Training 2022 Training Reports

[anchor man]

Voss, Black, and Aker are all better than the Eagles players you have them up against. Judd and Cox are the only 2 that are better.

I am not sure Judd was as good as Aker and Voss.
I know which of them I would rather.

 

[Scham]

I’m putting my head out there with this but midfields include a ruckman and I reckon the Eagles mid 2000’s side could have a say in this argument. Lining them up head to head below;

Voss vs Cousins - [emoji662]️
Black vs Kerr - [emoji662]️
Lappin vs Judd - Judd[emoji736]
Power vs Fletcher - Power[emoji819]️
Clark Keating vs Cox = Cox[emoji736]
Ackermanis vs Embley [emoji662]️
Hart vs Chick/Braun = Hart[emoji819]️

I reckon head to head it could be a dead heat. I know Kerr vs Black is controversial but Kerr was runner-up in Brownlow twice.

I expect a lot of missiles coming my way especially as we are supposed to hate Eagles


Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com

You're spot on. And the industry agrees. Those two midfields are regularly referenced as the best of the best.

 

[PurpleReign]

You know when we’ve run out of things to talk about in the pre season thread when we start discussing how good the Weags were.

 

[Snuffaluphagus]

I am not sure Judd was as good as Aker and Voss.
I know which of them I would rather.

I really want the current topic to die in this thread but I find it really hard to let this one go. Judd peak was arguably the most absurd match winning force ever to grace the field. The only argument against his greatnes was the relative short time frame of his career but to suggest he might not have been as good as Voss and Acker is absurd

 

[Tbonefreo]

Hilarious that people thought Jlo would play Erasmus in R1. He doesnt play draftees unless he’s absolutely forced to by injuries.
If we drafted an 18 year old Chris Judd, Jlo would still play Bailey Banfield and Mitch Crowden ahead of him!

18 year old judd wasn't selected by the Eagles for their round one team...

 

[Ogrebait]

Any chance of moving this non-Freo AFL discussion into the Non-Freo AFL Discussion thread?

 

[Schauermann]

Goals?

8 marks inside 50 for 1.3.

Feels a lot like last year atm.

 

[wakojako]

Meek was awesome today. Really want him to work on his forward craft as I think Lobb is a liability.

 

[Purpletown]

Totally agree on Judd over lappin and if you wanted to argue that eagles Judd was the best player out of the group and a better player than 01-03 Voss I could hear an argument (though because of my personal bias, I'd take Voss due to leadership).

I can't agree with Black v Kerr - Black won a brownlow and was runner up twice, played 300 plus games, won a norm smith. Acker is a billion times better player than Embley and that is easily your worst comparison. Embley was a good winger, did quite a lot of nice stuff, whereas Acker could blow a game open in 5 minutes. He's a knob but was one of the most gifted players of the last 20 years.

Where the eagles have the edge is in the ruck and in their midfield depth, as they probably batted quite a few deeper. The backline and forward lines are a no contest though.

Judd was certainly a better player than Lappin but Lappin was as good if not better than any of the other mids in that company. A seriously talented and tough player.

 

[eastfreo75]

Des Headland had a lot of talent. And the 10mins of highlights were great. But the other 90 minutes of the game, Des could go missing.

In his defence, however, he did suffer some chronic leg injuries which restricted his output in the second part of his career. It seemed as if he he could never really get going in his later years.

He played his best footy at Brisbane where their engine room could get him the ball on the outside and he could use some great skills to link between midfield and forwards.

If we can get that kind of play out of someone, then that would be great! We have the engine room to create the supply.

Headland had a double knee cap that caused a lot issues and pain.

The guy fought through pain and couldn’t be consistent.

Shits me that the club didn’t load manager

 

[arsesmart]

I really want the current topic to die in this thread but I find it really hard to let this one go. Judd peak was arguably the most absurd match winning force ever to grace the field. The only argument against his greatnes was the relative short time frame of his career but to suggest he might not have been as good as Voss and Acker is absurd

Matchwinner? I'd like to see his win/loss against us. I'd bet it's not that great.

 

[Snuffaluphagus]

What have we learned from two pre-season matches:

• Our ball movement seems to have improved and our skills look terrific. That seems consistent across both games.
• Early I suppose but I swear we are seeing better leading and hitting of the leads already. Forward structure looks good.
• Plan A being to move it fast continues to look terrific and work a treat. Seems that we still struggle a bit moving to plan B of slower more controlled movement and teams that shut us down will continue to make it real hard
• Brodie and Clark look like value for money pick-ups as it stands.
• Freddy will likely kick over 30 goals if he kicks even at league average
• Goal kicking is going to be a concern for a long time. You CAN NOT go at 4.10 from set shots. Diabolical
• Chapman remains the greatest thing since sliced bread. Predicting his 1st of 3 Brownlows in 2025
• Erasmus being a 190cm aggressive ball hunting machine is likely going to be needed if we continue to rely on Fyfe to be that guy. We should not be losing the midfield battle to that team

 

[Purple Jesus]

What have we learned from two pre-season matches:

• Our ball movement seems to have improved and our skills look terrific. That seems consistent across both games.
• Early I suppose but I swear we are seeing better leading and hitting of the leads already. Forward structure looks good.
• Plan A being to move it fast continues to look terrific and work a treat. Seems that we still struggle a bit moving to plan B of slower more controlled movement and teams that shut us down will continue to make it real hard
• Brodie and Clark look like value for money pick-ups as it stands.
• Freddy will likely kick over 30 goals if he kicks even at league average
• Goal kicking is going to be a concern for a long time. You CAN NOT go at 4.10 from set shots. Diabolical
• Chapman remains the greatest thing since sliced bread. Predicting his 1st of 3 Brownlows in 2025
• Erasmus being a 190cm aggressive ball hunting machine is likely going to be needed if we continue to rely on Fyfe to be that guy. We should not be losing the midfield battle to that team

The worst bit is that we lost it to two guys. NN and Kelly. Disgraceful really.

 

[theGav56]

The worst bit is that we lost it to two guys. NN and Kelly. Disgraceful really.

I'm not unhappy with a low key approach to pre-season games, which is what we saw. I certainly don't want to see Darcy going into combat mode against Natanui, but did like seeing Meek push harder.

Kelly had a terrific game. Looked as good as when he was at Geelong. We don't really tag much these days but I would still like us to have that capacity. Banfield the obvious option, but O'Driscoll has some attributes.

 

[malpaso]

The worst bit is that we lost it to two guys. NN and Kelly. Disgraceful really.

It's why a midfield tagger should be in every side.. did we even try Crowden or Banfield on Kelly?

 

[wayToGo_]

Based on skimming through the game day thread I suspect the negativity was because some expected we'd go through the motions and have a 10+ goal win? Playing against witches hats ahead of Rd 1 would have been the worst outcome for us. I know a lot is made of WC's outs but they still have their best ruck and mid, their best runner, their two best forwards (Kennedy, Ryan), and all their key defenders (Hurn, Gov, Barrass). Their whole spine was out there sans the anti-vax guy. When Chesser keeps getting mentioned as the 4th on their list of outs I think the media might be going a bit overboard about the 'crisis'. Apart from Shuey, Yeo and Sheed they've got a lot of 'meh' players out atm.

There were only four negatives from the game imo...

1. Goal kicking accuracy, especially from set shots. Although the two sets of goal posts must have been ****ing annoying for the players.
2. Positioning to crumb in the forward line - we had a heap of snapped goals last week and very few this week. We just weren't getting enough to the contest when we bombed to the top of the square or else we weren't positioning correctly and spoiling each other when we did. We had a massive 21 marks i50 so clearly we didn't rely on bombing deep too often.
3. We didn't defend the ground ball well when they regularly bombed long into their 50. Their mids were left front and square unopposed and that led to most of their goals being easy snaps on goal like we had last week. None of their talls scored (so our KPDs were doing their jobs).
4. We gave away some really dumb free kicks. It doesn't matter that some were weak af, the players just need to not give the umpires a reason to **** us over.

As for the contested work and clearances, I thought it was a silly comment by whichever commentator was crapping on about how WC won the contested ball by so much. Our focus was clearly on uncontested ball movement which for the most part I thought was excellent. And I thought there were three reasons our stoppage work wasn't as good as it should be...

1. Darcy was blowing out the cobwebs and was patchy - he gave away two frees at the centre bounce from tackling without the ball leading to centre clearances against and then it felt like he stopped following up post tap. A few of his stoppage taps were brilliant, and that snapped goal was excellent but I actually thought our stoppage/clearance work was often better when Meek was rucking.
2. Mundy was a bit of a liability defensively. Was a big part of the reason Kelly dominated, to the point he eventually got moved off of him.
3. WC's sole focus from last week was clearly applying a heap more pressure on the ball so we didn't just waltz out of stoppages like last week. And on the flip side they were very good at throwing the ball around without getting pinged by the umps which bodes well for me throwing something through my TV come the regular season.

If you couldn't see the scoreboard you'd have never even considered us losing that game. The biggest plus from the last two games imo is I don't expect us to **** it up every time the ball is heading towards our 50 anymore. The forward line definitely looks better coordinated, and the mid connection looks really good. 21 marks i50 is huge and for the most part they were in really kickable locations - which unfortunately also means our goal accuracy was actually worse than normal. At least a lot of our misses only just missed though I suppose.

tldr; stop over-reacting, it is pre-season. Neither the 97 point smashing last week nor the 13 point win this week mean anything. Looks more good than bad if you compare to last year imo - especially the forward line.

 

[Flour bag punter]

I felt the Darcy/Meek combination was consistently better than Darcy/Lobb. Some of Meek’s second efforts on the ground and leading/pressure work up forward we’re more valuable than Lobb’s occasional pluck in the air.
Walters worked into the game well and showed polish. Backline awesome just need time together to gel.

 

[dockerfemme]

I'm not unhappy with a low key approach to pre-season games, which is what we saw. I certainly don't want to see Darcy going into combat mode against Natanui, but did like seeing Meek push harder.

Kelly had a terrific game. Looked as good as when he was at Geelong. We don't really tag much these days but I would still like us to have that capacity. Banfield the obvious option, but O'Driscoll has some attributes.

I would have liked us to try and close down Kelly for a quarter, just for the experience. As you say, Banfield the obvious option. Sometimes it is necessary.

 

[dockerfemme]

I felt the Darcy/Meek combination was consistently better than Darcy/Lobb. Some of Meek’s second efforts on the ground and leading/pressure work up forward we’re more valuable than Lobb’s occasional pluck in the air.
Walters worked into the game well and showed polish. Backline awesome just need time together to gel.

Meek was the best of the three of them on the day.

Don’t agree with you on the backline. I thought Chapman and Ryan great, everyone else okay to poor.

 

[Jezzitizle]

I felt the Darcy/Meek combination was consistently better than Darcy/Lobb. Some of Meek’s second efforts on the ground and leading/pressure work up forward we’re more valuable than Lobb’s occasional pluck in the air.
Walters worked into the game well and showed polish. Backline awesome just need time together to gel.

Really agree with this, the team looked better with the change of Meek on.

I get frustrated seeing Lobb give up on contests he could get to.

Plus defenders find it very difficult to knock Meek off his line, and he is better when the ball is in the ground.

Based off the two practice matches, I’d have Meek in for round one over Lobb.

Also have serious concerns with Henry - he just doesn’t go hard at contests when he needs to and it leads to the opposition clearing the ball.

I’d prefer Nod on the wing, at least we get 100% and his ceiling looks comparable to Henry to me.

 

[dont bowl there]

I would have liked us to try and close down Kelly for a quarter, just for the experience. As you say, Banfield the obvious option. Sometimes it is necessary.

Banfield is simply no good, he tried to tag Steele in the last round of 2021 and Steele got 3 Brownlow votes. You don't need to tag to put some body on an opposition mid.

 

[Docker82]

Really agree with this, the team looked better with the change of Meek on.

I get frustrated seeing Lobb give up on contests he could get to.

Plus defenders find it very difficult to knock Meek off his line, and he is better when the ball is in the ground.

Based off the two practice matches, I’d have Meek in for round one over Lobb.

Also have serious concerns with Henry - he just doesn’t go hard at contests when he needs to and it leads to the opposition clearing the ball.

I’d prefer Nod on the wing, at least we get 100% and his ceiling looks comparable to Henry to me.

Meek is certainly becoming more and more impressive. If Lobb does leave at the end of the season, I hope that’s the way we go rather than picking up some expensive, underperforming replacement (Jackson would be just expensive).

Fact is though Meek has kicked one goal so far in his AFL career from multiple games as the ruck/forward. Has a bit to work on there. I’m starting to come around to us maybe being able to make it work though - just feel Lobb is still the better option for this season.

Also long term I think we see Henry and NOD on either wing. I actually think Henry is showing a bit but he’s not going to consistent for a while. Acres and Aish seem to lack the magic (for lack of a better term) the really good wingers have. Hoping NOD can be an upgrade.

 

[dont bowl there]

Meek looks to have greatly improved his around the ground work buuuuut I would still go with the Darcy/Lobb combo. Meek needs to be able to hit the scoreboard to play the second ruck role.

 

[Ge3ks]

Based on skimming through the game day thread I suspect the negativity was because some expected we'd go through the motions and have a 10+ goal win? Playing against witches hats ahead of Rd 1 would have been the worst outcome for us. I know a lot is made of WC's outs but they still have their best ruck and mid, their best runner, their two best forwards (Kennedy, Ryan), and all their key defenders (Hurn, Gov, Barrass). Their whole spine was out there sans the anti-vax guy. When Chesser keeps getting mentioned as the 4th on their list of outs I think the media might be going a bit overboard about the 'crisis'. Apart from Shuey, Yeo and Sheed they've got a lot of 'meh' players out atm.

There were only four negatives from the game imo...

1. Goal kicking accuracy, especially from set shots. Although the two sets of goal posts must have been ******* annoying for the players.
2. Positioning to crumb in the forward line - we had a heap of snapped goals last week and very few this week. We just weren't getting enough to the contest when we bombed to the top of the square or else we weren't positioning correctly and spoiling each other when we did. We had a massive 21 marks i50 so clearly we didn't rely on bombing deep too often.
3. We didn't defend the ground ball well when they regularly bombed long into their 50. Their mids were left front and square unopposed and that led to most of their goals being easy snaps on goal like we had last week. None of their talls scored (so our KPDs were doing their jobs).
4. We gave away some really dumb free kicks. It doesn't matter that some were weak af, the players just need to not give the umpires a reason to fu** us over.

As for the contested work and clearances, I thought it was a silly comment by whichever commentator was crapping on about how WC won the contested ball by so much. Our focus was clearly on uncontested ball movement which for the most part I thought was excellent. And I thought there were three reasons our stoppage work wasn't as good as it should be...

1. Darcy was blowing out the cobwebs and was patchy - he gave away two frees at the centre bounce from tackling without the ball leading to centre clearances against and then it felt like he stopped following up post tap. A few of his stoppage taps were brilliant, and that snapped goal was excellent but I actually thought our stoppage/clearance work was often better when Meek was rucking.
2. Mundy was a bit of a liability defensively. Was a big part of the reason Kelly dominated, to the point he eventually got moved off of him.
3. WC's sole focus from last week was clearly applying a heap more pressure on the ball so we didn't just waltz out of stoppages like last week. And on the flip side they were very good at throwing the ball around without getting pinged by the umps which bodes well for me throwing something through my TV come the regular season.

If you couldn't see the scoreboard you'd have never even considered us losing that game. The biggest plus from the last two games imo is I don't expect us to fu** it up every time the ball is heading towards our 50 anymore. The forward line definitely looks better coordinated, and the mid connection looks really good. 21 marks i50 is huge and for the most part they were in really kickable locations - which unfortunately also means our goal accuracy was actually worse than normal. At least a lot of our misses only just missed though I suppose.

tldr; stop over-reacting, it is pre-season. Neither the 97 point smashing last week nor the 13 point win this week mean anything. Looks more good than bad if you compare to last year imo - especially the forward line.

That was a really good post. Cheers.

 

[Yeti]

tldr; stop over-reacting, it is pre-season. Neither the 97 point smashing last week nor the 13 point win this week mean anything.

Agree with this.