Scores late in quarters

[Blueboy3]

Not sure if its thread worthy but after watching the replay of mondays game and seeing the oposition being able to convert goals late in quarters i did abit of research to see whether run out quarters as well as our opposition. Given we are regarded as one of the fittest sides in the comp i would have thought we would run out both games and quarters better than our opposition. For the sake of the discussion i treated "red time" as less than 5 minutes of playing time before the end of the quarter.

Carl 3.8
Stk 6.0

Carl 3.7
Gws 3.0

Carl 2.1
Frem 3.4

Carl 1.4
Ess 5.7

Carl 7.3
Coll 4.3

Carl 5.3
Bris 5.1

Carl 4.4
Rich 3.2

For a total of
Carl 25.30
Opposition 29.17

We've had more shots late in quarters but converted less goals, and are going at significantly less than our opponents, is it coincidence or does something cause us to leak goals moreso relative to the rest of the game.

Most worrying for mine if you look at the last month in isolation
Carl 6.20
Stk 17.11

Welcome to pick this apart as even i question the statistical relevance, but seeing as i got the info i thought id share it.

 

[Blueboy3]

One last one too, of the goals we have conceed this year, 37% of them occur in the last 5 minutes of playing time. While we only score 22% of our goals in the same time.

 

[The Old Dark Navy's]

The red time goals vs the Saints were particularly harmful and obvious. Fight all quarter to get back to a goal behind, then in a minute you go into the break 3 goals down. Hell, one of them was with 2 seconds left. Some extra bodies pushing into defence deep into quarters is commonplace usually.

 

[95blues]

I'm pretty sure that for the past 5 years or so, we have been the absolute champions at allowing the opposition to score late in quarters. In particular the last 30 secs to a minute. I dont think a game goes by for us without that happening.

I think it was in the 2nd or 3rd against the saints with 26 secs to go and BT says "only the Blues have enough time to score here" or something like that. My response to BT was "you havent watched many Blues games BT..." and bang.

Every single game. Very frustrating.

 

[Jeremias]

It's a serious concern, but it's nothing new.

We've been letting teams score late in quarters for quite some time now, a number of seasons in fact.

It's not every game, but when it does happen it's just so disheartening.

Why it happens, is purely speculative. It could be complacency, it could be running out of steam or it could be something else. It's somewhat of an unknown. What we do know is that it can seriously deflate a team after 25+ minutes of good work to let a few cheap ones through the gates. Must be ironed out sooner rather than later - this is too important a game to bust your gut for 25 minutes only to have all the good work undone by a minute or two of dropping off.

 

[Peete]

Good observations on late goals against us- the St Kilda game was full of them - quite a few however on rebound from behinds. Look at our point scoring averages - our accuracy is getting worse - far too many behinds.

This means a lot of the time - our forward press is failing to stop the rebound late in a quarter - after we score a behind.

I wonder how many of these behinds are an outcome of specky shots in the first place. Better to lock the ball deep in opposiiton half than give them an easy out with only a point cost.

St Kilda loss was painful to watch - so many fumbles so much attention paid to Kosi and Reiwoldt - leaving whole center of ground wide open to their smalls enjoying easy kick and gathers into wide open space.

We have gone too far down the path of never moind what the oppossition scores - we will score more. Thast why we look 'soft' - it is because we take teh attacking option every time- irrepsective of field position or game situation. When this is working and we are destroying weaker teams - we look great.

As soon as we miss shots we set up easy rebound - for large parts of teh game agianst St Kilda - we had no forward press set up to stop them exiting their 50 - a really weird game plan.

Both St Kilda and Essendon somehow openned up the whole center of the ground - for easy passges direct to goal - using faster players.

In todauy's game - defence is often put under extreme presure - from failed attacks and turnovers. Without a structured defensive line - a behind can often be a trurnover.

 

[95blues]

What i find most frustrating is that our forward half is always so crowded but the oppositions is always usually 3v3?

 

[Peete]

What i find most frustrating is that our forward half is always so crowded but the oppositions is always usually 3v3?

Teams have figured out how to stop our fast breaks - in simpel terms - they are ALL playing behind the ball at bounces. They have 2+ players we have to get through 10-20 meters ahead of us -classic umbrella defence. Thsi leaves them able to play man on man deeper as you point out. Often our outside players are unmarked but in uselwss positions - outside teh area where teh fight for ball is on.

 

[gbatman]

Have been thinking about this one myself, we do often concede goals late in quarters. My theory is that we are far too dependant on running and have to work harder and run more than other sides for the same return to make up for our poor contested game and lack of strong solid core players.

We wear out more than other sides and when things slow down for us we are hurt more than most other sides for the reason i mentioned above.

We are far to dependant on space and running and when this breaks down either to late quarter fatigue or opposition tactics we are basically useless.

We need to play a less demanding game style and look to minimise pointless running in our game as well as reducing the ammount of hard running we have to do. we need to do this by winning more center clearances. Having to attack from defence all the time is taxing on the players. Improve how we lock the ball in the forward line so we can slow things down that way and so we aren't being asked to get back quickly as often. We must slow the opposition's movement forward or prevent them doing so.

So basically we are working too hard, running too much and not taking enough shortcuts by having a game style completly dependant on run and speed which also happens to be easy to shut down by blocking up the space and forcing a contested style of game which we are no good at playing but must be good at to win a premiership.

 

[Blueboy3]

My theory is that we are far too dependant on running and have to work harder and run more than other sides for the same return to make up for our poor contested game and lack of strong solid core players.

Would explain our inaccuracies late in quarters. It would be great to have a look at the spread of where opposition shots on goal are taken late in quarters. Similar to the images you get of where Franklin takes his shots from the pockets. Any idea where you would find such information?

 

[gbatman]

That info does exist, not sure where to get it, but it could suggest a lot of things.

1. When we go long we go to the pockets any way. Not sure why, but I think it has a lot to do with preventing the opposition from rebounding efficiantly but we still allowed them to switch play and come out with ease any way which was really poor. I think we are also backing ourselves from scoring from throwins. Not sure I agree with this. Every club John Barker has been at, the ball has been directed towards the pockets.

2. We lack decent tall targets, we don't go in very straight.

 

[Big Sim]

The red time goals vs the Saints were particularly harmful and obvious. Fight all quarter to get back to a goal behind, then in a minute you go into the break 3 goals down. Hell, one of them was with 2 seconds left. Some extra bodies pushing into defence deep into quarters is commonplace usually.

Absolutely killed us to the point that this was largely where the game was lost. The momentum shifted late in the first quarter and we never regained it.

For all the gnashing of teeth and rabid frothing about this loss, we actually had more scoring shots and could have won it if a couple of our better and senior players had stood up when it counted. Our lesser lights have largely taken the blame and its a bum rap IMO.

 

[Peete]

All the metro males in the team are worried about their hair gel situation late in every quarter- running adds to risk of hair getting messy - just like tackling and going for ball do too...risk a photo opportunitywith bad hair on public display thios woudl contravene player manager and agent and PR department orders -not in our game plan.