Spot on. Everyone can bang on about how useless our rucks were (and they were considering the oppo), but we did win the hitouts by a bit. There's simply no excuse for the wooden spooners to be able to waltz out of clearances as easily and often as they were. They weren't getting silver service from a gun ruck, at best it was 50/50 once it hit the deck and they still pulverised our mids.
Theres something seriously wrong with the way we setup. And Simmo can bang on about effort as much as he wants but it's not like it was a once off. If the players are continually not giving enough effort, drop them or change it up.
Feel like there's still a feeling of when Nic comes back it'll all be good, we really need to get past that imo
(Having said that, I do look forward to at some stage this year having a centre square of Nic ,Yeo, Culley and Ginbey)
It’s not just set-up, it is first and second movements once the ball is in play also.
Too often all of the players either get sucked in towards the contest (we win ball, handball to a guy still within the contest and under pressure, or they win ball and scrub it to free players on the outside who have seemingly unlimited time).
The other favourite of this group is to keep space but in a line (essentially parallel with the goal line). If we win the ball it can work (overlap), if we don’t it is a recipe for disaster as the opposition just need to get 1 player through (noting we are terrible tacklers also) and they are running forward uncontested.
We are desperate for defensive mids. Ginbey shows those traits, as do Yeo and Culley. But we also need to see structural changes in stoppage coaching. It seems insane we keep getting beaten the same way, surely we are trying to change that (so is it the players, or the coaches, who are not fully understanding the severity of the issues?!)
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