binman

Indeed I did, and I was proved incorrect. I may well be proven wrong about salo too. We'll see.

No, not every comment of course. In most circumstances it's clear from the context it is a posters opinion or an assertion of fact. Personally, I often preface comments with 'in my opinion' it used to do the infamous Lord Nev's head in. But I do so to minimise confusion. For example, in my opinion salo is 100% in Goody's best 22 and 100% is a lock when he is fit. Which is a completely different conversation to whether I personally think salo is best 22. Which, by the by, in my opinion he is.

Again, and i promise im not being facetious, do you mean if you were a selector or that you think goody thinks salo is not a lock in our best side? I ask, because they are two different things.

To clarify, salo is not in your opinion best 22 and he would not be an auto selection if you were selecting the side. Or you don't think he is an auto selection in the real world, ie you don't think goody has salo in his best 22 and even when fit and available is no sure thing to come into the team?

Thank god it's not game day again. Though it's gone from the first game of the round to the last game of the round! My kingdom for some non outlier games.

To be honest it's not even in my top 100. It wasn't even the worst in the march - the free against Max for hitting it out on the full when it pittone who did so and the insufficient intent free against Bowser were worse. Dont get me wrong, it was right below me, so I had a perfect view and it was an absolute howler. Brilliant tackle, that should have been awarded. But, deliberately or accidentally, Kemp tilted his head toward the ground and under pressure, and with the noise about concussion (noise the AFL can seemingly ignore completely when it suits them) i can understand why the umpire made a mistake. That's to say, wrong decision, but there were mitigating circumstances. What makes that free worse in my book is not paying obvious frees, for example clear htb against Walsh when he fended off (cost us a shot at goal) and tracc get wrestled and held at one of the final stoppages 20 metres from our goal. The latter cost us the game as there would have been no time for the blues to score again. In my opinion, not nearly enough attention is paid to the frees THAT ARE NOT PAID, particularly those near the end of close games. The 'they've put the whistle away' phenomena is one of the most ridiculous parts of AFL footy. The umpires job is to pay frees that are there. Even if it doing so, arguably particularly if doing so, impacts the result. Refusing to make a decision is a de facto decision.

Bob Geldof got his days mixed up.

Ridiculous. And short sighted. Just makes for rubbish games of football. Does anyone know if they have 5 day breaks in the NFL and NRL?

Better the former if the goal is four points and as much a percentage boost as possible.

Except there is no way the club would set such a target. No way. Sends all sort of wrong messages to the players and breaks the golden rule - respect your opponents. Goody will likely do what he always does - set a benchmark score we want to keep them under. That's ot. It he wants us to score more heavily than we otherwise would he will simply develop an agressive plan, and specific strategies (eg go fast, play on quickly, take on high risk corridor kicks etc) that if implemented effectively will lead to higher scores. And the margin, if there is one, will look after itself.

Me and you both WCW.

Except for the need for a second ruck. They could use petty and maybe tmac, but neither have taken a centre stoppage ruck contest this year and I both have had recent foot injuries- do we want to risk them getting smashed at centre bounce? I wouldn't mind to see verell get the call up.

100% agree with above. The goals at the beginning of quarters - and a couple they scored quickly after we had scored one - were a huge factor in the loss But on the positive side, we had momentum butbfor most teams those sort of goals are momentum killers. We were able to keep scoring and keep the momentum

Damn, I'm going to get AI to write my posts! Will save me 30 hours a week. I'll just put all my DL posts into the AI machine and ask it to come up with posts in the style of binman. For example, AI please give a 200 word post on the low hanging fruit solutions the AFL could immediately implement to improve the standard of umpiring. And AI please a follow up post on the topic of the AFL deliberately maintaining stupid rules to create controversy and clicks. Sheet - even my AI parameters are long!

Finding common ground on any topic requires respectful debate. I'm well up for robust, respectful debate and whilst I can sometimes be guilty of being overly sarcastic and/or dismissive that is the exception not the rule Adding a laugh emjoji to my previous post, which was a genuine good faith attempt at respectful dialogue and debate, is your prerogative. However, given I didn’t make any gags, laughing at my attempt fo engage and debate respectfully is obviously not going to foster respectful debate or us finding common ground. Given a respectful debate seems unlikely, we wont find common ground and further debate will just be a source of annoyance to us both. Life's too short for that sort of palaver. So lets put a pin in it, agree to disagree and move on.

With respect ATBOG i think you are using out of date metrics to assess performance - certainly different metrics to those i use, and at the risk of coming across like a know it all, different metrics than what footy clubs use to asses performance in the modern era. In 2024 the metrics coaches use to assess individual performance would include a whole bunch of information we as fans do not have access to. The most important of these is playing their assigned role. Another is adherence to structures, systems and team rules - particularly those relating to the all system defensive system we employ. Another is work rate as measured by heir GPS numbers, including their total kms run, top speed, kms run at striding pace, sprint kms, defensive running, offensive running etc etc. I know for fact that each player gets these numbers for every game AND every training session so they know if they have hit their targets. A key one is the KPIs for their line, in this case the mid group. Coaches are interested in what individuals do as part of their specific line and any individual KPIs are directly informed by whatr that group is tryting achive and what the indicators of success. Others are pre and post clearance uncontested contested possessions and there are no doubt many more that I'm not aware of Then there are the numbers that are publicly available, including things like pressure, contested possessions, score involvements, goal assists, one percenters, contested marks, intercepts, spoils uncontested marks etc etc. Each player would have a group of stats and indicators specific to their role in the team. That's to say not all stats are relevant for each player. I doubt coaches use disposal numbers in of themselves at all, or if they do only for specific players because in specific circumstances (eg they have been asked to get more involved). Coaches are interested in impact and disposal numbers are absolutely useless as a measure of impact. Take Billings. Posters have been confidently predicting and/or calling for him to be dropped for weeks and it seems to me that is largely based on his low disposal numbers and seemingly low hurt factor. But as i argued on the podcast if he is a fixture in the side we can be certain he is meeting his individual KPIs, in particular playing his role and doing what he needs to do from a systems and structure perspective. Which is why i was so confident he would not be dropped this week (and it wasn't because we didn't have alternatives - Hunter, Laurie, Woey all could have come in for him). So given we don't have access to the critical information to say that you can 'absolutely guarantee you that Goody would not be happy with our midfield to date' is, to be frank, patent nonsense. A couple of other random comments: Viney has been quieter for the last 3-4 weeks but was brilliant in our first 4 games Oliver's numbers are crazy good given his limited preseason and playing with a broken hand for 3 games, sore ribs for at least one (the tiger game) and recovering from surgery in the last game Petracca is struggling with a tag? Really? Would have struggled to get 20 possessions if he didn't go forward? You are judging him on a scenario that didn't happen based on your predictive power? C'mon. Our mission are 'posting records low numbers'? I didn't 'blame the defenders' for giving up 5 goals from the centre In fact i explicitly acknowledged the mids are a factor in the ream giving scores from center clearances, noting the 'mids are only one factor in influencing whether an opponent scores a goal from a centre clearance' By the by, do me a favor and try to avoid misrepresenting my comments Yes i said the defenders were one of the factor, because Goody made clear in his presser, they were Clearances are no longer as important an indicator for most teams, certainly not for us - so whilst they are still important they are not nearly as important as they were say 10 years ago (turnover related stats are way more significant now) Take the Cats - before we played them they were unbeaten but were 17th for stoppage clearances won You seem to be under valuing the importance of the pressure stats - the clubs don't On pressure, there is a contradiction in your post above - you note how important it is mids don't allow their opponents out the front. How do you think they do that? Spoiler alert- by applying pressure

I agree with the above except the last paragraph. Sort off. I agree they didn't change their method much according to the conditions. But they definitely changed their method close to finals and during the finals. Whilst sill lookimg for scores from turnover, which we were too, they basically adopted our forward half game. I take the point you made in another thread that they played a slingshot shot game against us in the final. But not in the first quarter and after that it was a function of how utterly dominant we were. We smashed them for territory and inside 50s but butchered ours chance. They were forced to rely on rebound goals but would have lost that game if not for their accuracy and our innacracy.

Yes, no doubt. But frankly that's just silly. For one thing we scored 2 goals ourselves from centre bounces, so the difference was only 3 goals. But of most significance, the mids are only one factor in influencing whether an opponent scores a goal from a centre clearance. And a pretty small one at that. The coaches, particularly the mid coach (McQualter for us) develops the plan, system and structures for each match. The players follow that plan. Both teams had very aggressive sets up, hence 7 goals in total from centre clearances (I doubt there will be many matches all season with so many cc goals). By way of contrast the tigers had 10 centre clearances against us and the cats 8. And both teams only scored one point from those clearances. Once the ball leaves the centre it's on the defenders to stop the opponents scoring. No coincidence when asked what happened in the presser (the first question he got) a frustrated goody noted our defence and kicks inside 50 were poor in the first - and did not mention the mids. And goody was spot on. We gave up some marks we rarely allow, the defenders looked a little confused at times and tmac and may were both off early. To be fair to the defenders, the blues were getting high quality centre clearances, their marking was brilliant early and perhaps the match ups weren't quite right. And the blues took every chance. On average, even with the clean exits and good looks, they kick 2.3 or 3.2 not 5 straight from their centre clearances (the blues were plus 22.5 on x score - brilliant, but anomalous, kicking for goal). But our back 7 would be the first to put their hand up and agree they were poor In the first half. And let's not let the forwards off the hook. We were forced to play our most in form and damaging mid for big chunks of time as a forward, which obviously impacted our ability to stop the blues winning centre clearances or doing so ourselves. The mids did a good job on the night, as they have all season.

Cost me money. Wanted to vack port but I assumed it 7:40 @#$%*@ AFL.

Not sure why our mids are copping it so bad. The top rated player from either team was tracc. Yes he played forward too, but still played through the middle. Crazy metres gained. Our next highest rated was jack (3rd behind cirpps). Nibbla, who had some time on bsll, next (4th for us and both teams) Clarry, who was terrific in the first half, but faded was still our 8th highest rated player. And Max was 6th. The blues are the best clearance team in the AFL. They only had 2 more clearances in total. And only scored 5 more points from clearances (-18 from centre bounces and +13 from around the ground stoppages). All while Max had his lowest rating in a match since being sick with the flu in the OR.

Agree with all comments. An interesting factor re: their centre clearance goals in the first is how aggressive we were with our set up. We seemed to roll the dice to try and win some clean centre clearances. If so, we lost that particular craps game.

Personnel helps that's for sure. But I agree with hoyne their system is flawed. I mean they gave up 17 scoring shots in the second half (by way of contrast the cats only had 14 in their second half in their high scoring win over the blues). They had a 38 point lead halfway through the third quarter and on a slippery night almost got run down. And a big factor in that was they were all over the place marking tracc. I was sitting at the punt road end (the end we were kickimg to in the last q) and had blues fans around me screaming at them in the last to man tracc up and stop leaving him all alone so often. It was bizarre. Their structure was all over the place. Blokes on fire and they were frequently letting him to sit out the back free. And we got ot to him multiple times. Almost cost them the game.

I have to check on the replay, but I think we might have evened up at stoppages after half time. Can anyone confirm or refute that?

So when the rain arrived we adapted.

#Demon myths