Yianni
Norm Smith Medallist
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2001
- Posts
- 6,730
- Reaction score
- 6,487
- Location
- Melbourne
- AFL Club
- North Melbourne
- Other Teams
- S.A Spurs, Liverpool
As i have often heard Kingy spruiking, it's the next posession after a clearance that is key, as today's 42 to 22, ( centre square 20 to 6) tally clearly illustrates.
Hopefully our next coach and his assistants can address this and turn our clearance dominance into the lethal weapon it should be with the 6-6-6 rule in play.
Absolutely. Clearances and contested possession used to be the key stats, now they’re nothing. Sent this to my Pie mate during the first quarter when they were down four goals.
As you can see, they’re murdering Port in clearance, yet being killed in uncontested possession. And they’re 4 goals down.
We all know what this looks like. It’s Ziebs in the midfield. Gets it, hacks it, they intercept and slingshot it back.
Here’s another screengrab, from today.
Someone said that Ross Lyon might be good for us, as we lack team defence. Nail, meet head.
It doesn’t matter how many times you win clearance, unless you’re ultimately scoring from clearance. We’re not, and we’re also not defending transition well at all.
I wouldn’t expect us to be considering (1) we weren’t very good at it when Noble was coaching and (2) team defence is, as the name suggests, a team thing. It needs training and cohesion. We have no coach and no system right now.
That said, I actually don’t think we’re in as bad a spot as many think.
Simpkin bouncing back, Sleevo’s form, Zurhaar, JHF, Curtis, McKay etc. We have a lot of good pieces relative to our results. It’s our system that’s garbage. Obvs there are big holes in the list, but our best players are young. That’s cause for optimism. (Remember in 2016 when it was the opposite?)
I think Clarko or another good coach could do a lot with our list. Just don’t read too much into the rest of the year. Just monitor the quality of individual performances. We have zero system, which in 2022 means all the things we all wrong our hands over here (difficulty scoring, ease being scored against)
But you can always coach system. You can’t coach talent. I mean you can, but I don’t think Geelong are a consistently good side because they keep drafting amazing players. They’re a consistently good side because they consistently coach a group of players of various abilities to play well with each other.
Our lamentations this year have all happened because our players are, collectively, running around like headless chooks.
Get a good coach and a few strong senior players in from other clubs, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see us have the year next year that a lot of us hoped we’d have this year.
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