Tas
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TheBrownDog
- Dec 23, 2002
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As an outside observer why isn’t Ziebell playing in the midfield more? To me your midfield didn’t look balanced at all, Higgins is now too much of an outside player and if you have added Hall and Polec he needs to improve his contested side and start tackling more. Hall, Polec and Higgins is too many pure outside types for my liking and Scott can only play on the outside with his frame aswell and when Cunnington only has 1 tackle for a game your always going to struggle through the middle of the ground for pressure.
Some talented players took the field against us but the overall balance of the team I don’t think was right.
Ziebell is too slow so once his opponent gets past arm reach he can basically jog into the forward 50 and have a shot on goal. Not only is he too slow, he doesn't have the tank to run all day, we got away with it when we could bench him every 2 minutes but now there are rotation caps and he would be a liability in the middle. He has improved on his endurance over time, but not enough to matter.
We already have this problem with Cunnington, you can't put multiple dinosaur paced players in the midfield. Even if he wins the clearances, he is just going to hack it forward without looking up and it will most likely go to the opposition.
We generally don't have Hall, Polec and Higgins in the middle at the same time, however, rotations and the like might end up seeing it that way from time to time.
Our major problem this year has been the lack of Jacobs and Anderson has only recently returned from injury and he missed the pre-season so he is still underdone and has only been able to play about 66%ish of games. He had 28 pressure acts and 10 tackles in 66% ToG so he was doing his bit despite the amount of time he was on the field.. The problem is Cunnington 14 PAs and 1 tackle in 80% ToG. Higgins 14 and 2 in 82%, Dumont 17 and 2 in 87%, etc. You can't have only one guy doing the defensive part of the game well and everyone else slacking off.
Most sides that have injected multiple new mature players into their side have usually gone backwards in the first year, when we combine adding a few inexperienced mids into the mix and being generally poorly coached in general it just creates a scenario where we aren't that competitive. I think it will improve as the mature players gel in year 2+ and if we can get our core inside group of Cunnington, Jacobs and Anderon on the park and fit, but almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong this year and it is more or less a write off. I think things will get better, however, the season is shot, our skills are pretty pathetic atm and our kicking for goal is very poor, once you lose that confidence you look hopeless.
What we can't afford is to go nowhere when we do get the ball.
Anderson had 19 disposals for 65 meters gained, Cunnington 29 for 81 meters gained, Simpkin 11 disposals for -13m gained, most of the guys who made some distance were pretty ordinary by foot, Polec 481m 53.3% kicking efficiency, LDU 417m 44.4%, Higgins 414m 53.3%.
We can't be bad at so many aspects of the game and hope to be competitive. When we do the basics well or even good, we can beat anyone, we just aren't well coached enough to execute consistently enough.