Setting up from kick-ins

[Stokes-Selwood-Prismall]

This is what killed us during this finals campaign (and even the latter half of the season). As much as anything else, we struggled to get the ball out of our backline from a kick-in and allowed the opposition to dance away from our offensive 50 with incredible ease.
It is probably the easiest thing to change as a coach and for whatever reason, Bomber just didnt do it.
This really became an obvious problem against St Kilda. We were just bombing it long every time and failing miserably. This instead of taking the short option immediately and spreading their zone to find gaps.

Then our forward zone allowed them to kick short then long down to the wing (usually to a 1 on 1/loose player) at will. Our zone was rubbish. It would be interesting as a stat to see how many interceptions we made during the finals campaign in our forward 50. 3 at most would be my guess.

With the footage they have available to study, it amazes me that we didn't come up with any changes to our system in those 3 weeks. Poor gameday coaching from Bomber in this instance.

Anyway, another great season, from a great team, hopefully we change things up a bit next year and come back at them with full force.

 

[OldStyle2007]

If you don't get it out quick, what can you do though?

I watched last night and Saints do same thing. At least 15 blokes covering the area from the edge of the square down into the Forward 50

Pretty hard to get it past all that defence

 

[thegerman]

I agree, our zone against the Pies was useless. Far too often the Pies kicked it long to a player without an opponent who just waltzed down the wing unchecked.

On the other end, we really struggled to get it past the 50m arc.

We should have been looking to have all our backmen play a 6 player counter-zone in the back 50 for the easy kick-in. The rest in a midfield huddle to force a contested situation. One of the ruck or CHF go for the mark, the other try's to 'block'. Or at worst, if not in a marking position, tap it forwards like a ruck contest. If we have enough at the ball, like all our mids plus, the HF flanks, that should be enough to counter such a large zone.

Still in the forward half we'd have the FF and pockets to try to lead up and create the space behind.

 

[OldStyle2007]

I think our problem setting up for their kick ins is we have too many guys like Mooney, Stokes and SJ who are often too lazy to properly defend and chase. They put in a lot of pretend efforts, but you can just tell they are holding something back

We really needed to press up more. so I'm surprised we just gifted them easy possession from their kick outs

At the other end, I think precise skills and short kicking, followed by a long release kick down field is the only way out of that full press. Bomber said at the press conference that the coaches were "screaming at the players" to slow it down and kick more and not play on as much. So obviously this was the plan but wasn't adhered to by the senior players