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

[Metalcrusher]

Butler could be handy we have two third rounders, could be used there.

Reckon we might have to hand over two first rounders for Papley. Not just because of Sydney being firm, his contract and not being fully committed to leaving but because it could get us two second rounders and Cameron. Those two second rounders could get us Martin. I just think if Martin nominates us we will need to find another second rounder or trade a player.

Might be hard to find the midfielder we need but it looks like small forward options are looking good. This means it might be crucial to have a first round pick going into next season.

A lot to mull over.

Need:
- one wing/HF
- one small crumbing foward
- one ruck
- one established mid

That's it ….

 

[Robbo's my hero]

I like Papley, but our 1st this year is more than enough, maybe too much

If we put #8 up what could we get in return?

 

[J-dog]

Boak is 31 and Rockcliff will be 30 before the start of next season. Would be a big mistake to get rid of Wines

Yes I agree.
I am hoping that we convince him to request a trade to us

 

[Blutopia]

I like Papley, but our 1st this year is more than enough, maybe too much

Since there is live trading now, maybe we are best to lock in Martin, Betts, Butler and then see what is available at pick 8 on draft night. If there is a gun junior small forward available we call Swans and say we can grab the kid or see what is the best deal they will take for Papley. If they are too greedy, we use pick 8 on the draftee who gets mentoring from Eddie in year one.

 

[LanceRomance]

If we get Martin and papley, I get the feeling we are going to trade a player or two out.... Just not sure who.

 

[J-dog]

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.

Sure.
I'll just say this once though.
We need multiple good small forwards and one more mature and capable inside mid that can link up and contribute on the outside.

By all accounts both Wines and Papley will cost 2 firsts with a second coming back.
I would rather bring in Wines and some less expensive small forwards in either s Gray or butler (not both) and Eddie, than Papley and a ruck that just never plays.
In either scenario Martin is separate whether he gets picked up or not.
I feel our ruck situation is not too bad, but would rather 2 small forwards should injury hit at least we have capable backup smalls, inside/outside mids, ruck, and talls.
If we go Papley we don't get our capable mid and I doubt we bring in Eddie, in which case if we get injuries (and we will) we will have to rely on the same team as this year.
I would choose the Wines option myself if it could be done but each to their own.
Let's see what happens.
Go Blues

 

[Hands On]

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.

Pretty in depth analysis and agree with most of it. But bat baby you need to get out more.

 

[Bobmonkey]

Since there is live trading now, maybe we are best to lock in Martin, Betts, Butler and then see what is available at pick 8 on draft night. If there is a gun junior small forward available we call Swans and say we can grab the kid or see what is the best deal they will take for Papley. If they are too greedy, we use pick 8 on the draftee who gets mentoring from Eddie in year one.

It doesn't work that way.
Player trades are made before the draft, not on draft night. Picks can be swapped, that's all.

I don't understand the obsession with keeping first round draft picks.
We've gone to the draft for 4 years now with first's and drafted a strong core, but we need to recruit to needs now.

Right now the teams biggest needs are damaging small forwards.
If you can hand over firsts for a young classy small forward and still get picks back, you just do it.
There is no point taking a gamble on drafting a damaging young forward who will take time to come good when we can have a ready made known quantity player right now.

 

[bmaurizio]

If we get Martin and papley, I get the feeling we are going to trade a player or two out.... Just not sure who.

Yeah I get the same feeling, the obvious one is Levi, perhaps Fisher too? not certain but one gets that gut feel Silvagni is up to something.
Remember hearing Suns enquired re Cunners last trade period.

 

[bmaurizio]

We desperately need to recruiter to need for a season or two as we’ve stock piled on young talent.
We now need to protect and mentor our lightweight youngsters , to enable them to develop to their potentials.

 

[C4[2]Yo`DooR]

I feel that a big clue was given when we pulled out of the race for Brandon Ellis.

His management reported today that they felt let down by Carlton pulling the rug from underneath him (implying that it was a done deal).

For us to suddenly pull out of this deal, it can only mean that we now must have a guarantee from someone else and have elected to redirect some of the projected Ellis salary to this player instead.

 

[Wagyu Beef]

Frightenning forward line when up and running.

 

[Blutopia]

It doesn't work that way.
Player trades are made before the draft, not on draft night. Picks can be swapped, that's all.

I don't understand the obsession with keeping first round draft picks.
We've gone to the draft for 4 years now with first's and drafted a strong core, but we need to recruit to needs now.

Right now the teams biggest needs are damaging small forwards.
If you can hand over firsts for a young classy small forward and still get picks back, you just do it.
There is no point taking a gamble on drafting a damaging young forward who will take time to come good when we can have a ready made known quantity player right now.

Fair enough. I thought that they were changing it to include players this year but they must have just put it up as a suggestion and not followed through.

Afl will probably announce it as a new rule just before GWS have a pick and want to trade it live for a player

 

[Stamos]

His management reported today that they felt let down by Carlton pulling the rug from underneath him (implying that it was a done deal).

Link?

 

[Keyza]

Cameron cost pick 12.

Was Cameron contracted?

 

[Blutopia]

I feel that a big clue was given when we pulled out of the race for Brandon Ellis.

His management reported today that they felt let down by Carlton pulling the rug from underneath him (implying that it was a done deal).

For us to suddenly pull out of this deal, it can only mean that we now must have a guarantee from someone else and have elected to redirect some of the projected Ellis salary to this player instead.

McLuggage Homesick and wants to come to us....

 

[myblueroan]

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

Made Tolstoy look like a comic strip writer.

 

[JoeyPBLUES]

McLuggage Homesick and wants to come to us....

Papley or something totally outta left field

 

[C4[2]Yo`DooR]

Link?

From today’s herald sun article by Jon Ralph, Sam Edmund

 

[The Flying Doormat]

It's only the Trade Bull*hitter, however

 

[Wagyu Beef]

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.

Going to print this off and read it over the holidays.

 

[La Dispute]

I like Papley, but our 1st this year is more than enough, maybe too much

Agreed.

If it’s a choice between Papley and downgrading two sets of 1st rounders (while signing two good players in Martin and Butler) I’m more than happy to bow out.

Use this years first wisely; and from what I can tell there are lots of players of interest in the range of our first rounder anyway, and retain next year’s first to go again.

Butler is reasonably like-for-like anyway, and it gives us far more flexibility over the next few years to shape our list properly. Bringing in all of Papley, Butler and Martin to the forward half might just be overkill anyway, and it’s not as though we’re teeming with draft collateral as it stands.

 

[RoyalBlues]

Made Tolstoy look like a comic strip writer.

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” - Leo Tolstoy

 

[myblueroan]

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” - Leo Tolstoy

Something us CFC supporters can appreciate.

 

[Healer]

Need:
- one wing/HF
- one small crumbing foward
- one ruck
- one established mid

That's it ….

Spot on,
I am not ITK. I am not a footy expert, more like a professional tea leaf reader.
There are too many small fwds in the rumour mix.
Not very much about gun mids since the rabbit was taken off the menu.
I suspect that there is shroud of silence over which mid we are really after.
And I also suspect Papley is a red herring.
Don't have the answers, but reckon there are some surprises in store.
In SOS we trust