Autopsy Blues loss to Suns discussion/rant etc etc.

[F_therest]

Was really bitterly disappointed with the skills watching the game. Upon reflection, though, I think it's going to take a little while for the players to get used to quick ball movement and 'play on' mentality. It's a stark contrast to the game style of the previous two seasons where the intent was to really keep the uncontested numbers up by possessing, then stopping to look for options.

I think the new approach to the game is a really big gear shift in game style and something the players are still getting used to.

From Saturday's game, it seemed to me that the either the player with the ball was one step ahead in his mind before dishing it off, or the receiver was one step ahead in his mind before receiving, where for each situation, the players really needed to be concentrating on what they were actually doing. I think that the 'polish' will come in time, no doubt.

It's probably been mentioned before, but despite the deplorable skills, we still had 67 entries into our f50 (it didn't seem like it though) on saturday. Albeit with a 32% scoring rate on i50 entry (league average is ~45% after two rounds), that means that the mids are getting their hands on the ball, but either delivery into i50 is bad (which it has been thus far) or forwards aren't used to positioning (young players, new fwd line coach, etc.), but probably a bit of both at this stage. It's also interesting to me that we had ~25% of hit-outs (clearly no ruckman) but ~45% of clearances (including 52% of centre clearances!) - it shows we adapted somewhat to the situation - but again, we weren't clean with the ball use. If we had been clean in and around the contest and scored at least the league average for i50 conversions, we'd be talking about a win now, not a loss.

If the players can effectively adapt between attacking style (our new game plan) when required and a defensive game when required (stuff we've seen in the past two seasons), then we can play games on our terms. But what this also means is that we need a strong, effective and efficient midfield, with typical KPP players being adaptable to play between the arcs as well (probably pointing out the obvious here). I believe we have the young cattle to do it.

I agree, though, with other posters here that tackling numbers are a bit of a concern (including Saturday) - we need to remember that we have a lot of young players out there that are either small (although Fisher bucks that trend) or are big (Weiters, H-Mac, JSOS, etc.) and don't know how to use their body yet - these guys are early 20's and have just finished growing (or are still growing!). A little concerning that some of our more senior players are registering lowish tackle counts - I hope this is addressed.

We'll see how we can respond on Friday - Bolts talked about drilling ball skills at training this week during Saturday's post-match presser, so hopefully we're cleaner in the contest and general play. If we are, we are in with a good chance of a win.

Good post.

May explain why imo Bolton seemed more calm and 'smiley' in his post match interview than a lot of the other times i have seen him after a loss...and he alluded to the fact he felt we were close and just needed to 'tweak' a few things to get the balance of offence/defence right.

The players are still adjusting to the new gamestyle, and seem a little confused as to their positioning and how offensive they should be vs defensive. When this happens, you get what you saw on Saturday with the obvious lack of cohesion that results in long bombs and fumbles. These things don't happen when a team is all on the same page and know exactly what they're doing and where they should position themselves.

Throw in the new positions players were playing due to injuries on top and it's not that surprising really with a young team.

No Krooz and Kennedy helping out midfield meant new centre square set ups.
Weitering playing forward and some ruck.
O'Shea playing his first game for us and Polson playing his second...Mullett also a newbie in our team. Cunningham playing off half back is new and we have no Docherty and of course Gibbs as leaders.

New gameplan + players out of position due to injuries + players in a team who haven't played many games together = lack of cohesion.

 

[NavySteel]

Good post.

May explain why imo Bolton seemed more calm and 'smiley' in his post match interview than a lot of the other times i have seen him after a loss...and he alluded to the fact he felt we were close and just needed to 'tweak' a few things to get the balance of offence/defence right.

The players are still adjusting to the new gamestyle, and seem a little confused as to their positioning and how offensive they should be vs defensive. When this happens, you get what you saw on Saturday with the obvious lack of cohesion that results in long bombs and fumbles. These things don't happen when a team is all on the same page and know exactly what they're doing and where they should position themselves.

Throw in the new positions players were playing due to injuries on top and it's not that surprising really with a young team.

No Krooz and Kennedy helping out midfield meant new centre square set ups.
Weitering playing forward and some ruck.
O'Shea playing his first game for us and Polson playing his second...Mullett also a newbie in our team. Cunningham playing off half back is new and we have no Docherty and of course Gibbs as leaders.

New gameplan + players out of position due to injuries + players in a team who haven't played many games together = lack of cohesion.

Agreed. Forgot to mention the lack of the players in the preferred 22, although I’m sure it won’t be used as an excuse.

I think Bolts’ favorite new line of ‘synergy’ holds true. It’s closely related to cohesion.

The Suns game definitely lacked cohesion and synergy.

I know people will say “it was just JLT”, but we saw some encouraging glimpses of what happens when the team clicks.

However, when the gears click into place for four quarters... look out!!

 

[BlueRenaissance]

Good post.

May explain why imo Bolton seemed more calm and 'smiley' in his post match interview than a lot of the other times i have seen him after a loss...and he alluded to the fact he felt we were close and just needed to 'tweak' a few things to get the balance of offence/defence right.

The players are still adjusting to the new gamestyle, and seem a little confused as to their positioning and how offensive they should be vs defensive. When this happens, you get what you saw on Saturday with the obvious lack of cohesion that results in long bombs and fumbles. These things don't happen when a team is all on the same page and know exactly what they're doing and where they should position themselves.

Throw in the new positions players were playing due to injuries on top and it's not that surprising really with a young team.

No Krooz and Kennedy helping out midfield meant new centre square set ups.
Weitering playing forward and some ruck.
O'Shea playing his first game for us and Polson playing his second...Mullett also a newbie in our team. Cunningham playing off half back is new and we have no Docherty and of course Gibbs as leaders.

New gameplan + players out of position due to injuries + players in a team who haven't played many games together = lack of cohesion.

I feel this is going too far in excuse-ology.

Fumbles, lack of preparation can happen due to the above-mentioned reasons. But over that game, nothing was corrected during the game. Leadership was lacking to turn around what was happening. Murphy was one of the worst offenders as our captain; he fumbled, missed team mates continually.

In competitive sport, anyone can be unprepared or get caught out for whatever reason but sometimes in the game you go...piss off, i've had enough I'm going to fight back! People stand up due to annoyance. Wouldn't happen I suspect with Hodge or Mitchell as they dig deep to show some spine. Murphy didn't show us anything I'm afraid and hasn't for the last 2-2.5 seasons. Murphy has shown grit in the past where he has come off second best (Dangerfield shoulder). As the game went on L Jones was more a deer in headlights with no leadership down back or coaching strategy to save his world of embarrassment.

Fumbling is a state of mind and nothing to do with Kruezer/Kennedy being out. That is to do with implied pressure from the opposition and rushing decisions and disposal. That can be changed by hardening the **** up due to the game ratcheting up in pressure.

I've loved the rebuild, the current team, coaches and recruiting team. They have built up loads of loyalty tickets with me as im fully on board. But just sometimes you got to call out a really poor performance. That game was embarrassing and links us with our pre BB/SoS past which we thought we had outstripped. It's a learning curve but let us not lessen it. They were terrible!

 

[katmanblue]

Did anyone else notice how bad the camera work was for the replays on the scoreboard?

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[RAPPA]

Did anyone else notice how bad the camera work was for the replays on the scoreboard?

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I was avoiding watching the replays for fear of tearing my hair out from seeing repeated dropped chest marks, missed handpasses etc

 

[mediumsizered]

I was avoiding watching the replays for fear of tearing my hair out from seeing repeated dropped chest marks, missed handpasses etc

It was definitely the type of stuff you didn't want to watch a second time.

 

[BluStreak]

We need to de Norf Mullett firstly. Leash Jones enthusiasm. Back Weits to regain his confidence.
We elimated two of our losses so we are closer to a win.

 

[Blue Pulse]

Was really bitterly disappointed with the skills watching the game. Upon reflection, though, I think it's going to take a little while for the players to get used to quick ball movement and 'play on' mentality. It's a stark contrast to the game style of the previous two seasons where the intent was to really keep the uncontested numbers up by possessing, then stopping to look for options.

I think the new approach to the game is a really big gear shift in game style and something the players are still getting used to.

From Saturday's game, it seemed to me that the either the player with the ball was one step ahead in his mind before dishing it off, or the receiver was one step ahead in his mind before receiving, where for each situation, the players really needed to be concentrating on what they were actually doing. I think that the 'polish' will come in time, no doubt.

It's probably been mentioned before, but despite the deplorable skills, we still had 67 entries into our f50 (it didn't seem like it though) on saturday. Albeit with a 32% scoring rate on i50 entry (league average is ~45% after two rounds), that means that the mids are getting their hands on the ball, but either delivery into i50 is bad (which it has been thus far) or forwards aren't used to positioning (young players, new fwd line coach, etc.), but probably a bit of both at this stage. It's also interesting to me that we had ~25% of hit-outs (clearly no ruckman) but ~45% of clearances (including 52% of centre clearances!) - it shows we adapted somewhat to the situation - but again, we weren't clean with the ball use. If we had been clean in and around the contest and scored at least the league average for i50 conversions, we'd be talking about a win now, not a loss.

If the players can effectively adapt between attacking style (our new game plan) when required and a defensive game when required (stuff we've seen in the past two seasons), then we can play games on our terms. But what this also means is that we need a strong, effective and efficient midfield, with typical KPP players being adaptable to play between the arcs as well (probably pointing out the obvious here). I believe we have the young cattle to do it.

I agree, though, with other posters here that tackling numbers are a bit of a concern (including Saturday) - we need to remember that we have a lot of young players out there that are either small (although Fisher bucks that trend) or are big (Weiters, H-Mac, JSOS, etc.) and don't know how to use their body yet - these guys are early 20's and have just finished growing (or are still growing!). A little concerning that some of our more senior players are registering lowish tackle counts - I hope this is addressed.

We'll see how we can respond on Friday - Bolts talked about drilling ball skills at training this week during Saturday's post-match presser, so hopefully we're cleaner in the contest and general play. If we are, we are in with a good chance of a win.

Great post, what was disappointing as you said is the fact that we didn't change our game style and continued to roll the dice. Last year against Adelaide they kicked the first 5 but then we slowed the game down defensively and kicked the next 3. We worked ourselves back into the game. I know we are young and are still working on our game plan but we must be able to change from attacking style to defensive style if things aren't going our way.

 

[BuxbaumBixby]

I had to wait a few days before having a rant about last week's performance in order to look at it with a bit of balance. But it's now Thursday and I still need some catharsis.

On reflection, the thing I hated most ..... even more than the skill errors and the lack of input/influence from our bottom 10 .... was this attitude that "we got ahead ourselves". When our skipper, post game, uses "we got ahead of ourselves" as an excuse for the performance .... W.T.F. did we get ahead of? A 4-5 goal loss to Richmond?? A bottom four finish last year?? A decade of irrelevance??

The first thing I want to hear out of the skippers mouth is the key areas that went wrong, and the key things we need to do to improve with some steely resolve to rectify it. I want him to take some responsibility.

I can kind of understand that our more mature players want to get some positive media after being beaten up for a long time, but the biggest disappointment is that it sounds like a couple of our senior players read some media while sucking down some kool aid and thought that last weekend was going to be a walk in the park.

We won't change until there's a shift in our leadership (not just one guy - but 7 or 8 blokes that bring everyone else with them) that stands up in games and says 'this aint ok'.

Rant over. Feels better. Blues to beat pies by 6 goals.

 

[thylacine60]

BB - 200 posts in 8 years but every one a winner.......

 

[Metalcrusher]

 

[Blues90]

Before I go completely off worth nothing Murphy 30 possessions with 68 Super Coach points, Zac Fisher 18 possessions with 110 SC points. Speaks volumes.


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Funny you say that because if you're going by that mantra Polson 50 points for 7 touches also speaks volumes

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[The Toad]

Let’s hope last week was just an momentary lapse in “pretty much everything “.
I think we’ll be back this week after what we all pray was a big kick in the arse wake up call.
Blues by 18.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Blue Pulse]

We won't change until there's a shift in our leadership (not just one guy - but 7 or 8 blokes that bring everyone else with them) that stands up in games and says 'this aint ok'.

So much this, however I feel this is already being addressed by SOS in my opinion, for too long we have had a bunch a prima donna's running around getting well paid to play football. A lot of them highly skilled and talented but few had the guts or mindset to change things when the game got hard. Hence why a lot of these guys have gone elsewhere. Yes they are performing well but so are their teams.

As much as I like Murphy and Gibbs, they are not leaders when things get tough, they are the cream when things are going well. I would say this is Murphy's last year as captain and you will see a changing of the guard. Kreuzer, Ed and Simo to a point are old fashioned lead from the front players. Doc, once right I feel will be a shoe in for the top job and any other contenders for the job would be happy to follow him onto the field.