Game Style

[Clay Davis]

Clay and Rob have said it all. S-O-F-T. Even Greg Broughton said so much in his presser -- smashed at the contested possessions. It's been coming for a few weeks and got highlighted by WCE and Saints. If Port played like they did last night, it might have been a different result.

Yep. We were bloody flattered by Port's disinterest. The second half of that game was much closer to where we are at.

Hill can't break a tag and was demolished by Jones when it counted yesterday. He is soft.
Ibbotson is a rubbish footballer. You've said it for years, Dr Dagg, and I have probably disagreed with you at times, but it's clear: he goes missing in a massive way when the contest goes up.
Putting Pavlich in the middle meanwhile is soft coaching. We've had three years to build a midfield and still resort to the same player to make a difference.

I thought Griffin played well yesterday, but there was a chance to experiment with two ruckmen, and we blew it. Instead, as many posters suggested, we backed our 'run'. Where was it? Nowhere, because Saints brought their contested game. Said as much only a couple of days before the game:

Are you saying we'll beat the Saints by playing an outside game of uncontested possession?

I'm not sure if you've watched much Freo, or footy in general, this year, but we've been humiliated around the ground when the contest is on. Embarrassed. Setting up with a strategy that makes us less competitive in the clearances over the game, but backs 'run' will put us on the path to nowhere.

Watch for the Saints to clog it up and force stoppage after stoppage.

Bam. It happened. In fact they didn't even need to force stoppages because they so decisively won the contested possession.

Don't be surprised to see an 80+ point humiliation next week.

 

[E Shed]

Don't be surprised to see an 80+ point humiliation next week.

80? I'd say 100+

 

[Tommo]

It's the old Cuddles style - soft at the ball, soft at the opponent, but create a good zone around the field. It simply doesn't work. It didn't when Cuddles was coach, and doesn't now.

It's not like St Kilda sprung some new game plan, they've played exactly the same every week for the past 3 seasons. Stack numbers around the contest, hack it forward and hope someone gets on the end of it. We persisted with trying to mess around with it in the clinches despite them stacking numbers around the contest instead of just getting it forward. We paid with it by consistently turning the ball over through dinky little handballs to the opposition, and that's when we actually got hold of the ball in the first place. Which was less likely given we were almost always 2nd to it in the contests.

Harvey reckons the players didn't follow the game plan, I hope for his sake he's right, because the game plan demonstrated today was just thick. And that's without going after the marshmallow soft effort of the players.

This!!
the question needs to be asked... Why are they not following the game plan?
Do they understand it?
There were times yesterday where I could have sworn that the players weren't sure what they were meant to be doing. This was particularly evident coming out of the back line and at kick-ins (zero movement or overlap). Are the instructions being given to them clear enough?

I seem to remember some of the Geelong players mentioning that Chris Scott was a great communicator, and could get his message through easily. Make you wonder who has actually been instructing the player the last few years.