Earl Hood

A commentator mentioned somewhere that Ken Hinkley instructed Port to do just that against West Coast to negate McGovern and Barass. It must have worked, Port flogged them.

Kozzies long bomb to nobody that scorched a free Hannan I think happened early. He later lowered the eyes and gave off a beautiful pass to a leading forward. The kid learnt very quickly unlike some others.

Noticed he was always a running option down the wing for our ball carriers who mainly failed to use him and instead kicked to a contest. So yes he has been a bit quiet.

With the TAC U18’s not happening recruiters won’t have a lot of observed form to go on at draft time. What do they go on, the boys Under 16 form and their physical abilities at the draft camp? Wouldn’t be the greatest year to have the first pick with the odds of getting it right reduced even further than it already is. Won’t be our problem.

Have look at a replay of the match, at least the first half that I have revisited, there doesn’t appear to be much wrong with where our half forwards were positioning themselves. Time and time again there were leading, free options but the ball carrier chose to go forward and kick long or shorter but nearly always in a predictable straight line while we had players free off to the left or right. The ball carrier just has to look and in crowd free stadiums, listen to the calls! This issue is so obvious from looking at the video. And look at the Tigers defenders, often caught behind our leading half forwards but I suspect that is because their zone defence was just assuming the ball carrier would predictably kick down the line or bomb to the CHF area so they congregate around there and ignore their leading opponent. This reminds me of when I played suburban footy off half back, if your team was on top you would just ignore your opponent and go to the predictable area the ball would be kicked too. Taking the obvious forward options makes us a better side but OK it doesn’t make us a great side, we have disposal issues but really if you are coached to play within your abilities, that’s a start.

I agree that developing disposal and decision making is not easy and some will never improve but what about vision? Watch a replay of last week’s match and freeze frame a dozen or so of our moves through the midfield and entering 50, time and time again as our player is about to kick you will see 3 or 4 better options than the one he chooses and often they were easier targets 20/30m off to the right or left to a free player. Instead our ball carriers invariably kicked to a contest, or just to a point up the line or tried a low % bullet that got intercepted. Why aren’t they looking for wider options that change the angle of attack and force defences to reset? And it’s just not vision, in these empty stadiums they should be hearing free players calls. Watching the the first half again it seemed every time we transitioned out of defence thru the corridor the ball carrier had Langdon running on the wing as an option, he really does cover some ground but few used the option, why? Looking at the first half in detail it looked like our forwards often moved to the right areas to lose their opponent but we rarely took advantage. Instead the Tiger defence tended to gather in numbers around TMac 25m out from goal and wait for the bomb. Yes we have players with limited foot skills and we will always turn the ball over at times but the coaches should be encouraging and drilling players to look to use wide options, shorter passes to a free player, pause after a mark and look for best option instead of the blindly turning and kicking up the line.

He was a NSW Giants academy player so all they have to do is match our first round bid which was pick 3 with their first rounder, pick 17 to get Greene. That’s the rules. I am sick of these academies, the draft has become a compromised joke against clubs like us.

Well it has been interesting to read Demonland comments, then Garry Lyon, Fox Sport analysis about our problems. I took that on board and sat down to watch a replay of our first half debacle against Richmond. I watched 50 minutes of footy but stopped and rewound our every foray forward into our forward zone and that uses up time. But when you freeze frame critical moves you see time and time again what we aren’t doing. That is consistently NOT picking the right option to pas the ball for advantage for the team structure we have. On paper the fix is easy, it is not about poor kicking skills, it is about decision making. Looking at all our forward attacks over again the issue is all about the ball carrier not being able or wanting to pick out the closest open option and particularly options on either side of you! So many times we have free players on the outside of the ball carrier but they only look inside and then kick long to a contest. When a kick sideways means the defenders have to reset. I cannot believe our coaches are not able to get our players into stopping and evaluating the best short free option. On the other hand we are playing with blinkers on and move forward in straight lines to obvious contests and wonder why TMacc gets swamped by defenders.

We couldn’t get Greene, Giants would just equal our bid.

Yes agree but why? These players are not that dumb surely. I just don’t understand our inability to rectify a basic and easily solvable problem.

I looked at this screen shot the other day and it is damming and showed lack of vision but it just occurred to me is that without crowds surely Viney could hear the calls from the loose players to his right. I assume with full stadiums players can’t hear team mates calls and have to rely on vision only but playing in an empty echo chamber you have to scratch your head why a player wouldn’t pick up such obvious free targets. I believe it comes from our mantra to play on at all times so we tend to kick straight ahead in predictable lines. Any directional switching only occurs in the back half, once we have possession forward of Centre we are so predictable it must remind opposition defenders of their days playing in the under 16’s.

Lyon and Watson agreed this morning there wasn’t an issue with the endeavour of the players, it’s all about execution and I agree. So this not about playing for the jumper or commitment, it is about basic ability, game plan, and how we execute the game plan. Does the game plan work, does the GP suit our skill set, are we selecting the right people to play? They are questions for the coaching hierarchy. Not sure they have any answers.

What revolution we just don’t have the $ to move Goody on I am afraid. And that situation goes straight back to the board who signed off on Goodwin’s contract extension on the back of one good season. Why do that? he wasn’t about to be poached for heaven’s sake. Just add it to the list of incompetent decisions on top of the numerous non decisions made by our boards of directors for decades! Too many old school tie time servers, I suspect? I don’t know but they are at best mediocre.

Not much, the club can’t afford to pay out Goodwin after resigning to extra years too soon! If they hadn’t he would be out of contract this year I believe. in hindsight our drafting is looking like a shambles. I noted last week in Egan’s summary of the seconds run against Geelong that he described Jackson’s ruck work as outstanding “that’s obviously why we drafted him”!!! That hit a raw nerve as why would you cough up pick 3 for a backup ruck when you have Max and brought in Pruess as backup? At draft time MFC were talking more about his athleticism and his ability play forward or as a midfielder.

It is not easy to improve skills and decision making mid season or maybe at all but I do believe skills and decision making improves automatically when players have more time and space to work in. you may have noticed how much time and space the Cats players had last week as they played keepings off. Our game plan doesn’t seek time and space it encourages contests and rapid ball movement, players banging it forward to the next contest or attempting low percentage passes that get intercepted. Every loose ball yesterday seemed to go to a Tiger on the outside, where were our players positioned? I need to watch a replay to try and work out what our players are doing off the ball.

6 Gawn 5 Hibberd 4 Petracca 3 May 2 Fritsch 1 Hannan

Yes there were at least two Dusty miraculous ball releases while being tackled that should have been penalised. Hannan’s was diabolical, then there was the obvious blocking for Lynch marks! Interesting.

You did note that Townsend opportunistic goal came off Smith’s smothered kick after he made position to receive a 7 meter handball from Oliver that should have gone straight to his midriff but instead dropped to his feet. He did well to scoopthe ball up in full stride but then it got smothered. Who do you blame?

The trouble with demanding excellence is you will only have a very few lining up, Max, Tracc.......the rest are mortal and need coaching and guidance.

Well the AFL did announce that they would reward the tackler if the ball carrier did not release the ball when tackled. He had to make a genuine attempt to release the ball and if he did that would be play on. So as usual on the first week of the new interpretation they got it wrong. The free against Petracca in front of goal was ludicrous! Then there were two similar frees for us that were just play on. But that is footy when you keep changing the interpretations.

But I don’t think Jennings did either!

The Rose in Fitzroy? My local.

Why blame Jones or Jetta for today’s debacle?

Think about it for a minute. Jones in next week might just provide some on field leadership but even more importantly Jones so often provides an option, a release for a player under pressure. That was a real problem today, players getting the ball surrounded by Tigers and either coughing it up or going for a laser like pass to a player that was often covered. Why did so many 50/50 chaos balls in contention that were slapped, punched or kicked to no target nearly always go to a Tiger on the outside? Says a lot about our game strategy.

On a related note I intend to watch the replay to count the number of times Reiwolt blocked a Demon defender, usually Smith to let Lynch take a mark unopposed in the forward 50. I thought with 3 umpires they were cracking down on this stuff but not this week.