Mentality

[yaco55]

Phone

Further to your arguments

Disposal efficiency

Round 1-9; +3.6% against the opposition - Third best in AFL.
Round 10; -10%
Round 11; -12%

The last two weeks are catastrophic figures, and it is no surprise that we lost - And of course poor kicking for goal ( which counts as ineffective ) has accentuated those figures.

Possible reasons for this

- My observation is that we haven't been spreading as well from the contests - Interested in whether other members who watch the games live share this opinion.
- Decision making in contested situations - especially ineffective use of handballs.

Maybe other posters can share their opinion.

 

[Summer Nights]

I expect there will be little or no discussion about our next game against Fremantle - Seeing that few posters will be able to watch the game live.

Well you're a bit of a silly sausage for saying that. There's plenty that can be taken from the tv. The thing that can't be seen is the efforts of players outside the view of the camera shots. If there's someone at the game who makes particular reference to this then someone who wasn't there has no basis to dispute it. All they can do is to dispute is what is on screen. There were people at the game who'd disagree with me, I'm sure, but that was my obversation; it's something we saw, for example, in the game against Richmond, where they got a run-on and scored freely before we lifted (just like in the Sydney game). The pressure acts for a percentage of that game were down on expectation, too.

I feel that my argument has been misunderstood a little. I think that some players were particularly down on their pressure efforts in defensive 50 and across the middle of the ground in the first three quarters. It's something you could see 20-50m off the ball and it allowed Sydney free run, time and space to deliver the ball well into their forward 50. It's a privilege that they didn't extend to us through their manic pressure, and the evidence is somewhat the inaccurate scoring from our end and easy goals from theirs.

Don't get me wrong, luck and our skill at kicking goals was also a factor.

 

[Ben the Gooner]

I don't know if it was effort, structure or something else, but no one seemed willing to shut down the fatside. Scott Lucas on SEN was all over it by quarter time, but it just didn't get fixed. Shutting down the fatside and forcing the rebound to come through traffic is literally the first rule of team defence these days, but we didn't do it and that's why Sydney scored so freely on the rebound.

He also was on the get goalside of the quick goal-scoring player bandwagon pretty early, and Hardingham was the only player who did that all night. Of course, he turned it straight over, but the point is still valid.

 

[Mr Mojo Risin]

I didn't get the feeling that there was a lack of effort.

You don't get 78 odd inside 50s against a very good team without effort. Tackle counts can be deceiving, just like disposal efficiency. Pressure acts show effort also and you don't need to lay a tackle to provide a pressure act. When a team like Sydney has a number of quick players, your defense can sometimes be better off by corralling a quick player to ensure he doesn't get behind you. Going for the tackle in some situations leaves a risk of allowing a player to get past you. On Saturday night, it was more of an open game than expected and therefore there were many of these situations.

The problem was dumb football going inside 50. You would think that when Hird moved Hurley back and subbed Bellchambers leaving Paddy in the ruck and not forward, that we would not bomb it long to our small forward line in the 3rd quarter. I understand we were under pressure and Sydney need to get credit for their part in that, however there were a number of times we put ourselves under unnecessary pressure by playing on when we didn't need to.

Two weeks in a row we have been found wanting with our decision making under pressure, especially heading into forward 50. Sure, we missed a lot of goals, however that was in large part to the shots being taken from difficult positions under pressure.

Make no mistake if we don't improve under pressure we will be losing a few more games as teams will have watched and understood our weakness.

I'm not worried about the effort, I'm very concerned about decision making.