Strategy Chris Scott's coaching performance

[muttonchops]

Now this I is not a bash Chris Scott sack him now thread. I think it is apt to at least DISCUSS his performance. Yes he came in and coached a flag and that was a magnificent effort. But was a lot of that riding on the coat tails of Mark Thompson and a great list. Yes that contributed but Scott did a good job. When he took the job if I remember correctly he was always aiming at a 2014/2015 flag tilt and he started developing the list accordingly.

But what is getting a little worrying is some of the coaching that is going on. Last year ended poorly with a bad loss to Freo in a "home" final and this season with an even better home final we have again succumbed. But throughout this season often our ladder position may have actually flattered our performance.

Some key coaching areas I think need attention appear to have not been addressed. Stoppages and clearances for me is a key one. This has been a problem last year and has continued this year. Shane O'Bree was bought in this year to help in this area but not much progress has been made. It is fair to say that our ruck stocks have contributed to this but in games where we have played "lesser" teams clearances and stoppages was an issue. Then when you come up against real quality like Sandilands yesterday the problem is magnified. Even Matthew Lobbe had 50+ hitouts against us. I know people will go on about how our gameplan allows us to lose stoppages because we can then win the ball back but that's crap. If you get your hands on it first that's this biggest advantage you can get. It is worrying for me that this severe issue has not been rectified for such a long period of time and on the biggest stage yesterday it gets exposed.

Another issue I have with the coaching is a lack of flexibility in our gameplan. When we go forward we are pretty predictable. Kick it to Hawk or Pods is about it then work from that. I know it is easy to pick out yesterdays game but is was blatantly obvious yesterday what we were doing. Throughout the year we had failed to implement a plan B or C if our forward line isn't functioning. Harry Taylor has been a bit of a plan B but that's about it. I think it is vital for a coaching staff to be able to react in a game and change things when they aren't working and yesterday our coaches were unable to do that.

I think that our inability to replace Cameron Ling as a tagger has been an issue. Taylor Hunt has been tried in that role but has not been successful. Continually we have had players tear us apart and nothing was done about it. I talk about Brent Harvey, Daniel Wells, Pendlebury, Mitchell and yesterday Barlow. It seems we don't go a hard tag as we used to is it due to lack of a tagger or just an unwillingness from the coaches to put a stop on a player that is killing us. I think we saw yesterday what the value of a good tagger is as we saw with Lingy for so long. The coaches refusal to stop key players has been worrying.

I know it is easy to start picking away at yesterdays game as it was so bad. But on the big stage when you are tested when the stakes are at their highest is when you expect to see if what you have been doing as a coach stands up. I think that perhaps some of the worrying signs that have been present for a period of time were finally exposed yesterday in the worst possible way. If the coaching had have been on top of these problems they may not have been exposed so badly.

I don't want to see this as an over reaction to a bad finals loss. These problems have existed for a long time among others I haven't even gone into that others may like to bring up. I question the coaching staff on these because that is where the buck stops. As I said at the start I am not trying to have a negative crack at Chris Scott but I think it is a good time to start assessing his performance as a coach on some of these big issues.

Feel free to discuss.

 

[THE CAT WRANGLER]

No doubt we were out coached & outplayed

No "b" plan
Seems unresponsive and not pro active

We were gifted a home final and screwed it

 

[SleazySimon]

Two things.

The match committee has made baffelling decisions all year by ignoring good form, both in the VFL and AFL.

The defensive side of things has been down this year, playing midfielders as defenders, and Horlin smith could could be a tagging option if Taylor hunt is down on form. Could have done a job on Barlow yesterday.

We kept bombing it into the forward line lesson not learned from last years final. Clearly out coached again by Ross.

 

[Pavlovs Cat]

Agree about the coaching but it is Ottens who we miss more. Get a decent ruckman in there and a lot of our clearance issues will diminish. If moving Stokes and Johnson into the mids was a CS decision then that was a good one that helped address an area of weakness from last year.

We are missing last years B&F as well as we have all year and big Tommy is a key plank in the CS boardwalk. Your best point was the lack of flexibility in the matchday coaching - no Tommy but our gameplan (if you could call it that) remained the same.

We played hard yesterday, but man we played dumb!

 

[ATSAM]

Agree, Coaching and selection a puzzle. Yes injuries make a difference and loss of Enright yesterday critical. But West must play, he can ruck, take a mark around the ground and kick a goal. AND he has experience something that Blicavs and Vardy do not. Once Hawkins was out it should have been Vardy to forward and West in- and Hawkins was never going to play.
No we don't have plan B or C just like the old days in Thompsons day then we were good enough to get through. Now we don't have crumbers -our small forwards were non existent and, even worse, useless yesterday - what are they told to do because they either aren't told anything or they ignore it. Time for a new forward Coach????
Rucks well we can't do much about that but the mid filed lacked any punch yesterday but has been ok to date.
Tagging. Taylor Hunt hasn't been given enough time or instruction to play well, Not given consistent chances. That is how you build confidence and experience. If Chris Scott wants 2015 he better put the 'kids' in and leave them there. Not keep changing them.
Well done Ken Hinkley one of the great Coaches.

 

[kilgour]

Now this I is not a bash Chris Scott sack him now thread. I think it is apt to at least DISCUSS his performance. Yes he came in and coached a flag and that was a magnificent effort. But was a lot of that riding on the coat tails of Mark Thompson and a great list. Yes that contributed but Scott did a good job. When he took the job if I remember correctly he was always aiming at a 2014/2015 flag tilt and he started developing the list accordingly.

But what is getting a little worrying is some of the coaching that is going on. Last year ended poorly with a bad loss to Freo in a "home" final and this season with an even better home final we have again succumbed. But throughout this season often our ladder position may have actually flattered our performance.

Some key coaching areas I think need attention appear to have not been addressed. Stoppages and clearances for me is a key one. This has been a problem last year and has continued this year. Shane O'Bree was bought in this year to help in this area but not much progress has been made. It is fair to say that our ruck stocks have contributed to this but in games where we have played "lesser" teams clearances and stoppages was an issue. Then when you come up against real quality like Sandilands yesterday the problem is magnified. Even Matthew Lobbe had 50+ hitouts against us. I know people will go on about how our gameplan allows us to lose stoppages because we can then win the ball back but that's crap. If you get your hands on it first that's this biggest advantage you can get. It is worrying for me that this severe issue has not been rectified for such a long period of time and on the biggest stage yesterday it gets exposed.

Another issue I have with the coaching is a lack of flexibility in our gameplan. When we go forward we are pretty predictable. Kick it to Hawk or Pods is about it then work from that. I know it is easy to pick out yesterdays game but is was blatantly obvious yesterday what we were doing. Throughout the year we had failed to implement a plan B or C if our forward line isn't functioning. Harry Taylor has been a bit of a plan B but that's about it. I think it is vital for a coaching staff to be able to react in a game and change things when they aren't working and yesterday our coaches were unable to do that.

I think that our inability to replace Cameron Ling as a tagger has been an issue. Taylor Hunt has been tried in that role but has not been successful. Continually we have had players tear us apart and nothing was done about it. I talk about Brent Harvey, Daniel Wells, Pendlebury, Mitchell and yesterday Barlow. It seems we don't go a hard tag as we used to is it due to lack of a tagger or just an unwillingness from the coaches to put a stop on a player that is killing us. I think we saw yesterday what the value of a good tagger is as we saw with Lingy for so long. The coaches refusal to stop key players has been worrying.

I know it is easy to start picking away at yesterdays game as it was so bad. But on the big stage when you are tested when the stakes are at their highest is when you expect to see if what you have been doing as a coach stands up. I think that perhaps some of the worrying signs that have been present for a period of time were finally exposed yesterday in the worst possible way. If the coaching had have been on top of these problems they may not have been exposed so badly.

I don't want to see this as an over reaction to a bad finals loss. These problems have existed for a long time among others I haven't even gone into that others may like to bring up. I question the coaching staff on these because that is where the buck stops. As I said at the start I am not trying to have a negative crack at Chris Scott but I think it is a good time to start assessing his performance as a coach on some of these big issues.

Feel free to discuss.

Fact is our list isnt that good
3 things to raise

1 we cant afford to try and play both jimmy and mackie spare down back
both susceptible to over the back
jimmy is not as good as mackie and should be re-deployed (not sure where)

2 our rucks are not in the same league, everybody knows that
with dawes gone they are all springheels, cant compete with pillars
pillars move under the ball drop, springheels have to jump from well back, tiring and injury prone
gets worse as the springheels tire
Answer, dont compete, forget about palming to advantage, forget about the different plays, just stick the fist in
each time freo scored a goal from a stoppage our ruck was trying to out palm to advantage the sand pillar
belt it further out if possible

3 finally the geelong wave is tiering and cant beat freo
our boys legs were gone, how many beautiful kicks fell short
we need variability, second option for wave should be out of bounds midway between forward flank and pocket, not too deep
split forward 3 and 3, too clusters well separated, vary which side
lateral cluster primary aim is out of bounds, use second option when nothing down central on offer or more importantly when we need a rest
re-group forward press
(oh i have just thought of a role for jimmy, forward half stoppage grunt)

 

[Pavlovs Cat]

Bartel - Tagger?

 

[Jon Douglas]

Every team has injuries and it is how you deal with them that counts.

Yes had we had a fit Hawkins and Simpson we probably would have been far better and even won.

We just needed a KP to kick another 2-3 goals (Hawkins) and a ruckman to stop Freo from dominating the hit outs (Dawson).

But the key re coaching was the fact that Lyon did an excellent job not allowing us the corridor and we did not know what to do about this. We needed a plan B if we did not have the corridor and we did not and that is a coaching responsibility.

We hardly ever broke thru the corridor and got easy goals - and that is a trade mark of Geelong.

We were out coached and outplayed and our team is not as good as we thought. Still good but not great.

We need Simpson, Hawkins and Menzel in the team and fit to be a better side - and another good inside mid/tagger. We better hope GHS is that player otherwise we just do not have the players to be a Premiership contender IMO.

 

[Skerret]

We will know more after Port. I think we can beat Port and I think we can take the Hawks. Not over yet.

 

[FredLeDeux]

We will know more after Port. I think we can beat Port and I think we can take the Hawks. Not over yet.

Obvious step 1: don't panic.
For all our faults and problems yesterday, we lost by 3 kicks, one of them a goal in dead time, and we had the same number of shots.
We can still do this.

 

[rooie]

Fact is our list isnt that good

seriously? our list is one of the strongest if not THE strongest. the problem we have is suffering injuries to key big men, not a lack of depth.
you can't easily replace no. 1 ruckmen and key forwards, and that is what we face.
you inject mcintosh or simpson and a fit hawkins into that game yesterday and you have a different result.

 

[Isaac Norm Smith]

You raise some very valid points. Chris was again out coached by Ross Lyon. Mind you, IMO Ross Lyon is the best coach in the AFL. His game plan might be ultra defensive and boring but he knows how to get the job done against opposing teams. I believe Ross Lyon figured out Geelong a long time ago and coaches his players accordingly. We definitely let an amazing opportunity slip yesterday..

 

[catters05]

I didnt watch the game as i was working, but why the * was chappy the sub in his 250th.

 

[CatFan79]

Taylor Hunt hasn't been given enough time or instruction to play well, Not given consistent chances.

He's been given plenty of time and instruction, been on our list for 5 years.. You need to accept he just might not be good enough..

 

[Isaac Norm Smith]

I should also add that Scott needed to change the way we played in the second half yesterday. We should have adopted the Hawthorn model of chipping it around and waiting for a leading option to present itself. This would have been much better than quickly playing on, handballing to someone under pressure and then bombing it into the forward 50. It's of a concern that we don't have a backup plan for sides like Freo, that's for sure.

 

[MC Extra Dollop]

Obvious step 1: don't panic.
For all our faults and problems yesterday, we lost by 3 kicks, one of them a goal in dead time, and we had the same number of shots.
We can still do this.

We are still two games away from a grand final (though I have serious reservations now that we can beat Fremantle, if we get that far, with Johnson and possibly Ibbotson to come back in). Port is a dangerous team; if we play like we did yesterday, they're every chance to roll us and all the rest of it, but let's be honest: we got the semi final match-up we were hoping for. And if we're good enough to earn (and that's a key word) a game against Hawthorn, let's see how strong this psychological hold we supposedly have over them really is.

The next step is selections. There's been a lot of strange decisions made over the year and these aren't Captain Hindsight type questions; they're legitimate WTF decisions that have been questioned prior to games even commencing. I won't bore you with all of them, but the most obvious one is: why was Chapman wearing the vest?? If he wasn't fully fit (and there was nothing in his previous two games to suggest that), he starts the game and probably finishes it. If he's not fit, don't play him. If he was knackered from last week's game, why didn't you sub him then? We keep hearing that the players knew exactly what was happening with the finals calculations as an excuse for the sub-par performance last week, so why was Chappy continuing to be one of the few to bust his arse for that entire game? It didn't matter, or so we're told.

Then, the forward line. It's not all Josh Walker's fault, seriously. He came in and provided pretty much what we should have expected. He's a big body, he runs, he jumps and he has a crack. But he has no polish in his game. So what we needed was crumbers at the fall of the ball. Where were they? It seemed like every time the ball hit the deck, three Dockers were just able to waltz the ball out of the defensive 50.

 

[kanyewest]

I thought it was baffling that Barlow stood basically on his own at the stoppages all day. If ever we needed a tag, yesterday was the day. And I'm sure the decision to start Chappy as sub was the coaches committee as a whole, so certainly not all CS's fault. But please, Ross Lyon would have been happy to see Chap as the sub, one less headache to think about for three quarters or whatever.

I think it's easy to overreact to one loss, but the fact is if you lose two home finals to Freo questions will be asked. Let's hope the boys bounce back next week and can put on a good show against the Hawks.

 

[Turbocat]

Glass half full/half empty type stuff. To some degree CS is playing with a hand tied behind his back.
CS dont stop winning. CS make sure we have a chance for a flag again by 2015
CS get the most out of the older , premiership guys. CS bring in young ones

Injuries are not an excuse but certain players are more stable , certain players are more brittle. The some roles can be covered by several players some can not and when the wrong player get injured it affects structure. Boris as god as he is can be covered easier than Simpson. Boris is far better , but due to circumstance Simpson's injury has become critical. It impedes and that is not CS's fault.

Across , the mix of our group looked tired yesterday. I think we had 1 or 2 youthful players short. That is a CS issue.

The luck we had with injuries thru 2007/2011 seems to have dropped off. Key injuries, key times. Lets see how the year pans out to my mind he has done a good job. And some of his hardest stuff may yet still to come. The older guys may have less choice about what happens if we continue to look 5% off.

 

[Jimmy Yamazaki]

I think yesterday the line up was wrong with Walker in and Chappy sub. Also Enright going down doesn't help not just because he's missing. But if we where going to sub say Vardy or Blitz out for Chappy giving us another runner, it could not happen.

Anyway It's a personal issue. We are in desperate need of a number 1 ruck that can play a bloody season and also a contest midfielder that can break lines (Ablett). Motlop, Stokes and Bundy are not big and strong enough for permanent midfield roles imo as tough as they may be.

We also desperately need a good tagger.

I still have never liked Bartel as a defender either, seems such a waste of his talents.

 

[CF]

FFS talk about fickle supporters, here you are. CS is doing a good job with what he has to work with. He has transitioned retiring players and youth beautifully. His match day coaching is generally very good. He came up against a team that was better yesterday, it happens. He'll go back with the coaching and Leadership group and look at what went wrong. They'll reset and have another crack.

Geelong supporters make me sick sometimes.

 

[geelong_crazy26]

What a joke of a thread, chris Scott is one of the best coaches in the AFL, if we had of kicked an extra sixteen points the op would probably have a thread up about how amazing chris Scott is.

He took a team which got absolutely ass whooped by collingwood 80 points down in the third quarter, lost Garry ablett the best player in the competition from the side, and turned that margin around 120 points in 2011. And you call that riding off the success of Thompson? I call it bloody good coaching! But of cause we lost yesterday by 15 points so we can't do anything but criticise him in here.

Last year we just weren't good enough, this year, everything besides yesterday has been exceptional, we beat hawthorn twice, Sydney twice, Fremantle, we beat all the top sides and finished second on the ladder, the game plan has looked very good all year and stood up when it counted against the best, we simply just had a shocker yesterday, I still have confidence given what we have shown to be able to produce that we can go all the way

I'm sure if we lose next week you will have a thread asking for chris Scott to be sacked or "discuss" the option of it.

 

[geelong_crazy26]

FFS talk about fickle supporters, here you are. CS is doing a good job with what he has to work with. He has transitioned retiring players and youth beautifully. His match day coaching is generally very good. He came up against a team that was better yesterday, it happens. He'll go back with the coaching and Leadership group and look at what went wrong. They'll reset and have another crack.

Geelong supporters make me sick sometimes.

Agree with a lot of this, read my post in regards to it, a joke of a thread really, rediculous reaction to a loss

 

[Art Vandelay_]

FFS talk about fickle supporters, here you are. CS is doing a good job with what he has to work with. He has transitioned retiring players and youth beautifully. His match day coaching is generally very good. He came up against a team that was better yesterday, it happens. He'll go back with the coaching and Leadership group and look at what went wrong. They'll reset and have another crack.

Geelong supporters make me sick sometimes.

Agree with that.
Might have been out coached yesterday but has been very good at rebuilding the list on the run and still having us contend at the same time. It is quite simple freo were the better side yesterday. I still would rather CS over Ross Lyon as I just saw his presser and Lyon is a pig of a man

 

[Partridge]

Agree with that.
Might have been out coached yesterday but has been very good at rebuilding the list on the run and still having us contend at the same time. It is quite simple freo were the better side yesterday. I still would rather CS over Ross Lyon as I just saw his presser and Lyon is a pig of a man

Coaching ability isn't related to moral character. That's two finals in a row that Fremantle - coached by Ross Lyon - have comprehensively beaten Geelong. You might want the most wonderful guy on the planet but I want the best coach.

 

[Partridge]

What a joke of a thread, chris Scott is one of the best coaches in the AFL, if we had of kicked an extra sixteen points the op would probably have a thread up about how amazing chris Scott is.

But we didn't, and we aren't.