Aish has already said Longmuir's biggest strength is game plan knowledge. Really hope selection and drafting is now based less on filling a role and more on getting enough players who have good skills to implement a precise kicking game plan. Our list has too many inside mids lacking pace and small forwards with average pace compared to most small forwards on afl lists. I cant see roles for either Crowden or Shultz in a precise kicking game plan. Hence Id rather delist them and bring in players who could potentially help in Menedue and a quick skilled state league player. Speaking of game plan I really hope the likes of Connor Blakly are given an absolute rocket next season when they follow the ball and dont work hard enough to cover their man spreading from stoppages. Connor's work rate in terms of staying with his man in sprints longer than 40 metres and ball watching last year were as appalling as ive seen from a freo mid in a long time.
I was really surprised to see sherrif write this a few days ago about a precise kicking game plan. (Hope you don't mind me quoting you sherrif). I know sherrif thinks about the game deeply, but given the general view of our skills and Richmond's success I was hoping we would implement something with elements of Richmond's game plan.
I really like Richmond's game plan. They score well, they covered well when they had a lot of injuries, they implemented it quickly in the 2017 preseason and they made structural changes with the use of more talls without losing their essence. What's not to like.
It seems to me to be unmeasurable. They get low possession counts, low contested possessions, low clearances, low marks (I guess because they are not controlling the ball), low contested marks and yet go inside 50 a lot, get a lot of marks inside 50 (even in 2017 with only 1 tall forward) and score well. I notice they bounce the ball a lot (their fifteenth bouncer is Cotch with .29 bounces per game in 2019, our fifth bouncer is Conca with .27 bounces per game). I guess this is because they are happy to move the ball with run and carry. They are said by the commentators to handball forward rather than backward, but I don't have any stats for this.
Our strengths seem to be oriented towards clearances and contested ball (and defence of course, and this is true of Richmond) and we need to use our strengths so maybe the Richmond way shouldn't be our way.
I am interested in opinions on what we should be doing with the player group we have, and what, if anything, can we learn from Richmond.
PS Richmond do remind me a little bit of North Melbourne under Pagan, who had low possession counts, scored quite freely, and seemed to force the ball forward at every opportunity. There were a lot less stats kept in those days.