3 Players

[larrikin]

I've noticed over the past few weeks that many of us have balmed our sharp drop off on the absence of three players (Gardiner, Embley and Fletcher).

Do people here honestly believe that has changed us from a top 2 side to a side making up numbers in the 8?

Are there other problems at work here?

My honest opinion is we are a talented side, but we are not at that level yet. We've been found a bit when the tempo has stepped up. We'll get there, we just need a bit of patience, and a lot of luck.

 

[ozzult]

It wasn't the sole reason, but it didn't help much either.

They could be argued as our three best performed players this season, so that definitely doesn't help.

 

[The Passenger]

Originally posted by ozzult
It wasn't the sole reason, but it didn't help much either.

agreed with that - i think having your three best players for a season out has also got the confidence of the guys down, thinking 'can we win without them' etc,.

 

[larrikin]

Originally posted by ozzult
It wasn't the sole reason, but it didn't help much either.

They could be argued as our three best performed players this season, so that definitely doesn't help.

I think we have been caught up in the whole thing a bit. We strill don't have a legitimate CHF or FF, and Port seem to have manged well with the longest injury list in the league (including Francou - who is (IMO) their best player)

 

[Mead]

Fletcher I don't think was a huge loss. Great player, gives us more midfield grunt, but on face value, with Braun and Chambers both stepping up we don't lose much on his account.

The other two are very different stories.

Gardiner is enormously important to this team. With a small forward line and a number of lightning fast ball magnets in our midfield, 9/10ths (or 17/18ths, as it were) of our entire gameplan revolves around Gardiner. West Coast had the two statistically best centre clearance combos in the league in Gardiner -> Cousins and Gardiner -> Fletcher. From memory, we were also the best at getting goals from stoppages inside our forward 50.

Basically, we were winning games by getting perfectly directed taps to our midfielders, who would hammer it forward before the opposition had a chance to get numbers back and clog the forward line, exposing our smaller forwards lack of marking grunt. If the worst came to the worst and a ball went out of bounds, we'd still have a decent chance of getting a goal courtesy of a Gardiner tapdown to Cousins, Kerr or Judd cruising past.

Now, frankly, Gardiner's best tapwork cannot be replicated- that isn't Cox's fault, there might be one, maybe two ruckman in the league who can do the job at all as well as him- given that our entire gameplan revolved around this dominant ruckman giving us good use, it isn't surprising that we suddenly have issues.

So without Gardiner and Fletcher, our most obvious way of winning games disappeared. We beat Hawthorn, but in a very different way to how we'd previously been winning games. Rather than blowing them away with a huge score, we just went for a steady, dour gameplan which saw us dominate the centre corridor, and strangle hawthorn.

As for Embley, well its worth noting that the woes didn't start until he went down. Our other huge strength this year (this is just a perception, don't have stats to back it up) has been that we have done very well in kick in situations, both in terms of moving the ball quickly out of defence, and manning up and keeping the ball in our forward fifty after opposition kickins. With our lack of marking kpps, we've done this thanks in part to Embley, who generally gives us at least one midfielder with an enormous advantage over his opponent in the marking contests- therefore, at each kickin, you could basically guarantee that Embers would be drifting in as a third tall in each marking duel, helping to alternatively set up play or lock the ball in our forward fifty. Ditto Gardiner, really- ask yourself how many times Gardiner would mark a Wirrpunda torpedo, to set up our run out of defence.

Remove the #1 and #2 mark takers in our team and we're suddenly in dire trouble- we can't play to our strength by winning the ball out of the centre and moving it on quickly to capitalise on our small fast lineup, and we don't have any hope of winning the marking duels that result in a slower game. The result of that is that we get a heap less ball, and suddenly a lot of the sort of players who could be classed as 'finishers' hit extremely poor form, due to lack of quality possessions.
I don't think its a coincidence that players like Judd, Haynes and Sampi have all hit poor form simultaneously. All three are at their best when given the ball in space- with our gameplan gutted, they simply aren't getting the opportunities they need to be effective.

 

[larrikin]

Originally posted by Mead
Gardiner is enormously important to this team. With a small forward line and a number of lightning fast ball magnets in our midfield, 9/10ths (or 17/18ths, as it were) of our entire gameplan revolves around Gardiner. West Coast had the two statistically best centre clearance combos in the league in Gardiner -> Cousins and Gardiner -> Fletcher. From memory, we were also the best at getting goals from stoppages inside our forward 50.

Basically, we were winning games by getting perfectly directed taps to our midfielders, who would hammer it forward before the opposition had a chance to get numbers back and clog the forward line, exposing our smaller forwards lack of marking grunt. If the worst came to the worst and a ball went out of bounds, we'd still have a decent chance of getting a goal courtesy of a Gardiner tapdown to Cousins, Kerr or Judd cruising past.

Now, frankly, Gardiner's best tapwork cannot be replicated- that isn't Cox's fault, there might be one, maybe two ruckman in the league who can do the job at all as well as him- given that our entire gameplan revolved around this dominant ruckman giving us good use, it isn't surprising that we suddenly have issues.

So without Gardiner and Fletcher, our most obvious way of winning games disappeared. We beat Hawthorn, but in a very different way to how we'd previously been winning games. Rather than blowing them away with a huge score, we just went for a steady, dour gameplan which saw us dominate the centre corridor, and strangle hawthorn.

As for Embley, well its worth noting that the woes didn't start until he went down. Our other huge strength this year (this is just a perception, don't have stats to back it up) has been that we have done very well in kick in situations, both in terms of moving the ball quickly out of defence, and manning up and keeping the ball in our forward fifty after opposition kickins. With our lack of marking kpps, we've done this thanks in part to Embley, who generally gives us at least one midfielder with an enormous advantage over his opponent in the marking contests- therefore, at each kickin, you could basically guarantee that Embers would be drifting in as a third tall in each marking duel, helping to alternatively set up play or lock the ball in our forward fifty. Ditto Gardiner, really- ask yourself how many times Gardiner would mark a Wirrpunda torpedo, to set up our run out of defence.

Remove the #1 and #2 mark takers in our team and we're suddenly in dire trouble- we can't play to our strength by winning the ball out of the centre and moving it on quickly to capitalise on our small fast lineup, and we don't have any hope of winning the marking duels that result in a slower game. The result of that is that we get a heap less ball, and suddenly a lot of the sort of players who could be classed as 'finishers' hit extremely poor form, due to lack of quality possessions.
I don't think its a coincidence that players like Judd, Haynes and Sampi have all hit poor form simultaneously. All three are at their best when given the ball in space- with our gameplan gutted, they simply aren't getting the opportunities they need to be effective.

All of your points are correct, but if 3 injuries can change us from a top 2 side to a side that would struggle to make the 8 then we are not in the ballpark. People say they are our 3 most important players, but if Judd, Cousins and Kerr went down peole would be justified saying the same thing. Jones has stepped up to an extent to take Embley's role, and Chambers etc have helped to fill Fletcher's.

Good teams win with injury - we haven't.

 

[Mead]

Originally posted by larrikin
All of your points are correct, but if 3 injuries can change us from a top 2 side to a side that would struggle to make the 8 then we are not in the ballpark. People say they are our 3 most important players, but if Judd, Cousins and Kerr went down peole would be justified saying the same thing.

Good teams win with injury - we haven't.

True- its pretty scary when you realise how good a side Port are- they've had a diabolical run of injuries this year, played the entire season without their best player and have the minor premiership sewn up with a fortnight to go- we simply don't have that sort of depth.

Having said that, if in round 12 this year you asked me to name to name our two most indispensible players, I would have said Gardiner and Embley.

I suppose a big part of the problem is that Gardie encompasses a fair chunk of both our Plan A and Plan B for winning games, we can't set up our running game without him, and we also lose our best contested mark. If Gardiner stays fit, all good, but if not, we need to develop the key position players to allow us win when the game is slowed down.

 

[larrikin]

Originally posted by Mead
True- its pretty scary when you realise how good a side Port are- they've had a diabolical run of injuries this year, played the entire season without their best player and have the minor premiership sewn up with a fortnight to go- we simply don't have that sort of depth.

Having said that, if in round 12 this year you asked me to name to name our two most indispensible players, I would have said Gardiner and Embley.

I suppose a big part of the problem is that Gardie encompasses a fair chunk of both our Plan A and Plan B for winning games, we can't set up our running game without him, and we also lose our best contested mark. If Gardiner stays fit, all good, but if not, we need to develop the key position players to allow us win when the game is slowed down.

Gardie is the huge loss, we have no real back up. Cox is a servicable ruckman, but our game is based around a dominant one.

Embley and Fletcher have been excuses IMO, because other players have stood up in their absence (eg Jones, Braun), and neither were reall integral to our plans pre season.

I just look forward to next season when teams have to match up to Judd and Embley on the wings with Jones, Chick and co running off HFF. That will be some goal scoring power.

 

[Jabber]

It's hard to make comparisons with other sides, because no-one else is as reliant on centre clearances as we are. Take out Gardiner & Fletcher and it becomes that much easier for other sides to tag and match up whats left.
Embley is our link man and troubleshooter - we have no-one else that comes close to his combination of speed, skills & size. His loss is by far the hardest to cover.

Woosha is doing a great job, but his one weakness is flexibility. He will improve and so will we - until then we are going to struggle when missing either Gardiner, Fletcher, Kerr, Cousins or Embley.

 

[Mr Q]

Originally posted by larrikin
Embley and Fletcher have been excuses IMO, because other players have stood up in their absence (eg Jones, Braun), and neither were reall integral to our plans pre season.

Its not that Braun and Jones haven't done an admirable job covering for Fletcher and Embley, but it is important to realise that if we have Braun and Fletcher or Embley and Jones both out there we have more options on the field.

In a lot of ways Embley going down hasn't lost us Embley per se, but the flexibility of having Jones as a marking forward which (other than his kicking) is IMO his best use for the team. Similarly not having Fletcher out there means Braun has to run in his place, and can't be used as a runner elsewhere on the ground, or running off the bench to spell Fletch, Cousins etc.

Its not that we haven't had the cover for them - its that we don't have any cover for the cover, and we're weakening other parts of the team.

Take the best three out of any of the top teams (maybe Port and the exceptionally even Sydney side excepted), and they'll struggle compared to normal. The only game in which we played exceptionally bad when these guys were all out was against St Kilda - and that would have been a bad day for the 2001 side.

 

[Voice of Reason]

I'd say all three have been important:
Fletcher, hard at it, in and under, lot of ball, another midfielder to match up on (and often the one who made it just too hard for the other side)
Gardiner, best ruckman in the club, and at the time in the AFL, first use of the ball to the midfield, who could "rest" up forward and give us another much needed forward target
Embley, unique combination of attributes, pace, endurance, height, overhead marking, goalscoring ability, courage, toughness.

And the sum of the three at once was even harder to take.

But anyway, it's just bad luck. You go with the best you have available and if it's not good enough, there are no excuses. Ask the coach.