Strategy How to improve in 2017

[Larry Donohue]

When we lost rooke and moons the team got heaps softer.
It would be noice to add some hardness guys that tackle hard and put there head over the pill.
And don't backdown.
We need to build our list with more skilful players with a hard edge.

Wasnt just rooke and moons. Chappy stevie corey lingy pods milburn all had a hard edge too

 

[rocker_oz33]

Wasnt just rooke and moons. Chappy stevie corey lingy pods milburn all had a hard edge too

Yeah they plenty of Mongrel too.

 

[Cursed Cat]

Wasnt just rooke and moons. Chappy stevie corey lingy pods milburn all had a hard edge too

can add Scarlett to that group too.

 

[BlightysCats]

You don't make top 2 with average players on your list

You do if it's the most even season ever, and you have the best injury luck and draw in your clubs history. We have been proven to be the also rans we really were in the finals - interestingly enough if we'd played every team once in a 17 round season we would've been ranked 7th on the ladder, which shows just how easy our draw was.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...n/news-story/b76bccce8070814b68f5f30af16327d5

 

[gocats88]

You do if it's the most even season ever, and you have the best injury luck and draw in your clubs history. We have been proven to be the also rans we really were in the finals - interestingly enough if we'd played every team once in a 17 round season we would've been ranked 7th on the ladder, which shows just how easy our draw was.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...n/news-story/b76bccce8070814b68f5f30af16327d5

Yeah, next year is going to be interesting.

 

[steady2]

I wrote it mate, and know exactly what I meant, just because your frustrated at me being right about our inept coach and that the team and myself made people like yourself look foolish for massively overrating our team/coach (especially in finals), you decide to use your prejudice against me to deliberately misrepresent what I said. I don't care, say what you want I'm comfortable with what I wrote.

I also know exactly what you meant that is why I quoted you, twice. "Right about our coach..." you can pat yourself on the back as many times as you like, I could not care less. I and few others did not overrate our team in the finals, in fact I did not tip them to make a Prelim at the beginning of the year, I do recall that you claimed a finals finish and at least one win would be a pass, on your own standards Scott got a pass, but I presume you will have changed the goal posts by now.

You claim I misrepresented what you said...???? How is that possible? I quoted your entire post twice, those were your words in their context. Misrepresenting you would have required paraphrasing and distorting which I did not, as I said, I simply quoted your post, all of it.

Of course you are comfortable with your post you always were however your claim that;

Didn't call the club shite just the coach.

Remains contradicted by your subsequent post;

Blicavs needs to go, he has currency and we could get a far better and quicker mid for him but again our shite coach and club will keep him because we're in to accepting mediocrity these days - as evidenced by so many people on this board deluded enough to think we'll play any decent footy should we make finals next year or that our finals performances in the last 5 years are fine. Scott will be re-signed, welcome to the age of GFC irrelevance.

At least have the decency to acknowledge that you called our club shite.

 

[steady2]

Yet another thread has been hijacked. Instead of a discussion over strategies for next year we have the usual, bash the coach, bash the team, bash the club, whinge, whinge, dismiss and distort any success and exaggerate all the negatives.

 

[BlightysCats]

At least have the decency to acknowledge that you called our club shite.

I didn't, if I wanted to I simply would've written shite coach and shite club, but I didn't say that, quite clearly the words shite and club weren't put next to each other, you can read in to it what you will, and you clearly already have.

 

[Baudolino]

You do if it's the most even season ever, and you have the best injury luck and draw in your clubs history. We have been proven to be the also rans we really were in the finals - interestingly enough if we'd played every team once in a 17 round season we would've been ranked 7th on the ladder, which shows just how easy our draw was.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...n/news-story/b76bccce8070814b68f5f30af16327d5

Regarding our draw this season, it may have seemed cushy when the fixture list was released, but as it turned out, three of our "double-up" games were much harder than predicted. Yes, we faced Brisbane and Essendon twice, but we also had two games against the eventual Grand Finalists (Western Bulldogs), a fellow preliminary finalist (Greater Western Sydney) and a semi-finalist that boasted the best attack in the competition (Adelaide).

Compare that to Hawthorn (Sydney, Richmond, Melbourne, West Coast and North Melbourne), Sydney (GWS, Carlton, Richmond, Hawthorn, North Melbourne), or the Bulldogs (Fremantle, Geelong, Collingwood, North Melbourne, St Kilda). If our fixture was easier than those around us, it was only marginally easier.

And it's silly to say that either our injury luck or our draw were the "best in the club's history". In both of those areas we merely regressed to the mean after a number of years of unusually bad injury runs and insanely hard draws.

 

[romeohwho]

Awww are you alright steady2? Don't cry it's ok Scott still has next year to fail you and our club again in finals.

Pretty sure we are all quite clear on your views BC but it would be good to have a constructive discussion on this thread.
Scott will certainly be at the helm next year, so your opinions are not relevant in this thread for 2017 are they? Take em to the Scott thread sport.

 

[nananana catman]

It's all about cohesion. The Bulldogs showed exactly what we are lacking. All these 2nd tier work as a whole rather than individual, and their tackling was amazing.

Agree 100%

 

[Vdubs]

Chris Scott is no Luke Beveridge. Guys like Duncan, Guthrie, Caddy and Motlop have all stagnated for years under Scott.

so what is Matty's brother doing?

 

[cynical]

People who think we are close to a flag because we finished 2nd have no idea. Freo were minor premiers last year and like us won the first week and were thrashed in a prelim.

- we did have an easy draw.
- we finished 2 games clear of 7th
- we were completely smashed in a prelim, over by quarter time, it's the most important game of the year.

Given that we haven't got a lot of quality kids and have more old guys retiring (or should be retiring) it's likely we will probably go backwards.

Our main problem is a lack of A graders, guys like Taylor, Hawkins and Motlop are no longer A graders, Duncan was close but went backwards this year.

Best thing we can do is move on some players and hit the draft and maybe get lucky with some real quality kids cos our current 2nd tier players arent good enough.

 

[Vdubs]

People who think we are close to a flag because we finished 2nd have no idea. Freo were minor premiers last year and like us won the first week and were thrashed in a prelim.

- we did have an easy draw.
- we finished 2 games clear of 7th
- we were completely smashed in a prelim, over by quarter time, it's the most important game of the year.

Given that we haven't got a lot of quality kids and have more old guys retiring (or should be retiring) it's likely we will probably go backwards.

Our main problem is a lack of A graders, guys like Taylor, Hawkins and Motlop are no longer A graders, Duncan was close but went backwards this year.

Best thing we can do is move on some players and hit the draft and maybe get lucky with some real quality kids cos our current 2nd tier players arent good enough.

I doubt anybody, including CS, think we are destined for top 8 next year based on this year. He said the amount of work that went into this season was massive, yet that plus more would be needed next year.
I would not be surprised if we go 11-11 or thereabouts next year because it is that even, and those extraordinary interstate wins we had this year (4), will not happen next year. And Saints, Pies, Demons, Dogs, GWS will further improve given their young talent.
Lean times, but the hope that our B-C grade mids can improve and assist Dangerwood is there, and Smith / Stanley will have preseasons. In that case, top 8 could be a reality. Gone are the days of almost assured top 8. We are not Swans or Hawks or Cats circa 07-13 any more.
Whatever we get, this is not life and death, it is entertainment and a game.
But why does it pain so much!!!?

 

[Billygotnun]

Our team balance of talls must change we need more run and cary to break the lines. Our game plan is based on our defenders intercepting marks and trying to create from there which just doesnt seem to work. When we get a quick clearence from the centre bounce it gives our forwards a much better chance as they are not out numbered.
Putting thurlow and guthrie back should help with run and creating play as they both great by foot.
I dislike the idea of having
Taylor, henderson, lonergan all in deffence. Great defenders just makes us too slow.
Our forward line seemed to work better when hawkins isnt playing as it makes us much more unpredictable. By no means i want hawkins out of the team. We need hawkins but need to use him better in some cases as a decoy as he will quite often take more than one defender. Any like minded cats supporters out there have any suggestions im just trying to work out how we can stop the opposition entire team getting back into our forward line every time we go inside 50

 

[Partridge]

I doubt anybody, including CS, think we are destined for top 8 next year based on this year. He said the amount of work that went into this season was massive, yet that plus more would be needed next year.
I would not be surprised if we go 11-11 or thereabouts next year because it is that even, and those extraordinary interstate wins we had this year (4), will not happen next year. And Saints, Pies, Demons, Dogs, GWS will further improve given their young talent.
Lean times, but the hope that our B-C grade mids can improve and assist Dangerwood is there, and Smith / Stanley will have preseasons. In that case, top 8 could be a reality. Gone are the days of almost assured top 8. We are not Swans or Hawks or Cats circa 07-13 any more.
Whatever we get, this is not life and death, it is entertainment and a game.
But why does it pain so much!!!?

Because people don't like being wrong VD. How fervently you hold an opinion becomes more important than the opinion itself. It's been like that on here for some time, from all sides.

Overall, finishing 2nd after home and away has to be impressive. I'd hoped for 5th-8th. They exceeded that. Happy to be wrong. The addition of Dangerfield, Smith, S Selwood, and Henderson was positive. Three perennially injured players - Menzel, McCarthy, and Cowan - stayed healthy and ended up playing stacks of senior football. Most definitely wrong there.

The problem is, it doesn't look like anything had been solved once the team hits the finals. An awful lot of established players on Friday night varied between average and awful. More worryingly, not for the first time in finals. The club has invested in a list management strategy that has to return a premiership in the next year or two or else. Based on the Prelim a lot of players are nowhere near as good as we like to think.

Interesting off-season ahead.

 

[year of the cat]

I doubt anybody, including CS, think we are destined for top 8 next year based on this year. He said the amount of work that went into this season was massive, yet that plus more would be needed next year.
I would not be surprised if we go 11-11 or thereabouts next year because it is that even, and those extraordinary interstate wins we had this year (4), will not happen next year. And Saints, Pies, Demons, Dogs, GWS will further improve given their young talent.
Lean times, but the hope that our B-C grade mids can improve and assist Dangerwood is there, and Smith / Stanley will have preseasons. In that case, top 8 could be a reality. Gone are the days of almost assured top 8. We are not Swans or Hawks or Cats circa 07-13 any more.
Whatever we get, this is not life and death, it is entertainment and a game.
But why does it pain so much!!!?

We could finish anywhere between 4 and 10 I reckon next year. Very unpredictable. If either J.Selwood or Dangerfield get injured then we are stuffed.

More of a concern however is our prospects 5 years from now though. By then Selwood and Hawkins will be gone and we just don't have any elite youngsters looking likely to take their place. It's no fault of the club - they have done a superb job in keeping us competitive for so long. But if you are unable to pick from the top kids for 10 years at some stage the chickens will eventually come home to roost. I think that will happen around 2019. Unless we are able to get lucky with latter picks in the next few drafts I just can't see how we can avoid falling off the proverbial cliff.

 

[steady2]

I didn't, if I wanted to I simply would've written shite coach and shite club, but I didn't say that, quite clearly the words shite and club weren't put next to each other, you can read in to it what you will, and you clearly already have.

Perhaps you are partly illiterate;

...our shite coach and club will keep him because we're in to accepting mediocrity these days...

Irregardless of your protest it seems quite clear that you are condemning both the coach and the club.

 

[catempire]

Regarding our draw this season, it may have seemed cushy when the fixture list was released, but as it turned out, three of our "double-up" games were much harder than predicted. Yes, we faced Brisbane and Essendon twice, but we also had two games against the eventual Grand Finalists (Western Bulldogs), a fellow preliminary finalist (Greater Western Sydney) and a semi-finalist that boasted the best attack in the competition (Adelaide).

Compare that to Hawthorn (Sydney, Richmond, Melbourne, West Coast and North Melbourne), Sydney (GWS, Carlton, Richmond, Hawthorn, North Melbourne), or the Bulldogs (Fremantle, Geelong, Collingwood, North Melbourne, St Kilda). If our fixture was easier than those around us, it was only marginally easier.

And it's silly to say that either our injury luck or our draw were the "best in the club's history". In both of those areas we merely regressed to the mean after a number of years of unusually bad injury runs and insanely hard draws.

Glad someone went to the effort of calling out that bullshit.

The 17 round hypothetical actually penalised us because it took away our double wins against top 4 and 8 sides in the Bulldogs, GWS and Adelaide.

It was a completely nonsense concept on several levels but in no way proved the point BC tried to claim.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

When discussing Mr. Elite Running Patterns kindly remember the following lines:

- He creates havoc
- He's a tagger
- He's a midfielder

The critical thing is, repeat saying these things over and over. Because the more you say them, the more likely they are to be true. Above all, ignore matches and particularly finals that offer clear evidence to the contrary.

 

[Vdubs]

Because people don't like being wrong VD. How fervently you hold an opinion becomes more important than the opinion itself. It's been like that on here for some time, from all sides.

Overall, finishing 2nd after home and away has to be impressive. I'd hoped for 5th-8th. They exceeded that. Happy to be wrong. The addition of Dangerfield, Smith, S Selwood, and Henderson was positive. Three perennially injured players - Menzel, McCarthy, and Cowan - stayed healthy and ended up playing stacks of senior football. Most definitely wrong there.

The problem is, it doesn't look like anything had been solved once the team hits the finals. An awful lot of established players on Friday night varied between average and awful. More worryingly, not for the first time in finals. The club has invested in a list management strategy that has to return a premiership in the next year or two or else. Based on the Prelim a lot of players are nowhere near as good as we like to think.

Interesting off-season ahead.

Simplistically, after 1Q time, we outscored them.
I know we were never in the hunt, but the first Q was a fatal blow.
That has happened v Pies and Saints this year.
Are we seriously victims of the double bye?
Unprecedented that both teams with the double bye are NOT in the GF.
Having been to most games this year, that first quarter was shocking, but who was not fearing it?
It was predictable given Swans match hardenedness, and our reverse situation, and our poor displays after byes.
All of that said, it is sad that our best 4 players, and our only good players probably include 2 retirees, and Dangerwood.
For the rest not to stand up in that game is going to have to be addressed and answered by the players for quite some time.
08 burned in them all 09 and beyond.
Here's hoping that our players are not as overrated as may be possible, and that they can respond.

 

[BlightysCats]

It's no fault of the club

Of course it's the fault of the club, who cares if we make finals only to lose them? I certainly wouldn't care if we'd traded out some our established stars earlier (seeing as we got rid of most of them later anyway) for draft picks, in fact we could still do it and start the rebuild we so obviously need. Let's trade Hawkins for maybe two picks inside the top 15, trade out Motlop, Blicavs and Stanley for draft picks and rebuild a great team again the old Geelong way, a lost way. I don't want to see us blunder toward another hopeless finals campaign only to have it reinforced again that we have developed very little talent over the last 5 years. Let's go right down! Get a new coach who actually has a clear and concise philosophy and game plan/style, and play the 4 or 5 good kids we should be able to pick up with the players we trade out, then get a top 10 pick next year for finishing down the ladder and trade out Duncan, Caddy etc to get more draft picks and just continue on... In 3/4 years we could be back in the hunt again with a bunch of promising kids and a coach that can win finals. There's no certainty of success with that plan but at least it's a plan rather than the seemingly inconsistent and now proven to be unsuccessful patchwork approach we've taken to list management over the last 5 years.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

All this rebuild talk is hilarious. Same posters saying we are playing terrible, coach is woeful, and too many players that aren't right.

Yet we finished second, then drop to third on a prelim final loss, all on the back of probably not playing consistent footy.

Imagine when we get it right. And we will. Just need the team to gel and play together more.

Sitrep.

• Coach is s**t
• game plan is s**t
• development is s**t
• Tier 2 players are bubkis
• we're a two man team
• too slow
• too old
• no back half run
• no CHF
• Hawkins neutralised by the +1
• no crumbing forwards
• cut up by small defenders
• s**t after the bye

Checks ladder... 2nd H&A. 4th overall. 2015 finished 10th. Moreover some of those overreacting in the last couple of days post-mortem are the very same that predicted a 9-12 or 5-8 finish. Yet pillory Scott and Co for surpassing where they themselves thought we'd end up. Absolutely bonkers this board in the last couple of days. 14 clubs would bite our hands off for a PF finish.
Not only that if we collate the views of those that are shall we say pessimistically inclined so to speak, we'd be entering the draft with about 20 spots to fill on the list. Rebuild. Pffft! absolute nonsensical dribble talk.

 

[BlightysCats]

it took away our double wins against top 4 and 8 sides in the Bulldogs, GWS and Adelaide.

We didn't beat GWS twice, in reality it took away 3 wins all at home and one of those against an injury ravaged Bulldogs side. The 17 round ladder doesn't lie we'd played every team once and that's where we stood. The reality is we were one errant kick on goal after the siren away from yet another embarrassing straight sets exit. It's just not good enough! There needs to be a significant change down at the GFC.

 

[Catman]

Midfield needs a bit of a shake up. Be it some new voices in the coaching ranks, some new ideas or a possible trade as too many of that second tier haven't improved and even regressed this year. I find it a bit of a cop out when players like Duncan (who'd I'd be open to listening to offers for) and Blicavs for example bemoan the arrival of PFD as a reason behind their drop in form due to a change in role. Surely witnessing him close up should be enough motivation to at least attempt to follow his and the captain's lead? Your role may have changed, but putting your body on the line and wanting to win the footy and beat your man should be a non-negotiable, regardless of your position.

The lack of proactive movement with the ball. Too often we concede ground by going backwards with handball to a stationary teammate. It just invites pressure. As for the handball, we do not execute that skill at all well, surprising for a team that does it a lot.

Run off half-back. Been addressed on here. Clearly it's why we are in interested in a Deledio, Wells or Hanley. Not hard to see why. Thurlow's pending return will help, but not much can be expected of a guy coming off an ACL.

Forward structure and personnel. Once again been discussed. Needs plenty of work. Hawk needs a hand, or two. And some protection from the umps would be helpful.

I reckon another visit from Leading Teams wouldn't hurt either. There appears to be a few just cruising right now, picking and choosing their time to go. We hear how keen the younger leaders are to maintain the Geelong culture and create their own history. It's about time they actually demonstrated this on field.