Our 2016 game style

[Event Horizon]

Has anybody observed any changes in round 1?
It appears to me, we still play very much finals like crash and bash, which looks ok when we win it out of the middle, but doesn't look anywhere near as effective when we move it from the backline. How many coast to coast goals have we kicked? Best we can hope in transition is to get it to the wing and create a throw in or a ball up, and then reload from there. This is very much what happens in finals, as the pressure is too great for coast to coast easy goals.

This is partly the reason why we have done well in the finals over last two seasons, as our game style is more adapted to that pressure than some other sides, like Richmond. However, it does make it harder to win 16+ home and away games.

Or was it simply round 1 and we are about to see some smooth ball movement in Brisbane?

 

[Donkey Chop]

It was just a brutal game IMO.
Last year North went to Adelaide wanting to play a bruise free game and the crows smashed us. This year both sides were going in hard and we were lucky enough to get the win. I think if North play like that every week they'll break most teams and then we'll see the game open up and North will run freely.

 

[trooroo4life]

Adelaide were set up really well defensively, they focused on that during the nab cup and done well saturday.

I doubt we will change that much from what we went with last year. If our skills were better our defence would look a lot better because jeez we stupidly turn it over in some real danger areas.

One thing that concerned me sat night was how easy crows got it out of our half from kick ins. An area where we were pretty improved in last year, hopefully dont let it hurt us this year. And on the other side we are way too slow when kicking in.

 

[Lavy_Panther]

Go at it hammer and tongs and hope to christ that we're fitter and can outlast our opponents.

 

[Event Horizon]

Go at it hammer and tongs and hope to christ that we're fitter and can outlast our opponents.

Need to be able to kick some easy goals if we want to win 16 games I reckon.

 

[Frank Thring]

It's interesting listening to Crows supporters who were saying how easy we were moving it out of defence and how open our forward line was. We are all harsh critics on our own team.

What i saw was two teams who came to play hard aggressive football and we came out on top. Thevl result would have been different if played at Adelaide i think.

 

[Viper2Jester]

It's too early to tell.

Last year we were very stagnant at times until the game opens up late in matches when players (especially opposition) tire. May be the game plan, may be that we lack pace, or both.

Lets see how we go against the Lions and reassess.

 

[Only Forwards]

It's interesting listening to Crows supporters who were saying how easy we were moving it out of defence and how open our forward line was. We are all harsh critics on our own team.

Must be because I did not feel this at all.

I felt like we had to scrap for the vast majority of our goals, and that we were not exactly great at isolating our triple towers which should be a clear strength.

 

[Event Horizon]

Must be because I did not feel this at all.

I felt like we had to scrap for the vast majority of our goals, and that we were not exactly great at isolating our triple towers which should be a clear strength.

We kicked it long to the forwards most times, which again works best in finals, as the game is played differently.

I felt our small defenders didn't have the best game, allowing far too many easy goals out the back, which needs to be fixed asap, given Brisbane pretty much gets all their goals via smalls.

 

[Heaps of fun]

Brown holds more of his marks in the first half and we lower the eyes a bit and the "easy" goals will come in. Always jitters in rd 1, rd 2 will be a better example of how we're going to play this year.

 

[CarnTheKANGAS]

Our setup at each centre bounce and restart thereafter is something that really concerns / annoys me..
We ALWAYS setup with a loose man in defence - normally Hansen (only real role he excels in) - however when we win quick centre clearances we always kick to an outnumbered forward line.
I'd much prefer our coach to back our players in to win the clearance (hell we have such supreme clearance players and the number 1 ruckman in the league (so why not back us in to win the clearance) and ensure we are kicking to the same number of players up forward

One thing I noticed is we win a centre clearance with a hack kick fwd - ball is contested or marked by a crow and the ball is slingshot fwd as our players have transitioned running forwards.

 

[tazaa]

They were set up real well defensively. Real well. I was quite complimentary at how they mopped up in defence.
They put numbers back, made us kick to a contest and ran the ball out well. They moved it pretty easily too when a poor kick came in.
We hardly scored when the ball was in dispute in our 50.

 

[Only Forwards]

We kicked it long to the forwards most times, which again works best in finals, as the game is played differently.

I felt our small defenders didn't have the best game, allowing far too many easy goals out the back, which needs to be fixed asap, given Brisbane pretty much gets all their goals via smalls.

It felt (I've glanced at the replay not analysed it) like we kicked to a pack contest rather than an isolated 1:1.

In round 15 2011 we played St Kilda, I distinctly remeber Caro saying something like "they bombed it in long like they had a forward line with Snake Baker to take speccies"

Not a whole lot has really changed except that we now have 3 KPF who's job it has become to bring the ball to ground. They do it well but we are more often than not putting the ball on their heads and letting them smash the pack rather than kicking it to even a small amount of advantage. Jeds kick to Dish stood out to me a lot for this very reason, it wasn't hugely to his advantage, but it gave him more of a fighting chance to mark it.

As to the goals out the back thing, if round 1 is anything to go by we need a strategy to stop it because loads of teams were getting them.

 

[the_one]

It's interesting listening to Crows supporters who were saying how easy we were moving it out of defence and how open our forward line was. We are all harsh critics on our own team.

What i saw was two teams who came to play hard aggressive football and we came out on top. Thevl result would have been different if played at Adelaide i think.

Strange hearing this as i thought their forward line was much more open. I felt we had to work extremely hard to kick goals and that they were doing it easy. Funny how supporters view their teams.

 

[Frank Thring]

Must be because I did not feel this at all.

I felt like we had to scrap for the vast majority of our goals, and that we were not exactly great at isolating our triple towers which should be a clear strength.

I dont quite see it that way. I saw an Adelaide team set up well defensively to which we worked our way through as the game went on.

 

[Kimbo]

... more often than not putting the ball on their heads and letting them smash the pack rather than kicking it to even a small amount of advantage.

Technically, this is probably correct (>50% of the time), but the expression seems to overstate it somewhat, as if it's the game plan or 'far and away' what we do. I'd like to rewatch the game and take note of I50s to gauge this.

I'm assuming we'll kick to advantage when the play (or skill of the kicker) allows but, that said, a long kick in isn't a bad option with the tall forwards we have, and with the opportunistic small forwards we have. Drew is a great contested mark, either in bettering one-on-one contests or bringing ball to ground when he's outnumbered. Waite has that leap and marks at the highest point. If he doesn't he creates carnage. Brown's height means he's a good chance to take the grab, especially on the lead. Yes, he's a candidate for Tarrant's 'concrete hands' mantle (get ready for BF generalisation 101), but he's still learning the craft and third forward for a reason. Plus all work very hard within the forward 50, in leading and in their defensive work and all work up the ground when needed. They're a hard-working bunch.

 

[Joshen]

One thing that concerned me sat night was how easy crows got it out of our half from kick ins. An area where we were pretty improved in last year, hopefully dont let it hurt us this year. And on the other side we are way too slow when kicking in.

I feel like kick-in problems (offensively and defensively) have been brought up after every game for the past 5 years...would love to see us go end to end but it just doesn't happen at our club for whatever reason.

 

[utility]

The thing that annoyed me on the weekend was the number of "soft" goals they kicked from within 15 metres of goal. If you watch season highlights of ours in the 90s (specifically 1999 IIRC) we kicked a lot of these goals.

It may be simplistic but good sides generate easy goals like these and don't cough them up. We'll definitely need to tighten up in that regard.

I also echo the comments about Adelaide's defensive efforts - very impressive and organised. Worth remembering they were a top six side last year so are not a bunch of mugs.

 

[muttley45]

I feel like kick-in problems (offensively and defensively) have been brought up after every game for the past 5 years...would love to see us go end to end but it just doesn't happen at our club for whatever reason.

You hardly ever see us take the really quick kick in option like Bulldogs, Weagles, or Port Adelaide, but basically wait until the umpire calls play on almost every occasion. Whether this is to allow us to set up a desired structure, laziness of players to provide quick outlets, or lack of a Plan B , is debatable, FWIW, i seem to stress least, and reckon we get out a lot easier when Dal does the kicking in.

 

[RobZombie]

I'm not sure one game says as much about changes to our game plan than what other teams are doing to combat what they know of Scott's plan in general. Two things stuck out for me in particular:

There didn't seem to be much drive coming from our rebounding defenders. It's normal for one or another to have an off game but doesn't seem to be a coincidence that all of Wright, Atley, Macmillan and McDonald all struggled to gain much meterage. From where I was sitting on the flank in level 3 it looked like the Crows were really setting up a high press when we had the ball in the back half.

We seemed to be doing a lot more bomb-and-hope entries into the forward 50 than usual. As a few others have mentioned it looks like we're happy to have a tall forward outnumbered and bring the ball to ground on the expectation that we'll have more numbers at ground level. In the past it's seemed to me that the 3 talls have focused a lot on getting one open or with a mismatch. Whether this is deliberate on our part or a response to a Crows tactic of getting numbers back remains to be seen I guess.

I said on twitter late in the 1st quarter:

The theme of this week’s main session will be “busting the press” and “going inside 50 with a bit of fricking purpose”.

I haven't paid enough attention to the Crows' goals to say for sure, but I think their easy open goals tended to come more from going forward quickly out of stoppages rather than getting over the back of a zone, which matches up with my guess that we prefer a deeper zone to a high press to stop slingshot attacks. This however looks like a continuation of last year's problem of how badly we defend lost clearances. So something to work on there.

On the bright side, defensively the focus on preventing the greatest threats - Tex and Betts - from carving us up inside 50 worked well. Both had ok statistical games but both were forced up the ground to get their touches and were nullified in scoring contributions I think.

Also, Gibson's ability to burn off his man to the next contest to maintain a numerical advantage even when he's not used is underrated IMHO.

 

[boneofshin]

I'm most interested in any difference in the way out forward line is structured now that Leigh Tudor has taken over that line. What I certainly didn't notice was our key forwards spoiling each other by competing for the same ball which was a welcome sight.

 

[LT Smash]

It's interesting listening to Crows supporters who were saying how easy we were moving it out of defence and how open our forward line was. We are all harsh critics on our own team.

Yes I think you have stumbled onto something here. We all expect our team to pressure the opposition, to press up in the forward half and force turnovers and kick multiple goals through this avenue. But when the opposition happens to break through the press and score a couple of cheap Joe the Goose open goal square goals, we all lose our shit. Most supporters are not smart enough to appreciate that the latter is an unfortunate and inevitable byproduct of the former.

Oh and it doesn't matter how good the opposition, even if we win, the harsh critics among us say we would have lost if we were playing someone decent.

 

[Dirty_11]

On Saturday Adelaide controlled pretty much the whole first half, we were fumbly and our forward entries were not as methodical as we would have liked. We busted our arse in the third to get the game on our terms, something the Crows were not going to hand over easy. When we eventually took control of the game we looked more decisive going forward.

 

[The Pleb]

I'm most interested in any difference in the way out forward line is structured now that Leigh Tudor has taken over that line. What I certainly didn't notice was our key forwards spoiling each other by competing for the same ball which was a welcome sight.

Really? I thought I saw a fair bit of it to be honest.

 

[Ischenko]

Might be stating the obvious a bit but from what I saw we are really looking to take advantage of the quality talls in our attacking half - and why wouldn't you? Looked almost old-fashioned at times, but was pretty effective, especially in the last. Petrie, Waite, Brown (potentially) & Goldy are absolute weapons and set us apart a bit. We're obviously playing a style that is geared towards September, where in past years our big bodied mids and big forwards and rucks have served us well. That said, only round 1: dust will settle by the Freo game I reckon.