Hardball gets?

[Ripper]

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,7236101%5E19765,00.html

The Good

Topped the AFL in contested marks (average 16/game) led by Graham Polak (47). Ranked second in effective long kicking (85/game).

The Bad

Ranked 14th in the hardball gets with just 29 a game. Kicked four fewer goals in games away from Subiaco.

It is not as bad as we think.

If we lead the league in contested marks
and 2nd in effective long kicks it follows that we have posession and less need for hardball gets.

Logic?

 

[Sera]

'Hardball gets' is very much about clearances. No one has the ball at stoppages so I honestly don't think your logic stands up...

 

[Ripper]

Originally posted by Sera
'Hardball gets' is very much about clearances. No one has the ball at stoppages so I honestly don't think your logic stands up...

Good try. If you take a contested mark you have already possesion and negated the need to win a hardball get from a spoiling contest.

 

[Sera]

So you honestly think that hard ball gets and contested marks are related to one another? That if one goes up the other goes down? Because you already have possession? Thats what you're really saying...

I think you'll find there is no link at all.

 

[Ripper]

Originally posted by Sera
So you honestly think that hard ball gets and contested marks are related to one another? That if one goes up the other goes down? Because you already have possession? Thats what you're really saying...

I think you'll find there is no link at all.

Well lets have a look at your mob.

The Good

Booted the most goals (341) and averaged the most looseball gets (61 a game) in the competition.

The Bad

Ranked 14th in marks and 15th in contested marks. After averaging 17.3 goals in the first 15 weeks, averaged just 11.1 in the last eight

Notice that they are big on loose ball gets but poor in marks.

Now if the ball is spoilt from a marking contest it could go to free space (loose ball) or a contest (hard ball)

Your mob are the opposite to us.

Co-incidence?

 

[dasler]

Originally posted by RIPPER_46
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/footy/common/story_page/0,8033,7236101%5E19765,00.html


It is not as bad as we think.

If we lead the league in contested marks
and 2nd in effective long kicks it follows that we have posession and less need for hardball gets.

Logic?

Thus the conjecture over some of Fremantle's draft picks this season. I'm sure Dunn and Campbell will do the job for you..

Fremantle's lack of tough hardball gets was apparent versus Essendon in the finals.

 

[nurries]

Re: Re: Hardball gets?

Originally posted by dasler
Thus the conjecture over some of Fremantle's draft picks this season. I'm sure Dunn and Campbell will do the job for you..

Fremantle's lack of tough hardball gets was apparent versus Essendon in the finals.

We lost out with H.ball gets and hard tackles majorly against the Bombers because of no Troy Cooke IMO.

 

[Kapow!!!]

Think about this. If we don't get the clearences from the mid field, where is the ball going to end up? Our backline. For us to get the run we need, the ball MUST come out of the backline at all costs because we don't want to conceed a goal. That means a majority of our run comes from our backline.

With this comes the Bell, Headland and McManus running off to make space and an option for the backliners to kick to. Then you get people like Cook, Haselby and Pav going in to get for crumbs and eventually find our loose men.

For the backline to be able to do this, they need possession and the only real way to get possession down back is to take a contested mark! That's why Polak is up there. Hadril and McPharlin are also good at taking contested marks. Then comes Hayden and Woods who come around them and run the ball out of the backline, find the loose men on the wings and in the midfield and we're away. If they can't get away, that's where Pavlich, Haselby and Cook come in, to either get the crumbs or provide a short option!

This means that we CAN get by without using clearences and Hard Ball gets! And if you say that this plan doesn't work, why the F*** did we win 14 games?

Think about it!

 

[pav_is_god]

It worked well last season, but we got showed up when opposition midfields got the hard ball and were able to deliver it properly to their forwards. In any case, I just wonder how our rebound from the backline will function with one less contested marker in Polak (who is supposedly going to be a CHF)?

 

[Tony_Clifton]

Simply having numbers of hard ball gets over a season does not give you the full story. At collingwood they centre their game plan around stoppages, bottling things up and ultimately, hardball gets. Freo are effectively the antithesis of this with our gameplan being an unaccountable game of keep it off (TIC for the precious few). Hence we have fewer opportunities for hard ball gets.

What would be better (I don't know if someone has it, the pope perhaps?) is for and against hardball gets, or proportion of games where teams have won more than 50% of hardball gets.

These stats would be for the whole team and it would be harder to break it down into individuals (ie. can an individual be recorded as losing a hardball get?) so generalisations have to be taken into account

 

[masai]

Originally posted by pav_is_god
It worked well last season, but we got showed up when opposition midfields got the hard ball and were able to deliver it properly to their forwards. In any case, I just wonder how our rebound from the backline will function with one less contested marker in Polak (who is supposedly going to be a CHF)?

A point to remember is that Polak spent alot of the season coming off the "pine", as the rotating backman. The backline obviously did ok (yes they can do better), without his marking power.

His marking power up forward will be an addition to that area as I see him playing 100% of the game time on the field. He is a good target, but some have questioned his kicking, we will see, maybe the crumbers will do the goal kicking for him.

 

[Ripper]

the point I am trying to make is if you have 200possies for the game and take 100 marks then the other 100 possies must have been obtained though hard & loose ball gets & free kicks. So the more marks you take means less of the other methods of obtaining possesion.

 

[The Mission Man]

Watch The Greatest Derby Ever (Round 22 season 2003) again for a clear demonstration in the difference between the respective game plans/strengths/deficiencies of the two teams.

Curiously, the actual difference in percentage between 1st and 16th in clearances and hardball gets isn't that huge and the figures themselves are unimportant, given that it is what you do with a hardball get or clearance that really counts.

We routinely get slaughtered at defensive throw-ins by teams like Essendon, Adelaide and Port Adelaide - and that is what makes a big difference.

But getting back to the groundwork of stumpy little running sides like the Wiggles and their fantastic hard balls.

What bugs me, apart from the subjectivity attached to "hardball get", is this: we may have been worse off in the hardball get department than the Weavils but we we weren't playing that grinding style of game.

It's like saying the Rolling Stones weren't very good at writing Beatles songs.

Who's better?

Again, I say - LOOK AT THE LADDER

Actually, Port play a high-possession game with reliance on their field kicking and ability to mark. It perenially proves to be their undoing come finals time when finesse goes out the window. As unattractive as it is, we may well be advised to work a gruntier sort of game.

There's no questioning our hard-at-itness however. We tackle like madmen. At one stage in the Greatest Derby Ever we had almost twice the amount of tackles effected.

It seems people get all het up by the "hard" in "hard ball get". Being literal-minded, they assume then there is something soft about Freo.

I can assure you, there's nothing soft about backing back into a crashing pack and emerging time and time again with the mark. There's nothing soft about Meat Sandwich Cook. Luke Webster would be pretty upset to hear you use the word soft.

Soft. It's a curious word for the stay-at-home ladies among us to bandy about like small change on one of their daytrips to the casino.

 

[Undertaker]

You all raise very good points and the way I see it is Fremantle is a good footbal team but to be a very very good football team you need to do all of the above mentioned, it will come.
Fremantle are currently playing to their strengths which is skill, pace & fitness, they do not have the bodies yet to win the majority share of the over the ball contests. Essendon exposed us last year and other teams will catch on quick. You will see a huge improvement from Freo in this area next season, I went down to training last week and some of the guys have bulked up, Sandy has put on at least 10kg+ and Snake looks a lot bigger also as do a lot of the others.

 

[Tony_Clifton]

Originally posted by The Mission Man
Actually, Port play a high-possession game with reliance on their field kicking and ability to mark. It perenially proves to be their undoing come finals time when finesse goes out the window. As unattractive as it is, we may well be advised to work a gruntier sort of game.

This is an important point. If the aim is to win finals then we need to play a style of football which will hold us in good stead when we play top four sides in pressure games. The hard part is using this same gameplan when playing lesser sides when there is a more suitable immediate strategy.

Of course having said this there is the concept of being totally flexible and unpredictable. I don't subscribe to this theory. Our list is good enough thanks to the draft to beat teams honestly and without slight of hand. If you try to work the angles in pressure games you get exposed.

 

[Kapow!!!]

Originally posted by The Mission Man
Watch The Greatest Derby Ever (Round 22 season 2003)

I think the round 21 season 2000 is better what with all of the fights and all!

But I agree with Ripper on this, if you take more marks, the less hard ball gets you will need to take because you'd be taking possessions with the marks anyway!

 

[dasler]

Fremantle supporters face the facts. You are crying out for tough hard midfielders to win the hardball, much a like we are crying out for some KPP to stand up and be counted.

Until this happens for both sides and our weaknesses are addressed we will be some time off challenging for the flag.

That's the sheer fundamentals of it.

 

[Exeter]

I always thought a hard ball get was trying to find your golfball in the rough at Joondalup

 

[back pocket]

"hard ball get" is an overused and overated term. 2 players racing eachother for the ball, whoever gets there first and wins it has a "hard ball get" stat next to his name, as does the player at the bottom of the pack who feeds it out to no one in particular. A contested mark is the hardest ball get of all, if you ask me, and since the result is a possesion without pressure, it is also the most effective way of "getting" the ball.

We won 14 games last season, and people read too much into the EF loss to The Bombers, who were simply too good for an overawed team and beat us by playing better, more direct footy, as they did a few weeks earlier.

Games are won and lost with the "loose ball get" stat, which is a better indication of how much possesion the team has. Even fiddly little one-two handballs are moving the footy forward generally, or opening up the play.

Stoppages is where we struggle, and this is not necessarily related to hard ball gets, more of strategy, positioning, and being able to read the ruckman. There's every chance 211 will become a dominant ruckman, and there's every chance the midfielders will capitalise on this dominance soon enough. No single player will improve our performance at stoppages, it will be a team effort and I'm sure the club is working at it as we speak.

I'm hoping 211 takes the hard out of hard ball get at the bouncedowns and throw-ins and gives our midfielders first crack at the ball whether it's hard, soft, loose, bouncing, or whatever.

 

[funky_monk]

Originally posted by back pocket
"hard ball get" is an overused and overated term. 2 players racing eachother for the ball, whoever gets there first and wins it has a "hard ball get" stat next to his name, as does the player at the bottom of the pack who feeds it out to no one in particular. A contested mark is the hardest ball get of all, if you ask me, and since the result is a possesion without pressure, it is also the most effective way of "getting" the ball.

We won 14 games last season, and people read too much into the EF loss to The Bombers, who were simply too good for an overawed team and beat us by playing better, more direct footy, as they did a few weeks earlier.

Games are won and lost with the "loose ball get" stat, which is a better indication of how much possesion the team has. Even fiddly little one-two handballs are moving the footy forward generally, or opening up the play.

Stoppages is where we struggle, and this is not necessarily related to hard ball gets, more of strategy, positioning, and being able to read the ruckman. There's every chance 211 will become a dominant ruckman, and there's every chance the midfielders will capitalise on this dominance soon enough. No single player will improve our performance at stoppages, it will be a team effort and I'm sure the club is working at it as we speak.

I'm hoping 211 takes the hard out of hard ball get at the bouncedowns and throw-ins and gives our midfielders first crack at the ball whether it's hard, soft, loose, bouncing, or whatever.

I like this post!!

 

[The Mission Man]

Like it? I'd like to take it out to dinner, maybe have a few drinks - who knows, by about three o'clock in the morning, I may even take advantage of it...

 

[pav_is_god]

Originally posted by The Mission Man
Like it? I'd like to take it out to dinner, maybe have a few drinks - who knows, by about three o'clock in the morning, I may even take advantage of it...

Nah, take advantage of first, then dinner.