Tas
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TheBrownDog
- Dec 23, 2002
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Lets be frank, we look like millionaires when it comes off, but we look absolutely shithouse when it breaks down (50% of the Essendon match).
Personally, after two seasons, I gave him until this mid season to get it right. He looks like he might achieve that deadline.
I have never been a fan of using entire seasons as experimental football laborotories, nor have I ever really witnessed that kind of thing before in all my years following North.
If it gets us to deep September, then I will be the first to applaud him.
This sounds like 'I made a bad call but don't want to admit it' post.
Every time something doesn't work you have to experiment with different things until you find things that do work, we have never reached the state of perfection in which we haven't needed to experiment.
I think our game fell apart vs the bombers because we couldn't get our hands on the ball for two quarters. Part of the problem was our ruck structure was putrid round 1. We had 30 hitouts vs 44, we had 26 clearances vs 40, 130 contested possessions vs 155. We were soundly beaten at getting the ball.
Ziebell was a massive out, a bigger blow than any peanut they had missing. We still need to win the ball for this style of footy to work, while some of our mids did okay, none of them really had stand out performances.
We didn't work hard enough, 338 disposals is low for our style of football. 505 vs GWS is ridiculously high, we probably wont achieve that many times. 385 we got vs Geelong is closer to the mark, that is factoring we fell asleep in the last quarter somewhat, so we should be averaging around the 400ish mark if we handball a lot because many of them are just disposals to get around someone zoning or pressing which generate more disposals than a long kick.
When we pull off this style of play we are in possession of the ball for a big chunk of games and the ball in in attacking half a lot more than it is in our defensive half. We are so far averaging 21 goals a game with 16 goal assists, our average last year was 14 goals and 9 assists, this style is encouraging the mids to run and carry and be aggressive. Even if we don't play like that all the time or every week, getting scoring power out of Swallow, Ziebell, Bastinac, Wells, Harvey, Adams and Harper shows these guys what they are capable of as offensive players.
Once they believe and have the confidence then that is a big part of the journey.