ZoBlitz
The Ghost Who Walks
- Moderator
- #1
Like every year I don't really have an excuse about why this is so late. I even had multiple non-working days since we played Collingwood to write this up. And I'm even later than usual! And to cement that laziness, I'm re-using a GIF I made for my 2022 preview!
I blame Simon Goodwin really. While Goodwin wouldn't have been sacked even if the Demons had lost last week, the pressure would have ramped up with Melbourne sitting 0-6 and I've been doing this game long enough to know how useful tangential references are to pad this preview out to its required length. I've only just returned from a lovely trip to South Australia and the last thing I'd want to do is remember that Ross Lyon exists and is still involved in football.
I mean despite all that, I even watched a St. Kilda game on purpose and not because it happened to be on in pub while I was there. I regretted my decision pretty quickly as the Saints started losing the contest and Ross did what he does best and just completely clogged up the defence. I managed to get through a half before I tapped out and I probably should have watched the Kayo mini of the game prior to starting this preview, but it's not as if I like watching the Bulldogs either.
One thing to start with is don't be deceived by the unusual number of goals that the Saints had managed to score so far this season prior to getting beaten by the Bulldogs last week. It's been highly inflated by the 135 points that the Saints managed to put past Richmond. In the last 100 games that Ross Lyon has coached, his team has only scored more than 130 once: 141 (Fremantle vs. North Melbourne, 2019). These kinds of scores are rare enough for teams that aim to kick a lot of goals as a general plan and even then, you only really see big numbers like these against historically terrible sides (and sides in temporary multi-year slumps like us). Don't be fooled, stretches of high scores and entertaining football will not last with Ross Lyon in charge.
Related to this, I was exceptionally disappointed on a fundamental level that the Saints re-signed Ross, so we are forced to watch him attempt to ruin football until the end of 2027, barring any unfortunate (to Ross at least) circumstances. Only positive is that Ross is just 20 games away from setting a new record for games coached without winning a premiership (beating a fellow ruiner of football, Rodney Eade). I do hope that he can survive until then and I think I'll enjoy a well-deserved break from writing up previews for at least a season if that happens. Or run a highlights package cobbled together from my previous previews.
I am feeling pretty chill after my holiday in South Australia and pleased with myself that I didn't cut it short to race up for the Collingwood game so I think I can probably avoid expressing the full ZoBlitz opinion on Ross Lyon in this preview [Edit: This turned out to a be a big lie anyway].
What do I know about St.Kilda this season that I haven't made up from my biases against Ross Lyon? I do know that Jack Macrae has started the season well after his move from the Bulldogs now that he can play his favoured role as a midfielder, rather than being one of the many midfielders shoved into the Bulldogs lineup to play as a spare ruckman or a forward that doesn't kick many goals, although he's been quieter in the last couple of weeks. He has double the number of clearances and twenty more contested possessions than the next Saints player. There is a suggestion that between Jack Steele, Macrae and Marcus Windhager the Saints midfield is perhaps a little one-paced, especially with Jack Sinclair not spending much time through the middle so far this season. Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera getting some time in the middle through the third quarter last week might be the start of an experiment to mix up the Saints midfield that we may see again this weekend.
With the handicap of playing under Ross Lyon already affecting the ability of St.Kilda to regularly score goals, they have the added difficulty of Max King continuing to struggle with his knee injury and with Membrey off to pastures new, they've been dependent on Jack Higgins and his career-best average of almost three goals a game this season to generate goals this year. Mitch Owens has also started the year well and there's a range of other contributors who've managed to put a score on the board despite the inherent difficulties of doing so in a Ross Lyon team.
Defence is boring to talk about, especially in a Ross Lyon team, but Callum Wilkie is a quality key defender, and he'll provide difficulties for whichever Lions forward he lines up against. Sinclair and Wanganeen-Milera do provide some level of excitement coming out of defence and hopefully they'll eventually move to a side where that's appreciated. The Saints have been easier to score against this season than is usual for a Ross Lyon side and you have to go back to late 2018 for a Ross team to concede more than 100 points in three games out of six. And we've managed to kick 19 goals in both games we've played against the Saints last year.
St.Kilda will be looking to bounce back after being dominated by the Bulldogs despite a strong start where they kicked four of the first five goals of the game. Apparently, "a Ross Lyon side hasn't been belted like this, ever" which shows you that their 85 point loss nine games ago was actually a much better performance by St.Kilda than the pure stats would lead you to believe. I really need to rewatch that game to check. The Saints will want to get some consistency back in their season which has involved good wins against Geelong and Port but poorer performances against Adelaide and the Bulldogs.
Ok, so I think I've pretended to know enough about St.Kilda to justify this as a "preview" rather than me "wasting everybody's time telling poor quality jokes about Ross Lyon" but we should move onto how the Lions have been travelling this season.
It's been an odd start to the season in some ways as we've converted ourselves from being a first quarter specialist team, that was the case for most of last year, to a third and fourth quarter team, usually running down big leads in the process. Before the loss against Collingwood, we managed to equal the VFL/AFL record by coming back to win in our last eight games when trailing at half time set by Carlton back in 1909-10. Which is pretty nifty, just saying.
The flip side of this amazing record is the fact that we've needed to chase down significant leads in four of our five wins this season, on the back of some weak quarters in the first half. I mean, in an ideal world you'd want to play consistently well all game, so you're not required to have to chase down teams at all. Maybe the side craves the thrill of the chase after the semi and prelim finals last year? I know I could go for simply belting sides from beginning to end, even if that is too "old school" for modern football.
So, what's the real dealio? Why are we struggling to play a consistent four quarter performance? Is it our midfield dropping off in periods of games and oppositions taking advantage of that? I was going to do a "deep dive" aka find clearance and contested possession stats comparing our first to our second halves that someone had already published online and plagiarise it but unfortunately no one seems to have made the effort to do that, and I can’t be bothered doing the research. But I’m assuming we’ll look weaker in those areas in first halves compared to the second. And that's almost as good as providing actual stats!
The midfield, when they've been on, have looked good with a particularly strong start to the season by Hugh McCluggage who's averaging career best disposals, tackles, clearances, inside 50s and contested possessions. Similarly, Josh Dunkley is averaging career best tackles and clearances. And Will continues his improvement by increasing his average disposal, contested possessions and clearances. Lachie has been the most inconsistent of the main midfield group, being reduced to 10 possessions through a strong tag by James Jordan, which is his lowest possession count as a Brisbane Lion and he hasn't always been at his effective best this season. I will say that Lachie's recent comments coming out against the abuse players have received online following the Collingwood game means I'm going to hit him up to join as a moderator on here once he retires. His GIF game probably isn't as good as mine though…
Looking purely at team statistics, as a whole we seem to have gone backwards in terms of clearance differential (2nd last year to 5th this year) and in contested possessions (1st to 6th) which has probably led to our drop in inside 50s (2nd to 6th). That might not necessarily be a complete disaster in itself but how has our forward line been going?
Iffy is probably the best description. Apart from Zac Bailey's super start to the year and Logan’s natural improvement after a strong first season as a key forward, there's been some issues. Kai has been injured, Cal's had some good games mixed in with quiet ones, Cam's had cameos but hasn't put it all together, Charlie has been struggling and Hippy's Bulldogs game sums up our inconsistency with his one kick in the first half followed by five goals straight in the second. It's just not clicking together as smoothly as you'd hope and compared to last year where we were the third best team in the league for generating shots on goal from an inside 50 entry, we're sitting fourteenth this season. Last week against Collingwood we had the combination of not being able to generate inside 50s and when we did, they were from slow movement along the wings followed by a long kick to no one.
Just to pause here, I'm still talking about a team that won its first five games in a season for the first time since Fitzroy did it in 1948. It's a great sign that we've been able to win games despite all this and suggests that we've got a higher ceiling of performance that we haven't reached yet.
Sam Day has become the ceremonial whipping boy in the forward line but as I've mentioned in my forays into the gameday threads, I don't think he's our main issue in the games where we've struggled early (or just generally last week). I also think Day has improved week-on-week with him being one of the better performers against Collingwood. The reality is that currently we don't have a replacement for him with Henry Smith, who I highly rate, having concussion concerns recently and Ty Gallop probably not ready yet to take the step up, especially considering he'd be playing as the chop-out ruckman. I look forward to none of this changing anyone’s mind and 80% of the gameday thread being calls to drop him regardless of the situation.
Our defence has done its best to make up for the lapses in performance by the midfield and the forward line, with Harris being Harris, Jack being Jack or Jackson (depending on who you talk to) minus those horrendous defensive turnovers ala Jason Roe and Ryan Harwood of days of yore and Lester being steady as usual. Starcevich being out has been a big loss as we don't have a comparable lockdown small defender on the list at this stage and while Jaspa Fletcher has done well to pitch in down back (and has been generally excellent this season), his skills are probably better suited to a rebounding, running role than a defensive stopper. Noah has also stepped it up with some quality performances and to his credit his disposal skills continue to improve, which had been a knock on him in previous years. With Zorko's credits in the bank, you can even forgive his grumpy old man behaviour from last week. And let's be honest, in his younger days he would have found a way to get himself suspended as well…
While winning five games we've also found a way to blood some new players in Levi and Will McLachlan and Sam Marshall. Don't quote me on it but I reckon Levi may end up being quite good. Keep that to yourself though. Will "I'm not calling him Shagga" McLachlan has shown enough to think he'll get more games this season if there are any future openings in the senior side. And if we start to really struggle in the midfield, we can always
Was that whole paragraph purely a build up for that weak, dare I call it, joke? Yes.
I'm willing to write off last week's performance as one of those nights where nothing went right and we paid the piper for the short break and another game played in hot conditions the previous week. You would think the extra few days break will freshen up the team and have them firing up for this week. Hopefully we can continue our winning streak away from home where we've won the last six games away from home.
So, where's the game to be won and lost against the Saints? Well, I would expect Windhager to tag Lachie so it'll be up to the other guys in the midfield to generate attacking movement. The Bulldogs have shown us the plan to beat the Saints as they murdered them around the stoppages which generated a huge number of inside 50s. I'd rate our forward line over the Bulldogs so if we can get the ball there enough, we can kick a winning score. If we can keep Higgins quiet, I think the Saints will struggle to kick a winning score. But I generally think that anyway with Ross Lyon coached sides.
Lions by 24.
I blame Simon Goodwin really. While Goodwin wouldn't have been sacked even if the Demons had lost last week, the pressure would have ramped up with Melbourne sitting 0-6 and I've been doing this game long enough to know how useful tangential references are to pad this preview out to its required length. I've only just returned from a lovely trip to South Australia and the last thing I'd want to do is remember that Ross Lyon exists and is still involved in football.
I mean despite all that, I even watched a St. Kilda game on purpose and not because it happened to be on in pub while I was there. I regretted my decision pretty quickly as the Saints started losing the contest and Ross did what he does best and just completely clogged up the defence. I managed to get through a half before I tapped out and I probably should have watched the Kayo mini of the game prior to starting this preview, but it's not as if I like watching the Bulldogs either.
One thing to start with is don't be deceived by the unusual number of goals that the Saints had managed to score so far this season prior to getting beaten by the Bulldogs last week. It's been highly inflated by the 135 points that the Saints managed to put past Richmond. In the last 100 games that Ross Lyon has coached, his team has only scored more than 130 once: 141 (Fremantle vs. North Melbourne, 2019). These kinds of scores are rare enough for teams that aim to kick a lot of goals as a general plan and even then, you only really see big numbers like these against historically terrible sides (and sides in temporary multi-year slumps like us). Don't be fooled, stretches of high scores and entertaining football will not last with Ross Lyon in charge.
Related to this, I was exceptionally disappointed on a fundamental level that the Saints re-signed Ross, so we are forced to watch him attempt to ruin football until the end of 2027, barring any unfortunate (to Ross at least) circumstances. Only positive is that Ross is just 20 games away from setting a new record for games coached without winning a premiership (beating a fellow ruiner of football, Rodney Eade). I do hope that he can survive until then and I think I'll enjoy a well-deserved break from writing up previews for at least a season if that happens. Or run a highlights package cobbled together from my previous previews.
I am feeling pretty chill after my holiday in South Australia and pleased with myself that I didn't cut it short to race up for the Collingwood game so I think I can probably avoid expressing the full ZoBlitz opinion on Ross Lyon in this preview [Edit: This turned out to a be a big lie anyway].
What do I know about St.Kilda this season that I haven't made up from my biases against Ross Lyon? I do know that Jack Macrae has started the season well after his move from the Bulldogs now that he can play his favoured role as a midfielder, rather than being one of the many midfielders shoved into the Bulldogs lineup to play as a spare ruckman or a forward that doesn't kick many goals, although he's been quieter in the last couple of weeks. He has double the number of clearances and twenty more contested possessions than the next Saints player. There is a suggestion that between Jack Steele, Macrae and Marcus Windhager the Saints midfield is perhaps a little one-paced, especially with Jack Sinclair not spending much time through the middle so far this season. Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera getting some time in the middle through the third quarter last week might be the start of an experiment to mix up the Saints midfield that we may see again this weekend.
With the handicap of playing under Ross Lyon already affecting the ability of St.Kilda to regularly score goals, they have the added difficulty of Max King continuing to struggle with his knee injury and with Membrey off to pastures new, they've been dependent on Jack Higgins and his career-best average of almost three goals a game this season to generate goals this year. Mitch Owens has also started the year well and there's a range of other contributors who've managed to put a score on the board despite the inherent difficulties of doing so in a Ross Lyon team.
Defence is boring to talk about, especially in a Ross Lyon team, but Callum Wilkie is a quality key defender, and he'll provide difficulties for whichever Lions forward he lines up against. Sinclair and Wanganeen-Milera do provide some level of excitement coming out of defence and hopefully they'll eventually move to a side where that's appreciated. The Saints have been easier to score against this season than is usual for a Ross Lyon side and you have to go back to late 2018 for a Ross team to concede more than 100 points in three games out of six. And we've managed to kick 19 goals in both games we've played against the Saints last year.
St.Kilda will be looking to bounce back after being dominated by the Bulldogs despite a strong start where they kicked four of the first five goals of the game. Apparently, "a Ross Lyon side hasn't been belted like this, ever" which shows you that their 85 point loss nine games ago was actually a much better performance by St.Kilda than the pure stats would lead you to believe. I really need to rewatch that game to check. The Saints will want to get some consistency back in their season which has involved good wins against Geelong and Port but poorer performances against Adelaide and the Bulldogs.
Ok, so I think I've pretended to know enough about St.Kilda to justify this as a "preview" rather than me "wasting everybody's time telling poor quality jokes about Ross Lyon" but we should move onto how the Lions have been travelling this season.
It's been an odd start to the season in some ways as we've converted ourselves from being a first quarter specialist team, that was the case for most of last year, to a third and fourth quarter team, usually running down big leads in the process. Before the loss against Collingwood, we managed to equal the VFL/AFL record by coming back to win in our last eight games when trailing at half time set by Carlton back in 1909-10. Which is pretty nifty, just saying.
The flip side of this amazing record is the fact that we've needed to chase down significant leads in four of our five wins this season, on the back of some weak quarters in the first half. I mean, in an ideal world you'd want to play consistently well all game, so you're not required to have to chase down teams at all. Maybe the side craves the thrill of the chase after the semi and prelim finals last year? I know I could go for simply belting sides from beginning to end, even if that is too "old school" for modern football.
So, what's the real dealio? Why are we struggling to play a consistent four quarter performance? Is it our midfield dropping off in periods of games and oppositions taking advantage of that? I was going to do a "deep dive" aka find clearance and contested possession stats comparing our first to our second halves that someone had already published online and plagiarise it but unfortunately no one seems to have made the effort to do that, and I can’t be bothered doing the research. But I’m assuming we’ll look weaker in those areas in first halves compared to the second. And that's almost as good as providing actual stats!
The midfield, when they've been on, have looked good with a particularly strong start to the season by Hugh McCluggage who's averaging career best disposals, tackles, clearances, inside 50s and contested possessions. Similarly, Josh Dunkley is averaging career best tackles and clearances. And Will continues his improvement by increasing his average disposal, contested possessions and clearances. Lachie has been the most inconsistent of the main midfield group, being reduced to 10 possessions through a strong tag by James Jordan, which is his lowest possession count as a Brisbane Lion and he hasn't always been at his effective best this season. I will say that Lachie's recent comments coming out against the abuse players have received online following the Collingwood game means I'm going to hit him up to join as a moderator on here once he retires. His GIF game probably isn't as good as mine though…
Looking purely at team statistics, as a whole we seem to have gone backwards in terms of clearance differential (2nd last year to 5th this year) and in contested possessions (1st to 6th) which has probably led to our drop in inside 50s (2nd to 6th). That might not necessarily be a complete disaster in itself but how has our forward line been going?
Iffy is probably the best description. Apart from Zac Bailey's super start to the year and Logan’s natural improvement after a strong first season as a key forward, there's been some issues. Kai has been injured, Cal's had some good games mixed in with quiet ones, Cam's had cameos but hasn't put it all together, Charlie has been struggling and Hippy's Bulldogs game sums up our inconsistency with his one kick in the first half followed by five goals straight in the second. It's just not clicking together as smoothly as you'd hope and compared to last year where we were the third best team in the league for generating shots on goal from an inside 50 entry, we're sitting fourteenth this season. Last week against Collingwood we had the combination of not being able to generate inside 50s and when we did, they were from slow movement along the wings followed by a long kick to no one.
Just to pause here, I'm still talking about a team that won its first five games in a season for the first time since Fitzroy did it in 1948. It's a great sign that we've been able to win games despite all this and suggests that we've got a higher ceiling of performance that we haven't reached yet.
Sam Day has become the ceremonial whipping boy in the forward line but as I've mentioned in my forays into the gameday threads, I don't think he's our main issue in the games where we've struggled early (or just generally last week). I also think Day has improved week-on-week with him being one of the better performers against Collingwood. The reality is that currently we don't have a replacement for him with Henry Smith, who I highly rate, having concussion concerns recently and Ty Gallop probably not ready yet to take the step up, especially considering he'd be playing as the chop-out ruckman. I look forward to none of this changing anyone’s mind and 80% of the gameday thread being calls to drop him regardless of the situation.
Our defence has done its best to make up for the lapses in performance by the midfield and the forward line, with Harris being Harris, Jack being Jack or Jackson (depending on who you talk to) minus those horrendous defensive turnovers ala Jason Roe and Ryan Harwood of days of yore and Lester being steady as usual. Starcevich being out has been a big loss as we don't have a comparable lockdown small defender on the list at this stage and while Jaspa Fletcher has done well to pitch in down back (and has been generally excellent this season), his skills are probably better suited to a rebounding, running role than a defensive stopper. Noah has also stepped it up with some quality performances and to his credit his disposal skills continue to improve, which had been a knock on him in previous years. With Zorko's credits in the bank, you can even forgive his grumpy old man behaviour from last week. And let's be honest, in his younger days he would have found a way to get himself suspended as well…
While winning five games we've also found a way to blood some new players in Levi and Will McLachlan and Sam Marshall. Don't quote me on it but I reckon Levi may end up being quite good. Keep that to yourself though. Will "I'm not calling him Shagga" McLachlan has shown enough to think he'll get more games this season if there are any future openings in the senior side. And if we start to really struggle in the midfield, we can always
Was that whole paragraph purely a build up for that weak, dare I call it, joke? Yes.
I'm willing to write off last week's performance as one of those nights where nothing went right and we paid the piper for the short break and another game played in hot conditions the previous week. You would think the extra few days break will freshen up the team and have them firing up for this week. Hopefully we can continue our winning streak away from home where we've won the last six games away from home.
So, where's the game to be won and lost against the Saints? Well, I would expect Windhager to tag Lachie so it'll be up to the other guys in the midfield to generate attacking movement. The Bulldogs have shown us the plan to beat the Saints as they murdered them around the stoppages which generated a huge number of inside 50s. I'd rate our forward line over the Bulldogs so if we can get the ball there enough, we can kick a winning score. If we can keep Higgins quiet, I think the Saints will struggle to kick a winning score. But I generally think that anyway with Ross Lyon coached sides.
Lions by 24.
I will thank you wholeheartedly for doing this preview - there is no way I could bring myself to write about him as much as you did.
