To many passengers- non tackling players..spectators !

[acker]

If you threw a ball in the middle of Addison and Hill and told them to fight for it I know who'd I'd be backing in. It ain't Hill.

I'd back Hill because to go through an entire match of football on a wet and slippery ground and be the only player out of 44 players not to lay a tackle is pretty embarassing (Addison)..

Now Addison is about 184 cm and weighs about 83 kg's ...it is hardly a lumbering ruckman we are talking about here ...and some people in this forum say he is doing a good job replacing Picken ! ..I'm not very convinced as Picken a tagger usualy lays about 4-5-6 tackles a match, including in the dry..

 

[acker]

I was at the game and thought Addison was pretty good against Davey (who was potentially the most dangerous Melbourne player.) Stats can be selectively quoted to support almost any thesis.

Look to be the only player out of 44 players not to lay a tackle is a pretty damaging stat, no matter how you spin it.

I watched the game on TV and I think Rocket dragged him for a fair bit of the night, and rightly so if he was not getting involved enough.

And regardless of who you saw him run with at times to allude that he did not have a moungrel match, thats your opinion and I respect that.

But from my perspective he was out of sorts to say the least and your opinion is not enough to sway my opinion which is the way I saw it with my eyes, read in the stats and heard others comment.

 

[DoggyStyle]

Bump.

This week 44 tackles against Sydney 57.

No tackles for Lake, Gilbee, Grant.

1 tackle each for Williams, Murphy, Harbrow, Minson, Hill, Husdon, and Higgins.

Bulldogs had 1 players with 5 or more tackles and Sydney had 4.

We won, go figure

 

[always right]

Bump.

This week 44 tackles against Sydney 57.

No tackles for Lake, Gilbee, Grant.

1 tackle each for Williams, Murphy, Harbrow, Minson, Hill, Husdon, and Higgins.

Bulldogs had 1 players with 5 or more tackles and Sydney had 4.

We won, go figure

And there you have it in a nutshell. Whilst most would agree with the general point Aker makes in regard to tackles, here is a classic case of statistics only telling part of the story.

Lake had no tackles but to most was BOG. According to Aker's logic, Lake had a stinker!

As for Grant. I'm genuinely surprised to see that he had no tackles. Is anyone going to seriously suggest that Grant did not chase or put pressure on the opposition? I would argue he is currently one of our most committed when it comes to putting defensive pressure on the ball carrier.

What I will concede however is that we cannot beat North this week without a committed effort to put pressure on the opposition....you can bet North will be very honest in this area.

 

[TedDougChris]

What I will concede however is that we cannot beat North this week without a committed effort to put pressure on the opposition....you can bet North will be very honest in this area.

Exactly. If we turn up and aren't prepared to slog it out, we'll lose.... North have nearly always been a hard working, tough tackling team...

 

[Bodicifer]

Tackling means one thing...the opposition has the ball...take it for what you will. I'm not saying tackles are unimportant by no means.

The stats that count are the effective possessions and the hard ball gets when there is a 50/50 contest. The tackler in a 50/50 was second to the ball every time.

 

[dogwatch]

And there you have it in a nutshell. Whilst most would agree with the general point Aker makes in regard to tackles, here is a classic case of statistics only telling part of the story.

Lake had no tackles but to most was BOG. According to Aker's logic, Lake had a stinker!

As for Grant. I'm genuinely surprised to see that he had no tackles. Is anyone going to seriously suggest that Grant did not chase or put pressure on the opposition? I would argue he is currently one of our most committed when it comes to putting defensive pressure on the ball carrier.

What I will concede however is that we cannot beat North this week without a committed effort to put pressure on the opposition....you can bet North will be very honest in this area.

I shouldn't take you to task seeing you're always right, but I did notice on Saturday that Grant was not tackling. I can't even recall him chasing much, which I thought was odd because it's been one of the attractive features of his game this season. In that I do agree with you.

He was, after all, the unsung hero who put all the pressure on the Melbourne defender (just avoiding giving away a free kick) in the final minutes last week, resulting in the ball spilling free for Griffen to snap the winning goal.

 

[mackem]

Tackling means one thing...the opposition has the ball...take it for what you will. I'm not saying tackles are unimportant by no means.

The stats that count are the effective possessions and the hard ball gets when there is a 50/50 contest. The tackler in a 50/50 was second to the ball every time.

I agree with this post.

Logic says the more tackles you have than the opposion means that THEY have the ball more than you.

You can only tackle a person with the ball.

If we have less tackles than the opposion and still win I'm quite happy.

 

[TedDougChris]

I shouldn't take you to task seeing you're always right, but I did notice on Saturday that Grant was not tackling. I can't even recall him chasing much, which I thought was odd because it's been one of the attractive features of his game this season. In that I do agree with you.

He was, after all, the unsung hero who put all the pressure on the Melbourne defender (just avoiding giving away a free kick) in the final minutes last week, resulting in the ball spilling free for Griffen to snap the winning goal.

I actually thought he did very well to get to the ball first and get it out quickly, so he didn't need to tackle as much this week. Maybe it's selective eyesight, but I thought he did very well this week...

 

[Butane]

Logic says the more tackles you have than the opposion means that THEY have the ball more than you.

You can only tackle a person with the ball.

Yep, this.

If two teams go at it equally and one team has more tackles you could assume from that, the other team had more of the ball all night. (Not the way it always is of course but it's one of many ways stats can lie!)

 

[Bulldog Joe]

Interesting that Addison, as a target of the OP from the Melbourne game. had 3 tackles on the official stats against Sydney.

Not sure that actually means anything, as I am not convinced that the official stats are actually accurate.

As to Grant not laying any tackles.. I find that hard to believe because I did make a comment during the game about how well he was pressuring the opposition.

 

[Mutt]

Interesting that Addison, as a target of the OP from the Melbourne game. had 3 tackles on the official stats against Sydney.

Not sure that actually means anything, as I am not convinced that the official stats are actually accurate.

As to Grant not laying any tackles.. I find that hard to believe because I did make a comment during the game about how well he was pressuring the opposition.

I agree that Grant applies defensive pressure Joe but I also recall three or four occasions when Grant's attempted tackle didn't stick. He caused a hurried disposal or the ball to be coughed up, but the defensive pressure would not have been recorded as a legitimate tackle.

 

[Fossie 32]

Yep, this.

If two teams go at it equally and one team has more tackles you could assume from that, the other team had more of the ball all night. (Not the way it always is of course but it's one of many ways stats can lie!)

So we need the ratio of total tackles [effective] divided by % time in possession to indicate whether we umm ..... did well with our tackling

 

[dogwatch]

As to Grant not laying any tackles.. I find that hard to believe because I did make a comment during the game about how well he was pressuring the opposition.

I will concede I was down the scoreboard end with not a very elevated view, so Grant could have been doing some good pressuring up the other end. Just didn't see much of it at my end.

As for this simplistic nonsense about "if you lay more tackles your opponent must have more of the ball" ... let's just take one example from the 3rd quarter of last week's game against Melb. You will probably remember it because Hill got a goal from the subsequent WB possession. What happened was Harbrow laid three successive tackles in the space of about 20 seconds, each one resulting in the ball spilling free. If Harbrow hadn't bothered we would have had three fewer tackles while Melbourne would have had more possessions. More to the point, we wouldn't have kicked the goal and arguably would have lost the match. Have a look at the replay if you don't believe me.

The "more tackles = less possession" argument is so obviously spurious I won't bother going into other reasons. The above example should illustrate it well enough.

If anyone has time try going through the match stats for all games played this year. It would be an interesting exercise. I reckon there's a good chance that the winning side actually lays more tackles in most of the games.

I just did it for Round 8 and found that of the eight winning teams:

• 6 laid more tackles than the losing side
• 3 had more possessions and more tackles than the losing side

Obviously that's not conclusive but it does support the argument that strong tackling and defensive pressure is a feature of winning sides. (In fact, it may force opposing teams to handball around in circles, thereby increasing their possession count, without gaining any metres or tactical advantage.)

 

[always right]

My brain's starting to hurt.

 

[DoggyStyle]

Your thoughts on this subject may well be valid, however unless we can also count the opportunities missed and by which player to lay a tackle then you can only look at this from a pure statistical point of view that on average we were either above or below the average tackle count for a winning team.

My original post in response to this from last week and the reason I bumped this thread.

FFS - You can interpret stats to mean anything you want, and laying more tackles does not necessarily mean you you will win the game.

As alwaysRight commented, Stack looked like he played a great defensive game and put his opponent under lots of defensive pressure yet he did not lay a tackle, likewise Lake didn't have a tackle yet may have been BOG.

Simply quoting stats in isolation or in context with other factors is a far too simplistic approach.

 

[always right]

My original post in response to this from last week and the reason I bumped this thread.

FFS - You can interpret stats to mean anything you want, and laying more tackles does not necessarily mean you you will win the game.

As alwaysRight commented, Stack looked like he played a great defensive game and put his opponent under lots of defensive pressure yet he did not lay a tackle, likewise Lake didn't have a tackle yet may have been BOG.

Simply quoting stats in isolation or in context with other factors is a far too simplistic approach.

Thanks for the support but it was Grant...not Stack

 

[DoggyStyle]

Oops - My bad. Proof once again that quoting Stats or even other people can bring you unstuck

 

[Pigdog]

I will concede I was down the scoreboard end with not a very elevated view, so Grant could have been doing some good pressuring up the other end. Just didn't see much of it at my end.

I was standing on the wing and from my excellent view I thoughts Grant's defensive efforts were very good.

As Long Wait pointed his ability to apply pressure from behind forced the Swans players to hurry their kicks which lead to turn-overs.