Game plan

[Kenny_Hunter]

I must say I'm pretty excited when I watch the Blues this year. We play exciting footy that is fun to watch. But as an Arsenal fan who used to see beautiful football not come to much under Wenger's last year's all game plans need tweaking.

During the Hawks game, I was grumbling about Cunningham,Betts not getting time in the middle. But now I half think Teaguey left the mids the same on purpose. He's sticking to game plan and if we lose we'll learn. Maybe he can throw in more defensive elements and tempo footy next year when our current structure ingrained.

You can see this year the team is getting onboard with the plan. We will continue to take a few steps back sometimes, but this is a long term process.

Is Teague deliberately not making the obvious moves when we're under the pump because he wants the team to buy into the game plan fully and play their role??

 

[Elmer_Judd]

It's pretty obvious that as fun as it is, it simply is not sustainable, over 4 quarters and in the course of a grinding season, where younger guys hIt the wall in the home stretch of the season.

Would perhaps like us to try bit more of a possession/keeping off game when the players look knackered

 

[Blue__Balls]

It's pretty obvious that as fun as it is, it simply is not sustainable, over 4 quarters and in the course of a grinding season, where younger guys hIt the wall in the home stretch of the season.

Would perhaps like us to try bit more of a possession/keeping off game when the players look knackered

I think Richmond are finding a really good balance now. Have watched their last two games, and it looks to me like they've got two gears. When the ball is backward of center, they're patient and methodical, they chip the ball around and try to open up new angles. But then as soon as the ball gets forward of center they go into their manic ball movement and constant pressure approach.

I could be off the mark on that, but if it's as simple as that it's very easy for their players to adhere to, and causes problems for opposition defenders who potentially get lulled into thinking they're going to be defending a slow play.

 

[Yubby]

I must say I'm pretty excited when I watch the Blues this year. We play exciting footy that is fun to watch. But as an Arsenal fan who used to see beautiful football not come to much under Wenger's last year's all game plans need tweaking.

During the Hawks game, I was grumbling about Cunningham,Betts not getting time in the middle. But now I half think Teaguey left the mids the same on purpose. He's sticking to game plan and if we lose we'll learn. Maybe he can throw in more defensive elements and tempo footy next year when our current structure ingrained.

You can see this year the team is getting onboard with the plan. We will continue to take a few steps back sometimes, but this is a long term process.

Is Teague deliberately not making the obvious moves when we're under the pump because he wants the team to buy into the game plan fully and play their role??

I get the impression that Teague doesn't necessarily make a lot of changes in game to roles and players as his preference is to plan for any changes and practice it on the training track first. The only exception of course was Cuningham for JSOS against Essendon which was due to injury so therefore forced. I do find it strange though that he changes things up week to week quite a bit, eg one week Martin was in a large amount of centre bounces and then the next week only 1 or 2.

Against the Hawks last week i didn't see much a lot of evidence of us adapting in game especially when they were killing us on the outside. That said SPS did find his way in the forward line late which i found really unusual as i would have thought if anything he'd go mid. Perhaps one of the issues hurting us is a lack of versitility from midfielders to play defensively or even in defense. Would have loved to have seen Williamson and Cuners moved onto Smith and Shiels so we had more pace and grunt compared to Murph and Walsh. If we needed to move Willo up the field we don't have many comfortable to replace him with from the rest of the team.

 

[gbatman]

I don't think we have a bad game plan, I think we execute poorly. Perhaps we need a plan B like a lot of teams have where they can throw extra numbers behind the ball and around the contests and slow things up a little bit at times. The basics of our game style are good. Our poor kicking and at times lack of physicality and pressure are another story. Keep the game plan and improve the players and develop a game where we can play more tempo footy at times and we will be better.

At the moment we are really vulnerable to defensive tactics. When the opposition close the game up, and position to tackle more we tend to start losing the contests and turn the ball over far too much. When it's open and the opposition are playing an attacking and balanced game plan which we try and play all the time we tend to do well. Basically we do well when the opposition think they can beat us but when they lock down and defend a bit harder we're no good.