Review R13: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly vs. Brisbane Lions

[dylan123]

The idea is fine

We don't seem to trust our footskills at that crunch/shut down time though. Resort to the bail out option almost instantly.

It's where you'd love to see a play like Hawthorn did earlier in the year (against Essendon?) where everyone goes to one side then you have someone quick lead off to the other side and attack. Wonder how much of that stuff is keeping it up your sleeve until finals or last cracks at winning a game.

Bit like how we were attacking to start the season and then went heavy on defending. Curious if this is because we don't think that style wins games or it allows us to do something like we did against Brisbane as teams are less prepared for it?

 

[Drugs Are Bad Mackay?]

It's where you'd love to see a play like Hawthorn did earlier in the year (against Essendon?) where everyone goes to one side then you have someone quick lead off to the other side and attack. Wonder how much of that stuff is keeping it up your sleeve until finals or last cracks at winning a game.

Bit like how we were attacking to start the season and then went heavy on defending. Curious if this is because we don't think that style wins games or it allows us to do something like we did against Brisbane as teams are less prepared for it?

When we go for that bail out kick - should only be once every single other option is covered - we need to at least be able to force a boundary throw in. Kick near the the boundary to Thilthorpe/ROB/Fog trio. Then set up defensively.

Instead we put the ball into good spots for them to attack from, quickly. And none of our talls can get near it

 

[NSolis]

Imagine not thinking it's at all weird that a team turned it's shit around after hiring somebody to assist a coach who had 5 years of failure under his belt.

What’s weird about it? The list has improved significantly in terms of personnel and the age and experience profile is now in a similar range to most successful clubs. The off field team has improved, as opposed to in 2024 when it got worse. We’ve had a dream run with injuries. Improving is pretty much in line with what you’d expect, while challenging for the top 4 in 2022 or 2023 with a super young and inexperienced list would have been very unusual. All our high draft picks except Curtin and Draper are coming into their AFL-ready years, everyone is fit, and we are winning games. Not weird or shocking in any way.

But my point was more about you saying how Nicks is ‘bashing his head against a wall with the defensive stuff’ because he’s worried about being ‘found out as a fraud’. It’s absolutely bonkers - the team is #1 for offence. On the couch did a segment yesterday about the scores from defensive half being the best for any team in the last decade, and they are an elite ball movement team. It’s a cult of anti-Nicks inventing conclusions to match an existing opinion with no reference to actual events.

 

[AFC979810]

Imagine not thinking it's at all weird that a team turned it's shit around after hiring somebody to assist a coach who had 5 years of failure under his belt.

Imagine thinking its as simplistic as Murray.

 

[jenny61_99]

Cumming on 5AA: “message at 3/4 time was go for it, don’t die wandering” “our start in the last was based on attack”

So then with a lead we go defensive, concede shit load inside 50s and rely on opposition inaccuracy.

Cumming then goes on to say the last disposal we had in our front half was with 9mins 38 left. Wow.

Yep, nothing wrong with stopping attacking and go defensive. FMD, how can any one actually defend this?

Did we choose to go defensive or did reigning premiers Brisbane up their intensity to try to win the game?

 

[moogerfooger]

But my point was more about you saying how Nicks is ‘bashing his head against a wall with the defensive stuff’ because he’s worried about being ‘found out as a fraud’. It’s absolutely bonkers - the team is #1 for offence. On the couch did a segment yesterday about the scores from defensive half being the best for any team in the last decade, and they are an elite ball movement team. It’s a cult of anti-Nicks inventing conclusions to match an existing opinion with no reference to actual events.

I mean, what would Leigh Matthews know anyway?

 

[Mostyn]

In Tassie ? AFL is their most consistent and significant earner. I wasn’t talking SA. Maybe tone down the remarkably untrue but hey. The way we talk to people matters and you could say what you said without … well … frankly needlessly know it all and adversarial. What I said in relation to a post about Tassie was not the exact opposite of what I wrote. Their tourism dollar is driven by wilderness experience, not sport and 12 AFl games are year do not change that.

I'm just commenting on the statement that AFL isn't of interest to tourists as remarkably untrue. It's arguably the biggest and most consistent tourism driver that the industry has.

I'm not having a go at you personally - just the fact that probably the opposite is true regarding what you said.

 

[George CantStandYa]

Did we choose to go defensive or did reigning premiers Brisbane up their intensity to try to win the game?

We didn’t switch, we continued to kick down the line, exactly what we did against Port.

 

[Mr_Moogle]

Imagine thinking its as simplistic as Murray.

I wouldn't be underating Davis. Nicks had everything else in place and came bottom 4. Same assistant coaches, same fitness people and mostly the same list. Of our new recruits only really Peatling has had a big impact. The other two have been just okay.

 

[mcleod at 50 lines it up]

In Tassie ? AFL is their most consistent and significant earner. I wasn’t talking SA. Maybe tone down the remarkably untrue but hey. The way we talk to people matters and you could say what you said without … well … frankly needlessly know it all and adversarial. What I said in relation to a post about Tassie was not the exact opposite of what I wrote. Their tourism dollar is driven by wilderness experience, not sport and 12 AFl games are year do not change that.

Yep I'd love to see evidence, kept mentioning economic impact rather than the net economic benefit. Of course there's going to be economic impact when you spend hundreds of millions of dollars, but increasingly governments are opting not to bid for major sporting events and scaling back on expensive infrastructure as they don't see the return on investment.

 

[GreyCrow]

. Of our new recruits only really Peatling has had a big impact. The other two have been just okay.

While this is mostly true - I think their impact has been more - what it has done is pushed 3 lesser players out

We are stronger with them in than not

 

[AFC979810]

I wouldn't be underating Davis. Nicks had everything else in place and came bottom 4. Same assistant coaches, same fitness people and mostly the same list. Of our new recruits only really Peatling has had a big impact. The other two have been just okay.

You don't think that replacing Murphy with ANB has been a massive massive upgrade?

You dont think a healthy TT has made a huge upgrade? He played his first game when we were 5-1-10.

Those 3 recruits improved our best 18 tremendously.

Last year we were trotting out Sholl (20 games), Jones (16 games), Murphy (17 games), Dowling (9 games), Cook (15 games), Borlase (10 games), Burgess (7 games). Thats ignoring the games we wasted on Hamill, Himmelurg, McHenry who aren't here.

We are over halfway through the season and this year those players have combined for a total of 8 games.

I think Davis has helped. But the biggest difference is Nicks has gone back to the 2023 gameplan and we are healthy with a much better list.

 

[cmndstab]

Did we choose to go defensive or did reigning premiers Brisbane up their intensity to try to win the game?

Yes, I'm not convinced that we "went defensive" as much as we just "got our asses kicked" by Brisbane's offence (thankfully they were inaccurate).

Against Port, we clearly went defensive, and you could see that in our setups after each goal. Whereas against Brisbane, they never actually got the goal, so we were just in scramble mode for the last ten minutes, trying desperately to get the ball out of defence, and turning it over so quick that the players stayed back there because the ball was coming back in almost immediately.

That's not a defence of the players or the coaches, by the way. We absolutely shat the bed in the last fifteen minutes, and I would say 9 times out of 10 Brisbane end up kicking a goal, and then who knows how we would have responded after that. But I don't think it's a case of us having gone defensive when we were one goal up with ten minutes of game time left. It was just a combination of us making poor decisions, being beaten at the contest by Brisbane, and never actually getting a centre bounce to reset. Somebody needed to get the boys organised, get a few extra players to come out and create a contest outside of D50, whether it was from on-field leadership or coaching direction. But nobody did.

 

[Mr_Moogle]

I mean, what would Leigh Matthews know anyway?

I'm not denying what we can all see. I just think it's possible that Nicks might be getting dragged along by Davis to play this style against his own instincts. We've all heard what he's got to say about footy, by his own admission he's a defense orientated coach. We've heard our own players say Nicks doesn't like attacking football. We've also heard Nicks say he's doing less now. I wouldn't be at all surprised if much of Nick's authority to govern our strategy was taken out of his hands over the off-season. He looked like a bloke under a lot of pressure late last year.

 

[suburpy]

Where’s the meltdown about that?

Interesting that he did ask the players and the answer was attack, go for it. We scored 5 goals doing that.

Do you think we 3/4 time Nicks asked them when we hit the lead what should we do? Or is it more likely that once we hit the lead Nicks

I'm just commenting on the statement that AFL isn't of interest to tourists as remarkably untrue. It's arguably the biggest and most consistent tourism driver that the industry has.

I'm not having a go at you personally - just the fact that probably the opposite is true regarding what you said.

Yes but not specifically in Tassie. It is undeniable their tourism is derived in large from wilderness and nature tourism. 75% of their tourism visits are for holidays of which the bulk are for nature. Ok so maybe for 12 games AFL attracts the opposition supporters to Tassie but it won’t form the majority of their 3 billion tourism revenue

 

[Golumless]

I wouldn't be underating Davis. Nicks had everything else in place and came bottom 4. Same assistant coaches, same fitness people and mostly the same list. Of our new recruits only really Peatling has had a big impact. The other two have been just okay.

Considering one of the weaknesses of the 2024 side was forward pressure, and that we've all but abandoned the wings, I wouldn't be underrating the impact ANB has on this side. Though, the big thing Nicks didn't have is the kids stepping up in 2024 that he's getting now. In part that's due to Thilthorpe going down with a long term injury early (as this is a side that may need a star KPF to fire properly), but it was group that couldn't handle the loss of performance in its experienced players and 2024 had most of them regress.

To answer your next post, it's also an off-base argument as the profile we've hit on this year is pretty much a repeat of our 2023 profile, outside of us becoming the gold standard with goal kicking (something we had fixed in 2024), and some further squad depth instead of being as reliant on our experienced players. Whilst it's likely there is some additional nuance from Davis, its likely we haven't seen the true value of this addition at this point as it's going to be in the next step in turning this iteration into a genuine contender; right now, this is Nicks.

 

[Mattrox]

Did we choose to go defensive or did reigning premiers Brisbane up their intensity to try to win the game?

He's taking 1 part of the interview and extrapolating it to fit his narrative.

He's forgetting to mention the part where Curtin says words to the effect that they have to dig deeper when they get tired. I heard the interview live.
My read was not that it was a deliberate attempt to shut the game down for 9 or 10 minutes. Although there were patches of play that were like that. My read was the not getting the ball into our F50 was part of the review.

My read of the play from D50 Cathedral End on the day was that the flags were blowing horizontal at 90 degrees to the western grandstand and we were using it as shelter to try and take contested marks on the wing.

I think we got the jump on Brisbane and surprised them and then they responded when we started to fatigue. 5 goals in a quarter equalled our entire 3 quarters tally. That level of intenisty will never be sustained.

At any stage if they kick a goal rather than a behind the ball is back in the centre and 6,6,6. Every behind they scored, we were trying to launch from kick ins. The game is different. It's an irrelevant argument because the couse of the game completely changes.

I am not arguing that everything is roses and sunshine. I doubt there was an instruction to ice the game from 10 mins out. He is arguing this was a coaching instrution so he can use it as evidence to sack Nicks. It was never said in the interview that it was a coaches instruction and pretty much said they need to be better as player in that situation. Brisbane are a good team with a great midfield. They were always going to respond hard.

My only take away was we won a close game. We won ugly. We won when not playing particularly well for large patches. This is something we haven't done in the past.

 

[BRL121]

He's taking 1 part of the interview and extrapolating it to fit his narrative.

He's forgetting to mention the part where Curtin says words to the effect that they have to dig deeper when they get tired. I heard the interview live.
My read was not that it was a deliberate attempt to shut the game down for 9 or 10 minutes. Although there were patches of play that were like that. My read was the not getting the ball into our F50 was part of the review.

My read of the play from D50 Cathedral End on the day was that the flags were blowing horizontal at 90 degrees to the western grandstand and we were using it as shelter to try and take contested marks on the wing.

I think we got the jump on Brisbane and surprised them and then they responded when we started to fatigue. 5 goals in a quarter equalled our entire 3 quarters tally. That level of intenisty will never be sustained.

At any stage if they kick a goal rather than a behind the ball is back in the centre and 6,6,6. Every behind they scored, we were trying to launch from kick ins. The game is different. It's an irrelevant argument because the couse of the game completely changes.

I am not arguing that everything is roses and sunshine. I doubt there was an instruction to ice the game from 10 mins out. He is arguing this was a coaching instrution so he can use it as evidence to sack Nicks. It was never said in the interview that it was a coaches instruction and pretty much said they need to be better as player in that situation. Brisbane are a good team with a great midfield. They were always going to respond hard.

My only take away was we won a close game. We won ugly. We won when not playing particularly well for large patches. This is something we haven't done in the past.

Did they put up any signs in the last quarter? I only saw the boxing glove sign earlier. That might clarify things.

In the Port match, the instructions and signage were clear.

 

[feenix67]

Did they put up any signs in the last quarter? I only saw the boxing glove sign earlier. That might clarify things.

In the Port match, the instructions and signage were clear.

I think they put this one up

 

[NSolis]

Yes, I'm not convinced that we "went defensive" as much as we just "got our asses kicked" by Brisbane's offence (thankfully they were inaccurate).

Against Port, we clearly went defensive, and you could see that in our setups after each goal. Whereas against Brisbane, they never actually got the goal, so we were just in scramble mode for the last ten minutes, trying desperately to get the ball out of defence, and turning it over so quick that the players stayed back there because the ball was coming back in almost immediately.

That's not a defence of the players or the coaches, by the way. We absolutely shat the bed in the last fifteen minutes, and I would say 9 times out of 10 Brisbane end up kicking a goal, and then who knows how we would have responded after that. But I don't think it's a case of us having gone defensive when we were one goal up with ten minutes of game time left. It was just a combination of us making poor decisions, being beaten at the contest by Brisbane, and never actually getting a centre bounce to reset. Somebody needed to get the boys organised, get a few extra players to come out and create a contest outside of D50, whether it was from on-field leadership or coaching direction. But nobody did.

I think there was an interest in trying to ice the game and protect the lead. Dawson said as much in the post-game interview, and also said they didn't execute it very well. There's some importance to the nuance though - what does that instruction actually mean to the players? My feeling is you put more numbers behind the ball and around the contest and keep putting the ball wide and trying to create stoppages. It's not 'don't worry about trying to score', we just happened to be absolutely smashed around the ball and were quite lucky to hang on, and we never had a chance to reset at centre bounce because Brisbane never kicked a goal.

We'd have been smashed around the ball just as much either way, because as you say we never really had possession for long, it was largely kickout to contest to lost possession.

 

[NSolis]

I'm not denying what we can all see. I just think it's possible that Nicks might be getting dragged along by Davis to play this style against his own instincts. We've all heard what he's got to say about footy, by his own admission he's a defense orientated coach. We've heard our own players say Nicks doesn't like attacking football. We've also heard Nicks say he's doing less now. I wouldn't be at all surprised if much of Nick's authority to govern our strategy was taken out of his hands over the off-season. He looked like a bloke under a lot of pressure late last year.

Any coach with a very young group should be focussed on defence. Most young AFL players know how to hunt the ball and score, they don't necessarily know how to play in an AFL structure or play a specific role. For a non-Nicks example, Jack Riewoldt has talked about being given defensive roles early in his career and how it helped him learn the game better, even though obviously he's a 700+ goal star forward at the end of the day. A lot of draftees talk about this in fact. They were generally the superstar player of junior teams and had to learn how to do other stuff once they get into the AFL team and they are playing a junior role in an established team. If you picked up a team in rebuild it would make sense to focus on contest and defence as a first priority.

So yes, Nicks certainly tries to instil defensive instincts in his team but plainly he also has a focus on fast ball movement and scoring, because his teams move the ball fast and score a lot. We were the highest scoring team in the AFL in 2023 as well under Nicks, so this isn't some new thing with Davis. The problem is that at times in 2023 and 2024 we struggled to stop opposition sides on a scoring run and our defence in general was mediocre, so it was an emphasis for improvement. Hence the defensive emphasis at the start of 2024 - not that Nicks fundamentally doesn't care about scoring, but that we already had that part of the game under control plus quality personnel, and we needed to improve elsewhere.

We missed the mark at times, but the balance this year has been good for the most part - probably a bit vulnerable in the early rounds like the Essendon game where we dominated but still conceded 100 points, but in the last month or two we've had a pretty good balance.

 

[GreyCrow]

I think there was an interest in trying to ice the game and protect the lead. Dawson said as much in the post-game interview, and also said they didn't execute it very well. There's some importance to the nuance though - what does that instruction actually mean to the players? My feeling is you put more numbers behind the ball and around the contest and keep putting the ball wide and trying to create stoppages. It's not 'don't worry about trying to score', we just happened to be absolutely smashed around the ball and were quite lucky to hang on, and we never had a chance to reset at centre bounce because Brisbane never kicked a goal.

We'd have been smashed around the ball just as much either way, because as you say we never really had possession for long, it was largely kickout to contest to lost possession.

I do think its a vague go down the line dont look cute and go for numbers and stoppages

Anything to chew time off the clock

What that means is if you have an outside option be very very sure you can execute - if not down the line

 

[GreyCrow]

Any coach with a very young group should be focussed on defence. Most young AFL players know how to hunt the ball and score, they don't necessarily know how to play in an AFL structure or play a specific role. For a non-Nicks example, Jack Riewoldt has talked about being given defensive roles early in his career and how it helped him learn the game better, even though obviously he's a 700+ goal star forward at the end of the day. A lot of draftees talk about this in fact. They were generally the superstar player of junior teams and had to learn how to do other stuff once they get into the AFL team and they are playing a junior role in an established team. If you picked up a team in rebuild it would make sense to focus on contest and defence as a first priority.

So yes, Nicks certainly tries to instil defensive instincts in his team but plainly he also has a focus on fast ball movement and scoring, because his teams move the ball fast and score a lot. We were the highest scoring team in the AFL in 2023 as well under Nicks, so this isn't some new thing with Davis. The problem is that at times in 2023 and 2024 we struggled to stop opposition sides on a scoring run and our defence in general was mediocre, so it was an emphasis for improvement. Hence the defensive emphasis at the start of 2024 - not that Nicks fundamentally doesn't care about scoring, but that we already had that part of the game under control plus quality personnel, and we needed to improve elsewhere.

We missed the mark at times, but the balance this year has been good for the most part - probably a bit vulnerable in the early rounds like the Essendon game where we dominated but still conceded 100 points, but in the last month or two we've had a pretty good balance.

I think the tone of your post is correct. I do think these are important attributes to teach young players

My concern is how we do it - only because my focus is us - my eye test over a long time is the players natural talent is deemed less important than this defensive learning

I think its led to the detriment of a few good players or projected good players

We nearly sent Curtin down the same road but thankfully someone had a word somewhere and he has blossomed

 

[Mr_Moogle]

I think the tone of your post is correct. I do think these are important attributes to teach young players

My concern is how we do it - only because my focus is us - my eye test over a long time is the players natural talent is deemed less important than this defensive learning

I think its led to the detriment of a few good players or projected good players

We nearly sent Curtin down the same road but thankfully someone had a word somewhere and he has blossomed

He tried to mind**** Rachele too.

 

[Mr_Moogle]

Watching over the last 8 minutes again and what I noticed was that our kick outs weren't that bad. We gave ourselves ample opportunity to take a mark from the kick out and fluffed a bunch of them. I think Rob dropped two and Walker/Pedlar spoilt each other. We also turned the footy over on the wing those few times we didn't stuff it up.

What is concerning to me is how Brisbane cut us up at ground level whenever the ball spilt out. You can forgive dropped marks in those conditions but they were mopping up the loose footy way too easily.