Demon Dynasty

Both our captains tend to lead by example rather than on-field vocal coaching types a la Lewis & Hodge. And unfortunately, with the exception of Jones on a few occasions only, neither has been able to lead by example!

Thx ww. So if it impacted in line they would have reversed the call even though it pitched outside off?

Guys in the world cup Finch was referred for an LBW not out decision. The review then showed the ball clearly hitting middle and off stump well below the bails. Instead of the not out decision being reversed they said "umpires (original) call" .. not out. Can anyone explain why that was pls?

About the only thing left to do this season that involves leaning back DV is downing one's favorite draught or drop. Watching the demons while doing so surely no longer mandatory and more likely to spoil any enjoyment from the former.

Hoping to see Goody develop a possession / momentum game style a la the Hawks/Cats before the season is out and we recruit Cameron in 2020. A Clean out of any forwards who can't learn to take some overhead marks and kick at around 50% conversion before season 2020 begins. Mids start kicking to favoured side of forwards more often (this season). Some speed, class & finish on the outside for 2020! Clarry, Viney and any other inside mids connecting with outside runners that aren't sitting 3 to 5 feet away and about to be tackled and who can escape their opponents with burst speed and deliver nicely inside 50. ..

Goffy you and Chook know each other i assume?

Whatever drug it is it must be a bloody cracker!

Quite possibly RR. The other factor is his change of role last season. Effectively you could argue it was like a rookie KF coming in for his first season. The opp had very little intel on him re how he played forward, forward patterns, favoured side to roll on and kick at goal etc. After a season of intel (and probably earlier...see Eagles homework for Prelim) most of the opp analysts and coaches had a chance to do their homework and are now matching him up with players who are better briefed/drilled & suited to playing on him. Add to this the fact he is also getting the opp's better forward with Hogan out and you may have the recipe for this year's massive fall from grace. If so it then becomes a question of...does he have the ability to take his forward game to another level and counter?

If you are going to sit/lean back on your last step as you kick for goal, resulting in little forward momentum with most kicks, as most of our players do (poor technique/execution) and try to guide it through, then guess what sort of result is likely for most right footers!? Then there's Tracc's chest high ball drop method! The two attempted bananas from Hannan & T-Mac last two weeks both missing by a country mile! Wowee! Seriously who is (isn't) teaching / correcting these guys? Rooke, Viney??? It's embarrassing as a Club and unwatchable. How Goody is allowing / overseeing this is beyond me. We have become a joke in the competition again within 6 months and it's no wonder opps treat us with contempt with methods like this. So many ex greats of the gane we could bring in to assist but where are they? Very poorly coached and drilled. And if they truly are getting the correct set shot kicking technique / training as forwards, and still not getting it after this long then they might need to be axed! Goody seems way too stubborn, unable to see where the changes/assists (T-Mac to Casey to regain some form/confidence for Pruess) are needed...and make them. Still wants to persist with the most out of form forward in T-Mac after the season is over and didnt fire a shot in 12 rounds! Regardless of whether there's a slight improvement in form from here the damage is done and Goody's decision to persist with T-Mac for the entire first half has almost ensured we are no chance of making finals. It's almost like he just wont accept he was wrong and wants to prove to everybody his decision to continue was justified, even at the expense of the club's potential finals chances. "See i told you he would be fine" (Goody's presser after T-Mac scores 4 goals in a return to form against the Blues, Rnd 16).

Dimmy the overall score does take into account the impact of turnovers and only uses 'effective disposals' as well as 'clearances' and not pure disposals (ie., total handballs / kicks etc). If you like it's attempting to capture the net effect of his output allowing for the good and the bad. While certainly far from perfect it does allow for the ineffectiveness of many of Clarry's (or anyone else's) poor disposal, should that result in a turnover or a non-effective disposal, at least so far as the basis for effective disposals, clearances and turnovers holds up. Unfortunately we don't have access to more robust options at this point so we work with the public ones we have. There is no doubt there would be some disposals that are probably more effective than others, including hand balls, especially where Clarry or Viney are concerned. Some that might be given off may be going to receivers who are in a less optimal position to impact vs others that might be in too close to a stoppage (etc) and more prone to being immediately tackled etc. The model i put up certainly isn't a perfect science but IMHO it does capture the performance side of effective disposals / clearances and also punishes for turnover. When Clarry is really on more often you will sometimes see him hit an insane score of 7ish (i can't recall too many others hitting this mark other than select super stars from other clubs). At other times when he's probably off a fair degree, we are seeing him rack up 4s to 5s. That's still a huge number, even taking ineffective disposals and turnovers into account (vs other mere mortals, even the very good ones, who are often hitting 3s to 4s at the top end). Clarry is relatively ineffective with a fair percentage of handballs as you say and we have all seen it. My argument to counter that is....if he wasn't willing himself to so many contests (above and beyond most other mids in the team) then we would not be getting our hands on the ball as often and the opposition mids would be. His work rate and 2nd/3rd efforts is incredible for someone of his age/experience and is literally at another level beyond most. Don't underestimate that impact and the amount of times Clarry is willing himself to the next contest to impact. Yes much of it may result in another stoppage. Yes his disposal may not all be as clean as we might like. But he is getting to so many of those contests and often ripping the ball out of the hands of the opp or stopping them from doing so, at least till the calvary arrives. The model is capturing some of that effort also (clearances, tackles, inside 50s, rebound 50s, 1%ers etc) on top of everything else he is doing. Remember also that after hitting so many contests, tackles and running both ways so well, he is probably spent on many occasions, hence the inability to impact more often with cleaner disposal. I will take this any day over someone who is unable or unwilling to work so damned hard to impact and effect a contest! I agree, in an ideal world he should be distributing to more impact players out wider into space and more effectively, where possible. But i would suggest we don't put this all on Clarry. If the options are there, via us setting up more effectively and most importantly HOLDING those structures out wider for the likes of Clarry, Viney and Chunk to feed out to (via foot or handball), then they might, more often, be feeding the pill out to them and they're away and off...again more often than we see now. When we do this the wingman or outside mids are then able to connect more effectively, having more space (time) in front of them in order to settle and deliver inside 50 or around the arc (in theory maintaining possession for longer). This is as much a coaching / mid / forward craft / recruiting issue and much to do with setting and maintaining structures (as well as having the appropriate receivers in place out wide who have some pace to put some space between themselves and their opponent) as it is a player issue. Both the FD & player/s are responsible for implementing, training/drilling and then the player/s executing under pressure. Yes this includes setting and maintaining structures that will result in better outside looks and results for those on the inside like Clarry and Viney. Discounting the fact that Clarry probably can ,and hopefully will (with the right support, guidance, training, structures and personnel out wide to assist), improve his delivery by hand we should not underestimate his output and ability to impact a game. It is massive and hopefully with some fine tuning there's plenty of upside to come! As i've said before, with some luck and some clever planning, recruiting and coaching, you can build a premiership team around the likes of Clarry and Big M! Fingers crossed we do so and don't blow it!

Many have questions about the why Praha. It has been a mega drop since the prelim as you say. I would like to think it's a combo of pre-season injuries, Goody's game style being pulled apart, an overly taxing game style impacting the players (mental exhaustion!??), a failure of mids/forwards connecting and a failure of accuracy on set shots (ie., forwards failing badly in general). Who knows if we will ever get to the bottom of the overall cause/causes! Certainly one for the ages and not in a positive way. I was hoping for the reverse this season.

I can also take a look at the Cats over any 3 week block from this year Buck. The Tiges over same in 2017. Run a comparison to our season so far or alternatively our 2018 season. Or both. Let me know if you have a preference. As long as it isn't both. Time constraints! ?

☝? lockstep with u on all of that RR ??

Wow, a bit like how many super stars is enough to win us a premiership Buck? And what are their short medium and long term scores like? The answer is probably as many as possible and for us we probably need half the team reaching 5 plus! I'm joking of course but given our parlous mental state this might not be far from the truth. As you know, stats in general are just a rough historical look at what may have taken place on the day. And as a one off (ie., one match stats only) a very rough look at that! Something that can never capture all the nuances that went down and so many of the public ones are pretty rubbery if looked at in isolation in a one off snap shot. Great example is a mid running with an opponent in a heavy lock down. He probably isn't going to score that highly (or put a score up that he might usually put up) on the day and if doing his job well or adequately, neither is his opponent. When you look back at a weighted score along the lines of what i am putting up or say a supercoach type score, they can be quite deceiving and a low score for the shut down player might result, but yet he we know he did his job and kept opponent X to a lowish output on the day in comparison to most weeks. Everyone who saw the match praises his job on the day and no one looks at the score and says "hey Jim Bob must have played a crappy game he only scored 50 on SuperCoach" or say 1.75 on my composite thingy. That is unless you didn't go to the match or watch it. And that's where stats can be a huge no no when assessing anything to do with sport if looked at in isolation with no context. Same can be said for many defenders vs say a wingmen or mids who might be given a free reign on the day. However, those having seen the match and watched it closely probably have a better understanding of why that score fell out the way it did on that particular day. Some of these anomalies are why i tend to favour at least 3 rounds of data, where possible, in order to get some sort of gauge on a player's comparative form over a series of matches rather than just one and then also compare them to another past period or block of matches to see if anything dramatic or significant is trending, both with a player or the entire team. Having said that who do we look at in comparison? The best from last year in the two grand finalists? And which three rounds do we pick out to assess and score? The two finals and the GF from 2018 seems appropriate yes? May as well look at the best for the year if bothering. Happy to do this and post the results on each player's score & their team scores also! I will also put up the GF result in isolation, just out of interest, to see who was sitting where on the day. We can critique the results and see if the model holds up ok or whether it's complete rubbish and a total waste of time! On the flip side It might also lead us to understand how many players we need to get to elite output of say 5 or higher as you have mentioned. Maybe it's more a team thing with a stack of others lifting into the middle sections (eg., 3.0 plus) vs their usual output which might be sitting at sub par levels, which from my experience is roughly around 2 to 2.5 or less. I can then also throw in our team's best 22 scores from season 2018 as a comparison and see how we compared over the season. Did we get close or still a fair way off those two during 2018?

I have no experience other than high school footy and no idea how forward craft works BIng, so if the experts are saying this they must be seeing the evidence of that happening. Personally i believe the blame doesn't lay 100% with the mids delivery. Partially yes. But a significant part might also lay with the forward craft, or lack thereof, of the forwards themselves! This excerpt from Nick Reiwoldt (and a little at the end from Lyon) on Tracc's forward craft in April, gives some insight into what might be lacking down at Demonland in his mind. Are there similar issues happening with T-mac, Weids etc? (Poorly coached/drilled or just not capable?). Is Melk generally better at it (when fit and in form) having come from a different club that coached and drilled this craft better and we just see a carry over from his time at Essendrug? Is Tracc a fail up forward more as a result of his poor kicking technique even if he has learned a little more forward craft of late? Playing him through the middle seems like the best course if so at this point, as witnessed on QB... “I don’t see any craft in his game,” Riewoldt told SEN Breakfast. “When I say craft, when you’re a forward in particular you’ve got someone playing on you constantly the whole time, trying to stop you getting a kick. But if you’re fast and he’s fast being a defender, well then it’s going to be a foot race. You’re essentially playing athletics. “Defenders now are so good at being able to go with you step for step and get in a fist. You have to try and create some separation for you somehow, this is where the craft comes in. “There are so many ways to create that separation. You can try and get in behind the defender to make him turn his head at the ball, you can stand and push and give yourself a metre, with a push lead. I don’t see any of that from Christian Petracca, “What I see is he’s always been the bigger kid, he’s always been more talented and he’s going to beat you on talent. There’s an opportunity for him to take his game to the next level by implementing some forward craft into his game.” Demons great Garry Lyon explained Petracca was targeted 14 times in their loss to Geelong on Saturday night, but the 23-year-old failed to hit the scoreboard and had “enormous work to do”.

I have noticed of late he seems to be playing around that area and even just outside the arc HB. Possibly just part of a high press or is he actually being asked to play off a wing for times during a match? His form and output has improved bIg time in the last two or three matches anyway. I could be imagining things and he is playing the same HB role and has just found form. Hard to know unless you watch individuals intensely and who has the time to do that! Maybe someone else on here has or has some inside Intel! ?

It could also mean that the bulk of our forwards look/do ok or better when training (non AFL ...match simulation) but their kicking action does not hold up on match day (under fatigue or any degree of AFL level pressure). Time to move a good number of them on at season's end, including some name players, if we are to improve (substantially) next year and for years to come. If not we risk wasting a very decent back 6 and a mid field that still offers great upside.

It comes down to forwards who aren't able to finish or capitalise on the monumental inside 50 count over so many games HB. Check the table above which is a composite of averages from the last three rounds and you will not see one forward in the top 10 for output (the composite scores also account for average goals kicked). Our mids have dominated other teams on occasions in clearances and inside 50s, even some very good ones like the Pies and the Cats. Some poor delivery and methods (bombing to hot zone far too often etc). But the forwards have either fluffed many of the entries or, when given the opportunity, missed very gettable stock standard set shots on multiple occasions. This is partly to do with 'some' very poor delivery but IMHO a major part of the poor conversion comes down to bog ordinary forward line up who, with a few exceptions, just aren't very good at their craft. Also most forwards outside of Jeffy, Smith & ANB (when playing) just aren't putting enough heat on players around them when we lose possession either. We aren't locking the ball in often enough nor causing enough turnovers in the most dangerous part of the ground (for the opp). They are mostly waltzing the ball out. Part of that caused by a very slack forward half zoning method. If we believe this same forward line up is taking us to the promised land (finals or even top 4) in 2020 then we are in for an almighty rude shock. Personally the signing of Weids was premature but the lessor of two evils (T-Mac). He does show potential but may well be another long haul option like Watts. I would happily trade both him & T-Mac along with future picks etc for a genuine KPF (Cameron) if the trade was up for grabs. Jeffy and Spargo are a delist for mine. Time to trial Lockhart & Dunkley in the 2nd half. Hannan & Hunt one more time around on a one year extension. Tracc goes into the middle and IF chunk plays on he moves into Tracc's role. Missing Melk in a big way atm obviously along with a genuine speedy small crumbing forward who can hit the scoreboard under heat. Two or all three of Viney, Clarry and chunk should not be in the starting 4 in the middle either. They are coal faced and unable to get the ball to the outside cleanly enough often enough to justify playing two or three at the same time. At least two of Tracc, Gus & Harmes need to be in with one of those three (assuming Chunk plays on) to improve our outside capability in 2020 and a genuine speedy outside winger who can finish is needed also.

Player / Team Stats Form Guide Rnds 10 to 12, 2019 vs Season 2018 Worth noting... T-Mac's dropped even further since the last 3 round block i looked at from Rnds 7 to 9 vs his 2018 average. In rounds 7 to 9 he was 44% down vs 55% in the last three matches (on average). That's another 11% drop! Hunt has dropped off substantially vs Rnds 7 to 9 where he was 56.5% up on 2018. Only 3% up in the last three rounds is a pretty huge fall. Jeffy off even further vs 2018 also. From Rnds 7 to 9 he was -21% off vs this block -29% off. Spargo is up on his earlier block from round 4 to 6 (-63.6%) but still well down on 2018. Hannan only just having returned after a long lay off is off -29% on 2018. Obviously further time needed to regain full fitness and tank. Smith (up 12.5% vs Rnds 7 to 9), Weids tracking similar to 2018. In the mid field Clarry is well and truly on track vs 2018 and not a concern. Maxy & Harmes off the charts vs 2018. However, we fall away from there with Viney, Gus & Jones still way off their 2018 average. Tracc was off 29% in Rnds 7 to 9 and has turned things around nicely in the last 3 rounds to be only off by about 8%, albeit most of that was the last game against the Pies. His best for the year. Jwags, who started off the season very well tracking at or above his 2018 average till Rnd 9, has now fallen away a little in the last 3 Rnds. FristchKreig has had a massive form reversal since Rnds 7 to 9 where he was 44% off his 2018 average to now be up by 12.7%! Has Goody changed his role maybe with more time through the mid field (wings)?

And this opens up a completely separate issue. Aside from Game styles, Structures, pre-season injuries, list problems (depth). Where has that ferocity been all year other than seen in the odd patches in games (Swans / Hawks?) and from the odd players rather than across the team as a whole? Fire in the belly, spark, spirit. Attack on the ball carrier. Call it what you will. It's been lacking from a 'team' perspective all season. Some individual performances/exceptions sure, but generally it's gone missing. Poor form can be turned around or a long injury list overcome (see Tigers in many matches) when this aspect turns. It's part of the coach's responsibility along with those in the leadership group (Captains included) to turn this part around. 12 rounds in and what have we seen so far in this regard guys? Happy with this aspect?

Different coach Scarlett

Tracc into the middle as per y'day (should have happened a month or more ago). No more HF play other than drifting through there on occasions to lose tag/create some mayhem and give the opp a diff look. Chunk goes to a mostly HF role to replace Tracc. Trade T-mac, ANB, Stretch. Delist Jeffy, Spargo, Smith & JKH. Give Hannan & Hunt a one year performance based extension. Recruit a genuine KPF and small to medium crumbing goal kicking forward with pace off the mark for 2020. Preferably Cameron as the KPF (yep I'm dreaming). For the remainder of the season Pruess in for T-mac. Lockhart & Dunkley in for for Jeffy & Spargo.

I hope you have a good book or too at hand LH

I very much doubt there will be a review that includes power being taken put of Goody's hands RJ. The people that were responsible for the rediculous 4 year extension would effectively be admitting they have made a mistake, which isn't going to happen while they are in power. You may as well ask Goody to step aside or resign if questions of power come into play. Neither will happen. We are stuck with Goody and the present board until the next lot of messiahs come along. By that point the list will look entirely different and probably in need of another rebuild. MFC's usual rinse and repeat methods. Unfortunately the Roos/PJ era was too short lived to fully right the ship. Another 3 to 5 years was needed.