binman

And the same people who won't give goody credit for his confusing selections last week (jvr dropped, AJ in, Fritter keeping his spot) proving to be good calls

Agree those stats reflect goody's focus on his fundamentals - pressure, contest and inside 50 tackling and pressure. Bur we are definitely making some fundamental changes to our method, a process we began in the two thirds of last season For example we are third in the AFL for uncontested possessions, a reflection of the way we are chipping it around to stretch opposition zones and maintain possession until we can find a path to attack and then press the button. I reckon another factor in using the chip it around strategy is it helps to minimise turnovers and intercepts because there's less emphasis on getting it forward at all costs. We're still turning it over too much (4th - Swans are number 1) but we're way better in terms of clangers. We are 14th for clangers, two spots better than the pies and just above Suns, Dockers, Dogs and Hawks - all teams that arw considered excellent kicking sides. By the by the Swans are number one for most clangers, which bodes well for us if we bring the heat, which I fully expect us to do I don't put much stock in the kicking efficiency stat, but for what it's worth we are above the Swans this season, 68% to 64.9%. In fact we are 2nd in the afl (behind freo), though that's probably a function of our chip it around strategy, which freo also use. The Swans' clangers and key stats really show the impact if losing so many quality plsyers, Gulden being the big one). Another change is how quick we are moving the ball. I'm not sure whete we're are at now but 3 weeks ago we were tp 3 for how quickly we played on after a free or mark. We've still got a long way to go to get the transition game right- we're 18th for scores from defensive half for example. Bur we're getting there - take that last stat. Yes we're nor scoring enough from our back half BUT we are actually 5th for transitioning the ball from our D50 inside our 50. We are one posiion above a hawks team many consider to be thevl best transion team and below other excellent transition team in the Dogs, Suns, (surprisingly) blues and Cats That suggests that we are actually transitioning effectively but breaking down once we get inside our 50 (no shock to dres fans). If we can improve our last kick inside 59 and our forward line effectiveness more generally we can really improve our scoring from the back half very quickly, which makes us a big threat if we can maintain our contest and pressure levels.

Bollocks. Tracc's technique is woeful whether he us kicking for goal or his field kicking. Which us wh5 both is so poor. Nothing to donwirh decision making.

We're we? News to me.

It's actually one of the least confusing team selections in the last few weeks. Lever has to come in, and there's no universe goody doesn’t seleect May if fit. The other factor is Lever and May playing together is more than the sum of the parts. They've only played together five times this season, and obviously not at all whilst Lever has been out. It will be great to see them wax on Sunday. Turner stays in, and they probably want to settle him down back meaning not playing as a forward. And With Amartey and Francis out they are lacking height. All of which means a tall defender has to come out and Tmac got the short straw. Spargo is the new Nibbla. The KPIs for his role would prioritise defensive running, pressure and tackles inside 50, assists and score involvements. Yes he's a forward but goals are a bonus. Im not saying he's been brilliant (though he's been better than many have suggested) but he has played his role, is presumably meeting his KPIs (hence his selection) and is clearly an important part of our forward line structure and system. On Sculley, I reckon he's got something. Tough, reads the ball well, wins his own ball and is a lefty with a neat kick.

Yep, all excellent points. As you say Lever is always going to come back you, so a tall probably has to come out given they don't have much height up forward I suspect if Goody is asked why Tmac was dropped, which surely he will be, he'll mention management of older players (which he flagged preseason) being a factor, but also match up being a factor. And good shout out to the fitness team. We were better in the last against the tigers and Eagles, and not as bad as the blowout against the hawks looked. And then great ladt week. And we've had dmfee soft injuries once again.

They should have said managed then. Hopefully they don't play him at Casey so he can actually get a chop out. If not being tested, its an insanely tough call - tmac has been by far our best, most consistent key defender tgis season.

Its funny yiy shkuld say tbe packers are like a religion in Wisconsin l One of the interviewees, a Wisconsin sports journalistin (the context was the failure to call favre to account for his reprehensible behaviour) said 'Favre is a God here, almost literally'.

It reallyis an incredibly brutal sport. I read somewhere that a linesmen who gets to the NFL, before even playing an NFL game, is likely to have had as many as 30, 000 head knocks during their high school.snd college careers (that's to say whilst the brain is still developing in the critical 12-21 year old range). Frightening. By the by the favre doc provides an fascinating insight into how fanatic green bay packer fans are and how important team is to Wisconsin. There was a bit about the response from many fans to favre joining the arch enemies, the Minnesota Vikings - pretty full on. Do you still livein the states? If yes, do you go to nfl games regularly?

As i understand it, there us a huge body of research on the role helmets play in concussion because of their use in gridiron. Different sport, and obviously much greater risk of concussion because they are using helmets to literally ram in to opponents also wearing helmets. So of course the helmets give players a totally false sense of security because whilst as you note they protect from say fractures they do nothing for the real danger- the sloshing of the brain inside the skull. In fact because the helmets are hard shelled they likely do more damage because they don't absorb any of the impact of collisions, in fact the opposite is true. And the amplify the impact of the whiplash effect of hitting the ground (becausevthey have no give), which is where a huge amount of the concussion damage is dome in NFL (and AFL) I wonder if the sort of helmet worn in AFL footy is slightly better in that regard (though not in terms of providing false confidence) as they are padded and so perhaps absorb a little of the contact, minimising, albeit not much, the slosh effect. Which is the principle of where they are heading in the states with the design of gridiron iron helmets. Which is helmets that have a sort of absorbent egg carton style material padding on them (and also have smart tech that measure impact and provide real time data to support doctor's assessment of concussion). I watched a doc on netflix about Brett favre ladt night Total [censored] hole. But of course deified as one of the greatest NFL quarter backs. He has recently diagnosed with Parkinsons. He would have taken thousands of huge hits to the heads, and countless whiplash incident when being driven into the ground. But that's nothing compated to the number of such events offensive and defensive linesmen suffer. Unless they sort the Its hard to see how NFL continues in say 20 years. Not because of the morap aspect of the obvious link to cte etc. But because of the financial implications of being sued. There is already a huge number of retired NFL players with CTE. Imaginehow many more there will be in 20 years given, like all eliye sports, players now are exponentially faster stronger (and therefore are hitting each other at greater velocity) than 20 years ago.

Apologies DS, apologies I missed the original quote. Ironic given the massive score a KP tonight.

Sure. If it was 1977 and zones weren't a thing.

I think your missing drevs point ds - as I noted it's also 5 metres narrower. Which means there's less area. Which us why over the last 10 seasons the average score there is aprox 10 points less than at the g, which statistically is very significant. It's a [censored] ground that's too small for modern AFL footy. Ditto kardinia Park for exactly the same reason.

Its chicken and egg. Again, id argue that people who watch footy, or at least a significant bl8ck of us arec very interested in meaningful analysis. That's certainly the case in America, as reflected in the coverage of MBL, NBA and NFL. I really can't imagine American sports fans are any more sophisticated than Australian sports fans.

Yes he does - but he explains exactly what it means clearly and with the visual aid of drawing a line down the ground to illustrate what he means (ditto 'fat side')

It would be pretty basic stuff for anyone currently playing footy, or involved in coaching or talent spotting, at a reasonable level. But not basic for the rest of us, particularly people like me who last played footy in the under 14s. I'd like to think I've got a reasonable handle on tactics and structures, but whatever I do know is a function of: Having always been really interested in the tactical side of the game Being fascinated by the evolution of tactics in footy My own observations Like a bower bird, getting scraps of information from the media to add to my knowledge All of which means my knowledge about tactics, method, game plans, structures etc etc is really just a hodge podge of cobbled together info with heaps of knowledge gaps and guess work. Which is why i find the coverage of the game so frustrating. I want to learn about the tactical side of the game, the basics and the more complex aspects and i don't think it is unreasonable to expect i get some that in the wall to coverage of the game in the same way you do in other sports. But there seems to be no interest in helping people learn about what I'd argue, given the size if the field, the number of participants, being 360 degrees, opaqueness of the rules and the speed of evolution is the most complex elite sport in the world. Which is why I loved this vid so much - smart, easy to understand when combined with visuals, doesn't talk in the stupid code and jargon ex footballers seem to love so much (eg the infuriating habit of recently retired ex footballers saying stuff like 'the fat side' or 'kicking off line' assuming people know what they are talking about when they have never bother explaining it) and above all informative and interesting. I mean, really, fox and 7 is that bloody hard?

The key is not having someone fast enough to chase him. The key Is frontal pressure and closing down the apace he has to run into. By the by that is also the key for us generally.

Indeed And there no driver fir 7 or fox to introduce any meaningful innovations given their duopoly. Why spend any money on innovation above and beyond paying the bone headed ex footballers who clag up the coverage of the game.

Yes, but its not as wide - i think its something like 5 meters less. So 5 meters shorter and 5 meters narrower meaning the surface area of the SCG is smaller than the G which has an impact on the ability of teams to spread and is a big factor in how congested matches are at the SCG which in turn impacts scoring. I haven't had a chance to double check this data, so take this with a grain of AI salt, but according to Copilot: Summary ComparisonStadium Avg. Total Score (Last 10 Seasons) MCG 188.5 points SCG 177.0 points This difference reflects the slightly more expansive playing conditions at the MCG, which can lead to higher scoring games.

He's good too

Ditto: Just watched it - absolutely brilliant. Love it I haven't watched any of his videos before - I'll watch them all now. I learnt more in those 27 minutes than i have in every game or replay I've watched this season combined That's exactly the sort of analysis that should happen during games and at quarter breaks.

I posted this in another thread, but makes more sense here: It's so great. I said on the pod that I thought our defensive structure was really good, particularly in the last quarter. But that was really almost a feeling based on the limited vision you can see watching on TV and the evident fact that we made it difficult for them to chain up those short 30-40 metre kicks the lions love to use to transition the ball. It was awesome to see that defensive structure and sytem demonstrated so clearly (with pretty basic tools - just shows it doesn't have to be super high tech to be effective). It was also terrific to get an insight into how zone defences are evolving and the concept of depth perceptio. The vision of our players lining up on the diagonal to block the oppo kick from the pocket was fascinating, as was how much direction and talk we do to maintain structures. Also loved the fritter pump up and the vision of fritter and koz working super hard on transition in the play that ended up with koz spotting up Friitter for a shot from 45 metres. Oh, and also loved the set play vision at the end with White highlighting how pumped tracc and maxy were when it came off.

I totally disagree about the average punter not being interested in that level of analysis. It's totally standard in say the coverage of NFL, NBA and test match cricket. Mainstream shows don't show it because they are lazy and hopeless and treat fans like [censored]. Does my head in

Pre the bounce Claz would find Neale and close check till the ball hit the deck. Post that they just went their own way Bin. Other than if they happened to come together in their attempts to extract or get on the end of a clearance etc. There was no heavy lock down or run with (shut down) role from Clarry other than the initial checking as the ball was bounced or balled up. In general play Claz does not look for Neale and just plays his own contest to contest game as well as guarding grass in the rolling zones. Neale also payed no attention to Clarry in general play as they both just played and ran the patterns they'd normally do. Your definition of a shut down must be very different to mine. Last week yes. This week not from what i witnessed. Reckon Clazz was instructed to play his own way after the initial pre-bounce (and during the ruck contest) checking. Will agree to disagree on this one. We're either in furious agreement or taking at cross purposes. I agree with you that clarry went to neale at stoppages to limit his influence, to shut him down. Sure he may not have run shoulder to shoulder outside of stoppages the way a true tagger would. But why would he? Who cares if Neale gets easy around the ground kicks - that's not where he does his damage. He does his damage at stoppages. That's where he needs shutting down and that's the role clarry was given. Clarry wasn't tagging neale he was taking neales one wood away and limiting his influence- the key metric being minimising the number of clearances Neale won (he only had 6 as it turns out, a huge win for us). That said, the way you describe it gives an impression clarry and neale spent most of the game nowhere each other. That's a false impression. Neale and Oliver's TOG was both mid 80% and neither played any position other than mids. That means claz was directly on Neale for almost all stoppages in the match. There were 83 stoppages in total during the game. That's an awful lot of time for claz to be directly locking down Neale. That's my definition of a shut down role of a gun midfielder (as opposed to say an outside runner or half back flanker which might involve running shoulder when the ball is in transition). Similarly melk had a shut down role on Andrews, despite not wearing him like a glove the way a tagger might.

It's so great. I said on the pod that I thought our defensive structure was really good, particularly in the last quarter. But that was really almost a feeling based on the limited vision you can see watching on TV and the evident fact that we made it difficult for them to chain up those short 30-40 metre kicks the lions love to use to transition the ball. It was awesome to see that defensive structure and sytem demonstrated so clearly (with pretty basic tools - just shows it doesn't have to be super high tech to be effective). It was also terrific to get an insight into how zone defences are evolving and the concept of depth perceptio. The vision of our players lining up on the diagonal to block the oppo kick from the pocket was fascinating, as was how much direction and talk we do to maintain structures. Also loved the fritter pump up and the vision of fritter and koz working super hard on transition in the play that ended up with koz spotting up Friitter for a shot from 45 metres. Oh, and also loved the set play vision at the end with White highlighting how pumped tracc and maxy were when it came off.