Prediction Round 19, 2025: Changes vs Richmond

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

With their veterans, maybe.

With their third-year players though?

I dont think anyone else has a 20 year old third year player as the starting mid every week though? Hewett with his injury issues should 100% have come into the year with a fitness plan given his history. If we went in with a "kick the ball and will see how you feel next week" as the formula I think we are probably not being as smart as we should be

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

I dont think anyone else has a 20 year old third year player as the starting mid every week though? Hewett with his injury issues should 100% have come into the year with a fitness plan given his history. If we went in with a "kick the ball and will see how you feel next week" as the formula I think we are probably not being as smart as we should be

Isn’t “we’ll manage your loads week to week and when it becomes a concern we’ll sit you out for a week” a fitness plan though?

Collingwood planning ahead of time to rest a 58 year old Pendlebury from interstate trips doesn’t mean every side has to sit down in February and mark out which players will be rested for which games. You need to be a bit more flexible than that.

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Isn’t “we’ll manage your loads week to week and when it becomes a concern we’ll sit you out for a week” a fitness plan though?

Collingwood planning ahead of time to rest a 58 year old Pendlebury from interstate trips doesn’t mean every side has to sit down in February and mark out which players will be rested for which games. You need to be a bit more flexible than that.

Perhaps the resting for interstate trips isn’t a bad idea… Flying Liam Ryan to Adelaide only to rest him anyway as an example is just poor preparation. Why do we need to be more flexible than that ? Are we playing for the flag or something ?
Let’s come up with a long term strategy for our players and don’t just toss a coin each week on what we should do

It’s this thinking which has Gross sitting on his hands for a third week in a row

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Perhaps the resting for interstate trips isn’t a bad idea… Flying Liam Ryan to Adelaide only to rest him anyway as an example is just poor preparation. Why do we need to be more flexible than that ? Are we playing for the flag or something ?
Let’s come up with a long term strategy for our players and don’t just toss a coin each week on what we should do

It’s this thinking which has Gross sitting on his hands for a third week in a row

Third week in a row?

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

Third week in a row?

On July 27 it will be his first game since July 5th

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

On July 27 it will be his first game since July 5th

So he’s twiddling his thumbs for a second week in a row.

 

[Astro7]

Just on the news, Richmond announced this game's mission is to target Harley.
'He's a special player and requires special attention..'
Nothing new I suppose, but it's becoming a thing, also a way of arresting momentum.
Presumably they watched some of the Port vision.
Could get ugly? How will he handle it, let's hope he doesn't cross the line and somehow get suspended for the Derby.

 

[Tyberious Funk]

I dont think anyone else has a 20 year old third year player as the starting mid every week though? Hewett with his injury issues should 100% have come into the year with a fitness plan given his history. If we went in with a "kick the ball and will see how you feel next week" as the formula I think we are probably not being as smart as we should be

I 100% guarantee you Hewett has a fitness plan. And I guarantee you it has been worked up by professionals that have more of a ****ing clue than the knobheads melting down on Bigfooty. And maybe, just maybe... the qualified professionals, that are working day-in and day-out with Hewett, and are actually, y'know, talking to him and monitoring his loads... are taking a cautious approach based on information and his track record of injuries.

Seriously... we ditched our CEO, we sacked our coach, we replaced our fitness staff, we've turned over the majority of our list and we've even started dropping under-performing senior players and playing the kids. It's like people here are itching to find something to complain about.

 

[GoEaglesGoSGIO]

I 100% guarantee you Hewett has a fitness plan. And I guarantee you it has been worked up by professionals that have more of a ****ing clue than the knobheads melting down on Bigfooty. And maybe, just maybe... the qualified professionals, that are working day-in and day-out with Hewett, and are actually, y'know, talking to him and monitoring his loads... are taking a cautious approach based on information and his track record of injuries.

Seriously... we ditched our CEO, we sacked our coach, we replaced our fitness staff, we've turned over the majority of our list and we've even started dropping under-performing senior players and playing the kids. It's like people here are itching to find something to complain about.

Can see this conversation

“Well Toms just got 30 possessions on Saturday what do you think we should do next for his fitness”
“I’m thinking let’s fly him all around Australia and give him 3 weeks off from football. That should do it “

I mean we can believe we are doing the professional thing but I think the evidence is heavily in the other direction

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Can see this conversation

“Well Toms just got 30 possessions on Saturday what do you think we should do next for his fitness”
“I’m thinking let’s fly him all around Australia and give him 3 weeks off from football. That should do it “

It’s two weeks off football, I thought we established that. Otherwise everyone has a week off football between games

And he made one last minute flight to Adelaide as an emergency when two players were ruled out the day before the game. That’s hardly a plan to fly him all over Australia.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

I mean we can believe we are doing the professional thing but I think the evidence is heavily in the other direction

Yeah but we beat St Kilda

 

[ziad]

Perhaps the resting for interstate trips isn’t a bad idea… Flying Liam Ryan to Adelaide only to rest him anyway as an example is just poor preparation. Why do we need to be more flexible than that ? Are we playing for the flag or something ?
Let’s come up with a long term strategy for our players and don’t just toss a coin each week on what we should do

It’s this thinking which has Gross sitting on his hands for a third week in a row

Gross is well short of being ready - this isnt St Vinnie's

 

[WCErevival]

Just on the news, Richmond announced this game's mission is to target Harley.
'He's a special player and requires special attention..'
Nothing new I suppose, but it's becoming a thing, also a way of arresting momentum.
Presumably they watched some of the Port vision.
Could get ugly? How will he handle it, let's hope he doesn't cross the line and somehow get suspended for the Derby.

Good thing we're bringing in enforcer Timothy Kelly

 

[Eastern Rangers]

He doesn't have the skillset to thrive in a genuine bottom side. Given his age it was an utterly bizarre piece of recruitment. Was it a 3 year contract?

Owies was such an easy assessment to make. He simply doesn't get enough of the ball and expecting him to be able to kick the same amount of goals that he did at Carlton relied on magical thinking.

It was a bad trade for both clubs. As his age, experience and front end skillset is much better suited to a side like Carlton.

 

[sharps24]

It’s all well and good to say that we are bringing in senior players to try and get a win, but have you seen how our senior players play at the moment? We’ve got more chance of winning by leaving the young guys in the team because our senior players constantly stuff up our ball movement or they just don’t turn up.
The gross mismanagement of Tom Gross is also a red flag for me.

Strongly agree. People want to talk in abstracts like average number of games, average age, senior players, the need for leadership etc etc etc. Then you go look at the contributions of those senior players, or what the cost is of carrying someone who's for no tangible reason to be in the side beyond the fact that they up our averaged age and games played stats for the weekend.

Meanwhile, and in the case of Gross especially but also its been Noah Long and Bo Allan was Clay Hall as well early in the season, those debutants or sub 10 gamers are getting the same possessions, covering the same ground according to the tracker, having the same impact measured in goals or score involvements or disposal efficiency or whatever you need to look at for that position.

We are not picking the side "thats going to win us the game." We say that every week yet haven't won more than a handful of games the space of time its taken some of these blokes to tack an extra 100 caps onto their careers in the past 4-5 years.

We are picking the side based on the close working relationships senior players have with their coaches [ex teammates in some cases] and how much the club is paying into their bank accounts each week. "Oh this guys has been in our best 22 when we were the best team in the land, I remember the weekend he met his partner, I helped him name his first puppy, I went to his sons christening, he's a little off the mark at the moment but I back him in to work through it, he's carrying a low grade quad tear and playing through it like a champ just quietly so..." etc etc.

We wonder why we have the shittest player development record in the league and yet the senior coach will still utter things like "he's going to be around the club a long time, if he doesn't play this year there is always next year."

Anyway battle of the bottom two this week still can look forward to a win hopefully.

 

[sharps24]

Shanahan our leading runner at 14.1km, genuine chance he did more on the weekend than Sumich did in his life.

How is it possible for a player who is in their first year of football and who has playing in his 3rd game of senior footy to cover more ground than any other player? It's just not possible. It takes a human adult 3-4 full preseasons to be ready to finish a game of AFL football, let alone lead the side with his work rate.

Now if you want to know something really crazy. I've seen it happen before multiple times in recent years. The club needs to get its GPS units serviced because there's just not way the likes of Clay Hall, Noah Long, Tyler Brockman, Hamish Davis [to name a few] could be winning or finishing top 3 in our running stats time and time again with scarcely 50 games between the lot of them.

Anyway what were we talking about? Oh yeah Sumich, a moron and! a fat lazy campaigner when he was 20. Gee, how the hell did we and Freo manage to carry him to those Premierships, minor premierships and dreaded runner ups as a player and a coach.

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Am I so out of touch?

No, it’s the GPS units that are wrong.

 

[stallon]

How is it possible for a player who is in their first year of football and who has playing in his 3rd game of senior footy to cover more ground than any other player? It's just not possible. It takes a human adult 3-4 full preseasons to be ready to finish a game of AFL football, let alone lead the side with his work rate.

Likely because he was jogging around everywhere, he was playing as a mobile KPF, very few sprints needed in his role.

Now if you want to know something really crazy. I've seen it happen before multiple times in recent years. The club needs to get its GPS units serviced because there's just not way the likes of Clay Hall, Noah Long, Tyler Brockman, Hamish Davis [to name a few] could be winning or finishing top 3 in our running stats time and time again with scarcely 50 games between the lot of them.

Could also just be them overworking themselves because they dont know what theyre meant to be doing, and they dont know when they can slow down a bit to manage their fatigue.
They also generally(especially the first and second year players) cook themselves late and have little impact late in games.

 

[Jandamarra]

Just hope the boys crack in and smack in big game on the line and do it for the boys

 

[stallon]

Owies was such an easy assessment to make. He simply doesn't get enough of the ball and expecting him to be able to kick the same amount of goals that he did at Carlton relied on magical thinking.

It was a bad trade for both clubs. As his age, experience and front end skillset is much better suited to a side like Carlton.

He will be better as the midfield gets better.
I have no doubt his impact wouldve been far greater if we had Yeo healthy for a few games to help us win a few clearances. Owies is still a decent player, hes just not a star

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Anyway what were we talking about? Oh yeah Sumich, a moron and! a fat lazy campaigner when he was 20. Gee, how the hell did we and Freo manage to carry him to those Premierships, minor premierships and dreaded runner ups as a player and a coach.

Sumich hadn’t even been drafted into the VFL as a 20 year old, FWIW.

 

[sharps24]

Owies was such an easy assessment to make. He simply doesn't get enough of the ball and expecting him to be able to kick the same amount of goals that he did at Carlton relied on magical thinking.

It was a bad trade for both clubs. As his age, experience and front end skillset is much better suited to a side like Carlton.

Owies had the 3rd most possessions in the side heading into half time against Port. He gets a healthy amount of that possession as contested possession as well, meaning he's out there winning his own ball a lot of the time since no kent will kick it to him.

He's averaging 1 less possession per game than Cripps. He gets about 10% less game time though so I'd imagine while he's out there he's slightly more effective than Cripps at gathering possession. He's kicking less goals than last year obviously, only taking 1.5 shots on goal per game compared to 2.8 last year, but he's also a whopping 20% less accurate this year [34 vs 54]. Crippa is taking 2.4 shots per game down on 3 per game last year, his accuracy has now levelled off at 44% despite starting the season in career best form on goal over the first 6 weeks. They are even on marks inside 50 and tackles inside 50, 0.7 and 1.3 per game each. Owies is ahead of Cripps on the following: marks, contested possessions, contested marks, 1%ers, clearances. Though it is pretty even. Basically all that splits them is that Cripps takes 1 more kick per game and has 1 more shot on goal per game with that kick, and it probably comes down to the fact that he spends an additional 6-8 minutes on the park per game than Owies [probably their rotations are similar, could be that both have had 1 game where they didn't finish and in Owies case he went out in the first of second qtr vs Cripps being subbed off that 1 time in the 4th.]

Owies doesn't really have the standing in this team to just blaze away, and the goal kicking side of his game is a bit off. Extremely similar to Brockmans first year. He is being compared to Cripps who has license to take shots from anywhere and does. Compare them last year Cripps took 3 shots on goal a game to Owies 2.8 but Owies kicked 33.13 to Crippa's 27.27. Given he is 5 years younger than Cripps I'd say on paper you'd back him to take the reins from here.

Also, Owies has been back for 1 game since injury and played better in that game than Cripps has in any of his own since coming back from injury. If you look at those 5 games in which he's only kicked 2 goals and averaged barely 10 possessions a game Cripps current form is worse than Owies form at any time in this season.

 

[langdon19]

Sumich may be a lot of things
But without him we didn’t snag two flags in the 90’s
Amazing finals player

 

[jdisc]

Sumich may be a lot of things
But without him we didn’t snag two flags in the 90’s
Amazing finals player

man, suma has a lot of burner accounts

 

[twce13]

No argument suma was a great player. But a shit bloke also.