Strategy Brisbane Lions Coaching and Staff Thread

[winged1]

It doesnt matter how well you coach if the players arent going to stick to the plan or be good enough to execute.

 

[jackess]

It doesnt matter how well you coach if the players arent going to stick to the plan or be good enough to execute.

Surely part of coaching is teaching the skills required to execute the gameplan. It's not just coming up with a gameplan and sitting back and seeing how the players go.

 

[winged1]

Surely part of coaching is teaching the skills required to execute the gameplan. It's not just coming up with a gameplan and sitting back and seeing how the players go.

If the players dont/wont execute the game plan, doesnt matter what you have taught them

 

[James North]

Yeah, Dangerous Minds rarely plays out in real life.

 

[jackess]

If the players dont/wont execute the game plan, doesnt matter what you have taught them

In that case the coach has lost the playing group and either the coach or the playing group must leave.

 

[Fatcat08]

In that case the coach has lost the playing group and either the coach or the playing group must leave.

Things are never as black and white as that. A coach doesn't have to "lose" the playing group for a gameplan not to be implemented properly, there are a range of factors the most glaring of which is pressure. When everything is happening at breakneck speed and there is pressure not to stuff up, old habits and having a conservative nature are hard to shake. I don't bite my nails these days but god knows I do when I'm watching the game, and I don't even know I'm doing it. Now thats nothing compared to the pressure the players are under.

Now in a lot of teams (especially the good ones) theres a number of experienced guys to help calm it down and stop the bad decisions. What I think we still lack a bit is that critical number (especially with our outs) that allows you to counteract the panic. Arguably our best player over the first few games is just coming back from a year out with injury.

None of the above is excusing whats happening so far this season but its not a case of one or the other have to grow. What good would that do? Either way you've got guys learning a new gameplan, whether they be existing players under a new coach or vice versa. We've seen how hard that is over the last few seasons and even a player of Beams calibre is still struggling with it. Some may say that players go to other clubs and slot in but in the majority of cases they're slotting into a fairly well established side where the gameplan is well set and adhered too under pressure, which isn't the case with us.

Certainly what's happening needs to be questioned and is a worry, but to say we need wholesale personnel changes this early in a season is a bit of a strectch.

 

[Lionheart182]

I think the players have been poor but by the same token it would be incorrect to completely absolve the coaches of the blame. I am hoping we can turn things around and am still confident we can get something out of this season. But something is wrong at the club and we need to fix it ASAP.

 

[jackess]

Things are never as black and white as that. A coach doesn't have to "lose" the playing group for a gameplan not to be implemented properly, there are a range of factors the most glaring of which is pressure. When everything is happening at breakneck speed and there is pressure not to stuff up, old habits and having a conservative nature are hard to shake. I don't bite my nails these days but god knows I do when I'm watching the game, and I don't even know I'm doing it. Now thats nothing compared to the pressure the players are under.

Now in a lot of teams (especially the good ones) theres a number of experienced guys to help calm it down and stop the bad decisions. What I think we still lack a bit is that critical number (especially with our outs) that allows you to counteract the panic. Arguably our best player over the first few games is just coming back from a year out with injury.

None of the above is excusing whats happening so far this season but its not a case of one or the other have to grow. What good would that do? Either way you've got guys learning a new gameplan, whether they be existing players under a new coach or vice versa. We've seen how hard that is over the last few seasons and even a player of Beams calibre is still struggling with it. Some may say that players go to other clubs and slot in but in the majority of cases they're slotting into a fairly well established side where the gameplan is well set and adhered too under pressure, which isn't the case with us.

Certainly what's happening needs to be questioned and is a worry, but to say we need wholesale personnel changes this early in a season is a bit of a strectch.

That's the problem I've had with Leppa since this time last season. Why has learning the new gameplan meant that the team has completely fallen apart? It's been the transition from the Voss gameplan to the Leppa gameplan which has left us in the situation we are in now. Leppa wanted to reduce the blowouts but what have seen in the last two weeks. It's especially frustrating when we see most changes in coach resulting in an improvement and not a bottoming out as we've seen in Leppas reign as coach.

 

[James North]

Do the same folks also square a lot of the blame on Rodney Eade for the Gold Coast's rough start to 2015?

ie, is it because Leppa is a new AFL coach that he's the first target?

I mean Eade's never won a premiership as coach, but he's had some pretty decent performances under him.

 

[Fatcat08]

That's the problem I've had with Leppa since this time last season. Why has learning the new gameplan meant that the team has completely fallen apart? It's been the transition from the Voss gameplan to the Leppa gameplan which has left us in the situation we are in now. Leppa wanted to reduce the blowouts but what have seen in the last two weeks. It's especially frustrating when we see most changes in coach resulting in an improvement and not a bottoming out as we've seen in Leppas reign as coach.

Has the team completely fallen apart though? Or are we lamenting another bad start to the season? Last season we started off badly but by the end of the year things were looking a bit more promising. Conversely at the start of last year St Kilda were 3-2 by round 5 and won 1 more game for the year.

As for the most changes in a coach resulting in an improvement I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. Port are one example but over the course of a full season I'm struggling to see many others (happy to be corrected though). Its entirely too early to judge the bulldogs yet IMO and Adelaide are in a very different situation list wise to what we are as well as it only being a few games into the season.

 

[James North]

On the coach change this as well, it would've been Voss that took us to 2009 finals then?

 

[Lionheart182]

Has the team completely fallen apart though? Or are we lamenting another bad start to the season? Last season we started off badly but by the end of the year things were looking a bit more promising. Conversely at the start of last year St Kilda were 3-2 by round 5 and won 1 more game for the year.

As for the most changes in a coach resulting in an improvement I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. Port are one example but over the course of a full season I'm struggling to see many others (happy to be corrected though). Its entirely too early to judge the bulldogs yet IMO and Adelaide are in a very different situation list wise to what we are as well as it only being a few games into the season.

Good points here. We generally forget how much can change over one season and tend to remember the last game we played exclusively. Whilst I am incredibly disappointed with the start it is important to maintain some perspective. From memory we didn't win a quarter in the first 4 (?) games last year but ended up on 7 wins.

 

[carnthemlions]

Has the team completely fallen apart though? Or are we lamenting another bad start to the season? Last season we started off badly but by the end of the year things were looking a bit more promising. Conversely at the start of last year St Kilda were 3-2 by round 5 and won 1 more game for the year.

As for the most changes in a coach resulting in an improvement I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. Port are one example but over the course of a full season I'm struggling to see many others (happy to be corrected though). Its entirely too early to judge the bulldogs yet IMO and Adelaide are in a very different situation list wise to what we are as well as it only being a few games into the season.

I really don't understand why people are so keen to make big calls in round 3. "We are a lock for the spoon!" "Bottom 4 for sure".
Like you said, last season showed just how wrong these kinds of predictions can be.

 

[SizeMatters]

We play our best football through the corridor... When we rebound our mids and flankers are just not working hard enough to play that style of game. I honestly can't believe people are questioning the fitness department at the moment. Teams are always fit at the start of the season after coming back from a hard preseason and after about 2 or 3 preseason games one would suspect that the match fitness would be good as well. It's a mental Or communication thing and I wager that it is both. Also doesn't help when you have Rocky and Hanley out the leadership side of things are shot through as well.

If we are still s**t after the bye then Leppa is an idiot for holding off the contract he was offered earlier this year.

 

[jackess]

Has the team completely fallen apart though? Or are we lamenting another bad start to the season? Last season we started off badly but by the end of the year things were looking a bit more promising. Conversely at the start of last year St Kilda were 3-2 by round 5 and won 1 more game for the year.

As for the most changes in a coach resulting in an improvement I'm not entirely sure that's accurate. Port are one example but over the course of a full season I'm struggling to see many others (happy to be corrected though). Its entirely too early to judge the bulldogs yet IMO and Adelaide are in a very different situation list wise to what we are as well as it only being a few games into the season.

It's the 22 out of 100 quarters won stat that worries me. I think the next worst is St Kilda with about 31. We have very rarely played 3 decent quarters in a game.

Do the same folks also square a lot of the blame on Rodney Eade for the Gold Coast's rough start to 2015?

ie, is it because Leppa is a new AFL coach that he's the first target?

I mean Eade's never won a premiership as coach, but he's had some pretty decent performances under him.

I think there's plenty of pressure on Eade. But I'll comment on that when somebody starts the 'Rodney Eade Coaching Thread'.

 

[Fatcat08]

It's the 22 out of 100 quarters won stat that worries me. I think the next worst is St Kilda with about 31. We have very rarely played 3 decent quarters in a game.

Agree that's certainly a worry and highlights our consistency issues. As an eternal optimist I do try to take heart out of the fact that to win as many games as we have with that stat our best must be very very good. We need to unlock more of the good more often though and if by the end of the year that's not happening then I think we can start questioning Leppa in more detail. I just don't think there's enough to work off right at the moment and more than likely a change now would just hit pause on the reset button.

 

[Fatcat08]

We play our best football through the corridor... When we rebound our mids and flankers are just not working hard enough to play that style of game. I honestly can't believe people are questioning the fitness department at the moment. Teams are always fit at the start of the season after coming back from a hard preseason and after about 2 or 3 preseason games one would suspect that the match fitness would be good as well. It's a mental Or communication thing and I wager that it is both. Also doesn't help when you have Rocky and Hanley out the leadership side of things are shot through as well.

If we are still s**t after the bye then Leppa is an idiot for holding off the contract he was offered earlier this year.

Privately I've had questions over our physical performance staff for a while now and know others who have too. I don't think its so much the fitness side of things as the combination of strength and fitness. We still do seem to have a lot of light bodies and while age is certainly a factor our core strength seems to be the most worrying. Staying upright in contests is very much to do with core strength and we're just lacking

Certainly a contributing factor is that we are forced into chasing a lot and being very reactionary due to the high level of turnovers we make, which saps a lot of energy out of you. When you can plan your positioning and be proactive its much less taxing on you running wise. Also we lack the strength to really stick our tackles and too often the ball gets free and play moves on, which increases the fatigue factor. If those tackles become more effective and we stop the flow of the ball all of a sudden our defensive running requirements reduce.

So while it may not be purely fitness our strength issues are having an adverse affect on our required fitness levels. The fitness to get to every contest is one thing, however there's a different kind of fitness involved with actually participating in the contest and that requires strength. The stronger you are (to a point) the less sapping each contest is on you and lack of this can make it appear that your fitness is down. This is why young guys who run high beep tests fatigue much quicker than experienced bigger bodies with lower running ability, its because they have to expend more energy in order to compete equally in a contested situation. Our lack of strength is not doing our ability to compete for 4 full quarters any favour.

 

[SizeMatters]

Yeah I understand where you are coming from but all those factors can be attributed to our list age profile as you pointed out. I suppose we have
To look at the players that have been around a while such as The 3 Rs etc and I think they are fine under Burton and all play very well towards the back end of the season. The fitness department have our list peaking at the right time.

 

[Quigley]

Do the same folks also square a lot of the blame on Rodney Eade for the Gold Coast's rough start to 2015?

ie, is it because Leppa is a new AFL coach that he's the first target?

I mean Eade's never won a premiership as coach, but he's had some pretty decent performances under him.

Eade should be given some time to bed down his game plan. Leppa had that last year when he reduced the win total in half. If we do not see improvement this year it is entirely appropriate for supporter to question his abilities. I am not writing him off but the rose coloured glasses are definitely off. It is not just that we have lost it is that we have been hopelessly uncompetitive.

On paper we have a midfield group which should be competitive with anyone in the competition and yet that group has been one of the major factors in the losses so far. There is little to no defensive running from that group. Leuey and Martin should be a strength of our team but the coaching team do not seem to be able to craft a game plan to take advantage of their strengths. Instead they seem to be forcing them into roles that highlight their weaknesses.

What exactly was the plan in the offseason? What was focused on? Where was the improvement going to be? We have come back no stronger, our running ability seems to be miles behind the team we have played and our skills have been appalling. The game plan is non-existent or at least no communicated well enough for the players to be able to implement it. In short it looks like we have worked on nothing. Now that will not be the case but evidence suggests that whatever the coaching staff has been working on has not yielded any positive results and indeed we look to have gone backwards in many respects.

On going backwards it also seems that many of our key players are going backwards. Mayes looked like a great talent prior to Leppa's regime taking over. Now he looks like a fringe player. Redden seems to be going backwards at a great rate of knots. Zorko was better under Voss than Leppa as was Leuenberger. Aish has shown no development and McStay looked better last year than this. Cutler flashes a lot of talent but Leppa has not been able to get consistency out of him.

Another thing which annoys me is this whole thing about throwing the players into multiple positions supposedly to work on their all around game. How about we concentrate on building the skills in a particular position before trying them elsewhere. Let the player settle and work out what they need to do and how they need to implement the game plan for a particular position. Having them play all over the field has been a failure for most of the guys it has been imposed on. Further when someone is dropped they are rarely going back to the ressies and playing the position they play at AFL level. Instead they are playing out of position and so are not given the chance to work on the issues which caused them to be dropped in the first place.

I had us in the 9-12 range this year and with the squad we have that should have been realistic. A bottom 4 finish again is what we are looking at based on how we have performed so far and that should not be acceptable to anyone. Leppa seems to have improved things off the field and in the locker room but it is the onfield performance which counts for most and if he cannot deliver that his coaching career will be short.

 

[Fatcat08]

Yeah I understand where you are coming from but all those factors can be attributed to our list age profile as you pointed out. I suppose we have
To look at the players that have been around a while such as The 3 Rs etc and I think they are fine under Burton and all play very well towards the back end of the season. The fitness department have our list peaking at the right time.

Age is certainly a factor but I think that even the 3 r's can be pushed off the ball a bit too easily on occasions and while they have high tackle counts sometimes are not as effective with their tackling as they could be. As for the peaking part, that would be fine if we were near september action, but our starts to the year are costing us big time in that regard and if we continue down that sort of track we just won't have the momentum to get going in a season.

 

[Quigley]

Yeah I understand where you are coming from but all those factors can be attributed to our list age profile as you pointed out. I suppose we have
To look at the players that have been around a while such as The 3 Rs etc and I think they are fine under Burton and all play very well towards the back end of the season. The fitness department have our list peaking at the right time.

Our fitness staff have consistently left us underprepared going into the season. This is the time when the fitness team have the biggest impact and when to date they have shown up as being no up to it.

They have very little to do with the backend of the year. At this stage game fitness has kicked in and it is all about workload management. The natural attributes of hte playing group are more likely to be the main contributing factor.

 

[jackess]

Our fitness staff have consistently left us underprepared going into the season. This is the time when the fitness team have the biggest impact and when to date they have shown up as being no up to it.

They have very little to do with the backend of the year. At this stage game fitness has kicked in and it is all about workload management. The natural attributes of hte playing group are more likely to be the main contributing factor.

Burgess from Port has proven you can push the players a lot harder in the the preseason than previously thought. The Crows, Freo and possibly other clubs followed this thinking last preseason. Hopefully we do the same with our older guys next preseason.

 

[SizeMatters]

You got blokes like Beams, Bundy and Robbo coming in and saying they are doing their toughest preseasons etc... I'm sure our fitness team is making them work hard.

 

[HowYouDoin]

It doesnt matter how well you coach if the players arent going to stick to the plan or be good enough to execute.

It's the coaches fault if the players don't follow or stick to the game plan.

 

[James North]

Eade should be given some time to bed down his game plan. Leppa had that last year when he reduced the win total in half. If we do not see improvement this year it is entirely appropriate for supporter to question his abilities. I am not writing him off but the rose coloured glasses are definitely off. It is not just that we have lost it is that we have been hopelessly uncompetitive.

On paper we have a midfield group which should be competitive with anyone in the competition and yet that group has been one of the major factors in the losses so far. There is little to no defensive running from that group. Leuey and Martin should be a strength of our team but the coaching team do not seem to be able to craft a game plan to take advantage of their strengths. Instead they seem to be forcing them into roles that highlight their weaknesses.

What exactly was the plan in the offseason? What was focused on? Where was the improvement going to be? We have come back no stronger, our running ability seems to be miles behind the team we have played and our skills have been appalling. The game plan is non-existent or at least no communicated well enough for the players to be able to implement it. In short it looks like we have worked on nothing. Now that will not be the case but evidence suggests that whatever the coaching staff has been working on has not yielded any positive results and indeed we look to have gone backwards in many respects.

On going backwards it also seems that many of our key players are going backwards. Mayes looked like a great talent prior to Leppa's regime taking over. Now he looks like a fringe player. Redden seems to be going backwards at a great rate of knots. Zorko was better under Voss than Leppa as was Leuenberger. Aish has shown no development and McStay looked better last year than this. Cutler flashes a lot of talent but Leppa has not been able to get consistency out of him.

Another thing which annoys me is this whole thing about throwing the players into multiple positions supposedly to work on their all around game. How about we concentrate on building the skills in a particular position before trying them elsewhere. Let the player settle and work out what they need to do and how they need to implement the game plan for a particular position. Having them play all over the field has been a failure for most of the guys it has been imposed on. Further when someone is dropped they are rarely going back to the ressies and playing the position they play at AFL level. Instead they are playing out of position and so are not given the chance to work on the issues which caused them to be dropped in the first place.

I had us in the 9-12 range this year and with the squad we have that should have been realistic. A bottom 4 finish again is what we are looking at based on how we have performed so far and that should not be acceptable to anyone. Leppa seems to have improved things off the field and in the locker room but it is the onfield performance which counts for most and if he cannot deliver that his coaching career will be short.

I generally agree with the performance sentiment of individuals, Quigs, but I'm willing to give Leppa more than a couple of seasons to get his message across, considering the state that the club and the list was prior to his arrival.

Let's say he spent the first year getting things right off the field - things "feel better" and we're "happier". That might take another 12 months to translate into trust, confidence and sheer will on the field.

He's coached 20-something games and taken on what was objectively the toughest coaching gig in the AFL.

Where I also struggle to put blame on Leppa (even in part) is that I don't know what kind of incredible super coach exists to take us from where we were at the start of 2014 to where we want to be.

What if the problem isn't technical, training, or skills related. What if it's all psychological? Does that take less or more time than technical problems?

I think it's important to remember that it's also not Leppa's fault that we've sucked for the last 10 years.