Review Round 3, 2015 - Brisbane Lions vs Richmond

[Cousin Jed]

Amazing that you can have a much better effort level, but so poor is the skill level you get the same result.

 

[3KZ is Football]

• Leppa - regardless of the huge deficiencies in our list and our injuries, the buck stops with the coach. The team just cannot keep on this trajectory for the rest of the year because Leppa would find himself fighting to keep his job. It is just not good enough the way the team has been prepared / played this year. The players take a big portion of the blame, but so to do the coaches. Where has our ferocious tackling / attack on the ball gone? Where is the focus on defence? How is it possible that our skills can seemingly get worse year after year from a very low base? Why don't we look like we are moving forward in terms of strength / fitness? Why can't the team execute its game plan / do we even have a good enough list to do so? And it may be of no real consequence now, but why the **** make Taylor the sub? One of the few players that put in against North - someone who helps sets the standard for the team in terms of intensity.

A very good post and this is bottom line.

 

[3KZ is Football]

Well, there's another season down the toilet. I know it has only been 3 rounds but, I think it is time to START PLAYING THE KIDS!

 

[3KZ is Football]

Yeah remember in 2011 it looked like that so I thought NVM young list in a few years they'll be bigger bodies. Still kinda waiting. I think our player turnover from 2011-2015 in particular has impacted on it.

Very true. The group of people responsible for list management at the Lions have done an appalling job.

 

[dlanod]

Asked this question a few months ago and pretty sure others have to. We always seem to have a lengthy injury list, with a lot of soft tissue injuries, our guys look smaller and are constantly out muscled in contests and we struggle to run out games. Burton has been here sometime now has had the opportunity to have an impact, hasn't done it. Time to try something new.

Burton did some good in significantly reducing the number and severity of soft tissue injuries we used to have (anyone else remember the never-ending quad injuries?) but we do seem to have reached a point where we're still off the pace.

Well, there's another season down the toilet. I know it has only been 3 rounds but, I think it is time to START PLAYING THE KIDS!

We already are, that's part of the problem.

 

[3KZ is Football]

We already are, that's part of the problem.

Can we play more kids? Select them and stick with them, at the expense of some of our lazy and perpetual underachievers.

 

[Ceebee]

After so much positive vibes before the season I just feel sad at the moment.
Can't get angry. just really flat.
Like others not sure what what can turn things around.
Going to test everyone. Supporters deserve better and I can understand the angst.
Pretty sure the boys are trying. Our skills are terrible and so is our confidence.
Just have to hang in there and hope things can turn around.
Looks like it is going to be a long year.

 

[Bucking Beads]

Playing the kids is the only way to get us out of this mess. That is provided our kids actually end up being any good. The trouble with playing the kids is we make it harder for us to sign big name players because we will keep getting beaten. Leppa really has very few options when it comes to team changes. Chopping and changing young players every week is not the solution.

 

[Nuggo]

We've been playing the kids for a bloody long time now.......they can't sustain AFL level of football. I think we are running the under 25's policy. As soon as they reach 25 they are required to leave.

For me our spine is weak and brittle. No FF, No CHF, No CHB, No FB (noted some are developing but yet to see any premiership players there).

Opportunities do come along such as the opportunity to get Hogan. Had we done a deal that may have caused a bit of pain at the time but it would be setting us in the right direction and everybody would have forgotten the pain. I think we have to keep taking risks where there are KPP opportunities.

And on a side note if Brisbane is not going to get behind the Lions, drop the Brisbane and just call them The Lions and make them a national team with Lion's Sports Community Centres over the nation and world.

 

[Viceregal]

Every time they showed this one Lion's player I am thinking who is that guy - didn't have a clue until one of the commentators decided to actually refer to the game and it turned out to be Staker - even after knowing that I still had trouble making it into the guy...

 

[AFLQLD]

My observations at the ground:

Justin Clarke should get a medal for the way he battles against the odds to hold our back line together at the moment. Without Merrett it seems Clarke is often the only man standing down there.

Daniel Rich is our best player and actually looks like he belongs in a different team. His skills and effort are what this team needs much more of.

Claye Beams worked hard and tried hard but his skill errors caused some awful turnovers.

Andrews is worth some perseverance I think.

McGrath looks a little bit lost at times but can't fault his effort.

Robinson is a trier but poor skills let him down so often.

Zorko played his best game for the year. He really did try to lift the team.

Christensen needs to work much much harder. I think he is going to have to accept that at Geelong he was a bit part player who could capitalize on the grunt work of others while here it is all hands on deck, including him.

Holding judgement on Dayne Beams for the moment. He is doing plenty but it amounts to little. When Rocky and Hanley are back will be the time to evaluate him.

Paparone needs to be a player who can float free in attack and defence. Otherwise he is a bit of a liability.

Aish is present but mostly irrelevant at the moment. He seems disinterested. Much the same for Mayes.

 

[POBT]

Amazing that you can have a much better effort level, but so poor is the skill level you get the same result.

Yup.

Errors kill.

 

[Nuggo]

My observations at the ground:

Aish is present but mostly irrelevant at the moment. He seems disinterested. Much the same for Mayes.

My fear is that as they are quite close and spirits are down at the moment if one leaves the other might go as well.....vicious cycle we are in at the moment.

 

[carnthemlions]

That was just ******* awful from a senior player.

Martin does a lot of things other ruckmen can't, but sometimes he has to remember he's not a midfielder. You'd never see Ivan Maric attempting a kick like that.

 

[POBT]

I remember this time last year saying that, with the youth of the side, we needed the experienced players to not let their standards drop. I recall seeing experienced players make one or two critical errors a match. That's not much in the context of a 22 man side. It was a miskick by Adcock, a fumble by Redden or or a free kick from Rocky and the side would capitulate for the following period. We just didn't have the resilience to succeed unless our best players played really well.

We have not moved on from that. We still can't afford Dayne Beams, Martin, Robinson to turn the ball over. We can't have Christensen missing sitters. We can't have Goose Maguire make poor decisions. We can't have bloody Redden getting 25 touches one week and bugger all the next.

I think the youth and inexperience of our side is an issue. But I don't think the top end of the list is doing enough to reduce the exposure of the young blokes. Rich aside, I can't think of a mature, top end player on the list who has played 3 consistently good games this year. Those guys need to take a look in the mirror and ask why their personal performance is not at the standard required.

 

[jackess]

We've pretty much stopped switching the ball to the opposite wing despite often setting up that way. All it leads to is going long down the line to 2-on-1's, which becomes a turnover and goal for the opposition because our players are out of position. Likely a few factors involved with that including lack of confidence in their own ability to execute the kick and taking too long so the opposition covers that avenue.

The other team shuts it down. You see it every single time we get a mark at half back. We do not shut down the oppositions switch because we don't run hard enough. We get the ball at half back and all the players up the field stop running instead of leading into space like other teams do. We also don't have the skill for those short lead up kicks. The only thing we can do is kick it to a pack and because we can't take a contested mark or crumb a contest we hope for a ballup because we are actually ok at clearances around the ground.

 

[Madkeenlions]

Second slippery game at the Gabba and our skill level shows we have not mastered the conditions at home. I know it's never easy but shouldn't we train more frequently at night under the lights when the dew and humidity is high? Why do our opponents adapt to the away conditions better than our own list which trains and plays there constantly?

 

[carnthemlions]

I remember this time last year saying that, with the youth of the side, we needed the experienced players to not let their standards drop. I recall seeing experienced players make one or two critical errors a match. That's not much in the context of a 22 man side. It was a miskick by Adcock, a fumble by Redden or or a free kick from Rocky and the side would capitulate for the following period. We just didn't have the resilience to succeed unless our best players played really well.

We have not moved on from that. We still can't afford Dayne Beams, Martin, Robinson to turn the ball over. We can't have Christensen missing sitters. We can't have Goose Maguire make poor decisions. We can't have bloody Redden getting 25 touches one week and bugger all the next.

I think the youth and inexperience of our side is an issue. But I don't think the top end of the list is doing enough to reduce the exposure of the young blokes. Rich aside, I can't think of a mature, top end player on the list who has played 3 consistently good games this year. Those guys need to take a look in the mirror and ask why their personal performance is not at the standard required.

People want to know why we lost by so much despite putting more effort in this week- this is why. The game was an arm wrestle in the 2nd quarter, and neither team was doing much to change that. Numerous senior players dropped the ball(quite literally in the cases of Martin and Maguire), and that turned what might've been a 20-ish point loss into a thrashing.

 

[jackess]

I remember this time last year saying that, with the youth of the side, we needed the experienced players to not let their standards drop. I recall seeing experienced players make one or two critical errors a match. That's not much in the context of a 22 man side. It was a miskick by Adcock, a fumble by Redden or or a free kick from Rocky and the side would capitulate for the following period. We just didn't have the resilience to succeed unless our best players played really well.

We have not moved on from that. We still can't afford Dayne Beams, Martin, Robinson to turn the ball over. We can't have Christensen missing sitters. We can't have Goose Maguire make poor decisions. We can't have bloody Redden getting 25 touches one week and bugger all the next.

I think the youth and inexperience of our side is an issue. But I don't think the top end of the list is doing enough to reduce the exposure of the young blokes. Rich aside, I can't think of a mature, top end player on the list who has played 3 consistently good games this year. Those guys need to take a look in the mirror and ask why their personal performance is not at the standard required.

Agreed. We saw round 1 against Collingwood who had a similar level of experience but still managed to beat us their experienced players Pendlebury, Sidebottom, Swan, etc. we're all quite good but the kids like Grundy also did quite. The biggest difference is that the whole team worked hard to play to the gameplan; pressure, zoning, quick ball movement, etc.

 

[chopperduck]

Yup.

Errors kill.

They scored a lot from our turn overs. I think outside of the poor execution, bad decision making really hurt us as well. Kicking to an out numbered contest when we had someone free the other way, and not playing the percentages such as kicking down the boundary and knocking it over when under pressure.

Effort was better, but defensive running was poor. Perhaps this is due to not so much actual work rate, but simply being out of position when we turn it over. Young bodies contribute to our inability to tackle, but too often 3 players go for 1 guy, 2 of them dont get to him and then they are stuck ball watching as he flicks it over the top to the players they should have been minding. We ball watch too much around contests and dont pick up free opposition players hanging around packs. Either get in and make an impact at the contest or cover the opposition outlet players. We would be better off covering the outlet players and leaving 1 guy to tackle the ball carrier, even if he misses that tackle, then allow them to run the ball out in waves.

Our composure with the ball is where we miss Rocky. He works hard to pick up those easy touches, whilst not damaging as such, i think it shows how much he directs the ball, our tempo and direction offensively.

 

[jackess]

Guys I hear Leppa copping a lot on here but there is someone else I have serious questions about. Brett Burton.

He came to the club in 2011 with big wraps about what a great fitness guy he was but why do we have so many injuries and why do our players not have a physical presence? Thoughts?

We don't have that many injuries.

You'd think fitness levels would be pretty easy to track but probably a bigger issue would be the facilities and the amount of money we have to put into the fitness department makes it tough.

 

[POBT]

People want to know why we lost by so much despite putting more effort in this week- this is why. The game was an arm wrestle in the 2nd quarter, and neither team was doing much to change that. Numerous senior players dropped the ball, and that turned what might've been a 20-ish point loss into a thrashing.

Yep. The thrashing was caused because we worked so bloody hard to stay in the game despite making error after error, fumble after fumble. Eventually, the dam wall broke.

I won't cop accusations of "no effort" as was bandied around a bit last night. They played really poorly but they tried hard. It is not much to hang our hats on but it is something. It all has to start with effort.

 

[Madkeenlions]

For what it's worth I love Mitch Robinsons manic attack on the ball. His skills are lousy but you want to see players putting it on the line,contest after contest. With such a young list and so many small players you need a couple of wrecking balls like Mitch and Sauce smashing a path for our runners. Don't judge him on clangers but look at the opposition bodies he takes out of contests. He's surely mad and much better playing with us than against!

 

[chopperduck]

People want to know why we lost by so much despite putting more effort in this week- this is why. The game was an arm wrestle in the 2nd quarter, and neither team was doing much to change that. Numerous senior players dropped the ball(quite literally in the cases of Martin and Maguire), and that turned what might've been a 20-ish point loss into a thrashing.

2nd qtr we got to what, within 8 points or something? We actually did well to grind back and get close. Then Martin had a brain fart and decided handballing the ball blindly back in field in the other teams direction instead of simply killing the ball at the boundary was a great idea. The scored directly from it then pilled another 2 goals on in about 4 or 5 minutes. Those 3 goals killed any momentum we had.

 

[Kevvo]

Agreed. We saw round 1 against Collingwood who had a similar level of experience but still managed to beat us their experienced players Pendlebury, Sidebottom, Swan, etc. we're all quite good but the kids like Grundy also did quite. The biggest difference is that the whole team worked hard to play to the gameplan; pressure, zoning, quick ball movement, etc.

I think that's right, but I think it's also because they got reward for it. We didn't. Two of Richmond's first bunch of goals were pretty streaky: one was a giveaway turnover from us, one was a lucky tight angle shot. We were doing some things pretty well at that point in the game but we just couldn't find any goals.

There were patches right through the second where Richmond didn't look like getting a F50 entry for a few minutes at a time. Then, out of nowhere, Stef dropped a chest mark that would've let us re-enter 50, tried something remarkable to recover, gave the ball away and they streamed downfield for a cheap goal. That particular moment to me stood out as a momentum change because of how much it deflated us.

Honestly, I feel like we would see a pretty dramatic improvement if we could just find a little bit of extra effectiveness inside 50.