BeinPurplenGreen
Freo Football Foci
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2008
- Posts
- 10,450
- Reaction score
- 11,139
- Location
- PollieCentral
- AFL Club
- Fremantle
- Other Teams
- Fulham/76rsPhilsNovaDrexel/Atalanta
I’ve been very down in the dumps during the last week, especially given we had a win, which is odd, as a win normally means I have a great week. I think I’m just over the whole never ending injury stream – so many good men going down for such little production…
(there’s a whole joke in there involving Bradey and Mundy and Mammaries and Gravy Clay, but I won’t go there…)
But, after a week of despondency, I’m trying to find a positive frame to approach the game. Especially as I’m not a huge fan of the current (2006 onwards) version of the Saints, and I do think many of our fit players can play better than they have been so far. OK, so to try to put it into a Power point/Leading Teams/Cuddles Connolly style:
1. How do we do on our kick-ins?
This whole season has, IMHO, been scarred by our over-reliance on kick-ins around the boundary to Sandi, and only Sandi. Several other posters on here have already wondered what we will do at kick-ins without Sandi.
In the second half against Richmond, and during the whole game against Wet Toast, we repeatedly kicked in to Sandi on the boundary – even when he was alone up against 5 opponents!!! In a number of these plays we had either Elvis or MJ doing the kicking in!!! Surely, while Sandipants is an undisputedly awesome talent, we must be able to develop an alternative tall target or targets for our kick-ins??
One of our great strengths in the first half of last year was how often we hurt teams by going coast to coast from a kick-in – and on watching those games again over the last week, very few if any kick-ins went to Sandi – instead we used Pav, Mundy, Mayne, Hill, Elvis, MJ and Broughts as targets, with Hayds or (mostly) Duffman doing the kicking in. Given Sandi is out, tomorrow will be a great test for our ability to develop more effective options for getting the ball out of our backline…
2. How do we adapt to not ruling the roost on the hitouts?
In the last three years, apart from the torching form of Barlow and Mundy in the first 12 games last year, I’ve often felt that our mids seem to be assuming that they can either sit back and wait, or just run to a particular spot, because Sandi will almost always win the hit and get it to a particular spot.
Personally, I wonder if this hasn’t hurt us rather than helped us, as the assumption of ongoing ruck dominance tends to lead to a lower expectation of having to go and get the contested ball from unexpected/unpreferred spots – and also a tendency to be surprised when the ball isn’t delivered on a silver platter as expected.
Mundy has been one of the few (along with Palmer and Lower) who have adjusted to win the ball when we lose the tap – IMHO if we are to do well against the Sainters with Sandi out we need to tigerishly attack every bounce, throw-in and contested pack, rather than waiting for the ball to be tapped to where it is in training drills…
3. Will we have the guts to kick inboard when the chance to do so is available?
Most will by now have seen my ranting thread about our obsession with the boundary line. All I will add to that is to say that in our first 12 games last year we hardly played any boundary line garbage, and yet we torched the comp. Hopefully we are more willing to go up the guts, even if we turn it over, this week.
4. Will we cope with the scruffy negative tagging of some of our key players?
The Saints have specialised in this negative garbage since about mid 2006. We didn’t cope with hard tags at all against either Wet Toast or Richmond, and I’ll be really keen to see how we go this week against Rossco’s inevitable negativity. Hill and Ballas (if he plays) will certainly be targeted, along with Pav, Mayne and probably Mundy. Without Suban and McPhee, we lack two of the bulkier players who we would traditionally send in to block, shepherd and create space for our outside players and midfielders. I can’t wait to see if Ibbo, Palmer, Lower, Duffman, Kep, MJ and especially Pearce and Griffin are up to the challenge of becoming rampaging blocking bulls for the likes of Mundy, Hilly and Ballas.
5. Can we kick straight for goal?
Pav, Mayne and Hilly, this means you. Enough said, just kick the freaking goals, FFS.
6. Will Harvey actually play Plamer, Lower and Hill where we can get the most return for effort from them?? Or does he persist with the idiocy of playing some or all of them out of position (or even worse as subs??)?
If we don’t play Palmer and Lower for 90% game time plus, and for almost all of that in the midfield, and Hilly 80% game time as a HFF/mid, we lose. End of story.
(there’s a whole joke in there involving Bradey and Mundy and Mammaries and Gravy Clay, but I won’t go there…)
But, after a week of despondency, I’m trying to find a positive frame to approach the game. Especially as I’m not a huge fan of the current (2006 onwards) version of the Saints, and I do think many of our fit players can play better than they have been so far. OK, so to try to put it into a Power point/Leading Teams/Cuddles Connolly style:
Six Things to Rate:
1. How do we do on our kick-ins?
This whole season has, IMHO, been scarred by our over-reliance on kick-ins around the boundary to Sandi, and only Sandi. Several other posters on here have already wondered what we will do at kick-ins without Sandi.
In the second half against Richmond, and during the whole game against Wet Toast, we repeatedly kicked in to Sandi on the boundary – even when he was alone up against 5 opponents!!! In a number of these plays we had either Elvis or MJ doing the kicking in!!! Surely, while Sandipants is an undisputedly awesome talent, we must be able to develop an alternative tall target or targets for our kick-ins??
One of our great strengths in the first half of last year was how often we hurt teams by going coast to coast from a kick-in – and on watching those games again over the last week, very few if any kick-ins went to Sandi – instead we used Pav, Mundy, Mayne, Hill, Elvis, MJ and Broughts as targets, with Hayds or (mostly) Duffman doing the kicking in. Given Sandi is out, tomorrow will be a great test for our ability to develop more effective options for getting the ball out of our backline…
2. How do we adapt to not ruling the roost on the hitouts?
In the last three years, apart from the torching form of Barlow and Mundy in the first 12 games last year, I’ve often felt that our mids seem to be assuming that they can either sit back and wait, or just run to a particular spot, because Sandi will almost always win the hit and get it to a particular spot.
Personally, I wonder if this hasn’t hurt us rather than helped us, as the assumption of ongoing ruck dominance tends to lead to a lower expectation of having to go and get the contested ball from unexpected/unpreferred spots – and also a tendency to be surprised when the ball isn’t delivered on a silver platter as expected.
Mundy has been one of the few (along with Palmer and Lower) who have adjusted to win the ball when we lose the tap – IMHO if we are to do well against the Sainters with Sandi out we need to tigerishly attack every bounce, throw-in and contested pack, rather than waiting for the ball to be tapped to where it is in training drills…
3. Will we have the guts to kick inboard when the chance to do so is available?
Most will by now have seen my ranting thread about our obsession with the boundary line. All I will add to that is to say that in our first 12 games last year we hardly played any boundary line garbage, and yet we torched the comp. Hopefully we are more willing to go up the guts, even if we turn it over, this week.
4. Will we cope with the scruffy negative tagging of some of our key players?
The Saints have specialised in this negative garbage since about mid 2006. We didn’t cope with hard tags at all against either Wet Toast or Richmond, and I’ll be really keen to see how we go this week against Rossco’s inevitable negativity. Hill and Ballas (if he plays) will certainly be targeted, along with Pav, Mayne and probably Mundy. Without Suban and McPhee, we lack two of the bulkier players who we would traditionally send in to block, shepherd and create space for our outside players and midfielders. I can’t wait to see if Ibbo, Palmer, Lower, Duffman, Kep, MJ and especially Pearce and Griffin are up to the challenge of becoming rampaging blocking bulls for the likes of Mundy, Hilly and Ballas.
5. Can we kick straight for goal?
Pav, Mayne and Hilly, this means you. Enough said, just kick the freaking goals, FFS.
6. Will Harvey actually play Plamer, Lower and Hill where we can get the most return for effort from them?? Or does he persist with the idiocy of playing some or all of them out of position (or even worse as subs??)?
If we don’t play Palmer and Lower for 90% game time plus, and for almost all of that in the midfield, and Hilly 80% game time as a HFF/mid, we lose. End of story.
