Review Round 10 v North Melbourne: Saturday 18 October @ Arden Street

[Cromulant]

Said it before, but if Chelsea Randall has to retire due to concussion, we should embark on a full scale rebuild

We don't have the level of pure footballing talent (brought up through a proper junior football system) to compete in the coming years

The system is getting there,

 

[moses]

From what I have seen this season, no team will come within 5 goals of North. They are a different league.

 

[Scorpus]

We should have forfeited the game to preserve our percentage, which might be crucial getting a better finals position

 

[moses]

We should have forfeited the game to preserve our percentage, which might be crucial getting a better finals position

I'm not confident we will get over Port next week.

 

[Cromulant]

I'm not confident we will get over Port next week.

We should.

North have perfected the throw too, nice to see

 

[moses]

We should.

North have perfected the throw too, nice to see

They are not even hiding their throws!

 

[Cromulant]

They are not even hiding their throws!

Dont have to hide it in the AFLW

 

[Scorpus]

The main difference between North and the rest of the competition is their skills. They know that they can nail a kick to a lead, or execute a handball, or pull off a snap on goal. Because of that, they don't fall into the trap that we (and most other teams in the competition) do of sending extra players to the contest. Hence, they always have someone free, and there's always a player behind the ball.

We've had our opportunities, but the handball has missed the body, or the kick has fallen short, etc. Because of that, we end up getting sucked into the contest to try and win it back, while North just stick to their structure confident that their players will execute under pressure.

Skills have always been an issue for us, but it's starker than ever watching this match.

The Crows need to make some hard decisions regarding players with substandard skills. If they're not offering something else massively valuable (contested marking, electric speed, etc) then any player that can't execute skills under pressure should be phased out of the side.

I reckon the difference is professionalism having watched the second half

North play like a fit, professional team at the standard this competition should be at. They work on skills and structure, and play a ruthless, modern brand of football. What they are putting on the park in terms of professionalism is the closest to the men's league in the competition's history. Rarely see missed handballs, fluffed marks, they are hard at it, fast and super fit.

Us on the other hand, it doesn't look like we have worked on improving skills, we have an outdated gameplan and many of our players look in poor condition. As a club we have not worked hard enough and are not treating the league as professional (when it is, the players are paid full time salaries)

 

[Cromulant]

I reckon the difference is professionalism having watched the second half

North play like a fit, professional team at the standard this competition should be at. They work on skills and structure, and play a ruthless, modern brand of football. What they are putting on the park in terms of professionalism is the closest to the men's league in the competition's history. Rarely see missed handballs, fluffed marks, they are hard at it, fast and super fit.

Us on the other hand, it doesn't look like we have worked on improving skills, we have an outdated gameplan and many of our players look in poor condition. As a club we have not worked hard enough and are not treating the league as professional (when it is, the players are paid full time salaries)

What does that say about every other club then ??

North are MILES in front of everyone

 

[TubbsFarquhar]

I'm not confident we will get over Port next week.

Genuine 50-50.

 

[Crow54]

I'm not confident we will get over Port next week.

Me neither.

 

[Scorpus]

What does that say about every other club then ??

North are MILES in front of everyone

Yeah, it says a lot.

North don't tolerate players that can't kick, mark or handball. And let's be real here, the league is nearly 10 years old, why should we be tolerating players that can't execute the basics of the game?

You can't tell me that North are putting in the same effort to improvement as we are. It's not like North have had tons of top end draft picks, it's the players they do have working ****ing hard to be league leading in skills.

And in the women's league, skills can be a real gap. In the mens, you don't see many players that miss handballs or drop uncontested marks. In the womens' it's common, it's an obvious gap that can be closed and North have done just that

 

[Crow54]

Yeah, it says a lot.

North don't tolerate players that can't kick, mark or handball. And let's be real here, the league is nearly 10 years old, why should we be tolerating players that can't execute the basics of the game?

You can't tell me that North are putting in the same effort to improvement as we are. It's not like North have had tons of top end draft picks, it's the players they do have working ****ing hard to be league leading in skills.

And in the women's league, skills can be a real gap. In the mens, you don't see many players that miss handballs or drop uncontested marks. In the womens' it's common, it's an obvious gap that can be closed and North have done just that

Any of their coaches poachable?

 

[Not_The_Messiah]

Eloise Jones deserves at least 50% more than whatever they’re paying her. She’s only one with the elite skills and hunger to perform.

 

[Daniel6]

Eloise Jones deserves at least 50% more than whatever they’re paying her. She’s only one with the elite skills and hunger to perform.

If she played like that every week, you would be spot on. But she goes missing just as often as she has a good game.

She is an exception player, but doesn’t turn up every week. Some weeks, she’s very quiet.

 

[Cromulant]

Yeah, it says a lot.

North don't tolerate players that can't kick, mark or handball. And let's be real here, the league is nearly 10 years old, why should we be tolerating players that can't execute the basics of the game?

You can't tell me that North are putting in the same effort to improvement as we are. It's not like North have had tons of top end draft picks, it's the players they do have working ****ing hard to be league leading in skills.

And in the women's league, skills can be a real gap. In the mens, you don't see many players that miss handballs or drop uncontested marks. In the womens' it's common, it's an obvious gap that can be closed and North have done just that

Having watched the girls train a fair bit, and coached against a fair portion of the SA based girls, they've all got skills.

But as you mentioned earlier, the development pathway isnt what it is in Victoria. Our girls standout in the SANFLW when they get to play there, and indeed theyre good enough to beat almost everyone in the league.

Id love to know what North do differently to the rest of the comp. With the possible exception of Brisbane, they're built different.

 

[Tas]

Yeah, it says a lot.

North don't tolerate players that can't kick, mark or handball. And let's be real here, the league is nearly 10 years old, why should we be tolerating players that can't execute the basics of the game?

You can't tell me that North are putting in the same effort to improvement as we are. It's not like North have had tons of top end draft picks, it's the players they do have working ****ing hard to be league leading in skills.

And in the women's league, skills can be a real gap. In the mens, you don't see many players that miss handballs or drop uncontested marks. In the womens' it's common, it's an obvious gap that can be closed and North have done just that

We had an epiphany in 2022, that we were never going to get past teams like Crows and Lions if we couldn't hit targets or run out games, we had a big cleanout that season, we got rid of a number of players who are still playing at other clubs atm and worked hard on skills and endurance. After the GF loss in 2023 where we were on top for 3 quarters and ran out of gas there was a big push to get our fitness up to elite standards and the players had formed Run Club over the preseason where they pushed each other and worked in teams to get their endurance up. It showed a lot in 2024, especially the first game where we played Brisbane in the rematch and just ran them into the ground.

You need the coach that has the vision of the future but you also need the player driven desire to be the best and drive the team standards, even though Kearney is getting old and long past her best, she has been a huge driver on and off the field, I think she would make a great coach when she hangs up the boots.

 

[cmndstab]

I reckon the difference is professionalism having watched the second half

North play like a fit, professional team at the standard this competition should be at. They work on skills and structure, and play a ruthless, modern brand of football. What they are putting on the park in terms of professionalism is the closest to the men's league in the competition's history. Rarely see missed handballs, fluffed marks, they are hard at it, fast and super fit.

Us on the other hand, it doesn't look like we have worked on improving skills, we have an outdated gameplan and many of our players look in poor condition. As a club we have not worked hard enough and are not treating the league as professional (when it is, the players are paid full time salaries)

They're a super professional outfit, no denying that.

But things like structure and conditioning always look better when your skills are good. The structure tends to break down because of skill errors. And if you have confidence that your teammate will nail a kick, you feel more confident to remain in your structure, rather than getting sucked into the contest to mitigate errors. And by remaining in your structure, you have more left in the tank to put in efforts when it counts, rather than constantly trying to sprint to the next contest in the vain hope of impacting it.

I agree that our coach is checked out, with no interest in innovating or even just trying something new. No, throwing Sarah Allan up forward after the game is already over for the umpteenth time doesn't count.

 

[cmndstab]

So... positives?

Eloise Jones with a fantastic second half, good to see. I remain a big fan. Marinoff proving that even her lesser games are still pretty good. Newman one of our best. Prowse good after a terrible start. Grace Kelly not great, but continues to perform better than I expected when we got her.

We almost won the second half

Probably can't take any credit for keeping them goalless in Q2. Was it four posters?

 

[craig crowing]

Good AFLW teams now have structures to create direct leads to move the ball with precision with kicking skills and players prepared to work hard to provide run .
We have no real structure and just bomb the ball into a contest or mis kick to opponent.
Why our club is always to slow to make hard decision is beyond me asa clearly Clarke should have been replaced as no planning or effort has gone into squad selection or team strategy pre season and boy don't get me started about our fitness levels.

 

[cmndstab]

Good AFLW teams now have structures to create direct leads to move the ball with precision with kicking skills and players prepared to work hard to provide run .
We have no real structure and just bomb the ball into a contest or mis kick to opponent.
Why our club is always to slow to make hard decision is beyond me asa clearly Clarke should have been replaced as no planning or effort has gone into squad selection or team strategy pre season and boy don't get me started about our fitness levels.

Agreed that Clarke should have been replaced before this season started.

Our fitness levels are fine, with the obvious exceptions of a couple of players. We've tended to finish games stronger than our opponents. In fact, much of our strategy (since the inception of AFLW) has been to wear opponents down with repeat stoppages, in the hopes of overrunning them in the end.

We have a "structure", but our poor skills don't allow us to play to it, and it's not well-developed enough to overcome that. We're usually well set up behind the ball, but struggle to transition to the forward line. The biggest issue we have is that there aren't enough players either capable of or willing to create separation from their opponents, so we rarely have an easy option to take. I'm convinced that part of that is by design - our kicking skills are poor across the board, so if we do create separation and then miss the kick, our opponents can easily counterattack.

So what generally happens is that we win back 90% of the ball that goes into our defence, start working it forward, and then either miss a target, or bomb to a contest, and all our contested players dive into the contest to try and neutralise it. If we're lucky, we get a dirty exit and bomb it forward, praying for a contested mark or a defensive breakdown. If not, the ball comes out to a free opponent, they send it back into our D50 and we start again.

Against North yesterday, we only turned the ball over six more times than they did, and yet they had almost 50% more possessions than we did. What that implies is that when North get possession, they retain it much longer than we do. Out of those extra 125(!) possessions they got compared to us, 101 of them were uncontested. That comes because they can hit targets, so their players feel confident to lead. How often do we hit a player on a lead? North had 25 more marks than us, and yet we had more contested marks than they did! Someone like Eloise Jones did a great job, but she shouldn't need to take several great contested marks for us to score goals - and outside of her, the only goals we scored came from a free kick, and a Boileau kick that she was lucky to nail. North certainly don't rely on great contested marks to score goals. They get a few that way, but most of them come from just honouring a lead and nailing the kick.

 

[Scorpus]

Agreed that Clarke should have been replaced before this season started.

Our fitness levels are fine, with the obvious exceptions of a couple of players. We've tended to finish games stronger than our opponents. In fact, much of our strategy (since the inception of AFLW) has been to wear opponents down with repeat stoppages, in the hopes of overrunning them in the end.

We have a "structure", but our poor skills don't allow us to play to it, and it's not well-developed enough to overcome that. We're usually well set up behind the ball, but struggle to transition to the forward line. The biggest issue we have is that there aren't enough players either capable of or willing to create separation from their opponents, so we rarely have an easy option to take. I'm convinced that part of that is by design - our kicking skills are poor across the board, so if we do create separation and then miss the kick, our opponents can easily counterattack.

So what generally happens is that we win back 90% of the ball that goes into our defence, start working it forward, and then either miss a target, or bomb to a contest, and all our contested players dive into the contest to try and neutralise it. If we're lucky, we get a dirty exit and bomb it forward, praying for a contested mark or a defensive breakdown. If not, the ball comes out to a free opponent, they send it back into our D50 and we start again.

Against North yesterday, we only turned the ball over six more times than they did, and yet they had almost 50% more possessions than we did. What that implies is that when North get possession, they retain it much longer than we do. Out of those extra 125(!) possessions they got compared to us, 101 of them were uncontested. That comes because they can hit targets, so their players feel confident to lead. How often do we hit a player on a lead? North had 25 more marks than us, and yet we had more contested marks than they did! Someone like Eloise Jones did a great job, but she shouldn't need to take several great contested marks for us to score goals - and outside of her, the only goals we scored came from a free kick, and a Boileau kick that she was lucky to nail. North certainly don't rely on great contested marks to score goals. They get a few that way, but most of them come from just honouring a lead and nailing the kick.

I think the fitness thing and running games out is possibly just a product of our gameplan, not our actual fitness levels.

We set up from the backline and don't run hard to create space or opportunities up the ground. We like to play a congested, tight, small zone around the ball, rather than opening it up. Other teams try and open it up and run to create options, which is more taxing. We're also very static inside 50 and don't do much leading work.

I suspect that if we tried to open up the ground when we have the ball like other sides do, which would mean having players run hard to create space and overlaps, that our ability to run out games would disappear.

You've highlighted it as well by noting we don't have players that work to create separation from their opponents

I think the skills issue is also a lot deeper than you present it. We have some poor kicks, and it's not helped by our kick targets not finding space. But also we have players that can't handball out of congestion. As in they make poor decisions as to which target to use and physically cannot execute the handball. Or, because they are bad at handballing, revert to dump kicks. And don't get me started on our marking, which has been a problem since the very beginning. Outside of a couple of players, we are weak in the air under minimal pressure - again exacerbated by how we don't work hard enough to find space.

What we used to feast on was our inside contested work being able to scrub the ball forward, finished by individual brilliance. We had excellent ball winners, and back in the early days of the competition it was common to flood defences. So we'd just sit back having 2-3 spare inside our defence (because the other team would do the same to us), we'd be better at winning the ball back in defense and then progressively bomb it forward to generate more contests and make it a territory game. Eventually the weight of numbers and players getting creative would see us kick a winning score.

That gameplan (and the playing list built to execute that gameplan) doesn't work to the same degree any more. The gameplans being used throughout the league now are becoming more "professional" in how they play. A simple territory gaining bombing style is amateur in comparison.

 

[craig crowing]

As per usual standard a amazing quality response from Cmnstab and also Scorpus and agree with their views.
Just feel that although we all agree that our movement ,structure and skills are not up to standard to current AFLW levels .
Apart from obvious ones we don't really know fitness levels, but so often our 2nd efforts are slow along with change of direction as over last few weeks could not count how easily opposition players went around Crows players like we were stuck in cement .
Along with all key players seem to have all slipped backwards this year all leads to a very very poor pre season to launch what was always going to be challenging.

 

[cmndstab]

I think the skills issue is also a lot deeper than you present it. We have some poor kicks, and it's not helped by our kick targets not finding space. But also we have players that can't handball out of congestion. As in they make poor decisions as to which target to use and physically cannot execute the handball. Or, because they are bad at handballing, revert to dump kicks. And don't get me started on our marking, which has been a problem since the very beginning. Outside of a couple of players, we are weak in the air under minimal pressure - again exacerbated by how we don't work hard enough to find space.

I agree with most of what you have written, but I want to particularly agree with this. I have been flabbergasted this year at just how poor our handball skills are. They're either high and loopy, inviting a spoil, or they're fired in like a missile at an awkward angle... or they just simply miss the body altogether, turning an uncontested situation into a contested one. Worst of all, their teammates are usually creating space to be then next link in the chain, and then when the turnover comes they have to try to scramble back to cover their opponents again.

I just about tore my hair out yesterday when we had the ball just outside 50, and had a free player (Marinoff?) running inside 50. All we had to do was execute the handball, but instead it got fired way over the player's head, who then had to gather the ground ball, which gave the defenders time to come in and neutralise it. This was not a handball under immense pressure, or during a tackle... just the standard pressure that will be there 99% of the game during a game. It cost us a shot on goal. Worst of all, it seems to almost be a tactic of ours, to handball it into space and assume that our speedier players or ground-ball players will run onto it. Why? The ball is never going to bounce consistently, especially the smaller ball they use in AFLW. Just send it to the body!

It's such a basic skill. Kicking the ball is challenging, I get that - but handballs shouldn't be, especially if we're determined to play a contested game. Handballs should be our bread and butter.