binman

All game plans require good kicks for them to work. Rhe best players are generallt excellent teams and the best teams have more excellent players.

No. Good kicking is. Always has been. Always will be. Great example the cats last q against us and rhe swans 2nd. Kennedys kick a perfect example. The wind was swirling and genuinely tricky. Our crap kicks simply could nor cope with it. He never looked like missing from 40. Perfect technique

Melbourne has one stand out weakness. And it is not our game plan. Though it certainly negatively impacts on the effectiveness of our game plan. We have had the weakness for 25 years. And it is not mental fragility. Though it certainly creates mental demons and our ability to execute in big moments. Our recruiting philosophy in the last 5 years has exacerbated the weakness. The weakness is that, with a very small handful of exceptions, we are a terrible kicking side and almost all of our players have woeful kicking techniques. Of our top 30 players i would only rate the following players as being above average kicks (and unsurprisingly all have strong techniques): Fritsch, Salem, Melksham, Lewis, Vince, Weiderman, Omac, Oliver, JKH, Hibberd (just), Spargo (but only up to 30 metres) and Tmac (but only when shooting for goal). That is simply not enough players who can be relied on to: hit a basic target, kick clutch goals under pressure, kick a ball to a designated spot, kick to a forwards advantage (put it in front of them, put it on their side of the contest!!!) and critically be trusted not to break scoring chains through basic turnovers. And of the 12 players noted above only 3 are anywhere near elite kicks. Again not nearly enough Our recruiting in recent years has empahsised players who are strong at the contest at the expense of skilled kicks. The best coach of the last 50 years, Alistair Clarkson has recruited all sorts of different players - talls, silky skilled, outside and inside. But there is one skill he has has empahsised throughout his career as coach - kicking. And won 4 flags. We have more talent than the current Hawks side and are certainly stronger at the contest. They are equally inexperienced, albeit with some senior players with much finals experience. And they are also down key players. Yet they are above us on the ladder. In large part because they have more players who are above average kicks. The stat about our goal kicking accuracy against top 8 sides mentioned on Footy Classified was fascinating. It is too easy to say the cause is mental weakness or choking - but not surprising so many so called experts go there given the shallowness of most analysis. Yes mental strength, inexperience and not playing in enough big games are factors. But the real cause is poor technique. Kicking technique is tested by 3 key external variables: environmental (wind, rain, dew, humidity etc), fatigue and most critical of all pressure (big moments, big games etc) The golf swing of professionals (and amateurs for that matter) is a good analogy for kicking technique. The best golfer's swings stand up under those same 3 variables and in particular pressure. Poor techniques don't. Not often enough anyway. Which is why so many brilliant players, like Adam Scott (whose putting technique has always been poor)do not win more often. Perhaps the best example is Greg Norman who was so often unfairly accused of choking. He had technical flaws in his game that were exposed under pressure - namely blocking drives. Tiger Woods is perhaps the most mentally strong player in the modern era but when he had to retool his technique because of his back injury he could not execute under pressure because his swing could not stand up under the variables noted above. Love him or hate but Jack Watts would have nailed his shots if he played in Sunday. And we win that game. Which is why i wanted to keep him. Yes i understand and respect the decision to trade him but i would have kept him simply because he was the best, most reliable kick in our side with a technique that holds up under pressure. And as i said above we simply do not have enough of that sort of player. And please don't throw Fritisch up. We could have traded one of our rubbish kicks - hunt for example - and had both of them in our forward line.

I 100% agree with the quoted text. I have in fact posted something almost exactly the same in recent weeks. Using a medical metaphor the critical thing in designing a treatment plan is getting the diagnoses right and treating the cause not the symptoms. Stretching the metaphor a bit, if i was patient showing symptom of an illness i would not want you as my Doctor.

Is it? Weird they would build a brand new ground and not make it the same dimensions as the g. If it is indeed narrower that really helps u as the width of the g makes our aggressive press less effective as an attacking weapon and more easily penetrated by opponents on the rebound

No problemo. I quite like the early race each season as first and second up form is on the whole a pretty reliable indicator. Some just come back better than others i 'weight' first and second up form quite high in my form analysis. That said it is of course not exact and i often get bloused by horses that have rubbish first up form and the trainer has changed something or it runs out of its skin. The other thing about the early races is that some good horses peak early in their prep and fall away. And so you can get ok odds and then avoid the losses at shorter odds. One horse that comes to mind is Black Heart Bart

G'day punters. This weekend is the weekend my mate and i kick off our spring season on the punt. Love the run in from here to when the carnival proper begins. Always some great value and i think the next few weeks in Sydney are great from a punting perspective - particularly if wet as it narrows the chances. I look forward to buying the Winning Post on Friday morning and starting my form on the train into town. Will post my best bets on Saturday morning. I'm not into sports multis so happy for this thread to focus primarily on the ponies. That said happy to offer up my two best footy bets for remainder of the season. I have pretty good strike rate with the footy so if others want me to post my two best i will continue to do so

Do you see everything through the prism of left and right political views? What a very strange way to understand life

They may not have the option to rest players.

And by the by i know you love winding people up and your choice of avatars is part of that shtick. But having a player from another club, particularly one that that king hit two of our great servants, as your avatar is ban worthy in my opinion. But each to their own

Disagree on all points. Except one. Yes it was a different era and there were different standards. But in that era Matthews was regarded as vicious thug. He was judged at the time as being a mindless thug with a propensity for premeditated violence. 99% of his peers were not mindless thugs. He remains the only VFL or AFL player to be charged by the police for an on field action and his viciousness saw the introduction of video to make sure such brutality was appropriate punished (and stop the inevitable legal issues that would have occurred if there was not a system put in place). He could easliy have killed Bruns, Smith or Giles. He can be judged on that.

Not quite right - though pretty close. Human employees at the bookies set the opening price (for win and line bets - all the stupid exotic bets probably are computer generated). Well it is probably more accurate these days to sign of on the price - so to speak- as there probably is a computer based starting point based on their data set. And then adjust the price. This is true of horse racing and sports betting. But yes after that point the market determines the price (and the bookie take their commission). Which is why the starting odd for any given game of AFL are the most accurate predictor of the outcome. Which of course does not mean the outcome of any given game always reflects the odds. But over the course of a season, say, the odds are proven accurate. We should be short favorites against the Swans.

Very pleased the line in the gws game came in to 12.5. Would have spewed if that big game choker tex cost me me $

My best footy bets: Gold coast v tigers game to be over the Total Match Point (TMP) of 167.5 Comment: will be a low to no pressure game and the tigers will score easily and not be too fussed about giving GC some cheapies. I would set the line at 175 so goo value GWS to make their line of 15.5 v Crows Comment: Crows have nothing left to play for and players will to want to get injured. GWS have everything to play for and need a win to shore up a top 4 spot. Crows also coming off a high pressure derby. Good value Other's to consider if looking for multis (which i don't): Brisbane line of 25.5 looks tempting as they are in pretty good form and i reckon the dogs v bulldogs TMP of 178.5 is too short given there won't be much pressure and the roos to make their line of 22.5 is also good value given the dogs are limping to the line and roos want/need percentage

I was at both games. I was 16 or 17 at the time. Worse thing i have seen at the football - or anywhere for that matter. I have been king hit before. Badly. They were both way worse and designed to inflict maximum impact. I for one am glad he never was at our club. I don't care how good a player he was.

if Channel 7 had the sort of influence over fixturing that some (well SWYL to be precise) say then they would have used that influence to have floating fixtures to maximise the likelihood Friday nights were corkers. i suspect the AFL will move to floating Fridays night soon enough as ratings are an important barometer for the AFL - though you wouldn't think it given their stoopid choices this year.

We were cooked. Such a frustrating game as it was evident from the get go we had nothing left in the tank. In fact in retrospect that was really the end of our season.

True enough. I am really confident we will though. I reckon we will win all of our last 3 games, or at least 2 from 3. With a weeks rest post season before the finals we will be in tip top shape. Speaking of which haven't seen DrD post in a while. Iam leaning to an early era Watts for his new avatar; Or maybe his platinum blonde phase;

I suspect goody is more focused on doing some damage in rhe finals than just making it to the finals. As he had said often it is rhe team that develops the most that wins flags.

Trust the process.

He is no lock down defender. If he comes in his job will be to run and carry and use his pace to exploit their lack of pace. Its interesting, in 2016 he was a huge weapon for us and his run was a big part of our strategy but seemed to get worked out early this year. His poor kicking didn't help. But obviously being out of the side has meant other players like Salem have assumed greater importance and it has only been hibberd and more recently Frost who have really run and carried the ball from defence. If he comes back in he is unlikely to be such a critical cog for us and therefore may not get the same focus from opposition coaches and so might get a bit of freedom and space.

I don't think so. The key will be how well we stop and/or pressure the ball coming him to him. If their mids and medium forwards are kicking it in to him under minimal pressure he will kill whoever is on him and get a bag. Tge other key will be drying up other scoring options. As i noted previously they will need to score close to 100 points to beat us and will happily give buddy 5-6 goals if he is the only scoring option. One thing i really like about frost on buddy is that im sure goody will instruct him to run off buddy, which will exspose his current lack of fitness and pace. If buddy is not scoring goals he is almost a liability, particularly on the wide spaces of the g, given how restricted he is (and how damaging his running is when fit). Smart move to look to exspose/exploit this lack of pace and abilty to apply forward chasing pressure. The suggestion they might look to bring hunt in fots with this as his pace would further exploit buddys imabilty to chase or get up rhe ground.

The ellot goblet of the coaching fraternity

Ramping up training would be hard to see on the track as i assume most of the aerobic and strength work happens on the other days, for instance in the gym. I think it is very likely they did a heavier block of training withe the aim of tapering for the finals.

Exaclty what i thought. Really annoying and pretty disrespectful really. One in particular was annoying as i interested in is answer was who were the best players he played on an he got the second (McKenna?) and was cut off