombres

Shows how important accuracy is.

McKay was terrific, as was ridley.

Their defence has improved out of sight, though still give up too many slingshot goals.

Caldwell looks a player. Ditto martin.

We did a good job negating merrett, but he is a total gun.

Skinner was schooled by a kid, mcvee. And did some really selfish things. 

Must be a very frustrating player to have in your team. 

I reckon they went too tall on a wet night, as evidenced by subbing 2MP.

Don's def tracking in the right direction.

But here's a couple of things to consider in terms of where the dons are at compared to the dees.

Take draper and merret out of last night's side, and how would they have gone (we had our two best players out, a ruck and a mid - maxy and tracc)?

Caddy was the youngest player on the field. We had the next 7 youngest.

The bombers had 3 players with 50 games or under. We had 7.

3 hours ago, Slartibartfast said:

For some, he never will be. It’s sad, because for a coach who has achieved so much and steered this club to that win without Brayshaw, Trac, Gawny and the shadow of Clarrie is a great effort. 
 

Congrats Goody and thanks. 

It's remarkable really. 

We win a flag and then out in straight sets x 2 and people call for goody's head.

Do people really not understand how difficult winning a flag is? 

Or how difficult it is to finish top 4?

I mean, surely of any group of fans dees fans understand these things?

Sure we went out in 2 in 2022.

But we finished top 4 in 2022 - the year after winning the flag.

Ask dogs, cats and pies fans how easy it is to back up after winning a flag.

We made top 4 again in 2023 - without a forward line.

We are currently in the 8, still an outside chance of top 4.

This despite losing 2 best 22, senior players prior to the season starting. 

And not having another in melk available till round 16 and losing our equal best player in tracc.

And having lever and salo out for big blocks of time.

And as a result having to field a team more akin to a team in the third year of a rebuild than a contender.

What exactly do people expect?

4 hours ago, Cranky Franky said:

We won despite the idiotic decision to ruck Petty. Petty did mostly SFA apart from falling over a lot & we had to move JVR onto the ball to get some drive.

This left the fwd line short & allowed McKay to dominate. We got away with it due to the wet conditions.

With all sincerity, I love it cranky.

I really value consistency.

2 hours ago, picket fence said:

Not at all, probably a very nice fellow, but what I dont like seeing is selection based on ZERO form! People fail to see that he first got selected on a ZERO possesion game at Casey earlier this season. Its no wonder he has failed to fire a shot.Ok I get it I'll say no more re Petty.

Picket, to be honest you are coming off as not having a great grasp on what might drive selection in modern footy.

I think it is reasonable to assume goody selection is largely driven by picking a team he thinks gives us the best possible chance of winning that game (I say largely because a factor sometimes might be an eye to getting a player ready for finals - so, an eye to winning future games).

If goody is picking petts at this point in the season, in a critical 8 point game, it is reasonable to assume he did so because he believed it would help us win. 

Petty is clearly playing a role, and doing what is asked of him.

He is a work horse who gets to contests and provides a down the line marking option.

In case you haven't noticed goody has ALWAYS had a player playing such a role in his teams. BBB and Tmac are two such examples.

It is a critical part of his structure and method - not least because it gives maxy a chop out from being smashed in such aeriel pack contests all game.

And have a listen to goody's answer to another inane question about our forward line.

Asked about the forward line mix working in the last 2-3 weeks, implying something radical had changed, he, politely, pointed out that the only change to that mix has been melk and that petts, jvr and disco have played together for most of the season.

Cohesion is critical in sport he pointed out. And that takes time he also pointed out. It takes continuity.

That's exactly what they have been doing - continuity in selection and building cohesion.

And we are seeing the fruits of that approach.

Dropping petty does not contribute to continuity or cohesion.

And brining in another kid like Jefferson does nothing to help us win, or for cohesion - or the kid's development for that matter.

And seriously, do you really think Fullarton would have helped us win last night? Bloke is barely passing muster as a ruck at VFL level

Despite the frankly ridiculous hand wringing on here about selection, we won the raw clearance count - which by the by is not a particularly useful stat these days as it's not a measure of impact.

What is a measure of impact is scores from stoppages, which critically we won by 14 points.

In fact it was arguably the deciding factor in our win given they scored 3 more points from turnover.

That doesn't happen without petty.

Goody deserves credit and praise not brickbats.

Which is why, when responding to a question about who we might play in the ruck against freo goody visibly bristled, before noting the option he ran with this week clearly JUST WORKED, implying the obvious- why would we change something that literally just proved successful?

1 hour ago, Binmans PA said:

We lost 2%+ with those late concessions. Pity.

We did.

But equally if weren't so accurate we would have list more percentage- and might well have lost the game.

The bombers were pretty impressive I thought.

The scoreline flattered us a bit, as evidenced by the x score - 71.3 dees to 75.5 bombres

4 minutes ago, whatwhat say what said:

when they're not professional it's very hard to hold them to account

having four on field has made it even more of a farce - four individual decision makers officiating the one game is absolutely absurd

i couldn't believe it when i heard it, but recently i think it was mcburney who confirmed that there's only three actually 'officiating' at any time and the fourth in the 'end zone' is effectively on a break during the time they're positioned significantly outside the play

it's a joke and the afl refuses to do anything about it cos, of course, it would cost money

and there's only one thing that the afl hates more than bad publicity, and that's spending money

My point about salary is needn't cost that much more than it currently does.

For example have 3 umpires per game.

Ironically, apparently a factor in having 4 is as you suggest it's less taxing - and that means their best umpires can do more games. 

6 minutes ago, ManDee said:

Binnie, proof reader on holiday? 🙂

Clearly not. Welcome back. 

13 hours ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

It happened with North too. I’d like to think it’s not intentional from the umpires. Maybe when the momentum shifts the umpires just get sucked in. 

I'll never believe umpires are actually corrupt or would umpires to help even up the contest.

But I suspect there's often some sub conscious stuff at play 

The obvious one is the whole noise of affirmation phenomenon. No doubt that's real.

This scenario is similar. Game done and dusted, one team way down. How often they suddenly start giving soft free kicks? 

This game then had the opposite scenario - game tightens up and they 'Put the whistle away'. 

Infuriating.

It's one or the key reasons why umpires should be full time pros. 

Just like footballers use sports psychologist and drills to improve decidion making under pressure, di the same for umpires (which no doubt they do now to some extent but as I understand it they only train once per week).

Coach them to do the job better, incentivise getting it right in the form of bonus payments and selection for marquee games and finals, drop them if not performing, allow some media scrutiny.

And they don't need to be paid much more than the current semi pro mob - who apparently get paid pretty well.

Plenty of young people who love sport but won't make it to elite levels would see umpiring as a genuine career pathway even if say the average, base starting salary was something like 125k.

Hell, that  would be double the starting salary in the community sector - a sector where salaries even for CEOS tops out at aprox 175k.

I'm going to debut the binman Unleashed segment- a blatant rip off cornes' volcano.

Just got to decide what makes me most angry.

There's more than a few options.

Go redleggers.

Caddy was the youngest player tonight.

And apparently we had the next 7 youngest.

The bombers are still in rebuild mode.

The Kids are alright

2 minutes ago, Moonshadow said:

My hat goes off to Nibbler.

Merritt could have been so damaging, but was kept reasonably quiet, particularly in the 2nd and 3rd quarters

Nibbler's fitness and ability to put on pressure was immense

Heart and soul.

His critical defensive effort inside the bombers' 50 late in the first that started a scoring chain, ending with koz's goal was so important.

Credit to McKay.

They would have been list without him.

A thought experiment.

Imagine taking draper and Merrett out of the bombers team tonight (the equivalent of gawn and tracc).

1 minute ago, Dee Zephyr said:

McVee, my goodness.

He was just brilliant.

Gave Skinner a complete bath.

Just now, demosaw said:

Essendon are a bunch of ruck-knuckles.

Thoughts on the non selection of a ruck?

1 minute ago, Engorged Onion said:

 

Not really, much like the rest of the news, it depends where you choose to get your opinions from. 😅

Indeed.

I expected we would win.

So certainly not against the odds from where I sit.

Just now, praha said:

Awesome, awesome win.

Umpires did everything they could to make a game of it.

 

That was bizarre umpiring in the last 5 minutes.

For example the bombers throwing the ball all night and they pluck one out of nowhere against rivers.

Go redleggers!

16 minutes ago, binman said:

Go doggies.

The 13 point line was my best bet of the round.

A long way to go yet (it's 3 quarter time), but they look the better, and fresher, team atm.

Good game of footy 

11 minutes ago, Engorged Onion said:

It’s so crazy, I’m imagining the form of Carlton and Freo will dip as well for a few weeks… it’s like the science is weird or something*
 

*checks todays scores 

And what about those swannies?

Lose a couple and people are wondering if they have come back to the pack....

Go doggies.

The 13 point line was my best bet of the round.

A long way to go yet (it's 3 quarter time), but they look the better, and fresher, team atm.