Analysis Beveridge - where to from here?

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Guido

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Last year we fielded the youngest side in the comp in 20/22 rounds and won 8 games. That’s actually good - seriously.
Good is an understatement.

For any team consistently fielding the youngest team in the comp / having hundreds upon hundreds of games less experience than the opposition almost every week, I honestly would doubt winning 8 games and being desperately unlucky in 3 others has ever been done before.

It would be interesting to see some of great coaches from other teams would do with a similar list profile, I don't think they'd be doing much better with this list as it stands.

Clarkson probably had a similar youngish team in 2005 - won 5 games, suffered half a dozen losses of 8 goals or more (including a 20 goal loss) with Sam Mitchell, Hodge, Franklin, Jordan Lewis, Campbell Brown, Roughead and half a dozen experienced heads around them (inc Crawford, Vandenberg, Dixon, and an AA level ruck in Everitt) playing most of the games that season. The next year they finished 11th. Then finals for 9 out of the next 10 years.
 

Guido

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Far too many people confusing young for good enough in the future.
You're looking at 19-20-21-22 year old kids who've had a bad week, month or even down season and assuming they're not good enough.

At 21, Lindsay Gilbee was a fringe player, Daniel Cross was a possible delistee, Matty Boyd and Dale Morris in the VFL. Kids take time, they will not hit their consistent, match winning best until 25.

My call: The list as it stands will have 10 future AA level players (at least one AA nomination in the next 10 years).

If we spend our money well, through trading, FA's and assuming a reasonable strike rate in drafting, we should add another 2 across the next 3-4 years.

Assuming no idiotic list management or getting raided, that should leave a group of a dozen top level players, with another half a dozen rock solid B or B+ types and plenty of finals tilts from 2020 onwards.

There's no point in arguing it now, I'm just putting my opinion forward, and you yours.

We'll bookmark it and bring it back up in 2025. Or 2030. Just before the Great Sino-American War.
 
Sep 7, 2015
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Beveridge is not adapting and has moved away from controlling the football to manic handball play on at every possession resulting in shallow entries into the forward 50 and turnovers. If there are no leads on, they should be kicking it deep in the fwd pocket like most teams are doing now. Play half the ground and switch to the other side to get some open play and deeper entries.
We are getting smashed at turnover transition football. This should have been evident and rectified when we lost to Carlton.

This post reads as if it's written by someone pretending to understand the game on a deep level.
 

Mattdougie

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You're looking at 19-20-21-22 year old kids who've had a bad week, month or even down season and assuming they're not good enough.

At 21, Lindsay Gilbee was a fringe player, Daniel Cross was a possible delistee, Matty Boyd and Dale Morris in the VFL. Kids take time, they will not hit their consistent, match winning best until 25.

My call: The list as it stands will have 10 future AA level players (at least one AA nomination in the next 10 years).

If we spend our money well, through trading, FA's and assuming a reasonable strike rate in drafting, we should add another 2 across the next 3-4 years.

Assuming no idiotic list management or getting raided, that should leave a group of a dozen top level players, with another half a dozen rock solid B or B+ types and plenty of finals tilts from 2020 onwards.

There's no point in arguing it now, I'm just putting my opinion forward, and you yours.

We'll bookmark it and bring it back up in 2025. Or 2030. Just before the Great Sino-American War.


I was not implying that we cannot be a good team in he future but being Young does not in anyway guarantee that
 
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One question I want to ask Bev is, why do we continue not to have a bulldog the deepest player in defence. Far too often our deepest defender is in front. We concede to many goals “over the top” and with our KPDs who collectively aren’t very strong the deepest should be playing back shoulder.

I don’t mind playing in front up the ground but we should have a player between the ball and the goal line at all times.
 
One question I want to ask Bev is, why do we continue not to have a bulldog the deepest player in defence. Far too often our deepest defender is in front. We concede to many goals “over the top” and with our KPDs who collectively aren’t very strong the deepest should be playing back shoulder.

I don’t mind playing in front up the ground but we should have a player between the ball and the goal line at all times.
It bothers me a bit too.

But even more at the other end of the ground when we flood back. We have no-one to kick to when there's an unexpected turnover and we break clear off half-back.

Yet when we turn it over unexpectedly they usually kick a goal.
 
One question I want to ask Bev is, why do we continue not to have a bulldog the deepest player in defence. Far too often our deepest defender is in front. We concede to many goals “over the top” and with our KPDs who collectively aren’t very strong the deepest should be playing back shoulder.

I don’t mind playing in front up the ground but we should have a player between the ball and the goal line at all times.

Seemed to work well for Dustin Fletcher. Against the Eagles Cordy was constantly out of position, sometimes ball watching instead of keeping close to Darling. Hamling nullified Naughton when we played Freo. How did he do that?
 

Charlie Bucket

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One question I want to ask Bev is, why do we continue not to have a bulldog the deepest player in defence. Far too often our deepest defender is in front. We concede to many goals “over the top” and with our KPDs who collectively aren’t very strong the deepest should be playing back shoulder.

I don’t mind playing in front up the ground but we should have a player between the ball and the goal line at all times.

We play zone defence/defensive press so always have defenders higher up.
Where we * it up is by having s**t turnovers and players like Cordy ball watching and getting caught out when it happens. Most teams play this way. We just haven’t been nailing it as well.

Remember the 2015 Elimination Final ?
That was a perfect example of not playing it well. We got caught out a few times and probably cost us the win.
For the rest of 2015/16 we played it pretty well most weeks.

If you nail that way of playing, you have an extra across the middle of the ground when the balls in your half. Helps to maintain ball in fwd half for repeat entries ( think Swans, Hawks, Tigers games ).
And when it’s done right, your last defender usually gets back to the deepest fwd in time. Unfortunately, we haven’t been doing that.
 

Charlie Bucket

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Seemed to work well for Dustin Fletcher. Against the Eagles Cordy was constantly out of position, sometimes ball watching instead of keeping close to Darling. Hamling nullified Naughton when we played Freo. How did he do that?

There was one goal, when the replay was shown from behind the posts, that had Cordy his eye off Darling for a good 5-10 seconds. Turnover happened and Darling then had 20 on him in no time. Was pretty poor as that’s not ability or understanding of the role, it’s lack of concentration. Not good enough at that level.
 
And when it’s done right, your last defender usually gets back to the deepest fwd in time. Unfortunately, we haven’t been doing that.
You also need a good tank and good game awareness which is why Daniel found him self isolated on taller opponents a number of times at the start of the year. He covers ground to cover the closest opponent to goal because he reacted faster than our other defenders.
 

Charlie Bucket

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You also need a good tank and good game awareness which is why Daniel found him self isolated on taller opponents a number of times at the start of the year. He covers ground to cover the closest opponent to goal because he reacted faster than our other defenders.

Yep, spot on Mofra.
 
Aug 1, 2008
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We are a team of midfielders and still manage to lose clearances.

The list is unbalanced

We are short of 3-4 talls
And the ones we do have we aren’t played

The list is one paced, lacks speed, evasiveness and strength

Worse than that - players have stopped developing. Our best players are having sub optimal years and aside from Dunkley, English and first year B Smith there is no improvement.

It is a very disappointing season.
 

JJHunter

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We play zone defence/defensive press so always have defenders higher up.
Where we **** it up is by having **** turnovers and players like Cordy ball watching and getting caught out when it happens. Most teams play this way. We just haven’t been nailing it as well.

Remember the 2015 Elimination Final ?
That was a perfect example of not playing it well. We got caught out a few times and probably cost us the win.
For the rest of 2015/16 we played it pretty well most weeks.

If you nail that way of playing, you have an extra across the middle of the ground when the balls in your half. Helps to maintain ball in fwd half for repeat entries ( think Swans, Hawks, Tigers games ).
And when it’s done right, your last defender usually gets back to the deepest fwd in time. Unfortunately, we haven’t been doing that.

Its not 2015/2016 - Football has moved on and this side is not capable of playing the way that worked for the 2015/2016 side.
Its important to remember the stability we had in our back 6 of 2015/2016. Wood and Boyd were all Australians in those years - Morris was playing.

But these days who is down there has changed greatly.
Not only is it changing from week to week qtr to qtr - but they also have a guy who is 5 foot 5 down there that cannot afford to be used within this structure.
He has been exploited almost every week for his height. If you want him to play there thats fine - but move away from the type of defence that allows him to be in positions where he is in marking contests against your Darlings and high flying Liam Ryans.

And more importantly IF you continue to lose because you setup in this manner, and you continue to turn it over putting your defensive structures at risk WHY KEEP DOING THE SAME THING !!

I dont agree with your concept that most teams do it either.
Two of the best defensive sides of the last decade, Geelong and Sydney have as a rule always got 1 player closer to goal.
And take Hawks - where do you remember seeing Lake sitting all the time.
 

Charlie Bucket

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Its not 2015/2016 - Football has moved on and this side is not capable of playing the way that worked for the 2015/2016 side.
Its important to remember the stability we had in our back 6 of 2015/2016. Wood and Boyd were all Australians in those years - Morris was playing.

But these days who is down there has changed greatly.
Not only is it changing from week to week qtr to qtr - but they also have a guy who is 5 foot 5 down there that cannot afford to be used within this structure.
He has been exploited almost every week for his height. If you want him to play there thats fine - but move away from the type of defence that allows him to be in positions where he is in marking contests against your Darlings and high flying Liam Ryans.

And more importantly IF you continue to lose because you setup in this manner, and you continue to turn it over putting your defensive structures at risk WHY KEEP DOING THE SAME THING !!

I dont agree with your concept that most teams do it either.
Two of the best defensive sides of the last decade, Geelong and Sydney have as a rule always got 1 player closer to goal.
And take Hawks - where do you remember seeing Lake sitting all the time.

Mofra nailed it on the head earlier, Daniel being one out is the result of others not playing to structure.
As for being exposed every week, he loses no more one on ones than any other defender we have, it just sticks out because of his height.

As for our defensive set up, the zone and press are always changing.
Pies started the press in 2010/11 and won a flag on the back of it, its still used by teams but in different ways. Same with the zone defence. Been around for a long time. WC used it to effect in 2015 but was outsmarted by Clarko in the GF when the Hawks played wide most of the game to avoid it. We played it well in 2016. Tigers played a different version in 2017 with higher pressure around the contest, which meant their zone had an easier time negating oppo long balls forward.

Personally, I have no issue with our defensive structure, what annoys me is the application by some of the players.
As I said before, when we nail it, it works very well. We had periods against the Hawks, Swans and Tigers where they couldn’t get near it in their fwd half. We saw the same against WC and if we were more efficient in front of goal we’d have been 4/5 goals up at half time. We dropped our bundle across every line after half time, we end up getting touched up.

If our players were playing their role to a tee and applying their structures 100% and we were leaking goals and getting flogged then, yep, something needs to change. Imo that’s not the case.
It’ll start to click and we’ll see a lot better games going forward. Imo.
 

Charlie Bucket

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Its not 2015/2016 - Football has moved on and this side is not capable of playing the way that worked for the 2015/2016 side.
Its important to remember the stability we had in our back 6 of 2015/2016. Wood and Boyd were all Australians in those years - Morris was playing.

But these days who is down there has changed greatly.
Not only is it changing from week to week qtr to qtr - but they also have a guy who is 5 foot 5 down there that cannot afford to be used within this structure.
He has been exploited almost every week for his height. If you want him to play there thats fine - but move away from the type of defence that allows him to be in positions where he is in marking contests against your Darlings and high flying Liam Ryans.

And more importantly IF you continue to lose because you setup in this manner, and you continue to turn it over putting your defensive structures at risk WHY KEEP DOING THE SAME THING !!

I dont agree with your concept that most teams do it either.
Two of the best defensive sides of the last decade, Geelong and Sydney have as a rule always got 1 player closer to goal.
And take Hawks - where do you remember seeing Lake sitting all the time.

Agree about the defensive stability in 15/16 but I still think this group can get to the level we saw with Boyd. And Wood playing well. It just needs time.
 

Charlie Bucket

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Its not 2015/2016 - Football has moved on and this side is not capable of playing the way that worked for the 2015/2016 side.
Its important to remember the stability we had in our back 6 of 2015/2016. Wood and Boyd were all Australians in those years - Morris was playing.

But these days who is down there has changed greatly.
Not only is it changing from week to week qtr to qtr - but they also have a guy who is 5 foot 5 down there that cannot afford to be used within this structure.
He has been exploited almost every week for his height. If you want him to play there thats fine - but move away from the type of defence that allows him to be in positions where he is in marking contests against your Darlings and high flying Liam Ryans.

And more importantly IF you continue to lose because you setup in this manner, and you continue to turn it over putting your defensive structures at risk WHY KEEP DOING THE SAME THING !!

I dont agree with your concept that most teams do it either.
Two of the best defensive sides of the last decade, Geelong and Sydney have as a rule always got 1 player closer to goal.
And take Hawks - where do you remember seeing Lake sitting all the time.

Also, i’m not against Bevo, changing it up if it’s not working. I’m just happy to give it time as it’s effective when done right.
 

Golden_6

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What frustrates me is the complete lack of bringing in outside experienced coaches to fill roles. This may or may not be Bevo's doing. Even the best coaches stagnate unless you continually bring in fresh new ideas. Look at our coaching staff:

Beveridge - 2015
Steven King - 2011
Ashley Hansen - 2012
Joel Corey - 2013
Gia - 2014 (Always been a Bulldog)

We haven't brought in a single new coach since 2015. This almost seems unbelievable to me.
 

gangsta deluxe

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What frustrates me is the complete lack of bringing in outside experienced coaches to fill roles. This may or may not be Bevo's doing. Even the best coaches stagnate unless you continually bring in fresh new ideas. Look at our coaching staff:

Beveridge - 2015
Steven King - 2011
Ashley Hansen - 2012
Joel Corey - 2013
Gia - 2014 (Always been a Bulldog)

We haven't brought in a single new coach since 2015. This almost seems unbelievable to me.

This is the critical problem. I believe Maple had a more hands on role in the first two years. I suspect he was able to challenge Beveridge (Monty perhaps did too), and nobody has come close to doing that since. Bev can be a genius, but with his creative tactics, there is often a fine line between genius and bizarre/idiotic moves.

He needs someone who can have a more active input. Someone who can, for example, tell him Dunkley isnt a ******* ruck when he pulls a move like that (I frankly despaired seeing Gardner in the ruck a couple of times last weekend). I cant see any of that mob listed above contradicting him or getting stuck in (although Corey strikes me as a good coach).
 

adammonerz

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If Josh Schahce is not going to be the forward he was supposed to be why not do a reverse Naughton and chuck him down back and see how he plays there, his a big body
 
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