List Mgmt. Ross Lyon - Sacked

Is Ross still the man for the job?

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Patty_Moz said:
Sure valid point. But are you suggesting we run with the best 22-25 we have atm and they’re good enough for a premiership? I’m not yet 100% convinced and would always be looking to improve the bottom end of our 22. Also I don’t want a repeat of the cliff we jumped off in ‘16 without even winning anything.

If we get close but don’t win it do you think no changes should be made to preserve stability? It is a tough question.

It made me chuckle this week theGav56 you’re very pro Lyon and I’m more towards the con but I agree (I’m pretty sure it was your post) Lyons contract should be decided after the bye next year.
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I think the club needs to continue this year in development mode, and if an opportunity to introduce a new player come up, take it. But to be realistic that may mean denying another developing player more games, so I'm not sure how productive it is. I really like the stability our defence has now, and even with a bit of change here and there, I am confident they will perform. We need to achieve similar across the rest of the field, and that does mean committing to a group of players in those roles.

Come the second part of the season if we are placed well we should go hard for finals. I don't think they are good enough for a premiership, but it is a really weird year.

Ballantyne; Apart from apocalyptic style injuries to our small forwards, I don't see a scenario where it adds anything to play him. Hope he is useful developing the kids at Peel.

Sandilands; Reality is that if we did end up with finals opportunities, he could be a difference maker, so I'd persist, but I can't see how that gets managed. Lobb is doing ok, and games into Darcy is a great investment.
 
PurpleEyes said:
Why?
Richmond won in 2017 finishing 8th for scoring but 3rd for points Against.
Western Bulldogs won in 2016 finishing 12th for scoring but 3rd for points Against.

History shows that a good defense is far more important than the ability to attack and score highly when it comes to finals football.
I know it's popular to want Freo to score more, but is it really required or is it an opinion that has been pushed by the AFL and the media.
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regardless how you do it, to win a flag you need to be in the 4 top (Dogs exception not the rule). To be top 4 you need to kick 4-6 more goals than the opposition on average.
 
theGav56 said:
Sandilands; Reality is that if we did end up with finals opportunities, he could be a difference maker, so I'd persist, but I can't see how that gets managed. Lobb is doing ok, and games into Darcy is a great investment.
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Bit of a Clark Keating type appeals to me with Sandi.
 

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PurpleEyes said:
Why?
Richmond won in 2017 finishing 8th for scoring but 3rd for points Against.
Western Bulldogs won in 2016 finishing 12th for scoring but 3rd for points Against.

History shows that a good defense is far more important than the ability to attack and score highly when it comes to finals football.
I know it's popular to want Freo to score more, but is it really required or is it an opinion that has been pushed by the AFL and the media.
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Sure you can win it (Eagles and Sydney were both 5th as well) but 6 of the premiers over the last decade have been top 2 for attack. We also can never win it like the bulldogs as we can never get 4 home finals so I don’t think it would be a good plan to try follow the path they laid.

4 of the premiers over the last decade were top 2 for points against so there seems to be slightly less importance to win that than points for. In the end you win by kicking a higher score.

It’s really personal preference as I pointed out our attack has shown some weakness under pressure over an extended period so I think we’ll need to improve our attack to top 2 or it gets tough to win it.
 
E Shed said:
I've already been proactive about acknowledging the good things I've seen happening this year and in fact I came out after the Derby (to some ridicule) and said I could see signs things weren't far away from gelling & I could see some good footy ahead.

None of it changes the fact that the things I've criticised Lyon for in the past were valid at the time IMO. He was too defensive, too conservative and he is a control freak lacking imagination. He is process driven which is his strength (he constantly improves the details and trusts the process) but IMO sometimes to be the best I think football requires brilliance, flair, imagination.

But a creative, flexible intelligence, which I try to maintain demands adapting to new information and I'm seeing green shoots everywhere at the moment. I'm enjoying the footy again, which as I've said before, is all I really wanted - to be entertained. Its is only a game after all.

I'm against blind adherence to any fixed point of view. I will criticise when I perceive things can be improved and acknowledge when I think they're being done well.
What I'm not going to be is a blind cheerleader when things are obviously horrible or negative for the sake of it when things are getting better.
I call it as I see it & I admit when I've been wrong.

I don't think I was wrong before, I think things have changed, and I like it. Lyon seems to be capable of learning and adapting which is all I ask for really. Its showing he can be genuinely intelligent and not just a slave to an increasingly obsessive process driven way of working.

We have much sterner tests ahead when we start coming up against Collingwood, Geelong, Richmond when we'll find out more and if Lyon can't take Clarko with the state of the Hawks injuries then we never will.
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This is pretty much where I'm at right now. Some good things have happened so far this year - and they bloody well needed to - and I like the intent we have shown in a few of our games. Just want to see consistency.
 
tacopavlich said:
It's pretty much inevitable in a rebuild where there "will" be supporters baying for the coaches head, regardless if it's fair or not. And also people in general have the habit of overrating lists I think, and imo ours in the last few years wasn't good enough to be competitive, due to factors such as age, depth, spine, etc. and switching coaches wasn't going to change very much, even if I didn't think Lyon was up to it.

It was only really now where the state of our list is in such a good shape where continued failure could be more reasonably attributed to coaching and structure, as we clearly have the cattle to do it now. I actually feel like our rebuild has progressed much faster than I was expecting, aided by some fantastic recruits and development. But if we regress now back to 2017/2018 levels, then I think a change is needed.
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Coach Lyon’s insistence for years of having a five man forward line tipped me against him. When you add to it one of the five was Chris Mayne who is on record for saying he would prefer to tackle than kick a goal, that then falls squarely on the coach’s shoulders.
Of course seasons were punctuated with the occasional win and ironically the feature which made those wins stand out was that the coach used a six man structure. I recall in 2016, a nightmare season, two memorable wins one of which was against Brisbane, where the six man forward line got the job done.
Now, I think whether or not you have a star studded front six or not is not as important as refraining from handicapping them by playing one fewer or indeed as is Coach Lyon’s wont, even less than five.
I hated our final campaign of 2018 against Collingwood. At three quarter time that game was Fremantle’s. The game was set up beautifully for an unlikely win; all we needed to do was give ourselves the best chance, but, no that is not how Ross does things.
Coach Lyon went beyond accepted standards of reasonable coaching tactics; he started the fourth quarter with three men in the forward line.
I don’t believe any reasonable argument can be mounted that six, even“C” graded players, isn’t preferable to three.

Of course there may be other reasons why a coach doesn’t give his side the best opportunity but, in the final game against Collingwood, I couldn’t work out what it may have been.
That loss to Collingwood so disheartened me. I was off my club. I’d had enough of this coach’s bullshit.

Then something really weird happened. The rules were changed where Coach Lyon is now forced to have six players inside the forward 50 metre arc. Right, I’m back on board. That will fix him.
Don’t get ahead of ourselves. There’s fine print. The coach can get the six players out of there straight after the centre bounce, and so it was.... come round two, after a very impressive season opener we meet Gold Coast and had what appeared to be an excellent chance to open with two wins. Indeed, at three quarter time we looked to have the game in our hands. Now, I was only watching on television and I am bloody certain I saw eight players in our backline within seconds of a centre bounce down in the last quarter. That is fully compliant with the new rules but for senior coach Lyon , where there’s a will there’s a way. Like you all on here, I was stunned with that loss. Bitter even.

This is going to take a particular intervention to fix. That is what I believe has happened.
I am convinced an individual at Fremantle Football club has approached our senior coach and stated “ I set about procuring the best attainable key forwards I could “ ; “ Now stop this ******* bullshit”.

For now I am back onboard with the coach albeit, with someone in the background issuing directives.
I have always had a high regard for the little fella, just not as a footballer.
As for Ross Lyon, I hope he continues to follow orders.
It matters little who is pulling the strings. If we have six high calibre forwards, they should be played there.
 
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Fred Ziffel said:
This is going to take a particular intervention to fix. That is what I believe has happened.
I am convinced an individual at Fremantle Football club has approached our senior coach and stated “ I set about procuring the best attainable key forwards I could “ ; “ Now stop this ******* bullshit”.
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That's a pretty convenient argument, so essentially all future successes can be attributed else where, whereas all failure attributed directly to Lyon so your precognitions can remain safely unchallenged regardless of outcome. It seemed pretty obvious to me at the time that carrying a hampered Darcy who was not playing his best in what was already a fairly tall and immobile team allowed GC to outrun us at the end. I think we've learned from that and dropped Cox for McCarthey for sake of balance. With so many good talls we want to play, we'll sometimes run into the danger of being tempted to play too many.

And it may even be possible that Lyon is a hack coach where the rule changes and our new forward line simply makes who the coach is inconsequential, we seem to have such a strongly positioned team where failure seems like a very hard thing to do. But it would be disingenuous to make this type of argument and then not also apply the same logic to when Lyon was in charge of a fairly uncompetitive list in 2018 still young and developing.
 
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Fred Ziffel said:
This is going to take a particular intervention to fix. That is what I believe has happened.
I am convinced an individual at Fremantle Football club has approached our senior coach and stated “ I set about procuring the best attainable key forwards I could “ ; “ Now stop this ******* bullshit”.
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Hmmmm....... well your not wrong there(bolded)
 
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Full credit to Ross and the boys for the win over the Giants. However, all the good work from the win against the Giants can be undone with a poor showing against the Bulldogs.

Ross needs to keep the attacking mindset. Another win with another 100+ points scored will go along way.
 
Looks to me more like we are playing in the fashion the coach and the club said we are headed when the rebuild started a few seasons ago. The rebuild that focused on players with run, speed, skill and natural footballing instincts. The one where the stated, clear intention was to become a higher scoring side.

But some people think it all happened two weeks ago, apparently.
 
theGav56 said:
Looks to me more like we are playing in the fashion the coach and the club said we are headed when the rebuild started a few seasons ago. The rebuild that focused on players with run, speed, skill and natural footballing instincts. The one where the stated, clear intention was to become a higher scoring side.

But some people think it all happened two weeks ago, apparently.
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Please, I am a fan of your posting but you are off in some sort of parallel world on this topic. He played Danyle ******* Pearce in round 1 2018. The rebuilding narrative is more twisted than a neurotic pretzel in this thread.
 

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Square Peg said:
Please, I am a fan of your posting but you are off in some sort of parallel world on this topic. He played Danyle ******* Pearce in round 1 2018. The rebuilding narrative is more twisted than a neurotic pretzel in this thread.
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Breaking news; Lyon doesn't debut first year players in round 1. I don't like it either, but, in the very slightly larger picture, it is irrelevant.
 
Square Peg said:
Please, I am a fan of your posting but you are off in some sort of parallel world on this topic. He played Danyle ******* Pearce in round 1 2018. The rebuilding narrative is more twisted than a neurotic pretzel in this thread.
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We've turned over the bulk of the list in just a few years. It's pretty clear that we have been rebuilding...

I can't vouch for Ross or why he would play Mr fall over Ballas in round 1 this year, I'm pretty sure Ross would prefer someone to stay on their feet and not trip over. But some leadership is not a bad thing - particularly when the list has been so disrupted. DPearce, would have been able to spend a lot of time on ground, a whole stack of 1st and 2nd year players rob everyone else of rest time on the bench, in which case players like DPearce enable the young players to actually be given a game.

There is a bit more to it than someone's stats, leadership, tank, player availability, a play your way in mantra in which case an excellent preseason should be rewarded - doesn't mean it carries forward into the season in which case they play their way out, no doubt a whole stack of other considerations that don't appear in dreamteam scores.
 
Square Peg said:
Please, I am a fan of your posting but you are off in some sort of parallel world on this topic. He played Danyle ******* Pearce in round 1 2018. The rebuilding narrative is more twisted than a neurotic pretzel in this thread.
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Are you serious? We've played more youngsters than anyone in recent years and turned over 80% of the list in a short period of time. Picking youngsters when they're not ready hurts a players development, it doesnt help. Simply playing players at afl level doesnt magically make them better. In fact someone like Giro is better off working at things at wafl level until he develops a bit more consistently by foot. The reason why Carlton and Gold Coast have been down for so long isnt because they didnt play youngsters. Its because they played too many youngsters before they were ready. Danyle Pearce played because there wasnt another youngster close to ready by Round 1 2018. Cerra had only just started training and Crowden (probably the closest to being ready youngster not selected) had hardly set the world on fire that preseason. Tucker benefited from playing a few games at WAFL last year. The idea that you have to play every young player to be rebuilding is absurd.
 
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I could see Ross’s game plan evolving the last year and a half, we just didn’t have the tall timber or mid skills to execute it. Now that’s not to say are skills are all the way there, I think we need a lot more work in fact, but having the tall targets has made us so much better.

Last year as soon as Taberner went down, we struggled to score so Ross went defensive again, he had to to stop the beltings. Didn’t always work obv.

This year, we throw in Hogan and a fit Taberner. All of a sudden McCarthy gets a nuffy defender & the n1 goes to Hogan. Taberner runs his man off the chain & we move Mundy & Walters out of i50 back into the midfield to deliver the ball & Matera plays deep forward again which is his perfect position. With Mundy Hill & Walters kicking i50 we have a lot more opportunity to score. Last year all 3 of them weren’t in the mid (hill injured).

I look forward to Blakely slotting back in & hopefully Darcy gets back in as well. Stephen Hill probably fit 2nd half. Would like us to try the super tall forward line again.

Brayshaw & Cerra’s skills have been down this year, but they’ll come on strong before the end of the year.
 
It could be me but I think the 6-6-6 rule could be the best think to happen to freo in a long time. More players in front of the ball has been the major change in game style. Also its easier to not bomb in long when you have quick leading players. Hogan has the fastest maximum speed (on the gps) in the afl this year. This change could yet bring out the best in Ross.

Couretesy of Deverauxin with a post in the Welcome Hogan Thread
https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/attachments/screenshot_20190422-192340_afl-jpg.659917/

Having quick leading players in McCarthy and Hogan definitely helps to allow players to lower their eyes so they bomb long less.
 
sherrif said:
It could be me but I think the 6-6-6 rule could be the best think to happen to freo in a long time. More players in front of the ball has been the major change in game style. Also its easier to not bomb in long when you have quick leading players. Hogan has the fastest maximum speed (on the gps) in the afl this year. This change could yet bring out the best in Ross.

Couretesy of Deverauxin with a post in the Welcome Hogan Thread
https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/attachments/screenshot_20190422-192340_afl-jpg.659917/

Having quick leading players in McCarthy and Hogan definitely helps to allow players to lower their eyes so they bomb long less.
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I agree, and the club is working it well atm.

BUT, I also thought the chopping the arms rule would be a massive blessing for Sandilands. Apparently his arms weren't included in that rule.
 
theGav56 said:
I agree, and the club is working it well atm.

BUT, I also thought the chopping the arms rule would be a massive blessing for Sandilands. Apparently his arms weren't included in that rule.
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This.. so much this.. how this rule didn't apply to sandi is a blight on the league.
 
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