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DarkSaint

DarkSaint

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Sep 22, 2015
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Been thinking about this for some time now and would like to see other peoples opinions on it, but I believe that we structure up pretty poorly in particular the forward half of the ground.

Last season and so far in the 2 pre season games that we have had, opposition defenders continuously outnumber our marking forwards and are able to take easy intercept marks. Another noticeable thing is that when the ball does get kicked into the forward line, it seems to come out pretty damn quickly and the opposition almost always end up having a shot at goal or sling shoting it out with great effect.

I know we have a young team and they are all pretty inexperienced but this does not excuse some of the structures that we have in place. I believe over the last 5 or so years we have always struggled to have a decent set up going forward of centre. There were numerous times in yesterdays game were we won the ball in a stoppage or clearance and one of our mids would launch it forward only for the opposition to take a uncontested mark. This was also evident when we did try and do a quick break away, that our players needed to stop and prop and look for other options as there was nothing up forward to kick it too.

I believe this a one major area that could be resolved without much talent needed (look at west coast losing half their back line and managing to structure up amazingly).

I think our forward line coach really needs to get to the bottom of this as i believe its one area that is really holding us holding us back. Our kicks into the forward 50 seem to be just long bombs to packs as for the life of me cant see any players leading out properly offering a good option to the kick taker, but rather staying deep hoping they can take a massive pack mark with 5 or so players going up for it.

What do other people think about this as i think sometimes our midfield is getting blamed for not great delivery but when they look up all they see is a group of players looking for a pack situation.
 
I think our game is changing every year and IMO our coaching panel needs to target recently retired players .
 

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Defacto said:
thing i'm not sure of, is when roo retires who plays the CHF role? is it bruce, who seems to be playing pretty deep right now?
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I think Bruce will need to play that CHF role with McCartin playing the deeper role that Bruce is occupying at the moment. What we really need is a lead up medium sized forward in Membrey to come which will give us 2 leading up targets in Him and Bruce.
 
Defacto said:
thing i'm not sure of, is when roo retires who plays the CHF role? is it bruce, who seems to be playing pretty deep right now?
Click to expand...


Is there any such thing in todays footy as a permanent CHF. 2 or 3 players from each club rotate through that position and the same with the backs. Bruce, McCartin and maybe a Membery or hopefully not a Hickey will get that role once he is gone.
 
I really hope Members makes the future best 22.
If Not then we need to target a 3rd forward and two quality on-ballers over the next two years.
And a half backline that can kick would be fantastic . :D
 
STK2020 said:
I really hope Members makes the future best 22.
If Not then we need to target a 3rd forward and two quality on-ballers over the next two years.
And a half backline that can kick would be fantastic . :D
Click to expand...
Savage, Webster, Roberton, D-Mac, Rice and White ought to give us more than enough good kicking off half back in the future I would hope.
 
DarkSaint said:
Been thinking about this for some time now and would like to see other peoples opinions on it, but I believe that we structure up pretty poorly in particular the forward half of the ground.

Last season and so far in the 2 pre season games that we have had, opposition defenders continuously outnumber our marking forwards and are able to take easy intercept marks. Another noticeable thing is that when the ball does get kicked into the forward line, it seems to come out pretty damn quickly and the opposition almost always end up having a shot at goal or sling shoting it out with great effect.

I know we have a young team and they are all pretty inexperienced but this does not excuse some of the structures that we have in place. I believe over the last 5 or so years we have always struggled to have a decent set up going forward of centre. There were numerous times in yesterdays game were we won the ball in a stoppage or clearance and one of our mids would launch it forward only for the opposition to take a uncontested mark. This was also evident when we did try and do a quick break away, that our players needed to stop and prop and look for other options as there was nothing up forward to kick it too.

I believe this a one major area that could be resolved without much talent needed (look at west coast losing half their back line and managing to structure up amazingly).

I think our forward line coach really needs to get to the bottom of this as i believe its one area that is really holding us holding us back. Our kicks into the forward 50 seem to be just long bombs to packs as for the life of me cant see any players leading out properly offering a good option to the kick taker, but rather staying deep hoping they can take a massive pack mark with 5 or so players going up for it.

What do other people think about this as i think sometimes our midfield is getting blamed for not great delivery but when they look up all they see is a group of players looking for a pack situation.
Click to expand...

From my perspective it's the long kick into the 50. We should go for a shorter option that puts pressure on their defence to man up on those that are there. We are currently just kicking to a big pack with the high ball which suits them.
 
I also think it's about the execution. Without knowing the internal benchmarks that AR sets for the team it seems as if we have strong emphasis on:
  • contested possession; the doggies made this a must win indicator for many years leading into their current team form. While I think it is certainly important I don't like the way we sometimes have three players contesting against one/two opponents. Also we seem to have a number of players who leave their feet and dive on the ball/man and therefore have no impact on the spread or holding up the opposition spread.
  • attacking spread on turnovers won; we seem to do this very well, but when a handball goes behind the man it means trouble. Against the Demons in NAB3 I can clearly recall a case of that happening and the demons had three players running that went from being behind our spread to in front of our defense in a heartbeat.
  • strong defensive running in conjuction with
  • defenders peeling off their man to contest/hold the ball up; again when we turn the ball over and the opposition gets in to fast break mode, I keep seeing defenders running toward the next contest to hold it up but just getting caught out in no mans land.
It all comes back to being more effective at the contest (less players doing more inside), and ensuring that we turnover less, and when we do turnover we make it a contested (slow) turnover and not a fast breaking one.

If we can get that sorted I think we will come on quickly.
 
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CursingFijian said:
I also think it's about the execution. Without knowing the internal benchmarks that AR sets for the team it seems as if we have strong emphasis on:
  • contested possession; the doggies made this a must win indicator for many years leading into their current team form. While I think it is certainly important I don't like the way we sometimes have three players contesting against one/two opponents. Also we seem to have a number of players who dive on the ball/man and therefore have no impact on the spread or holding up the opposition spread.
  • attacking spread on turnovers won; we seem to do this very well, but when a handball goes behind the man it means trouble. Against the Demons in NAB3 I can clearly recall a case of that happening and the demons had three players running that went from being behind our spread to in front of our defense in a heartbeat.
  • strong defensive running in conjuction with
  • defenders peeling off their man to contest/hold the ball up; again when we turn the ball over and the opposition gets in to fast break mode, I keep seeing defenders running toward the next contest to hold it up but just getting caught out in no mans land.
It all comes back to being more effective at the contest (less players doing more inside), and ensuring that we turnover less, and when we do turnover we make it a contested (slow) turnover and not a fast breaking one.

If we can get that sorted I think we will come on quickly.
Click to expand...

Great summation IMO. So many times we turned it over on the wing or the half forward line and it went back over three Saints heads to their trailing Demon opponents who were then effectively 10m in the clear going into attack.

Better execution will go a long way to solving this problem.
 
It was actually the defence that was out of sync on Sunday... Some pretty basic team rules and structures that were ignored or lost too easily. A few players in new roles, etc probably helped contribute to that.

They'll all be better for the run both fitness wise and football wise.

Not fussed or concerned in any way. 6-8 wins...percentage of 85-90 & it's a solid year.
 
What actually is our game plan?

We're now into our 3rd season under Richo & I still have no clue. I see glimpses of what looks to be a game plan, then nothing like it appears for another 2-3 weeks.

I still cant fathom the kicking long bombs to a spot 25-30m out from goal either. If we're gonna be doing that sort of kick forward, move it forward another 15m before bombing long & then go long to the toop of the goal square (ie: a really dangerous spot). We pretty much won the 1st game v Bulldogs last year by doing this, then in the 2nd game against them, we reverted back to the long kick to the spot 25-30m out from goal & were picked off by Easton Wood pretty much all game.
 

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Rors said:
What actually is our game plan?

We're now into our 3rd season under Richo & I still have no clue. I see glimpses of what looks to be a game plan, then nothing like it appears for another 2-3 weeks.

I still cant fathom the kicking long bombs to a spot 25-30m out from goal either. If we're gonna be doing that sort of kick forward, move it forward another 15m before bombing long & then go long to the toop of the goal square (ie: a really dangerous spot). We pretty much won the 1st game v Bulldogs last year by doing this, then in the 2nd game against them, we reverted back to the long kick to the spot 25-30m out from goal & were picked off by Easton Wood pretty much all game.
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I think the coaches interview made mention of the fact that the last kick inside attacking 50 is still problematic and too many opportunities are being missed. Based on that I'd say that the coaches would like us to think it through sometimes. Where we get the fast break though I also think the instruction is to send it in quickly, kick to advantage and let Bruce and company earn their wages. Some players may have trouble sensing which is the appropriate choice.
 
It seems like the game plan is to move it very quickly and in waves out of the backline (often with numerous handballs) and to then kick it long and high into the forward 50.

Both of these aspects broke down at times on the weekend though. The running it out of the backline very quickly in waves part broke down sometimes when we just seemed to be trying to move it too quickly for our own good and made some very poor handball choices, including handballing to someone stationary with his back to play, handballing to someone who was about to be tackled (which happened a lot) and so-on. A lot more poise is needed if we're going to continue doing this sort of thing.

It's kind of the opposite of the way Hawthorn take the ball forward. With this way of ours it all happens very quickly and we either go forward really quickly, or we lose the ball very quickly and it flies back into our backline, whereas with Hawthorn it's all about ball-retention, wanting to keep the ball in their own hands for much longer and just not letting you get a sniff of it. Something that is expected to be an even better way to play under the new rotations cap, as they are less likely to get worn out playing that way than say we will if we persist with playing such a break-neck style.

The kick it long part also broke down in the first half in particular when we only had Bruce and Membrey up front. If we're going to be kicking it long and high Membrey isn't going to be much help to us, as he's not tall enough and that will allow the Tom McDonalds of the AFL to just peel off him and intercept the kicks, as he did so often on the weekend. We'll need at least two of Bruce/Riewoldt/McCartin/Hickey/Lee/Goddard there if that plan is going to be successful. If they don't mark it, I'd say the plan is for the Lonie's/Billings'/Weller's/Sinclair's/Gresham's/Templeton's to get the crumbs and goal, or to at least lock it in the area, where we will then fight like hell to keep it.
 
Hawthorn tend to make better space when going forward. Due to us hugging the boundary line more often than not there isn't those little spaces for us to lead as it is all cluttered. What I noticed a few times on the weekend was that no one was presenting at all. Most were standing there watching others to make a move or waiting for the high kick to come on the wing etc. It probably shows that a lot of our young players fear of making a mistake if they drop it and its turned over. Although I notice Billings is always demanding the footy which shows to me that he has good hands. Less rotations might help us out with more spread but could also go wrong due to us going to wide in lieu of the corridor.
 
saint_ said:
Hawthorn tend to make better space when going forward. Due to us hugging the boundary line more often than not there isn't those little spaces for us to lead as it is all cluttered. What I noticed a few times on the weekend was that no one was presenting at all. Most were standing there watching others to make a move or waiting for the high kick to come on the wing etc. It probably shows that a lot of our young players fear of making a mistake if they drop it and its turned over. Although I notice Billings is always demanding the footy which shows to me that he has good hands. Less rotations might help us out with more spread but could also go wrong due to us going to wide in lieu of the corridor.
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This.

Watching Hawthorn on Saturday night, I just get amazed by how much space they have around the ground & in almost like a soccer set-up, they move in a triangle-type formation, ie: they always have 3 kicking options - 1 leading into space forward of the ball, 1 leading sideways either towards or away from the player with the ball, & 1 'get out of jail' option out the back where they can switch play to the phat side

It's just so efficient
 
aussierulesrules said:
It seems like the game plan is to move it very quickly and in waves out of the backline (often with numerous handballs) and to then kick it long and high into the forward 50.

Both of these aspects broke down at times on the weekend though. The running it out of the backline very quickly in waves part broke down sometimes when we just seemed to be trying to move it too quickly for our own good and made some very poor handball choices, including handballing to someone stationary with his back to play, handballing to someone who was about to be tackled (which happened a lot) and so-on. A lot more poise is needed if we're going to continue doing this sort of thing.

It's kind of the opposite of the way Hawthorn take the ball forward. With this way of ours it all happens very quickly and we either go forward really quickly, or we lose the ball very quickly and it flies back into our backline, whereas with Hawthorn it's all about ball-retention, wanting to keep the ball in their own hands for much longer and just not letting you get a sniff of it. Something that is expected to be an even better way to play under the new rotations cap, as they are less likely to get worn out playing that way than say we will if we persist with playing such a break-neck style.

The kick it long part also broke down in the first half in particular when we only had Bruce and Membrey up front. If we're going to be kicking it long and high Membrey isn't going to be much help to us, as he's not tall enough and that will allow the Tom McDonalds of the AFL to just peel off him and intercept the kicks, as he did so often on the weekend. We'll need at least two of Bruce/Riewoldt/McCartin/Hickey/Lee/Goddard there if that plan is going to be successful. If they don't mark it, I'd say the plan is for the Lonie's/Billings'/Weller's/Sinclair's/Gresham's/Templeton's to get the crumbs and goal, or to at least lock it in the area, where we will then fight like hell to keep it.
Click to expand...

That makes sense. I had it pegged as stuff around with it coming out of defence until we turn it over then try to put them off by giving them the ball when they expected we'd try to keep it.
 
Another element to add to our structures is flexibility. In recent history we haven't been able to respond when our structures aren't working and a big part of that is the personnel.

Think we'll see more swingmen in the team like Gilbo, Hugo, Lee possibly Roberton. Shents is being trained to play either end. Players need to be able to switch and adapt fast.
 
In my simple mind, there are basically two ways you get a mark in 50. One is on the lead, the other is in a contested mark. To do the contested mark type, you need a man-mountain who can contest with the defender and monster him out of it. I don't that's really Bruce's style, but it may be Paddy's eventually. The alternative, the mark on the lead, relies on disposal efficiency from the person outside 50, and that has been letting us down for half-a-decade. I think the "bomb it long and high" is a concession that our disposal into 50 isn't clean enough, and more of a desperate hope that Bruce or whoever will be able to pull off a contested mark... which to be honest, they often don't. The best entries into 50 that I've seen us do, are precise kicking straight to Bruce on a lead (Bob against Melbourne, Newnes against Kangas).
 
DarkSaint said:
Been thinking about this for some time now and would like to see other peoples opinions on it, but I believe that we structure up pretty poorly in particular the forward half of the ground.

Last season and so far in the 2 pre season games that we have had, opposition defenders continuously outnumber our marking forwards and are able to take easy intercept marks. Another noticeable thing is that when the ball does get kicked into the forward line, it seems to come out pretty damn quickly and the opposition almost always end up having a shot at goal or sling shoting it out with great effect.

I know we have a young team and they are all pretty inexperienced but this does not excuse some of the structures that we have in place. I believe over the last 5 or so years we have always struggled to have a decent set up going forward of centre. There were numerous times in yesterdays game were we won the ball in a stoppage or clearance and one of our mids would launch it forward only for the opposition to take a uncontested mark. This was also evident when we did try and do a quick break away, that our players needed to stop and prop and look for other options as there was nothing up forward to kick it too.

I believe this a one major area that could be resolved without much talent needed (look at west coast losing half their back line and managing to structure up amazingly).

I think our forward line coach really needs to get to the bottom of this as i believe its one area that is really holding us holding us back. Our kicks into the forward 50 seem to be just long bombs to packs as for the life of me cant see any players leading out properly offering a good option to the kick taker, but rather staying deep hoping they can take a massive pack mark with 5 or so players going up for it.

What do other people think about this as i think sometimes our midfield is getting blamed for not great delivery but when they look up all they see is a group of players looking for a pack situation.
Click to expand...
March 2016 lol.. think I might have been right in some aspects.
 
There's a lot of similarities with my team at the moment.

We are the poorest sides in the comp when it comes to creating scoring opportunities from hard work further up the ground. After a while when the hard work continues to go unrewarded, a team starts to drop it's confidence and the level drops away.

The saints should have had a 5 goal lead at half time last night.
 
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