Opinion Reality check and regress to the mean or the loss that makes the season?

[ATSAM]

I can't read the Advertiser on line but Mooneys headline is interesting. Anyone have the content?

 

[catempire]

I can't read the Advertiser on line but Mooneys headline is interesting. Anyone have the content?

The gist is he’s saying the players should take it on themselves to give up their bye period holidays to stay at the club and train.

 

[mcwilrob]

I can't read the Advertiser on line but Mooneys headline is interesting. Anyone have the content?

Yeah - can some one post?

 

[mcwilrob]

The gist is he’s saying the players should take it on themselves to give up their bye period holidays to stay at the club and train.

Given our post-bye record I'd try anything that hasn't been done yet. We are so lethargic after a bye Mooney's suggestion is worth a go!

 

[Mad_Hatter]

Reports suggest the entire club basically goes into holiday mode for a week, including Cook who goes away for 2 weeks.
Clearly THAT'S the issue.
The positive is they don't do the same with the pre-finals bye. They all stay at the club and do what they should.
Atleast that's the positive I'm holding on to.

 

[ATSAM]

The gist is he’s saying the players should take it on themselves to give up their bye period holidays to stay at the club and train.

Well there is a thought. You may think given our form that the players might want to keep that form going at the same level. It could have been, with some leadership, that in the meeting after the previous week with another win that they agreed to stay at home and stay focused by way of getting together, engaging in some light training and keeping focused. eg just going to Bunnings like Kelly was reported to have done.
But no off to Noosa for the obligatory break for many of them. And Cook always goes away at this time of the year , used to go with Costa when he was President.

 

[catempire]

Well there is a thought. You may think given our form that the players might want to keep that form going at the same level. It could have been, with some leadership, that in the meeting after the previous week with another win that they agreed to stay at home and stay focused by way of getting together, engaging in some light training and keeping focused. eg just going to Bunnings like Kelly was reported to have done.
But no off to Noosa for the obligatory break for many of them. And Cook always goes away at this time of the year , used to go with Costa when he was President.

Me, 16 June 2017:

One thing I notice is that over the bye weekend all of the big guns head to nice warm parts of Australia and post to social media lying by the pool, at the beach, etc. Obviously that's what the CBA entitles them to do but if I was in the leadership group next year I'd be doing a "voluntary" training/bonding weekend in Geelong.

Mooney has been a fan of my work for a while now.

 

[Strange Cat]

You would had though that the big review over the summer would had included the byes performances

The club did a lot right over the summer, it remains to be seen if this will include the finals post byes

 

[bulletproof]

The gist is he’s saying the players should take it on themselves to give up their bye period holidays to stay at the club and train.

If the aim was to win the game Vs Port, yes sure, stay and train. I think the aim was to mentally freshen up, as there is still a lot of football to be played.

I don't think we can judge the approach yet. Another loss this week, and you would have to say they dropped the ball by losing momentum but bounce back strongly and I think this loss will be forgotten about pretty quickly.

 

[Max Milburn]

The rest was factored in as part of our long term management.
Even if a group of seniors put their hands up and said "we should train', I doubt they would have let them.
It's clear that some are more concerned about this bye thing than others.
When you consider our current position, however, losing one game isn't a disaster taken in the context of player management as we head into the second half of the season.

 

[Max Milburn]

You would had though that the big review over the summer would had included the byes performances

The club did a lot right over the summer, it remains to be seen if this will include the finals post byes

A finals bye and a mid season bye can't really be compared.
There is no scheduled break for players in the finals.
But you are right, it remains to be seen.

 

[Vdubs]

Reports suggest the entire club basically goes into holiday mode for a week, including Cook who goes away for 2 weeks.
Clearly THAT'S the issue.
The positive is they don't do the same with the pre-finals bye. They all stay at the club and do what they should.
Atleast that's the positive I'm holding on to.

What's wrong with a well deserved week off? So what if it does add to the chance of a loss for THAT game? Isn't a mental and physical break worthwhile, and deserved, given there are potentially still 13 games to play?
I can cop the post bye loss every year if it is not reproduced at any other time.

 

[Vdubs]

You would had though that the big review over the summer would had included the byes performances

The club did a lot right over the summer, it remains to be seen if this will include the finals post byes

Do you think the expectation was to win 20, 21 games this year before finals?
Unrealistic expectations here by many.
We were beaten by a better team on the day, but we will live to play better games, and if not, well, we just aren't that great, bye or no bye.

 

[Mad_Hatter]

What's wrong with a well deserved week off? So what if it does add to the chance of a loss for THAT game? Isn't a mental and physical break worthwhile, and deserved, given there are potentially still 13 games to play?
I can cop the post bye loss every year if it is not reproduced at any other time.

"IF" being the operative word.
We won't know now until finals if it works or not.
I can easily see though that the last few years of having the break before finals has been a massive negative, we have usually been blown away in the first quarter due to lazy, slow football with zero intensity. Just like against Port.
You say well deserved week off, they have a few months off at the end of the year and there are arguments around the AFL currently that they "have too much free time" through-out the year, so no, a week off by the entire club half way through the year is NOT deserved. How would it be received if we missed top 4 by 1 game? Or missed finals by 1 game?

 

[Vdubs]

"IF" being the operative word.
We won't know now until finals if it works or not.
I can easily see though that the last few years of having the break before finals has been a massive negative, we have usually been blown away in the first quarter due to lazy, slow football with zero intensity. Just like against Port.
You say well deserved week off, they have a few months off at the end of the year and there are arguments around the AFL currently that they "have too much free time" through-out the year, so no, a week off by the entire club half way through the year is NOT deserved. How would it be received if we missed top 4 by 1 game? Or missed finals by 1 game?

Just not good enough, that's how I would receive it.
Every win is a blessing in this comp, and we've had a ridiculous number this year already. Expecting that to be the norm or the status quo is more ridiculous. We have made the most of our momentum. I now expect other teams with similar or more talent-yes MORE, like Melbourne, Port, etc, to have their own momentum. Let's see if they make the most of it.
There certainly is the need for a mental and physical break. Any contrary suggestion is a teaser.

 

[Nickoo]

Maybe Otto is just no good as a ruck coach?
Or maybe he is and the decision not to have him full time really has hurt us?

I do really wish we had gotten Dean Cox in.. Good outside voice for the coaches and able to look after our ruckman.

Agreed. Really good points. Scotty is placing pressure on the midfield coach who has been a standout underperformance so far, people have noted.

Stanley has to play above himself a bit to beat or break even so his inevitable dropoffs look more obvious in my opinion. I liked when Smith was in a few weeks ago and was a tad surprised they didn’t leave him another game. I thought we looked better in the centre winning taps to advantage.

They are staking allot on someone when the cracks are whipping has shown to fall apart. If we are going to do anything in the finals it’s going to be having players in the side who can turn the game and am worried we don’t have them. But then again I thought we didn’t lose ourselves and kept mucking in throughout sat which is a good sign.


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[Max Milburn]

Agreed. Really good points. Scotty is placing pressure on the midfield coach who has been a standout underperformance so far, people have noted.

Stanley has to play above himself a bit to beat or break even so his inevitable dropoffs look more obvious in my opinion. I liked when Smith was in a few weeks ago and was a tad surprised they didn’t leave him another game. I thought we looked better in the centre winning taps to advantage.

They are staking allot on someone when the cracks are whipping has shown to fall apart. If we are going to do anything in the finals it’s going to be having players in the side who can turn the game and am worried we don’t have them. But then again I thought we didn’t lose ourselves and kept mucking in throughout sat which is a good sign.


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Stanley's improvement has been very noticeable.
He isn't going to win every contest, but even against Port he put in and had good moments.
How he backs up this weeks will be instructive.

 

[Vdubs]

Another loss this week would still not spell doom and gloom; just reflecting we are in a really flat trough. It's the right time of year to go through this. I have vivid memories of our season 09, post loss to Saints. We were pretty flat for a while, and our excellent start got us into a top 4 position, then we peaked. And we had Ottens, but he did very little for a lot of 09.

 

[00VicWard001]

If the aim was to win the game Vs Port, yes sure, stay and train. I think the aim was to mentally freshen up, as there is still a lot of football to be played.

I don't think we can judge the approach yet. Another loss this week, and you would have to say they dropped the ball by losing momentum but bounce back strongly and I think this loss will be forgotten about pretty quickly.

This is very true. Paid commentators and even fans live week to week on a teams performance, they can only discuss what they have observed (I.e. what happened last weekend) and figure out why the team won or lost, nothing more.

Their specific journalist/commentator/talking head jobs, limited access to the teams strategy and potentially lack of capacity for insight simply doesn’t allow them to forecast into the future and work out why certain outcomes could happen based on decisions made (by the coaching team) on training loads, breaks, intensity, resting of players etc. this applies every week. They literally discuss injuries, current controversial topics, the coaches who are in the gun, the poor form of teams with large supporter groups. Breaking news is literally Damian Barrett going through someone’s garbage, checking the forums on BigFooty or being told something from a club ‘insider’ for an envelope of cash about Dale Thomas drinking at a VFL game. There is nothing truely insightful or new out there and really, there shouldn’t be, because even if there was, it would be a speculation at best.

 

[00VicWard001]

"IF" being the operative word.
We won't know now until finals if it works or not.
I can easily see though that the last few years of having the break before finals has been a massive negative, we have usually been blown away in the first quarter due to lazy, slow football with zero intensity. Just like against Port.
You say well deserved week off, they have a few months off at the end of the year and there are arguments around the AFL currently that they "have too much free time" through-out the year, so no, a week off by the entire club half way through the year is NOT deserved. How would it be received if we missed top 4 by 1 game? Or missed finals by 1 game?

Your post reminded me about something Chris Scott was saying. Something along the gist of: the bye isn’t the issue, rather losses are due to certain other similarities of momentum loss within the game itself.

The trend is not actually losing due to playing after a bye (which is such a ridiculously large variable that it just cannot be controlled - who you play, where, when, the team members, the players loads, where they went on holidays etc etc), rather it’s because we don’t crack in in the midfield when the game is there to be controlled or won.

It happened with Richmond and it happened with Port. With the Richmond game, I remember a player more or less saying after the game “we went back to our fundamentals and our midfield stepped up in that second quarter”.

 

[Nickoo]

Another loss this week would still not spell doom and gloom; just reflecting we are in a really flat trough. It's the right time of year to go through this. I have vivid memories of our season 09, post loss to Saints. We were pretty flat for a while, and our excellent start got us into a top 4 position, then we peaked. And we had Ottens, but he did very little for a lot of 09.

Absolutely and I remember against Melb(can’t remember if Melb were any good) that year a very dark day that without a brilliant effort from Corey would have seen us lose. Everyone was like oh no we’re finished this year. What’s going on, up in arms. No good. Bomber I remember said that they’d taken on a training load that flattened them out and that looked to be true come finals time as we were up and about.


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[BlakeyNoFlakey]

Kingy showed on AFL360 on Wednesday that Port's backman didn't get sucked up the ground and played one on one on our forwards to stop our new tactic, and it worked. This is going to be something the team will have to overcome because you can bet all teams will do this against us now.

 

[Baby Duck]

This is very true. Paid commentators and even fans live week to week on a teams performance, they can only discuss what they have observed (I.e. what happened last weekend) and figure out why the team won or lost, nothing more.

Their specific journalist/commentator/talking head jobs, limited access to the teams strategy and potentially lack of capacity for insight simply doesn’t allow them to forecast into the future and work out why certain outcomes could happen based on decisions made (by the coaching team) on training loads, breaks, intensity, resting of players etc. this applies every week. They literally discuss injuries, current controversial topics, the coaches who are in the gun, the poor form of teams with large supporter groups. Breaking news is literally Damian Barrett going through someone’s garbage, checking the forums on BigFooty or being told something from a club ‘insider’ for an envelope of cash about Dale Thomas drinking at a VFL game. There is nothing truely insightful or new out there and really, there shouldn’t be, because even if there was, it would be a speculation at best.

And to illustrate this, the AFL app had a video and quick clip with Buckley discussing Moore's new haircut. Riveting stuff.

On SM-G955F using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Landgraft]

Kingy showed on AFL360 on Wednesday that Port's backman didn't get sucked up the ground and played one on one on our forwards to stop our new tactic, and it worked. This is going to be something the team will have to overcome because you can bet all teams will do this against us now.

I think most of our forwards would relish the one on one contests.

Last week's main problem was the midfield. Sure the forwardline didn't cover their ass like they have some weeks, but the delivery was nowhere near up to scratch.

 

[Jhye Clark 13]

People still think the bye is the issue.

If the AFL had scheduled 5 of those games after the bye at KP instead of interstate we'd be lauding our performances coming off the bye.

Fact is Port are a good team who have some really talented footballers ... I guess excuses make losses easier to handle.