Strategy Groundball gets

[jmac70]

I don't pretend to know much about strategy but a statistic caught my eye yesterday. Hawthorn have 6 of the top 15 'forward 50 groundball gets' players for the season to date. We don't have any players in that list. Given Hawthorn's domination of the competition it would seem that the ability to win possession at ground level in the forward 50 is a pretty important stat.

So why are we poor in this area and how can we improve?

 

[THATSGOLD]

I don't pretend to know much about strategy but a statistic caught my eye yesterday. Hawthorn have 6 of the top 15 'forward 50 groundball gets' players for the season to date. We don't have any players in that list. Given Hawthorn's domination of the competition it would seem that the ability to win possession at ground level in the forward 50 is a pretty important stat.

So why are we poor in this area and how can we improve?

Quick tell Bucks.

 

[Kappa]

I don't pretend to know much about strategy but a statistic caught my eye yesterday. Hawthorn have 6 of the top 15 'forward 50 groundball gets' players for the season to date. We don't have any players in that list. Given Hawthorn's domination of the competition it would seem that the ability to win possession at ground level in the forward 50 is a pretty important stat.

So why are we poor in this area and how can we improve?

We haven't had a decent crumber on our list since Krak left...

We improve by finally drafting one

 

[jmac70]

We haven't had a decent crumber on our list since Krak left...

We improve by finally drafting one

That would certainly help but Hawthron also have tall players on that list, such as Roughead and Gunston. This indicates to me that they are better at second and third efforts.

 

[jmac70]

Quick tell Bucks.

GTFO troll.

 

[Robroy22]

Cos "Groundball gets"=crumbing!!

 

[Shaneprice97]

We haven't had a decent crumber on our list since Krak left...

We improve by finally drafting one

Id rather us just recruit a ready made one, cant really be bothered waiting for one to developing to be honest.

Dont really rate the position, and wouldnt ever waste a high draft pick on one.

 

[jmac70]

Groundball gets are not just about crumbers. It is about players who can win the ball at ground level, regardless of height. The fact that Hawthron dominate this stat would indicate it is an important one.

 

[Kirby]

Play Williams up forward maybe?

It's probably not the answer but he is a gun ground ball winner.

 

[Robroy22]

Groundball gets are not just about crumbers. It is about players who can win the ball at ground level, regardless of height. The fact that Hawthron dominate this stat would indicate it is an important one.

Don't think I mentioned height or body shape at all in the term "crumbers" (Roughy, Gunston and Hale do it just about as well as Breust, Poppy and Rioli....) so I agree with you...we need more guys that can do it AND THEN FINISH OFF THEIR WORK WITH GOALS.

 

[Robroy22]

Play Williams up forward maybe?

It's probably not the answer but he is a gun ground ball winner.

Yep he is...and he would scare a lot of defenders with his attack on the ball.

 

[mike123]

That would certainly help but Hawthron also have tall players on that list, such as Roughead and Gunston. This indicates to me that they are better at second and third efforts.

They also have great crumbers in Cyril and Breust, think its a mix of both. Their crumbers read it off the pack better and get their first, whilst their key forwards seconds efforts are always there if they don't.

 

[SpongePie]

Is Motlop the answer for 2016?

 

[shizzle]

Id rather us just recruit a ready made one, cant really be bothered waiting for one to developing to be honest.

Dont really rate the position, and wouldnt ever waste a high draft pick on one.

Yep, the Dees picked up Garlett for peanuts, pick 61 basically.
Currently averaging 2 goals and 5 tackles per game(including a career high of 10 in a game).

 

[Markfs]

i'm old fashioned. I'd make the stupid mistake of recruiting footballers who can do lots of things well. You never know when the ball will come off the top of the pack in the last minute of a grand final and we'll have a player at the drop with the "wrong skill set". Of course we can hope the game is a draw and the player might have to time to undergo "fast track intensive" training sessions with specialist coaches in order to maximise his new role in the replay the following week...

 

[domin8tors]

interesting stat. although I would suggest that our problem is perhaps further up the field. Hawks get another 8 or 9 enteries in the F50 then us which give the crumbers another 8-9 oppurtunities which therefore bump those stats up. I'd like to see the % of groundball gets once the ball is in the F50 and not the total number of Ground ball gets. before I went out and started recruiting Crumbing forwards.

 

[sr36]

How many of the Hawthorn ground ball gets are genuine crumbs and how many are gathers in space based on their teams ability to isolate their forwards and create space for them to lead in to or run onto the ball? I'd suspect that the latter is the case. They're not really renowned for kicking it long to a contest and getting blokes front and centre. Freo are the team who get a lot of genuine front and centre crumbs.

 

[Quicky]

I wish we had guys that could mark it last week. Grundy, Witts and White had me crying into my beer every time they double grabbed and dropped a marking opportunity the team had worked hard to create.

 

[Scodog10]

My guess is that it's game plan related. We pray on turnovers. Turnovers will mean that we have players out the back on the overlap so there are less opportunities for groundball gets. We also regularly allow the opposition a plus one in our forward half which will naturally make it harder to generate groundball opportunities and at a rough guess we concede on average a high amount of intercept marks.

So there are a number of factors at play which is why it probably isn't overly relevant for us and not something we should focus on, but a player the ilk of Josh Green might come in handy were we to focus on it more moving forward.