Centre Clearance Conundrum

[KillerMagpies]

We are 18th in the comp at centre clearances.
We’ve lost Grundy for the year.
Cox was actually quite good on Friday, but Gawn was smart enough to rove to Cox and add to Melbourne’s avalanche of clearances.
We levelled up with Melbourne at half time and pulled away.
I’m confident if we can square the clearance numbers it will make us far more potent.
Cameron has lost a bit of form.
Adams is no guarantee to come back.
What do we do??
Throw Ash Johnson in for short bursts for some second efforts?
Time for McCrae?
Reboot Callum Brown?
Activate Nick Daicos?
We need another spark, I reckon.
Thoughts, guys??

 

[OniAu]

Natural mids need to go in. Who that is i dont know

Carmicael. McCrae, Nick Daicos

All inexperienced i know. Im sure the coaches have the finger on the pulse

 

[Markfs]

callum brown of course.... he's primed and ready to go. i've no doubt that he will be in the team this week.

 

[Doc1763]

Knew we should have kept Blair!!

 

[ThePhantom777]

I'm surprised we haven't tried Macrae in the Seniors by now with Chugg and Bianco getting a shot.

 

[Scritchyscroony]

Magden could be that big bodied midfield clearance beast we need.
The coaches have him pigeon holed as a gun full forward for obvious reasons. But if they could think outside the box a bit he could be the silver bullet for our clearance woes.

 

[anshell]

Adams is the only answer short term.He’s not going to solve the problem completely of course ,but he will help when he comes back.Hopefully he will be fit for the first week of the finals,

 

[Quicky]

A hungry De Goey. A fit Adams. An angry Maynard when we can spare it. Back the boys in.

 

[TheVillageIdiot7]

Personnel doesn't matter too much.
Hasn't for most of this year.

If you watch the game, we get first hands to it a lot. But fumble and then everyone is out of position.
When we don't win the tap, we're so offensive that we're out of position.

Mids and people are not the issue IMO.
Its structure and how we go about it.

I though Cox was great in the middle, but for every tap we won and got first hands, we fumbled and lost it (and couldn't lock it in).

I'd much prefer us to just go super defensive and force a secondary ball up and reset with more numbers around it.
over the course of a game, this would serve us much better than the 5 we win and 15 we lose.

...But too late in the season to try and learn this now.

 

[Countrypie]

Personnel doesn't matter too much.
Hasn't for most of this year.

If you watch the game, we get first hands to it a lot. But fumble and then everyone is out of position.
When we don't win the tap, we're so offensive that we're out of position.

Mids and people are not the issue IMO.
Its structure and how we go about it.

I though Cox was great in the middle, but for every tap we won and got first hands, we fumbled and lost it (and couldn't lock it in).

I'd much prefer us to just go super defensive and force a secondary ball up and reset with more numbers around it.
over the course of a game, this would serve us much better than the 5 we win and 15 we lose.

...But too late in the season to try and learn this now.

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has thought this. A couple of blokes in there are good footballers but not necessarily one touch players. De Goey is probably our best 1 touch player atm but even he tends to fumble a little.

 

[Timmy from Thomastown]

Not too concerned. Adams is important but apart from that we just keep doing what we are doing.

 

[TheVillageIdiot7]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has thought this. A couple of blokes in there are good footballers but not necessarily one touch players. De Goey is probably our best 1 touch player atm but even he tends to fumble a little.

Been this way all year.
We're just all or nothing at CB.
given how well we score from transition, its the worst outcome we can have is to get owned at CB.

I understand the thought of "play to your ruckman winning".....but as you said, only JDG seems to ever be in the right spot at the right time.
Even the pendles walk out was all because of JDG.
....If we are to go far, he needs to be in every CB.

He single handly righted the ship in the second half in my opinion.
Albeit i'll temper this with saying he is offensive only. If we lose it, his man is gone!!

We are stuck with what we have this year and 10+ weeks have told us it aint changing.

If you've seen any of Jens videos from training, you'll see its a mess.

 

[legendstatus]

My biggest concern for years now - we aren’t a one touch midfield as mentioned above. Often we get in the right position and then try to move it quickly or panic and we lose ball.

Not sure who our midfield coach is but we need to seriously sort it out before finals. Some may say we’ve won 11 in a row but we all know this won’t last forever - giving opposition teams a head start is not something we want to deal with in September

What was noticeable from Melbourne was they had players ready on the outside and the amount of time they quickly handballed over the head of a Pies player was a clear tactic


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[FAIRANDBALANCED]

At the SCG I would put Sidebottom in there. He usually plays crap against the Swans in Sydney, but maybe getting him in the game early will help. They don't have a dynamic centre clearance crew, so someone crafty and clever like Sidebottom might snag a few.

At the MCG he is a bit too important guarding that wing, so just have to hope DeGoey goes complete beast mode.

 

[jefffff34]

If required, break the Nick Daicos glass.

 

[ThePhantom777]

Been this way all year.
We're just all or nothing at CB.
given how well we score from transition, its the worst outcome we can have is to get owned at CB.

I understand the thought of "play to your ruckman winning".....but as you said, only JDG seems to ever be in the right spot at the right time.
Even the pendles walk out was all because of JDG.
....If we are to go far, he needs to be in every CB.

He single handly righted the ship in the second half in my opinion.
Albeit i'll temper this with saying he is offensive only. If we lose it, his man is gone!!

We are stuck with what we have this year and 10+ weeks have told us it aint changing.

If you've seen any of Jens videos from training, you'll see its a mess.

On the couch showed footage tonight of JDG running from CB to the backline as first midfielder to help out defensively, getting a tackle and mark intercept.

 

[Monco Matt]

I think the reason we suck so badly at centre clearances is because our midfield are already thinking about pulling back towards the D50 rather than going forward. Our style really does rely a fair bit on winning the ball across half back and running the ball out towards goal that way before the opposition can set themselves up defensively. I may be wrong but it looks that way to me. Our mids don't play in front of opposition mids, we sit back off the shoulder looking to peel back into defence or to lay a tackle, mostly!

 

[Piesinmyeyes]

Time to give Macrae a crack?
Surely his endurance is up to speed by now.
If his skills are a key factor so what?
Oliver got the ball 100 times last week and hardly hit a target and we know Adams is a butcher.
Time for a look…

 

[No SPIN]

Personnel doesn't matter too much.
Hasn't for most of this year.

If you watch the game, we get first hands to it a lot. But fumble and then everyone is out of position.
When we don't win the tap, we're so offensive that we're out of position.

Mids and people are not the issue IMO.
Its structure and how we go about it.

I though Cox was great in the middle, but for every tap we won and got first hands, we fumbled and lost it (and couldn't lock it in).

I'd much prefer us to just go super defensive and force a secondary ball up and reset with more numbers around it.
over the course of a game, this would serve us much better than the 5 we win and 15 we lose.

...But too late in the season to try and learn this now.

The secondary ball up strategy was used in the past when Grundy was using shallow taps.
I agree it’s more a set up than personnel issue at CB.

 

[hellfire]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has thought this. A couple of blokes in there are good footballers but not necessarily one touch players. De Goey is probably our best 1 touch player atm but even he tends to fumble a little.

Yep agree.

Although we have to one of the cleanest ground level players in the comp…. N. Daicos. The odd centre bounce wouldn’t hurt at this stage, but he couldn’t feature regularly yet.

 

[Anzacday]

but for every tap we won and got first hands, we fumbled and lost it

Drove me nuts!

 

[Countrypie]

Yep agree.

Although we have to one of the cleanest ground level players in the comp…. N. Daicos. The odd centre bounce wouldn’t hurt at this stage, but he couldn’t feature regularly yet.

I feel more comfortable when Josh is in there but he gets monstered a bit as well

 

[No SPIN]

My biggest concern for years now - we aren’t a one touch midfield as mentioned above. Often we get in the right position and then try to move it quickly or panic and we lose ball.

Not sure who our midfield coach is but we need to seriously sort it out before finals. Some may say we’ve won 11 in a row but we all know this won’t last forever - giving opposition teams a head start is not something we want to deal with in September

What was noticeable from Melbourne was they had players ready on the outside and the amount of time they quickly handballed over the head of a Pies player was a clear tactic


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

I’d prefer improvement as well, but Rich in their flags year were bottom 5 for CP and Clearances.

 

[The Royal Sampler]

I think at a ground the size of the SCG, we can afford to ask more of Carmichael and not manage his minutes so much.

 

[TheVillageIdiot7]

On the couch showed footage tonight of JDG running from CB to the backline as first midfielder to help out defensively, getting a tackle and mark intercept.

yup saw that. But to be fair, he was only there because his initial CB run took him to the back half of the square.
Kudos to him for pushing back though.
But that was not actually what i meant.

At CB, he is just about always on the move in such an aggressive way its win or nothing.
He cannot defend his direct opponent due to the speed he is moving.

Its ok if others are playing the defensive way and are prepared to cover his man, which seems like what we try and do.
But like i said, he is the only one that seems to make a difference in there.