Review Round 11, 2022 - Brisbane Lions vs. GWS

[Mighty Lions]

I don't think the coaching staff would allow Joey to go anywhere near a ruck contest with his suspect shoulder...if that is what you are suggesting as a chopout for Big O to take a breather during a game.I think McStay is the only option if Fort is dropped. Eric to valuable to risk.

Not suggesting Joey give Big O a chop out however should his shoulder come up 100% after a few games back in the 22 he will be considered. McStay is the only other option but Fagan & Co will work out the best solution for sure.

 

[Nunez]

Not suggesting Joey give Big O a chop out however should his shoulder come up 100% after a few games back in the 22 he will be considered. McStay is the only other option but Fagan & Co will work out the best solution for sure.

I've liked McStays ruck work in the forward line. I think he'd be serviceable providing a chop out.

 

[Shaka7]

How times have changed! The narrative on the board fails to acknowledge the GWS team who showed up yesterday. They have a coaching team with something to prove and would have troubled many teams....I see them causing havoc in the coming weeks actually.

Yes, there were mistakes but that was because the opposition showed up with something to prove. Focusing on individual performances and highlighting negatives just takes away the togetherness that we seen as a club. That has been the point of difference the past few years....how many 1st rounders were in the GWS team compared to us?

 

[a mayes ing]

How times have changed! The narrative on the board fails to acknowledge the GWS team who showed up yesterday. They have a coaching team with something to prove and would have troubled many teams....I see them causing havoc in the coming weeks actually.

Yes, there were mistakes but that was because the opposition showed up with something to prove. Focusing on individual performances and highlighting negatives just takes away the togetherness that we seen as a club. That has been the point of difference the past few years....how many 1st rounders were in the GWS team compared to us?

I get that GWS showed up, but what annoys me is that the following week, they willl probably not be anywhere near as good. Hawthorn looked like superstars against us and lost to GC yesterday. For some reason, we seem to get the best out of teams.

 

[DevRoboGun]

I get that GWS showed up, but what annoys me is that the following week, they willl probably not be anywhere near as good. Hawthorn looked like superstars against us and lost to GC yesterday. For some reason, we seem to get the best out of teams.

Given this is our fourth season as a top 4 side , clubs really lift to play us, there's no doubt about it. That's what comes with being one of the best.

 

[Shaka7]

I get that GWS showed up, but what annoys me is that the following week, they willl probably not be anywhere near as good. Hawthorn looked like superstars against us and lost to GC yesterday. For some reason, we seem to get the best out of teams.

My point is that we seem to have become entitled as supporters with little or no regard for the opposition. Hawks game yesterday was under very different conditions. It's like comparing Freo's - Pies game to yesterday's, you wouldn't....

 

[knaf]

No doubt Darcy is out of form....cant argue with that. So what? Drop him some think? Wont happen. Everyone has a form slump once or twice in their life including myself & yourself and the ones that want him dropped. Good players like Gardner will fight his way through this and will help us win flag. Have faith like Fagan will have.

Not me. I’ve been in a form slump for over 60 years and nothing the coaches could do would get me out of it.

seriously though, I have been a Gardiner supporter for a number of years. He had two or three years when he should have been in discussion for AA in my opinion. However, again in my opinion he has not regained that level of performance since he has returned to the side. Completely understand why the coaches are giving him time, he has earns their trust, but at some point his performance becomes more tHan a form slump and can be attributed to other factors. Maybe a combination of injury wear and tear, and change of rule interpretation?

I’m not making that call. A number of posters were offering the opinion that Berry was not best 22/or would never reach his previous level. I was concerned about this as recently as two weeks ago.

The balLe in Gardiner’s court.

 

[The Flying Belgian]

So teams didn't try to / couldn't work our Harris when he was All Australian?

This isn't about opposition teams working anything out.

Of course they did, but it's not like a light-bulb goes off over their heads. Harris is definitely down on form a little and looks to be still carrying injury, but it's not all on him.

But the game has gotten quicker which means less time to zone off and read the play. Footy is different to 2 years ago. The teams who are able to implement effective pressure through the midfield are the ones who are able to slow down the game and restrict scoring. That's not us at the moment. Our mids are not defensive minded, which is kinda working at the moment as we're scoring enough for it not to matter, but when you play russian roulette enough at stoppages then you're going to get burnt occasionally. But to put the blame solely on the defensive unit for that is overly simplistic.

 

[Nathan Barley]

Agree our midfield is our weakness 100%. We don't seem to have players at the drop of the ball in center clearances at any time in any game at the moment.

The positive thing is its still May and we have plenty of time and improvement before the important stuff come late August/ September.

I see next weeks game as a real challenge for us as we have done a lot of miles in the last month and none bigger than a trip to Perth. We lose this game convincingly and watch everyone come out bagging us and giving us no chance come September. Love it when we prove every doubting thomas wrong...hate it when the current doubting thomas's jump on the wagon only when we win and their crappy bagging of players & the club quickly disappear.

Lyons is guilty of this. Always trails his opponent in. Racks up tackles this way but doesn’t win enough footy

 

[bungalow_bill]

We're sitting at 9/2 but it seems we have lots of problems.

I actually think we'll go better against stronger opposition

Let's see where we are after the next 3 games before jumping to any conclusions.

We do have an issue with centre clearances and don't seem to have anyone on the defensive side of the contest often enough to hurt us. I'm sure we'll be working on it for this week.

Losing the clearances yet still winning was a trait of the Tigers flag winning teams

 

[Brett C]

Lyons is guilty of this. Always trails his opponent in. Racks up tackles this way but doesn’t win enough footy

Funny that Lyons is sitting 2nd for centre clearances ahead of Neale and 13th for stoppage clearances while also being top 30 for contested possessions.

Tells me he can win plenty of the footy and not just tackle.

 

[Dalions]

Funny that Lyons is sitting 2nd for centre clearances ahead of Neale and 13th for stoppage clearances while also being top 30 for contested possessions.

Tells me he can win plenty of the footy and not just tackle.

He can win the footy, he can tackle when the ball is in contested situations but on the spread away from contest he is a liability defensively.

 

[Harry Haller]

Godd win from a slow start. Berry, Neale, Coleman, Dev, Rayner, Linc, and Charlie the standouts. Liked Prior's game also. Hippy building and Dan better for the run. I thought the ruck dept were both good.

Things to work on-
I would like Harris to tighten the leg rope given to his opponent. It is fine to try and intercept but on two many occasions has a three metre starting gap been turned into six metres without him quite realising. Certainly not a good tactic if the player you are giving that position to is standing fat side and his end point is directly in front 15-20 from goal. It happened this week but has happened enough throughout the year to suggest it is a weakness.

I know there is probably a lot of love here for Noah and I love his attack on the contest and competitive nature. Both his disposal and tackling technique need refinement though. A simple thing he could fix easily is his technique when kicking from a mark or free kick. He seems to get back off the mark and kick while his momentum is still moving back. The old off one step scenario. The best kicks can get away with that more often but I feel like this decreases kicking accuracy in the majority of instances and if kicking is not your major strength to start with you are making the task much harder for yourself. On the tackling, he just seems to go so hard that he gives more high contact frees than your average player, might be wrong just feels that way to me.

 

[dlanod]

Funny that Lyons is sitting 2nd for centre clearances ahead of Neale and 13th for stoppage clearances while also being top 30 for contested possessions.

Tells me he can win plenty of the footy and not just tackle.

Lyons benefits from playing second fiddle to Neale fairly drastically though. A lot of the time Neale will be the one to win the ball, and handball it to Lyons who gets the clearance. Being in a position to receive and clear still takes talent and game awareness, but he's not necessarily winning the ball in the traditional sense.

 

[Tom14]

Lyons benefits from playing second fiddle to Neale fairly drastically though. A lot of the time Neale will be the one to win the ball, and handball it to Lyons who gets the clearance. Being in a position to receive and clear still takes talent and game awareness, but he's not necessarily winning the ball in the traditional sense.

His type of clearances tend to be get ball and immediately kick forward - which is still valuable - but he doesn’t drive the legs and take territory like Lachie.

It’s an interesting one, I don’t think we should drop him because I’m not sure clug or dev will pick up the slack of his clearances but he’s not quite the player he was from 19-21 so far this year.

 

[On the quiet]

I will start by saying I am a lifetime Lions Supporter with over 65 years of supporting them. Part of last season I have criticised Players and Coaches performances and have done the same this season up till now. I think I have become a pessimist when it comes to the Lions with my criticism. We all know what our weaknesses are and what is required when players are not performing for whatever reason and what the Coaches need to address. Whether that happens it is up to them but I would say once you are entrenched in the side, it is is like the once Australian Cricket sides where you never get displaced due to poor form, etc. With all the games so far this year IMO we have not played a good 4 quarters, if any. All I see and hear is we have won ugly, is that what we want to continue to see? Yes, a win is a win but at present on some of our performances they are lack lustre against lower sides. Positives yesterday were the performances of Neale, Berry, Rayner, Coleman (beautiful disposal) and the Dev's great performance. This boy has a lot of skill and needs to be continually played. I believe when he came on the ground the side lifted through his hungry endeavour, tenacity and his natural ability. There is the old saying: Football is a game with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up. So this relates too: MiNDSET. Once our Mindset is positive, everything flows in a positive way. On our previous performances our Mindset is not there. Some of the opposition clubs have it at present, it shows. It only shows with us spasmodically.

Congrats on such a long affiliation. Also well said above. There is a recent world #1 batsmen that only got a test debut because Steve Smith missed an English test with concussion, sometimes the solution is readily available.

 

[martinson]

He can win the footy, he can tackle when the ball is in contested situations but on the spread away from contest he is a liability defensively.

We've known this for some time . I presume we're working on him or the structure or both to lessen the liability.

 

[Nathan Barley]

Funny that Lyons is sitting 2nd for centre clearances ahead of Neale and 13th for stoppage clearances while also being top 30 for contested possessions.

Tells me he can win plenty of the footy and not just tackle.

He does well often in the second half when we have open the game up

Again it should be noted we have a lot more centre clearances in our games than other teams. Look at the last 2 weeks

 

[martinson]

For us if Neale doesn't win the clearance it's either McInerny punching it forward or Neale handballing or pushing it on it to someone ,often Lyons.

Good point as well re the number of goals kicked in our games. We could be winning more centre clearances than other teams but still be below par percentage wise.

 

[The Zork]

I get that GWS showed up, but what annoys me is that the following week, they willl probably not be anywhere near as good. Hawthorn looked like superstars against us and lost to GC yesterday. For some reason, we seem to get the best out of teams.

Other way to look at it is, and I’m of this train of thought - are we just an easy team to play against?
We certainly allow opposition extended periods of dominance that produce chances.
I think our potent forward line has outweighed our impotency down back, just.
And hence we are winning games, just.

 

[dlanod]

For us if Neale doesn't win the clearance it's either McInerny punching it forward or Neale handballing or pushing it on it to someone ,often Lyons.

Good point as well re the number of goals kicked in our games. We could be winning more centre clearances than other teams but still be below par percentage wise.

Obviously not so much this week, but McCluggage collecting and weaving through traffic should be added to that list at a minimum.

 

[Lion_LegacyXL]

Other way to look at it is, and I’m of this train of thought - are we just an easy team to play against?
We certainly allow opposition extended periods of dominance that produce chances.
I think our potent forward line has outweighed our impotency down back, just.
And hence we are winning games, just.

The way I see it it's mostly an attitude & mindset thing. Comparing our initial 15-20 minutes to the rest of the game was night & day.

 

[martinson]

Other way to look at it is, and I’m of this train of thought - are we just an easy team to play against?
We certainly allow opposition extended periods of dominance that produce chances.
I think our potent forward line has outweighed our impotency down back, just.
And hence we are winning games, just.

The point is that we are winning games.

If we play better teams and can't win them regularly then we can analyse what the problems are.

In the meantime our problems are most times less than those of the teams we're playing against . And not much worse when we do lose which so far have been 2 games that we could've won.

 

[martinson]

Reading this thread it's a wonder we win any games. Our rucks are below average and hit it anywhere ,our M/F is ordinary and get or will get belted most of the time and our backline is a rabble. Plus we're really slow.

It seems the forward line escapes too much scrutiny . They're cool.

My only observation is that if we find it hard to fit players in like Dev and Tommy Berry we're not travelling too badly.

 

[Nunez]

Other way to look at it is, and I’m of this train of thought - are we just an easy team to play against?
We certainly allow opposition extended periods of dominance that produce chances.
I think our potent forward line has outweighed our impotency down back, just.
And hence we are winning games, just.

Given we're 9-2 I'm not sure we're an easy team to play against. I think we invite teams to play us at our game but ultimately they can't maintain it near as long as us - which is why we are not only winning but have a strong %. If we can suck teams into playing the game on our terms, we'll win more often than not as we've seen.

And to top it off - we're only one win behind the "unbeatable" Melbourne Demon's.