Demon Dynasty

The bombers have stretched them on the switch in this second half then played daring footy cutting it back through the middle more often

Draper haha.....loved the endeavour though

Although the Hawks are pretty well organised behind the ball they are also pretty slow in defensive transition on a fast rebound. Pedestrian mid field

The Hawks aint that good either. Pretty poor back 50

Shiel wow....never looked like it

Take a bow Nick Martin. All class this kid

Are you saying they have no spine?

Yeh Deanox has pretty much covered the fact that club's analysts (i would guess more so than coaches / line coaches) would be drilling down with more detailed specifics vs the basics we see. Would be surprised if the old 'tackle stat' is used much at all. The "effective tackles" stat superseded that many years ago is my understanding. One of the non public ones i would love to get hold of is the player kick rating showing how effective player's are at hitting up targets under various match situations & pressure ratios.

GWS .....

GWS = Greatest Waste of Space!

Aside from the form of Cameron i don't really see much change in either team vs last season's general output 🤷‍♂️

Wow.... Ward literally looked like he got shot there and the ump still fell for it haha

MRP peer pressure

Yeh i agree they looked better earlier in the season taking multiple avenues to goal. Become a bit predictable when Buddy's in.

Promising signs with enough time in the system but personally dont think he's quite ready for a full on stint at the big league yet. Would need to have a run of very good to outstanding performances at VFL to be seriously considered by the brains trust and (for mine) i've yet to see anything that suggests he is bringing that sort of level till now. That could change of course between now and Sept. Stranger things have happened.

This backs up my call (and Skuit's) earluer that we need to start looking for another Key tall forward for 2023 and beyond. And someone who is a bit of a dead eye in front as well. Imagine this team with say a Mihocek running around. Be nice to find a mature age nugget out there similar to Geelong with Pods as a marure age rookie at #50 in 2009 (Premiership team 2011). Yes i know they don't grow on trees and other clubs are looking also but would be a very handy get if we could.

Some of the closer results above mostly came down to not having a settled forward 6 & getting ourselves back to somewhere near our best mix here IMV. Once we see a more settled forward six that's able to play together consistently while also getting somewhere near full match fitness doing so. With the return of BB a few weeks back and now Jackson/Kozzie coming back from H&S, the FD can now run with their 'preferred' front 6 and hopefully we see things start to gel a little better in the forward half and the scoreboard do the same. Mind you, having so many players out and now retruning it could take another two to three weeks before we see that forward line really start to click. So this week is still, potentially, looking like a bit of a danger game. However, if that 6 did click this week i would be thinking a 6 to 10 goal thumping of the Aints is also a possibility. Right now i believe we are playing a slightly improved version of our 2021 brand (asside from the forward 50 aspects) which has of course seen us go 7-0. IF the forward 50 phase of our game gets its mojo happening (hopefully in the next two to three weeks) and the rest of our game stays somewhere near the level we've seen till now, might wanna strap yourseves in folks as we could be about to witness some pretty crazy performances from this group.

Yes seems pretty gettable 😄 I guess if you extrapolate all that over an entire season and add every week's minor aberage shortfall up then you are down a fair amount vs some opps and it might eventually catch up with you in the odd close game. However, with the return of some key players and others hopefully getting back to their more normalised match fitness / form in the coming weeks eg; Lever, Rivers, Petty, Viney, Sparrow, Jackson, ANB and Kozzie you would think there will likely be a slight uptick in pressure acts/one percenters etc organically anyway. I don't see it as an issue and super confident the FD and even some of the leaders will be aware of such things already and monitoring standards going forward.

Pretty spot on there Biff. Norf tend to turn into crudd without this bloke.

While i do hope the Weid is able to keep improving as this year progresses, all the constant tooing & froing between who is the better option got me thinking in the last week or so. Plugga aint a young fella of course and this could be his final season. And lets just say for whatever reason Weid doesn't quite make grade over the next while... Where's our next 'Very Talented' medium to tall multiple goal kicking forward coming from? And i don't really see this as Van Rooyen in the next few years given he has only just started his apprenticeship. He is probably at least 3 season's away from having a significant impact. So who do we target? Has to be an existing mature player IMO. While i'm not suggesting this player as he isn't available, i am thinking similar size / skill set and multiple goal kicking capabilities / talent eg; Finlayson Who else might be out there we could make a play at towards the end of this season for 2023?? One of the Norf boys maybe ie; Larkey?

Plugga's value in the team is enhanced by his ability to not just play in defence in an emergency. Yes he could even pinch hit for Lever's intercept role if needed at some point IMV (hopefully only a short term emergency stop gap as we saw earlier this season). But in general, when he is asked to play higher up the ground, he is probably more versatile/capable in terms of reading the play / intercept marking than say the Weid. And thats not to say Weid is abysmal in this area either. Im just not sure he is as capable / reliable here? Purely subjective view on my part so take it with a grain of salt. Jackson coming back in gives us another high leaping option up forward when he isnt giving Max an assist in the middle and he also has the ground ball smarts & ground ball getting ability that say a Weid / Plugga don't have as much of. Jackson covering the chop out role for Max kind of puts Weid as the 2nd stringer back up to Jackson here. So provided plugga is performing to some reasonable standards asked by the FD (i would guess over a block of 3 games or so at least) if Jackson is fit / available and BB is also ripe and fit, Weid is unlikely to get the preferential nod over plugga IMHO. At least for the remainder of this season anyway (assuming all of the above).

10th overall in pressure act averages till now (courtesy of the above site). We will more than likely need to crank the pressure side up (outside of forward 50 pressure which is still strong as you have highlighted) as the year progresses given we are sitting 10th on pressure act averages at the moment vs 5th overall in 2021. Having said that we are not far off in this regard anyway, only averaging approx 7 less pressure acts a game so far. Relatively easy to make up as needed i would think.

Never underestimate the importance of keeping those Ballarat turnstiles clicking over Cyclops

While the (general) tackle stat is one indicator of pressure and sure we are well off our overall position last year, i would not discount that this might be by design vs an actuall drop off. By design i mean the FD may have asked for a certain level / system to be played and met by the boys. Given our results/ladder position we would appear to have well and truly implememted / met the level & methods being asked so far. Some of these aspects being asked might be more critical to efficiency of ball usage and movement out of & away from stoppage/congestion. Including efficiency of transition off HB such as cleaner ball use, utilising space a tad better, presenting to the right places & effective delivery etc. Defensively the FD might be asking a tad less of most players from a general tackle count at this early phase of the season....preferring instead to build and bring the heat slowly as the season progesses, ensuring more players have more left in the tank for some of the bigger matches to come?? Also if the boys are turning the wick up on efricency of ball movement, winning contested at a high level et al then it might also explain the lower general tackle count vs 2021 as we are in possession much more of the time?? The time in possesion stat might be handy here! In a defensive aspect it would appear we are keeping the forward half pressure up by the looks of the inside 50 tackle count vs last season or at least, not very far off our best of last season. Pressure acts inside 50 (averages) and scores from turnovers inside 50 would also be interesting to know vs last season. While it is a fact the general tackle stat is off i would like to think this has more to do with good management and well designed playing styles/methods & executions (uncluding talent) vs a lack of willingness from some (or many) players to bring enough heat till now. It would be interesting to compare the tackle averages pre bye vs roughly 6 to 8 rounds post the bye and see how we sit both individually and in a team averages sense vs the rest of the comp. All up we are leading in so many other key aspects of the game. +20 in stoppage clearances the last two weeks one nice example. No.1 in contested possession averages differential as per 2021. Improved one place in uncontested possessions differential from 7th in 2021 to 6th at the moment. No.1 in meters gained differential as per 2021. Average meters gained is up by 200 meters a game vs 2021. Obviously Sam Mitchell saw this part as a huge asset he needed to try and curb as much as possible which he did successfully last week by locking down Lingers who had only 178 meters gained vs a massive 599 the previous week vs the Tiges. In a team sense we went from 6305 meters to 5960 vs the Hawks. My only concern might be that i am wrong about all of the design aspects above and maybe, just maybe, a few too many players are coasting a little too easy on the pressure front (aside from what happens inside 50!??) and might be leaning a little too much on our amazing defensive linemen & zoning system to always save the day. Hopefully not the latter and would be very surprised if this were the case.

Him & Grey are both pretty solid. Seems like a natural talent with a fair bit of upside. Decent moves with ball in hand. Be surprised if he isn't being looked at as we speak.