When you say goody sticks with his structure, do you mean in terms of his selection policy?
One of the criticisms he's faced is playing favourites with selection. And sticking with players who are out of form.
From my perspective, assessing selection decisions is a bit like assessing the high performance program - there are so many variables and unknowns it's hard to make a balanced assessment.
That said, there have been plenty of head scratchers over the journey.
For example I was amazed laurie was selected ahead of spargo late last year. And selecting tmac was also baffling given he was clearly not fit and was still impacted by his foot issue.
But like I said, there are unknowns- was Grundy invested, was spargo perhaps not meeting internal benchmarks, etc etc.
One thing I do know about goody's selection policy is playing an assigned role is key to being selected week in week out.
If a player in poor form stats wise keeps getting selected, fans can be pretty confident they are playing their assigned role and meeting the related KPIs (which could include indicators fans are unaware of, such as distance run, maintaing structure, following team rules, halving contests stc).
All of which is a function of goody's coaching philosophy of being system focused.
His critics often knock him for his game day coaching, the no blan b or c stuff. Go up to the box some say.
Personally, I think those critisisms are unfair, and yet another Goodwin myth.
I mean just this season he gave Mitchell and Scott, two coaches who are lauded for their game day coaching and tactical smarts, a tactical bath.
But be that as it may, goody, like hardwick, longmuire, mcrae and longmire is a systems coach.
Which is why he coaches from the bench (I know longmuire and Longmure dont)
He does much of tactical work ahead of the game and relies on his players to follow and execute his pre game plans. He has his senior assistant in the box to give him in game tactical advice.
Which doesn't mean he is inert.
When watching our games on tv watch how often when showing a shot of goody how often he is getting info from the stats analyst who sits on the bench. It's constant.
The idea that goody is stubborn, inflexible or predictable doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
To be honest, if anything I think he can be too experimental.
Just look at this year.
He selected tmac and bbb at the start of the on the back of interrupted preseasons, and in tmacs case two weeks after surgery.
BBB was probably a bust, but we did win games with him in the team. And tmac hasn't missed a game - or a beat.
On tmac, despite us being desperate for key forwards, they instead play him as a defender (perhaps recognising how important having elite kicks down back is) - and almost a hb flanker at that. It's been a genius move as tmac has been terrific.
After his out of the box selection of mvvee down back in 2023 and bowey in 2021 (few would argue both calls were winners) he selected another in Howes. Out of the side now, he was terrific in the first third of the season and will come back in I reckon.
Amd this season he has selected a young defender, Turner, as a forward.
Put Windsor straight into the ones from the get go.
Blooded the kolt, woey, amw and pup.
He has experimented with our centre square rotations (River, anb, salo and koz all getting a run) and used clarry in a defensive mid role.
After largely eschewing using taggers, he tagged Stewart in our win over the cats, had nibbler shut down daicos and neale and used fritter to do the same to Andrews.
He's played our best winger, Langdon, at half forward flank and not used sparrow as a mid until the last 2 weeks.
And he's brought back players off long injury breaks straight back into the side - melk being the latest example
All of that whilst experimenting with a game plan that has won us the flag and mutiple top 4 finishes.
Predictable?
Hardly.
Far from being predicatable, you could mount a stronger case for goody being too UNPREDICTABLE.
