Winston_Smith
Club Legend
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2013
- Posts
- 1,234
- Reaction score
- 3,719
- AFL Club
- Collingwood
First up, I will admit I have in the past been a major cheerleader for Derek Hine and his team's prowess in relation to drafting, trading, and even cherry-picking talent from non-football sources. However...
Our poor disposal, mainly by foot, but also increasingly by hand, is the Achilles heel which has been killing us since we cleaned out our experienced players at end of 2012. No awesome game plan, no supreme fitness level, no footy smarts, no disciplined structure, and no leading teams Gen Y "we're all leaders" bullsh** can compensate for a team that simply can't kick straight and can't handball to advantage.
I'm going to take some heat for pointing a bone at a man who is a hero of our club, a man who has undeniable ability in identifying talent (a veritable "untouchable", if you will) and more-so considering I'm new here and I've had a few Bourbons since the final siren of our loss to the Suns tonight, however these most basic of foot and hand skills we seem deficient in are developed between the ages of 6-15, and are already on display and trackable at all footballing levels monitored by our highly paid list management team.
I look at Hawthorn, and I see a bunch of slender, middling sized, private-school-boy-type, average talent players, who all have pin-point kicking and handballing accuracy under pressure, and furthermore superior pace. Gunston, Bruest, Schoenmakers, Hill, Burgoyne, etc. These guys are tearing up the park already, but wait until they get muscle mass on their frames and experience under their belts.
Is it possible that our poor disposal is the result of poor recruiting decisions? Are we focusing too much on size and athleticism, such as recruiting 211cm Frankensteins from the USA who have never touched a football in their life simply because they are big and can run a bit, and not enough on simple poise and accuracy with football in hand? Or, are we simply not developing our disposal skills behind the scenes? Are we focusing too much on contested ball and structures, but not enough on pure kicking and handpass accuracy at training/VFL developmental level?
Or is it our lack of training under real pressure that kills us? It seems to me our kicking and handballing has become woeful when we are under heat. Any military training worth its salt teaches its soldiers to perform under pressure by recreating a battlefield environment in training; trains them to keep a steady hand and fire straight when bullets are whizzing by. My junior footy coach used to swing a loud clicking thing (klaxon?) when we were lining up for a set shot to simulate pressure. Are we not doing something similar in our training? Is that why Cloke can't kick from 15m out when the crowd are jeering?
They are not ready:
Proper Readiness:
Interested to read your opinions.
Our poor disposal, mainly by foot, but also increasingly by hand, is the Achilles heel which has been killing us since we cleaned out our experienced players at end of 2012. No awesome game plan, no supreme fitness level, no footy smarts, no disciplined structure, and no leading teams Gen Y "we're all leaders" bullsh** can compensate for a team that simply can't kick straight and can't handball to advantage.
I'm going to take some heat for pointing a bone at a man who is a hero of our club, a man who has undeniable ability in identifying talent (a veritable "untouchable", if you will) and more-so considering I'm new here and I've had a few Bourbons since the final siren of our loss to the Suns tonight, however these most basic of foot and hand skills we seem deficient in are developed between the ages of 6-15, and are already on display and trackable at all footballing levels monitored by our highly paid list management team.
I look at Hawthorn, and I see a bunch of slender, middling sized, private-school-boy-type, average talent players, who all have pin-point kicking and handballing accuracy under pressure, and furthermore superior pace. Gunston, Bruest, Schoenmakers, Hill, Burgoyne, etc. These guys are tearing up the park already, but wait until they get muscle mass on their frames and experience under their belts.
Is it possible that our poor disposal is the result of poor recruiting decisions? Are we focusing too much on size and athleticism, such as recruiting 211cm Frankensteins from the USA who have never touched a football in their life simply because they are big and can run a bit, and not enough on simple poise and accuracy with football in hand? Or, are we simply not developing our disposal skills behind the scenes? Are we focusing too much on contested ball and structures, but not enough on pure kicking and handpass accuracy at training/VFL developmental level?
Or is it our lack of training under real pressure that kills us? It seems to me our kicking and handballing has become woeful when we are under heat. Any military training worth its salt teaches its soldiers to perform under pressure by recreating a battlefield environment in training; trains them to keep a steady hand and fire straight when bullets are whizzing by. My junior footy coach used to swing a loud clicking thing (klaxon?) when we were lining up for a set shot to simulate pressure. Are we not doing something similar in our training? Is that why Cloke can't kick from 15m out when the crowd are jeering?
They are not ready:
Proper Readiness:
Interested to read your opinions.
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