Analysis Our weakpoints

[MLG23]

Outside speed, kicking accuracy around the ground and in front of goal, Trav underperforming, no genuine fwd pocket goal sneak and another decent tall forward.

 

[mike123]

Outside speed, kicking accuracy around the ground and in front of goal, Trav getting injured, no genuine fwd pocket goal sneak and another decent tall forward.

EFA

 

[MLG23]

Trav having a terrible conversion rate. Everything else is on point your highness

EFA

 

[BringouttheGimp]

Why less Broomhead when he is 1 of our most Classiest Players?

Totally agree with you there td.. he has similar evasive skills to a Didak.. and he's fleet footed and very quick decisive decision maker at least he's shown glimpses of that.

 

[Kappa]

Our major weakness is our defence.

Yes Toovey Brown and Frost can all hold a forward honest, but we were ranked 18th in the competition from taking the ball out of the defensive 50 and scoring.. The majority of our defenders are very poor disposers of the ball so when teams take the ball forward it gets stuck in our defence until they eventually kick the goal.

We are really quite desperate for a Shaw or Scharenberg type down there, the AFL has gone past defenders who can ONLY defend... Hawthorn set the standard with guys like Gibson Burgoyne and Birchall

 

[spartan-magpie]

goal kicking, kick outs, general kicking (although inproved) ability to gain large amounts of of momentum and put it on the score board.

I reckon we'll see a big improvement in most of these areas this year

 

[Timmy from Thomastown]

Our weakpoint is that for the first time in living memory we dont play Essendon twice

 

[Hong Kong Pie]

Our weakpoint is that for the first time in living memory we dont play Essendon twice

Would have been very handy this year.


Centre clearances were also a weakness for us last year i think. We were put on the defensive much too often from the centre bounce.

 

[TradeDraft]

That's the dream, but in the retrospect, a 'Hudson' replacement would've been handy.

The Club would say that would take games away from Grundy and Witts

 

[left at home]

goal kicking, kick straight would have made the finals
brake away speed top end type

 

[Kappa]

Interesting that so many people put "goal kicking" as a weakness when we were the 3rd most accurate team in the competition.

 

[PicaBoo]

Interesting that so many people put "goal kicking" as a weakness when we were the 3rd most accurate team in the competition.

Statistics...
10th in goals
9th in behinds
11th in overall scoring
10th Goal vs Behind ratio.
7th in assists
8th in inside 50's
11th in points per inside 50

So above average getting the ball inside 50 but actually hitting the scoreboard with it below average.
I would call that a weakness.
That is without taking into account of scoring at key moments / tight games. Gutfeeling as stated by the majority of the board is that it would be even further in our disadvantage.

 

[cleomenes]

Statistics...
10th in goals
9th in behinds
11th in overall scoring
10th Goal vs Behind ratio.
7th in assists
8th in inside 50's
11th in points per inside 50

So above average getting the ball inside 50 but actually hitting the scoreboard with it below average.
I would call that a weakness.
That is without taking into account of scoring at key moments / tight games. Gutfeeling as stated by the majority of the board is that it would be even further in our disadvantage.

Very interesting figures. Like so many others, I thought that we kicked our season away. These numbers say that we were very middle of the road. I suppose that we have to look at the other big subjective problem, field kicking, and blame that.
Leaving out the games against weaker clubs that we lost last year through lack of intensity, I thought that the pressure games that we lost against really strong opponents came down to our inability to get a disposal to a man in the clear, where those teams were able to do so. A better balance is needed between pressure on the man and getting off the pack. It is a very fine line, and one that another year's experience might well fix for us.

 

[domin8tors]

I hate to over simplify but our main point of weakness is our rucks. Look at the good sides, you'll see a good to dominant ruckman. It's no coincidence that we've slipped back in all respects since Jolly was retired. The game starts in the middle, every few minutes it returns there and in between times there are stoppages manufactured by defensive structures that favour the big strong bodied rucks like Mumford, McEvoy or Goldstein. If you look at premiership sides over the years you'll find the ones that dominated had great BIG rucks. Charman and Keating, Ottens, Lee, Monkhurst, Madden, Jolly (at two clubs) Polly Farmer, Nicholls....it's a pre-curser to success. Get a dominant ruckman or pair of rucks and you can win a flag. The fact that North made a PF last year is all due to Goldstein....thats how far a dominant ruckman can take a side.
Since Jolly left we've wobbled along with our pair of baby rucks and they just get smashed at centre bounces. So much so that even great midfielders like Pendles, Swanny and Beams couldn't compete with other mids and had resort to "roving to the opposition rucks". Being the 18th side in centre clearances exemplifies our predicament.
A midfielder of Buckley's caliber ( and Robert Harvey, Scotty Burns etc...) knows the importance of strong rucks so I can only presume that they have undergone this long drawn out ( and some might say painful )process of "blooding" our young rucks and getting game time and pre seasons into them so that their development coincides with the renewal and regeneration of the club over all.

When one of (or hopefully all of ) Grundy, Witts, Cox become dominant centre bounce ruckmen then everything else will flow. Winning centre clearances puts oppositions on the back foot and makes defending a lot easier. It also gives our forwards the ability to lead into space because we have the initiative from a centre clearance.

Its our biggest weakness. If it gets solved this year we can look forward to a lot more success.
We NEED a DOMINANT RUCKMAN.

yes a good ruckman is important but tell me who Hawthorns " Good " ruckman is. Grundy had a better year then Hale and Ceglar combined.

 

[CFC2010]

Our skills by hand and foot for me.

The only players I feel calm with when they have ball in hand are Pendles and to a lesser extent Fas.

All our other players it is like a lottery.

I compare them with the bench mark the Hawks and even their duds hit targets most of the time.

 

[jackcass]

Letting easy out the back goals was a weakness last year that cost us games, hopefully it gets fixed.

Far too easy a statement to make without giving any analysis of how and why they occurred. Reality is that we get our fair share of "easy out the back goals", every team does so it's hardly the be-all-end-all of weaknesses. Most of those scored against us occurred because of turnovers, poor decision making, or getting beaten at clearance situations.

 

[jackcass]

Started round 1 v Hawthorn 2012.
Maxwell playing the goal keeper role is a big loss for goals dribbling across the line. So many are easily stopped with someone manning the line.

Enjoy watching your soccer then but there's no top bar in goals at AFL, not sure what your point is.

Interesting you'd pick that Hawthorn game as we were missing Tarrant, Brown and BJ from our back 6 who were replaced with debutants in Keeffe and Yagmoor, Maxwell was thrown into the unfamiliar KPD role as a consequence. But don't let that stop you cherry picking isolated nightmares and holding them up as an example of a broader issue.

 

[jackcass]

The ruck situation at the centre bounces is still a problem and Grundy is at the centre of it. He's an aggressive player and has patches where he strongly contests in other parts of the ground but he is massively over-rated on consistent levels of output. Like late Jolly he barely gets off the ground.

I don't think either Grundy or Witts will ever be high leaping rucks (Cox and Moore more likely to do that) but I think they can still improve greatly as they build that core strength, build the tank, and gain valuable experience.

 

[Robroy22]

yes a good ruckman is important but tell me who Hawthorns " Good " ruckman is. Grundy had a better year then Hale and Ceglar combined.

I think you might find McEvoy, Hale and maybe even Ceglar when he played all had better stats ( hit outs to advantage, marks, disposals, goals) than Grunds last year. Hawthorn certainly had a far better centre clearance differential than we did.

 

[Frankie23]

Yeah the transition from defence to attack is probably the biggest weakness for me, however I'm not too concerned about it going forward.

Our main aim is to become the best transition side in the game, so another pre-season into the many youngsters on our list helps natural transition (ability to run the lines).

Addition of Reid and Pendlebury (at times) will help the use out of the back, while players like Langdon, Maynard & Sinclair who are all good kicks will improve as a result of consistent games & confidence.

Addition of link up players such as Aish & Howe will help immensely. Aish can run the lines and will be a key link up player, while Howe has an engine and can take a grab. Both will work their way onto the wing throughout matches, so our transition will benefit with these two in the team.

 

[jackcass]

Actually I don't understand why we're good at the stoppages and terrible at the centre bounces? We practice the centre bounce drills often enough yet we watch opposition sides take the ball away so easily at the centre bounce. Grundy and Witts have to learn to time their jump at the centre bounce to intercede the ball at the right moment. Maybe it just takes time for inexperienced ruckmen to learn to time their jumps.

It's as much about the quality of the clearances as the quantum. Moot point winning a clearance if it leads straight to a turnover. A lot of that will come with composure gained through experience but with the Witts, Grundy, Broomhead, Crisp, Elliott, Kennedy and De Goey types in the midfield rotations it is what it is.

 

[jackcass]

We don't take advantage of set shot kicks at goal. This is the major problem.
Even simple set shots from 35 out, directly in front, we don't convert anywhere near as often as we should.

Some of our players might even drop their heads after one of forwards, more often than not, misses relatively easy set shots at goal.
They've just worked their asses off to get the ball inside our forward 50, and all that work has just resulted in a point, or an opposition boundary kick.


We need to convert shots taken from within 35 meters directly in front at least 8 times out of 10.
If we can't do this, we've either got the wrong people kicking for goal, or our goal kicking coach is not doing his job.

Half way through the 2015 season we were the most accurate goal kicking team in the league from memory.

 

[jackcass]

I'm not sure we really skillful rebounders and much as we need excellent decision makers. I'm a massive fan of the way Birchall goes about creating that drive out of defence for the Hawks - a lot of the time his kicks are barely thirty metres but he gets the ball moving out of the back half and that's what creates time and space up forward. Impossible to improve F50 entries if the front half has been clogged up due to slow ball movement. We need to be smarter with the pill in hand this year.

Grant Birchall is about to turn 28 and has over 200 games under his belt. Might be just a little unrealistic to expect the same from Williams, Langdon, Sinclair, Marsh, Scharenberg, Frost, Ramsay or Maynard just yet.

 

[jackcass]

Absolutely we should. I know it was a bit of a junk game, but he absolutely dominated in that role against the Cats last year. I'm keen to see more of it through the NAB challenge at least.

Totally disagree. Still our best mid and clearance player and until some of the kids start to take up that slack he's unlikely to be release for other duties all that often.

 

[jackcass]

Trav having a terrible conversion rate. Everything else is on point your highness

Trav managed 34 goals 23 points last season at about 67% conversion. Yes I know that doesn't count OOF but that aside, just how many KPF's managed better than that?

Mike's point was that he had 32 gaols in the 16 games up till he hurt his calf but only returned 2 for the remaining 6 games of the season when he was conceivably on track for 44 for the season if he had not been injured and played every game.