Oppo Camp Non-Essendon Football Thread XIV

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BrunoV

Brownlow Medallist
May 5, 2009
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Equalisation has worked and it’s made everyone trash.


While I wanted to make a jibe about "standard communism" I think it's more a case of the game being wildly over coached and players instincts being destroyed.

There was a discussion about this on SEN this morning, about how there are too many teams and the talent pool being diluted.

That's all well and good but it's the best players in teams who take up positions in the structure resulting in obtaining all of the possessions and they're the ones who can't kick the thing.

Take us today, for example, it wasn't out bottom 4 or 6 who were torching our forwards.

My suspicion is that players suffer "paralysis by analysis" and they don't really know where they want to kick it half the time. I suspect that the players are conditioned to think in scenarios which are not necessarily applicable to the situations they find themselves in. Take our pre-seasons, as another example, I'm sure evertyhing looks great when there is no real pressure on the ball.

I think what we are seeing is that you need excellent teams who are very experienced to play the way coaches are trying to get a lot of s**t sides to play.

It would be good to see everyone get back to basics and just play 1v1 until they're a few years in. Look at Sydney, they're essentially as inexperienced as anyone else and they're version of a rebuild is spending year on the cusp of finals.

You might say that the talent pool is too diluted and that the AFL should have teams good to implement the more complicated plans but I would ask when has there been a period in the history of the game when this was the case?

I'm not AFL historian but I would suggest that the late-80s to mid-90s (probably an 8 to 9 year window - it doesn't last 10 years) would be the only era during which there were 5 to 7 sides who were all genuinely good. You had the end of the Hawks dominant 80s era, the West Coast powerhouse, the Geelong powerhouse, combinations of 80s powerhouse sides and rebuilds for Essendon and Carlton. A very good Adelaide side which was essentially a state side. North was consistently good at least from 92 (I think) toward the end of this period.

Even through the 80s you generally had sides losing finals by 80 points.
 
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Macca18

EFC
Jul 6, 2009
5,127
3,645
Victoria
AFL Club
Essendon
I hope West Coast continue to maul Fremantle.

I not only want them a game behind us... but percentage as well. As it stands they've lost 6% so far tonight.

These other games that we so often ignore could become vital in our push to make the finals. I want those top 3-4 teams to continue beating up on the teams around us on the ladder & fingers crossed that a few others down near the bottom (Melbourne, Carlton & well... it's not going to happen... but the Suns) can pull off an upset or two in the last third of the year against our rivals.

The only top 6 team we play again is Collingwood in the final round. We just need to keep winning ugly and I know it will click at some stage.
 
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