Analysis How will we get back into our best form?

[ziad]

The only two genuine stars we have are NN and JK, watching them over the last couple of years has been exciting but without them we are pretty meh! Cameos from Yeo, Shuey and infrequent bits of brilliance from Jetta haven't filled the void. We are done for this year, pretty obvious Priddis and Mitch shouldn't play in the same side, two people doing what one was doing previously, Mitch is doing his half a job a bit better than Pridda but still two blokes who couldn't run out of sight on a dark night.
With a modicum of decent drafting we could have Blakely, SPP, Sheed, Shuey and Yeo running around in our midfield, someone deserves to be sacked for that shit. Hopefully Pridda puts the team first and rethinks his plan to play on next year.
Sorta veered away from my original point there, which is we are pretty ordinary without NN and JK.

bad drafting, obviously b grade fitness and medical staff, old boys management, soft players who are over hyped.

 

[Free Agent]

The only two genuine stars we have are NN and JK, watching them over the last couple of years has been exciting but without them we are pretty meh! Cameos from Yeo, Shuey and infrequent bits of brilliance from Jetta haven't filled the void. We are done for this year, pretty obvious Priddis and Mitch shouldn't play in the same side, two people doing what one was doing previously, Mitch is doing his half a job a bit better than Pridda but still two blokes who couldn't run out of sight on a dark night.
With a modicum of decent drafting we could have Blakely, SPP, Sheed, Shuey and Yeo running around in our midfield, someone deserves to be sacked for that shit. Hopefully Pridda puts the team first and rethinks his plan to play on next year.
Sorta veered away from my original point there, which is we are pretty ordinary without NN and JK.

I think we probably need to have a bad year to get a high pick. Let's be honest, superstar players like Nic Nat and Kennedy only come if you have a top 5 draft pick. It's the way the game is these days that to get that star player you need to bomb out unless you fluke it,but it's fair to say that hasn't happened at our club for years with poor recruiting so we have two options now . One is continue to be mid table for years with sub par vanilla players and never have the talent to beat the top teams or just suffer for a season or two and finish bottom 3 on ladder and pick up a star for the future. Basically what Freo is doing now.

 

[Mico89]

pick players based on form not past achievements....

 

[javaguice]

Clubs playing silly buggars with Nata. He will return for last game of season.

We sneak into the 8. Week off, Have to travel to Adelaide or Sydney week 1. Stirring upset.

From there, we win it all. Simmo looks like a genius for making sure his best 22 are on the park at the business end of the season.

Priddis wins NS medal and BF melts.

Im crossing my fingers.

 

[Quinz]

Clubs playing silly buggars with Nata. He will return for last game of season.

We sneak into the 8. Week off, Have to travel to Adelaide or Sydney week 1. Stirring upset.

From there, we win it all. Simmo looks like a genius for making sure his best 22 are on the park at the business end of the season.

Priddis wins NS medal and BF melts.

Im crossing my fingers.

Priddas acceptance speech to mirror Choco Williams- "Bigfooty, you were wrong"

 

[Mickey Rae]

I think we probably need to have a bad year to get a high pick. Let's be honest, superstar players like Nic Nat and Kennedy only come if you have a top 5 draft pick. It's the way the game is these days that to get that star player you need to bomb out unless you fluke it,but it's fair to say that hasn't happened at our club for years with poor recruiting so we have two options now . One is continue to be mid table for years with sub par vanilla players and never have the talent to beat the top teams or just suffer for a season or two and finish bottom 3 on ladder and pick up a star for the future. Basically what Freo is doing now.

There is a third avenue and that is through Free Agency. You can take advantage of this with very little outlay .... apart from the salary package. if you go for and get the right player he can make an immediate positive change to the dynamic of the club both on and off the field. It is something a serial "mid range" finishing club like WCE should be pursuing.

 

[domo]

Remove the zone defence immediately. Play lock down defence and if you want a floating player then play a 7 man defence.
Use Mitchell as our general, change the plan to go through Mitchell as often as possible. Let him be the player he is.
Open up our attacking moves, we are to one dimensional. All our forwards lead to the same place, we never separate. This makes it way to easy to defend. The amount of times we see our two tall forwards competing for the same marks is not on, it is a very easy plan to stop. You have to separate the defenders so they can't work together.
And the biggest let down of our game plan is the instruction to handball at all cost, no side butchers possession as much as we do, the amount of times we give the ball to a player under more pressure is ridiculous. It is better to advance the ball to a contest 30-50m by foot than to give it to a player by hand who has no chance.
Real basic footy stuff this but you will find the teams that do the basics well are the teams that are high up on the ladder. Our basic skills and instincts are very sub par.

I don't agree with a lot of this. Other than our over-use of the zone/web. We look so much better when we are not zoning/web. Zoning is the opposite of natural instinct in football, so its no wonder we look like shit footballers when we overuse zone. We look better when we give our guys a better chance to be footballers.

You all hate me for saying it over and over.. but central to a lot of our problems is midfield, and Mathew Priddis. Both Mitchell and Priddis can't run for shit. Having them both out there destroys any idea of one on one type defending and ironically actually kills zoning /web strategy anyway. Which we use to try cover for slowness. Also because there are less rotations, blokes can rest a bit with zoning.
Then if you add Gaff and Masten. More small mids with their own limitations. Next add in Shuey and Sheed, also are not big bodied. Put this lot out there altogether in the midfield, and its no wonder our mid balance sucks. Shuey is a superstar. Both he and Sheed have class and skill and have the least downside of all that crew. Then we also have Hutchy and Redden to consider. Priddis & Masten - both should be goneski. Play Yeo and Wellingham in the middle at times too (The Gov stays back). Redden plays Priddis' spot. Nelson, Cole Schofield are options to switch in for Yeo+Wellingham. at halfback.

You say not to be so one dimensional then suggest we only go thru Mitchell? He makes his fair share of mistakes along with brilliance too. But there is no doubting his value. In his last days at Hawks, teams worked out to target him physically and hammered him. In saying that when he has the ball more often than not good things happen.

We get a lot of goals from getting a turnover and getting the ball over the back for running break away goals. It's high risk high reward strategy. But other teams do that to us as well - it's totally a trend in "today's game". That's why power running and speed is so critical. It's blatantly obvious when Priddis is out there how easy it is for the opposition to run straight thru the middle on the rebound. Plenty of times this happens from a Gaff or Priddis bomb or a panic kick.

So, I think our bomb kicking is much more wasteful and stupid than over hand balling it (game plan??). Yes hospital hand passes shit me. Like the one that nearly killed Yeo last week.. jeeezus... Which happened because the handballer and receiver were both stationary (which wasn't Yeo's fault) Absorb the tackle, stop the play there. Get back. Half the time the umpys don't call holding the ball anyway.

Bombing when it's to I50 also makes our forwards look shit and gives them no chance to get the separation you talk of. Not having JK out there is hurting us as well. He is a beast with his work up the ground and smart leading. This is another problem caused by us getting beat in the centre bounces. Again Priddis is a problem because he can't collect the ball or receive it and carry it to the 50m line. (is worst centre clearence defender too). To be fair it's also a lot harder these days to get clear tap breaks from the centre like the good old days. Opposition midfielders have had a field day even when Nic Nat was playing sharking our taps. Which again happened heaps because we refused to play an enforcer or big bodied midfielder in the centre. Again, our midfield balance currently sucks.

Last resort "KICK IT" to safety can work if you have fast running players able to cover when the other team gets the ball and blasts straight back past you. Surprise surprise, when we don't and it's usually Priddis and or Gaff, with Mitchell out there who kick the said bomb and then stand around watching and pointing as the opposition hoons straight thru them with Hill, Jetta and Cripps RUNNING PAST them back having to cover. (Then those guys cop the criticisms for "going missing").

so it's our midfield folks... apologies re: rant.. sorry not sorry..

 

[ChampRevesby]

Remove the zone defence immediately. Play lock down defence and if you want a floating player then play a 7 man defence.
Use Mitchell as our general, change the plan to go through Mitchell as often as possible. Let him be the player he is.
Open up our attacking moves, we are to one dimensional. All our forwards lead to the same place, we never separate. This makes it way to easy to defend. The amount of times we see our two tall forwards competing for the same marks is not on, it is a very easy plan to stop. You have to separate the defenders so they can't work together.
And the biggest let down of our game plan is the instruction to handball at all cost, no side butchers possession as much as we do, the amount of times we give the ball to a player under more pressure is ridiculous. It is better to advance the ball to a contest 30-50m by foot than to give it to a player by hand who has no chance.
Real basic footy stuff this but you will find the teams that do the basics well are the teams that are high up on the ladder. Our basic skills and instincts are very sub par.

Instincts are a huge part of being a good player. The best always know what they are going to do with the ball before they get it. We have some really dumb players who panic under pressure.

 

[Seadog]

I think we have to start a cutting edge supplements program.

 

[Biggie]

I think we have to start a cutting edge supplements program.

I see no harm in trying this. Hell, let's even keep the concoction a secret from the players.

 

[Patron]

Play our best team. I don't think that includes Priddis.


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[Bleedblueandgold]

We simply need to play the way we did against Geelong.

 

[matt_bas]

Our team haven't been themselves at all lately. We've lost games we would've won 100% of the time in the past, we haven't flatracked at all this year and there seems to be a distinct lack of belief.

Additionally, the MC have been trying to **** over our season from the start.

In my opinion, I feel the MC needs to wake up and realise our best 22 doesn't include Priddis and a ridiculous amount of talls, and I think we have a chance to get on a winning streak until the end of the season.

So what do we do now? Is it a quick fix or a long rebuild?

Step 1: Pick Masto
Step 2:
Step 3: Win Premiership

 

[Godfather32]

Step 1: Pick Masto
Step 2: Drop Masto
Step 3: Win Premiership

 

[Natho]

we clearly are shit

 

[kid_a]

as mentioned previously on this thread, we only have two a-graders.
Mitchell is playing like a man who is on a goodbye tour, still doing good things, but playing with a real lack of mongrel and urgency compared with his Hawthorn days.
A lot of things need to be done to get us back to playing our best footy, but we simply can not play our best footy without our two best players (Nic Nat & JK).

 

[QS]

Need someone like this fella...

 

[frenchconnection]

Remove the zone defence immediately. Play lock down defence and if you want a floating player then play a 7 man defence.
Use Mitchell as our general, change the plan to go through Mitchell as often as possible. Let him be the player he is.
Open up our attacking moves, we are to one dimensional. All our forwards lead to the same place, we never separate. This makes it way to easy to defend. The amount of times we see our two tall forwards competing for the same marks is not on, it is a very easy plan to stop. You have to separate the defenders so they can't work together.
And the biggest let down of our game plan is the instruction to handball at all cost, no side butchers possession as much as we do, the amount of times we give the ball to a player under more pressure is ridiculous. It is better to advance the ball to a contest 30-50m by foot than to give it to a player by hand who has no chance.
Real basic footy stuff this but you will find the teams that do the basics well are the teams that are high up on the ladder. Our basic skills and instincts are very sub par.

Which is a coaching thing surely? Probably a combination of outdated coaching and having too many players who make dumb decisions at crucial times more often than not.

 

[frenchconnection]

M

The only two genuine stars we have are NN and JK, watching them over the last couple of years has been exciting but without them we are pretty meh! Cameos from Yeo, Shuey and infrequent bits of brilliance from Jetta haven't filled the void. We are done for this year, pretty obvious Priddis and Mitch shouldn't play in the same side, two people doing what one was doing previously, Mitch is doing his half a job a bit better than Pridda but still two blokes who couldn't run out of sight on a dark night.
With a modicum of decent drafting we could have Blakely, SPP, Sheed, Shuey and Yeo running around in our midfield, someone deserves to be sacked for that shit. Hopefully Pridda puts the team first and rethinks his plan to play on next year.
Sorta veered away from my original point there, which is we are pretty ordinary without NN and JK.

Maybe start with sacking O'Brien at seasons end would be a start!. It was his decision not to draft SPP so should be hung out to dry

 

[frenchconnection]

Clubs playing silly buggars with Nata. He will return for last game of season.

We sneak into the 8. Week off, Have to travel to Adelaide or Sydney week 1. Stirring upset.

From there, we win it all. Simmo looks like a genius for making sure his best 22 are on the park at the business end of the season.

Priddis wins NS medal and BF melts.

Im crossing my fingers.

Dream on

 

[frenchconnection]

There is a third avenue and that is through Free Agency. You can take advantage of this with very little outlay .... apart from the salary package. if you go for and get the right player he can make an immediate positive change to the dynamic of the club both on and off the field. It is something a serial "mid range" finishing club like WCE should be pursuing.

Easier said than done as in the past it has been very difficult to coax players West.

 

[MVPD01]

It's easy, learn to kick goals...How many times have we missed a simple set shot only for the ball to go down the other end for a goal. They are called momentum changers. I reckon players spend way to much time on game plans and structure when essentially football is a very simple game. We can't even do the simple things we'll let alone perfect complicated structures and game plans.



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