Bluemour Discussion Thread XVIII - Please Sir, Can We Have More?

[Arr0w]

Cameron was also mentioned.

Crows were the ones trying to push Lyons into the deal instead.

Never understood why SOS and or the Crows never rated Lyons

 

[MileHigh]

Get Papley and Martin. Just get them.

I'm sick of being s**t. We would be dangerous af forward of the ball.

Not sure why we need Papley. Just need to pump more games into Polson. Is that still a thing?

 

[zeggie]

I disagree.
I think Wines is a more urgent need and I think PA would happily take that while they can still cover losing him.
Will be a different story when Rockliff and Boak are ready to retire

We have plenty of inside mids.

We have, let me count, zero small forwards.

He has 3 years on his contract. Port will want more.

 

[KohPhi]

Didn’t SOS want Lyons in the original Gibbs trade — now in the set up at Brisbane looks good — would a menagola do same for us right now

I think they offered Lyons. We knocked it back..

 

[BringBackSimmo]

Lindsay Smith

oh wait, we have moved on.

 

[Kramer1]

Lol why would SOS 'cool' on Martin for being 'too eager'...

SOS: Sorry Jack, you've made it clear you'd LOVE to be a bluebagger and would take less money than you could get at the Dogs to play here instead.
We were interested, but sorry now i'm not so sure, that's not the kind of players we want here at Carlton.

OK.

 

[KohPhi]

Lindsay Smith

oh wait, we have moved on.

He could play. Had a personality clash with Pagan who gave him the arse at North. Joined Blues then we got Pagan next season.

Papers stamped.

 

[La Dispute]

Dan Butler drives a white couriers van because he always delivers the goods.

 

[BringBackSimmo]

He could play. Had a personality clash with Pagan who gave him the arse at North. Joined Blues then we got Pagan next season.

Papers stamped.

Interesting, i wasn't aware of that.

 

[RoyalBlues]

Dan Butler drives a white couriers van because he always delivers the goods.

Should combine well with Stocker then too . . . .

 

[gab213]

Whitnall stays Hamill goes still Hurts

Hamill leaving actually hurt Whitnall, Hamill was to Whitnall what Spalding was to Kernahan.

 

[gbatman]

Disagree entirely.

The rule exists to protect players. Head injuries have clearly been identified as something the AFL wants to minimise/eliminate, and to that end there is a rule that penalises players who make contact with an opponent's head.

For a player to then take deliberate steps to ensure an opponent makes contact with their head goes against the purpose for the rule to exist in the first place. How can the AFL protect players' heads when, as a direct result, players are rewarded for exploiting that protection for competitive gain.

Shrugging tackles is OK in my book, a player has the right to try to slip an opponents grasp by lifting their arms. Players who drop at the knees and "lean" excessively into tackles (ie. Tippa) should not be receiving free kicks in such circumstances. You can't tackle a player below the knees, you can't tackle a player above the shoulders, so where do you tackle when a 5'8 bloke is allowed to fall to his knees, lean forward, and tuck his head?

Like it or not drawing free kicks is a part of the game and a very important part of the game. You want to be a good team you need to be good at just about all aspects of the game and this is one of the aspects. There are many ways to draw a free. The main way is to be dangerous and get in good positions, get your opposition out of position a bit and that gets them to panic and make a mistake.

The rule exists to protect players heads, they are getting contact to the head so they are getting free kicks. They are getting contact because they are trying to break tackles which is a genuine and massive skill of the game and they are very good at it. The tacklers are making high contact from bad tackles. Free kick every day.

Doesn't matter whether in the air, around a stoppage or in open play. You get your opponent to panic and slightly out position them then next thing the spoil is high or chops the arms, there is a hold, there is a high tackle or an illegal block or some kind of pressure/panic driven free kick.

Secondly players are not intentionally trying to get free kick. They aren't playing for it. They are just getting in a position where their opponent is slightly out positioned and putting the pressure on them to stop them and reacting to whatever mistake the defending player does. Selwood is strong so he needs to be tackled really correctly but he is also smart and has a good sidestep which puts the tackler out of position and is why he breaks tackles and gets frees. It's quite simply good play.

Doing good things on an AFL field is supposed to be hard and favor the skilled and ball winning players. Lay a good tackle, get rewarded. Lay a poor tackle, get penalised. Attack the footy with commitment, get rewarded. Use dirty tactics like holding, arm chopping, thuggery to stop player getting the footy, get penalised. Players who are winning free kicks are doing so under these guidelines and exploiting those who are doing the wrong thing and have lesser abilities. I'm happy enough seeing good play get rewarded and poor play get penalised. I'm fine with that. Let the stars be stars and the also runs be what they are.

The head contact a player gets when a tackle slips is very marginal and low impact but most of the time warrants a free kick. The way this doesn't happen is better tackling, quite simply the challenge is being put forward to the tackler by the ball carrier. If they can't tackle properly and can't prevent a strong mid opening their shoulders then that's on them. This level of footy is supposed to be hard, it's what makes it elite and great and for what it's worth, when someone like Selwood opens their shoulders and the tackle slips, it's not to get a free kick, it's to break the tackle. The free kick is just a bye product and IMO if he'd good enough to do it and the tackler is not good enough then good on him, deserves to be awarded for that because it's good football V bad football and I prefer to see where the good football wins out.

If one player is too good for the other then that's great. That's what the stars of the comp are. Too good for most. A guy like Selwood happens to be too good for a lot of the opposition players tackling him. So be it. They either get better or they lose the contest. That's footy.

Shrugging tackles is huge IMO. In terms of a skill increasing in value, it's the skill that has increased in value over the last 20 years. There's a lot of players around the ball now, if you get it, it's nearly a sure thing that you will have to beat the first tackle to get it away cleanly. If you have a team that is good at that then you can be damaging from your clearances and it really gets your side away. Really generates run, time, space and carry. The elite inside mids, this is what they do well. Clean hands and incredibly difficult to tackle, it's a requirement in modern football to be an inside mid, you have to be able to beat the first tackle a lot of the time and you have to be able to lay a tackle so they don't get it away. I think as an ability this one goes unnoticed a lot. Teams can win the clearances but they are hacking it out of there and turning it over a lot while others win the clearances and are breaking tackles and getting handballs away and getting it to a ball carrier in the clear who can direct a kick. Enormously valuable skill and if you have a player who can do this well and who wins a few free kicks doing it because he's elite and hard to tackle then I think he should be admired for that.

Falling to the knees IMO is unnecessary, I think they need to be trying to avoid the tackler or break the tackle. Doing that is not playing for free kicks but it does draw a lot of free kicks.

This is what a lot of people on here are not distinguishing, the difference between playing for free kicks and the difference between drawing free kicks. You're trying to do something that's going to achieve a good result for you without getting the free but you get a free kick, that's drawing a free kick. Shrugging the shoulders, it's trying to break a tackle, it slips high, well done you have drawn a free. Dropping at the knees, it's not trying to achieve anything other than to draw high contact, this is playing for a free. put your head down after you have come up with the footy, this is playing for free kicks. Put your head down to get the footy and someone comes the other way and gets you high, this is drawing a free kick. There are so many tricks forwards use to encourage defenders to grab an arm or a bit of guernsey or mids use at the stoppage to try and get their man to hold them and it's mostly by jostling for prime position and being good enough to take it. This is drawing a free kick. Flopping is different again and IMO that should be punishable.

If you've got a bloke out there and he keeps doing something in a way where if it works out well they get a good result regardless of the free then there is nothing wrong with that and what Selwood is doing shrugging tackles and drawing a few free kicks is just fine IMO. He gets them because he's good and he's damn good at breaking and shrugging tackles.

I can agree with a lot of what your saying in many aspects however I would like to bring up some points as food for thought.

If you tackle lower as you suggest, then you tackle around the waist and don’t pin the arms and therefore the good player gets it away to a team mate.

If you tackle at height of the solar plexus which is the optimal height and the opponent either a) bends at the knees or b) Lifts his arm intentionally for you to slip up above the shoulder, then it is near impossible for the best tackler to not infringe.( You have to take into account the oil/sweat on the arms of player you are tackling).

I think that bending knees and lifting the arm are not in the spirit of our game as it is a technique designed not to evade but to draw a free.

Shrugging is different as it is a movement of hips and shouldn’t cause tackle to go high but if the player with ball has strength in hips and shrugs and the tackler has poor technique- he gets free and runs off. This is a great skill.

The solution is for the umpires to review each games decisions and for clubs to be able to query certain decisions where they feel the technique is not in the spirit of the game and therefore if certain players doing it regularly are found to have gotten consistent frees from these actions then they are to be warned and if it continues the following week then umpires to be notified to not pay high frees to that player.

Don’t shoot me down - just a suggestion to make it a fairer system.

Ideally you want to tackle a player around the elbows and have a good amount of downward force coming from both your arms and your body. You want to pin the elbows in and pull them down. You do this well you won't get shrugged or give away a free.

A lot of the tackles guys like Selwood and Murphy break and get to slip up are from players tackling with their hands as I like to call it, where they reach out and don't get their body in and get the full wrap up (usually because they have sidestepped). The other reason is because they have been tackled high up on the arm, mid arm to lower shoulder and if you tackle these blokes there they are going to shrug you every time. Personally I like it. If you want to tackle them tackle them right. Get in hard, get around the elbows and bring them down. Puts a lot of emphasis on good tackling technique. Murphy, Selwood, they aren't getting free kicks from good tackles, they are putting themselves in good positions where they are hard to tackle and they are letting their smarts and abilities do the rest. You tackles them right, you get them, tackle them poorly, they get you, it's a fair game.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of players out there laying really good tackles but there are a few who let themselves down and fail when tackling these good inside mids.

Shrugging is a big part of it. You're not just opening your arms up and making it slip you're putting in a strong lateral movement to put the tackler in a poor position so they reach out (tackle with their hands/arms and not body) and so they grab you in the wrong spot. You do the rest with your arms but you need to have the agility and core strength to do the step which starts it all. You want to shrug effectively, you have to put in a good step so when they tackle they don't get you with their body or get a good wrap up.

It's actually a technique designed to break tackles. you bend the knees so you can have that strong lateral movement. As I said you need to have that strength and agility to do it. The frees are just a bye product. Sometimes these players slip the tackle using the same technique and get a handball off and they don't get high contact and no one notices. Sometimes they slip a tackle and it goes high and everyone complains they are playing for frees. Sometimes they get caught effectively and no one notices. You want a good side step you have to be able to bend the knees and use the power in your legs. Breaking tackles is done with both shoulder and core strength. Core strength to stand up in the tackle and put the tackler out of position, shoulder strength to shrug out of the weak tackle you have brought about from your sidestep or because they are a weak tackler.


Personally I see this as a really big weakness in our team over the board.

Harry and Charlie when they get stronger and more threatening are going to get more frees. They are going to learn the arm locking techniques and pushing techniques to bring about holds and their strength and abilities are going to make their opponents panic and infringe.

Our young smalls. Fisher should be drawing more high frees because he's small. Not big on putting his head down and body on the line yet and his strength isn't there yet but has a good step. Same with SPS when he gets stronger. Dow who has great core strength and a good step, when he gets stronger around the shoulders I see as being someone who should be able to draw a lot of high free kicks. Cripps is a heavily tagged weapon and the opposition panic and give away holding frees a lot more but I feel he should look at how to encourage his man to panic and hole more often. Our small forwards I feel at stoppages need to work on going low and hard to draw frees. It's not easy but put the opposition under pressure and it could be the difference in some crucial close games.

Drawing frees is game craft and very important and we lack this. Being a young side that is to be expected but there are so many tricks and strengths our guys can work on so the free kick count isn't always against us.

Quite simply, what do umpires reward and how can we make that happen? What do we need to do to achieve that? Get stronger? Play tougher, harder, braver? Work the opposition over to put them in positions where they might panic? Work on our techniques, shrugging, pushing off, arm locks, sidesteps etc

Footy is a complex thing and we need to be good at all of it. Every aspect.

 

[gbatman]

Hamill leaving actually hurt Whitnall, Hamill was to Whitnall what Spalding was to Kernahan.

Lance had an amazing year in 2000 after Hamill left but you can't help but wonder how good we might have been that year and what may have been if we had Hamill and Koutoufides didn't get injured.

I think it hurt the team a lot more than it hurt Whitnall but still, put the focus on Lance to do the bulk of the work up forward.

 

[AB_Blue]

Sik van Dan.....man


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[Robbo's my hero]

Whitnall stays Hamill goes still Hurts

I’m not sure you’re totally aware of how silly this statement is.

 

[The Flying Doormat]

If you haven’t already - whack it in the no discussion thread.

Cue ferrisb

 

[BlueTongue]

Hamill leaving actually hurt Whitnall, Hamill was to Whitnall what Spalding was to Kernahan.

Yep - Great analogy

 

[The Flying Doormat]

Meeting with Martin went very well..

Any updates/confirmation on a meeting with Betts?

 

[Heres Waite]

Hamill leaving actually hurt Whitnall, Hamill was to Whitnall what Spalding was to Kernahan.

And what McGovern will be to Charlie in 2020!!

 

[AT97]

Cunningham’s front and centre goal late in the game against the bulldogs was first class, guy could be anything with a clean run

Only 10th on our list of best goals of the year. thought it would be higher.

 

[AndyLucimitis]

Like it or not drawing free kicks is a part of the game and a very important part of the game. You want to be a good team you need to be good at just about all aspects of the game and this is one of the aspects. There are many ways to draw a free. The main way is to be dangerous and get in good positions, get your opposition out of position a bit and that gets them to panic and make a mistake.

The rule exists to protect players heads, they are getting contact to the head so they are getting free kicks. They are getting contact because they are trying to break tackles which is a genuine and massive skill of the game and they are very good at it. The tacklers are making high contact from bad tackles. Free kick every day.

Doesn't matter whether in the air, around a stoppage or in open play. You get your opponent to panic and slightly out position them then next thing the spoil is high or chops the arms, there is a hold, there is a high tackle or an illegal block or some kind of pressure/panic driven free kick.

Secondly players are not intentionally trying to get free kick. They aren't playing for it. They are just getting in a position where their opponent is slightly out positioned and putting the pressure on them to stop them and reacting to whatever mistake the defending player does. Selwood is strong so he needs to be tackled really correctly but he is also smart and has a good sidestep which puts the tackler out of position and is why he breaks tackles and gets frees. It's quite simply good play.

Doing good things on an AFL field is supposed to be hard and favor the skilled and ball winning players. Lay a good tackle, get rewarded. Lay a poor tackle, get penalised. Attack the footy with commitment, get rewarded. Use dirty tactics like holding, arm chopping, thuggery to stop player getting the footy, get penalised. Players who are winning free kicks are doing so under these guidelines and exploiting those who are doing the wrong thing and have lesser abilities. I'm happy enough seeing good play get rewarded and poor play get penalised. I'm fine with that. Let the stars be stars and the also runs be what they are.

The head contact a player gets when a tackle slips is very marginal and low impact but most of the time warrants a free kick. The way this doesn't happen is better tackling, quite simply the challenge is being put forward to the tackler by the ball carrier. If they can't tackle properly and can't prevent a strong mid opening their shoulders then that's on them. This level of footy is supposed to be hard, it's what makes it elite and great and for what it's worth, when someone like Selwood opens their shoulders and the tackle slips, it's not to get a free kick, it's to break the tackle. The free kick is just a bye product and IMO if he'd good enough to do it and the tackler is not good enough then good on him, deserves to be awarded for that because it's good football V bad football and I prefer to see where the good football wins out.

If one player is too good for the other then that's great. That's what the stars of the comp are. Too good for most. A guy like Selwood happens to be too good for a lot of the opposition players tackling him. So be it. They either get better or they lose the contest. That's footy.

Shrugging tackles is huge IMO. In terms of a skill increasing in value, it's the skill that has increased in value over the last 20 years. There's a lot of players around the ball now, if you get it, it's nearly a sure thing that you will have to beat the first tackle to get it away cleanly. If you have a team that is good at that then you can be damaging from your clearances and it really gets your side away. Really generates run, time, space and carry. The elite inside mids, this is what they do well. Clean hands and incredibly difficult to tackle, it's a requirement in modern football to be an inside mid, you have to be able to beat the first tackle a lot of the time and you have to be able to lay a tackle so they don't get it away. I think as an ability this one goes unnoticed a lot. Teams can win the clearances but they are hacking it out of there and turning it over a lot while others win the clearances and are breaking tackles and getting handballs away and getting it to a ball carrier in the clear who can direct a kick. Enormously valuable skill and if you have a player who can do this well and who wins a few free kicks doing it because he's elite and hard to tackle then I think he should be admired for that.

Falling to the knees IMO is unnecessary, I think they need to be trying to avoid the tackler or break the tackle. Doing that is not playing for free kicks but it does draw a lot of free kicks.

This is what a lot of people on here are not distinguishing, the difference between playing for free kicks and the difference between drawing free kicks. You're trying to do something that's going to achieve a good result for you without getting the free but you get a free kick, that's drawing a free kick. Shrugging the shoulders, it's trying to break a tackle, it slips high, well done you have drawn a free. Dropping at the knees, it's not trying to achieve anything other than to draw high contact, this is playing for a free. put your head down after you have come up with the footy, this is playing for free kicks. Put your head down to get the footy and someone comes the other way and gets you high, this is drawing a free kick. There are so many tricks forwards use to encourage defenders to grab an arm or a bit of guernsey or mids use at the stoppage to try and get their man to hold them and it's mostly by jostling for prime position and being good enough to take it. This is drawing a free kick. Flopping is different again and IMO that should be punishable.

If you've got a bloke out there and he keeps doing something in a way where if it works out well they get a good result regardless of the free then there is nothing wrong with that and what Selwood is doing shrugging tackles and drawing a few free kicks is just fine IMO. He gets them because he's good and he's damn good at breaking and shrugging tackles.



Ideally you want to tackle a player around the elbows and have a good amount of downward force coming from both your arms and your body. You want to pin the elbows in and pull them down. You do this well you won't get shrugged or give away a free.

A lot of the tackles guys like Selwood and Murphy break and get to slip up are from players tackling with their hands as I like to call it, where they reach out and don't get their body in and get the full wrap up (usually because they have sidestepped). The other reason is because they have been tackled high up on the arm, mid arm to lower shoulder and if you tackle these blokes there they are going to shrug you every time. Personally I like it. If you want to tackle them tackle them right. Get in hard, get around the elbows and bring them down. Puts a lot of emphasis on good tackling technique. Murphy, Selwood, they aren't getting free kicks from good tackles, they are putting themselves in good positions where they are hard to tackle and they are letting their smarts and abilities do the rest. You tackles them right, you get them, tackle them poorly, they get you, it's a fair game.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of players out there laying really good tackles but there are a few who let themselves down and fail when tackling these good inside mids.

Shrugging is a big part of it. You're not just opening your arms up and making it slip you're putting in a strong lateral movement to put the tackler in a poor position so they reach out (tackle with their hands/arms and not body) and so they grab you in the wrong spot. You do the rest with your arms but you need to have the agility and core strength to do the step which starts it all. You want to shrug effectively, you have to put in a good step so when they tackle they don't get you with their body or get a good wrap up.

It's actually a technique designed to break tackles. you bend the knees so you can have that strong lateral movement. As I said you need to have that strength and agility to do it. The frees are just a bye product. Sometimes these players slip the tackle using the same technique and get a handball off and they don't get high contact and no one notices. Sometimes they slip a tackle and it goes high and everyone complains they are playing for frees. Sometimes they get caught effectively and no one notices. You want a good side step you have to be able to bend the knees and use the power in your legs. Breaking tackles is done with both shoulder and core strength. Core strength to stand up in the tackle and put the tackler out of position, shoulder strength to shrug out of the weak tackle you have brought about from your sidestep or because they are a weak tackler.


Personally I see this as a really big weakness in our team over the board.

Harry and Charlie when they get stronger and more threatening are going to get more frees. They are going to learn the arm locking techniques and pushing techniques to bring about holds and their strength and abilities are going to make their opponents panic and infringe.

Our young smalls. Fisher should be drawing more high frees because he's small. Not big on putting his head down and body on the line yet and his strength isn't there yet but has a good step. Same with SPS when he gets stronger. Dow who has great core strength and a good step, when he gets stronger around the shoulders I see as being someone who should be able to draw a lot of high free kicks. Cripps is a heavily tagged weapon and the opposition panic and give away holding frees a lot more but I feel he should look at how to encourage his man to panic and hole more often. Our small forwards I feel at stoppages need to work on going low and hard to draw frees. It's not easy but put the opposition under pressure and it could be the difference in some crucial close games.

Drawing frees is game craft and very important and we lack this. Being a young side that is to be expected but there are so many tricks and strengths our guys can work on so the free kick count isn't always against us.

Quite simply, what do umpires reward and how can we make that happen? What do we need to do to achieve that? Get stronger? Play tougher, harder, braver? Work the opposition over to put them in positions where they might panic? Work on our techniques, shrugging, pushing off, arm locks, sidesteps etc

Footy is a complex thing and we need to be good at all of it. Every aspect.

....ummm phewwww. I’m just going to agree with you.


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[AT97]

Never understood why SOS and or the Crows never rated Lyons

or GCS.

 

[Blue and Blue]

Secret Meeting with Butler ?......Ha ha...ch7 always trying to look so clever..idiots

 

[AndyLucimitis]

Sik van Dan.....man


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Redirect Notice

SOS: I’ll get you Butler.


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[TheBlueCampaigner]

Like it or not drawing free kicks is a part of the game and a very important part of the game. You want to be a good team you need to be good at just about all aspects of the game and this is one of the aspects. There are many ways to draw a free. The main way is to be dangerous and get in good positions, get your opposition out of position a bit and that gets them to panic and make a mistake.

The rule exists to protect players heads, they are getting contact to the head so they are getting free kicks. They are getting contact because they are trying to break tackles which is a genuine and massive skill of the game and they are very good at it. The tacklers are making high contact from bad tackles. Free kick every day.

Doesn't matter whether in the air, around a stoppage or in open play. You get your opponent to panic and slightly out position them then next thing the spoil is high or chops the arms, there is a hold, there is a high tackle or an illegal block or some kind of pressure/panic driven free kick.

Secondly players are not intentionally trying to get free kick. They aren't playing for it. They are just getting in a position where their opponent is slightly out positioned and putting the pressure on them to stop them and reacting to whatever mistake the defending player does. Selwood is strong so he needs to be tackled really correctly but he is also smart and has a good sidestep which puts the tackler out of position and is why he breaks tackles and gets frees. It's quite simply good play.

Doing good things on an AFL field is supposed to be hard and favor the skilled and ball winning players. Lay a good tackle, get rewarded. Lay a poor tackle, get penalised. Attack the footy with commitment, get rewarded. Use dirty tactics like holding, arm chopping, thuggery to stop player getting the footy, get penalised. Players who are winning free kicks are doing so under these guidelines and exploiting those who are doing the wrong thing and have lesser abilities. I'm happy enough seeing good play get rewarded and poor play get penalised. I'm fine with that. Let the stars be stars and the also runs be what they are.

The head contact a player gets when a tackle slips is very marginal and low impact but most of the time warrants a free kick. The way this doesn't happen is better tackling, quite simply the challenge is being put forward to the tackler by the ball carrier. If they can't tackle properly and can't prevent a strong mid opening their shoulders then that's on them. This level of footy is supposed to be hard, it's what makes it elite and great and for what it's worth, when someone like Selwood opens their shoulders and the tackle slips, it's not to get a free kick, it's to break the tackle. The free kick is just a bye product and IMO if he'd good enough to do it and the tackler is not good enough then good on him, deserves to be awarded for that because it's good football V bad football and I prefer to see where the good football wins out.

If one player is too good for the other then that's great. That's what the stars of the comp are. Too good for most. A guy like Selwood happens to be too good for a lot of the opposition players tackling him. So be it. They either get better or they lose the contest. That's footy.

Shrugging tackles is huge IMO. In terms of a skill increasing in value, it's the skill that has increased in value over the last 20 years. There's a lot of players around the ball now, if you get it, it's nearly a sure thing that you will have to beat the first tackle to get it away cleanly. If you have a team that is good at that then you can be damaging from your clearances and it really gets your side away. Really generates run, time, space and carry. The elite inside mids, this is what they do well. Clean hands and incredibly difficult to tackle, it's a requirement in modern football to be an inside mid, you have to be able to beat the first tackle a lot of the time and you have to be able to lay a tackle so they don't get it away. I think as an ability this one goes unnoticed a lot. Teams can win the clearances but they are hacking it out of there and turning it over a lot while others win the clearances and are breaking tackles and getting handballs away and getting it to a ball carrier in the clear who can direct a kick. Enormously valuable skill and if you have a player who can do this well and who wins a few free kicks doing it because he's elite and hard to tackle then I think he should be admired for that.

Falling to the knees IMO is unnecessary, I think they need to be trying to avoid the tackler or break the tackle. Doing that is not playing for free kicks but it does draw a lot of free kicks.

This is what a lot of people on here are not distinguishing, the difference between playing for free kicks and the difference between drawing free kicks. You're trying to do something that's going to achieve a good result for you without getting the free but you get a free kick, that's drawing a free kick. Shrugging the shoulders, it's trying to break a tackle, it slips high, well done you have drawn a free. Dropping at the knees, it's not trying to achieve anything other than to draw high contact, this is playing for a free. put your head down after you have come up with the footy, this is playing for free kicks. Put your head down to get the footy and someone comes the other way and gets you high, this is drawing a free kick. There are so many tricks forwards use to encourage defenders to grab an arm or a bit of guernsey or mids use at the stoppage to try and get their man to hold them and it's mostly by jostling for prime position and being good enough to take it. This is drawing a free kick. Flopping is different again and IMO that should be punishable.

If you've got a bloke out there and he keeps doing something in a way where if it works out well they get a good result regardless of the free then there is nothing wrong with that and what Selwood is doing shrugging tackles and drawing a few free kicks is just fine IMO. He gets them because he's good and he's damn good at breaking and shrugging tackles.



Ideally you want to tackle a player around the elbows and have a good amount of downward force coming from both your arms and your body. You want to pin the elbows in and pull them down. You do this well you won't get shrugged or give away a free.

A lot of the tackles guys like Selwood and Murphy break and get to slip up are from players tackling with their hands as I like to call it, where they reach out and don't get their body in and get the full wrap up (usually because they have sidestepped). The other reason is because they have been tackled high up on the arm, mid arm to lower shoulder and if you tackle these blokes there they are going to shrug you every time. Personally I like it. If you want to tackle them tackle them right. Get in hard, get around the elbows and bring them down. Puts a lot of emphasis on good tackling technique. Murphy, Selwood, they aren't getting free kicks from good tackles, they are putting themselves in good positions where they are hard to tackle and they are letting their smarts and abilities do the rest. You tackles them right, you get them, tackle them poorly, they get you, it's a fair game.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of players out there laying really good tackles but there are a few who let themselves down and fail when tackling these good inside mids.

Shrugging is a big part of it. You're not just opening your arms up and making it slip you're putting in a strong lateral movement to put the tackler in a poor position so they reach out (tackle with their hands/arms and not body) and so they grab you in the wrong spot. You do the rest with your arms but you need to have the agility and core strength to do the step which starts it all. You want to shrug effectively, you have to put in a good step so when they tackle they don't get you with their body or get a good wrap up.

It's actually a technique designed to break tackles. you bend the knees so you can have that strong lateral movement. As I said you need to have that strength and agility to do it. The frees are just a bye product. Sometimes these players slip the tackle using the same technique and get a handball off and they don't get high contact and no one notices. Sometimes they slip a tackle and it goes high and everyone complains they are playing for frees. Sometimes they get caught effectively and no one notices. You want a good side step you have to be able to bend the knees and use the power in your legs. Breaking tackles is done with both shoulder and core strength. Core strength to stand up in the tackle and put the tackler out of position, shoulder strength to shrug out of the weak tackle you have brought about from your sidestep or because they are a weak tackler.


Personally I see this as a really big weakness in our team over the board.

Harry and Charlie when they get stronger and more threatening are going to get more frees. They are going to learn the arm locking techniques and pushing techniques to bring about holds and their strength and abilities are going to make their opponents panic and infringe.

Our young smalls. Fisher should be drawing more high frees because he's small. Not big on putting his head down and body on the line yet and his strength isn't there yet but has a good step. Same with SPS when he gets stronger. Dow who has great core strength and a good step, when he gets stronger around the shoulders I see as being someone who should be able to draw a lot of high free kicks. Cripps is a heavily tagged weapon and the opposition panic and give away holding frees a lot more but I feel he should look at how to encourage his man to panic and hole more often. Our small forwards I feel at stoppages need to work on going low and hard to draw frees. It's not easy but put the opposition under pressure and it could be the difference in some crucial close games.

Drawing frees is game craft and very important and we lack this. Being a young side that is to be expected but there are so many tricks and strengths our guys can work on so the free kick count isn't always against us.

Quite simply, what do umpires reward and how can we make that happen? What do we need to do to achieve that? Get stronger? Play tougher, harder, braver? Work the opposition over to put them in positions where they might panic? Work on our techniques, shrugging, pushing off, arm locks, sidesteps etc

Footy is a complex thing and we need to be good at all of it. Every aspect.

Bugger me, you should have inserted chapter numbers into that post.