Resource The 'not worthy of a thread of its own' thread

[Spearman]

I was just thinking about how our mids have less game-time than other mids and we rotate a deeper midfield to create great burst play.

It's just really interesting coaching and analysis to change this up to what other teams are doing as standard.

Surely one of the unheralded architects of this has to be our new football analyst Jason Lappin?

We discuss and analyse coaching and players on here a fair bit, but we never really consider the true depth of what goes on within tactics and coaching.

This includes opposition analysis and identifying trends to follow and counter, then finding the right players to fill the spots and training them to do the right things within the game.

We see dominant rucks come up against Stanley and Blicavs, yet we win the clearances... there would be significant analysis and training about players like Gawn and their hit-zones, players like Oliver and their patterns within stoppages. And for any team to do well, they actually have to have regular patterns so that they are predictable to each other. Gawn may have 5 different things he does exceptionally well and he relies on Oliver/Petracca or Viney to be in certain positions to make that happen. Gawn would need to be facing a certain way for some of these 5 taps to occur. Likewise, Oliver needs to be in a certain spot, running a certain way for this to become a clearance in their favour. So you can predict it pretty well.

And when you look at a player like Oliver, who I've read is a running machine who needs very little rest in a quarter, there would be patterns/tells on when he is getting towards needing a rest. In turn a good tactical team can exploit these behaviours - for example, for the majority of Oliver's time on ground before rest, when he is feeling good and running hard, you'd put Atkins or Blicavs (one an elite tackler, the other elite with pressure acts) on him, purely to disrupt him and get in his way as he runs to one of Gawns hit-zones. Then when Oliver is reaching 90-95% of his average time on ground before rest, that's when you'd rotate a fresh Dangerfield or Guthrie on him to attack hard and take the clearance away.

While all this is happening, the opposition team are doing the same thing to us.

For supporters, we just see free-flowing action, but really, it's alot of set pieces that are thought out to the nth degree.

Would love to hear opinions on this or even insight if anyone else has it.

Well done, you should replace one of those talking heads on the Couch or any of those shows. Really.

 

[Farmer2Goggin]

I was just thinking about how our mids have less game-time than other mids and we rotate a deeper midfield to create great burst play.

It's just really interesting coaching and analysis to change this up to what other teams are doing as standard.

Surely one of the unheralded architects of this has to be our new football analyst Jason Lappin?

We discuss and analyse coaching and players on here a fair bit, but we never really consider the true depth of what goes on within tactics and coaching.

This includes opposition analysis and identifying trends to follow and counter, then finding the right players to fill the spots and training them to do the right things within the game.

We see dominant rucks come up against Stanley and Blicavs, yet we win the clearances... there would be significant analysis and training about players like Gawn and their hit-zones, players like Oliver and their patterns within stoppages. And for any team to do well, they actually have to have regular patterns so that they are predictable to each other. Gawn may have 5 different things he does exceptionally well and he relies on Oliver/Petracca or Viney to be in certain positions to make that happen. Gawn would need to be facing a certain way for some of these 5 taps to occur. Likewise, Oliver needs to be in a certain spot, running a certain way for this to become a clearance in their favour. So you can predict it pretty well.

And when you look at a player like Oliver, who I've read is a running machine who needs very little rest in a quarter, there would be patterns/tells on when he is getting towards needing a rest. In turn a good tactical team can exploit these behaviours - for example, for the majority of Oliver's time on ground before rest, when he is feeling good and running hard, you'd put Atkins or Blicavs (one an elite tackler, the other elite with pressure acts) on him, purely to disrupt him and get in his way as he runs to one of Gawns hit-zones. Then when Oliver is reaching 90-95% of his average time on ground before rest, that's when you'd rotate a fresh Dangerfield or Guthrie on him to attack hard and take the clearance away.

While all this is happening, the opposition team are doing the same thing to us.

For supporters, we just see free-flowing action, but really, it's alot of set pieces that are thought out to the nth degree.

Would love to hear opinions on this or even insight if anyone else has it.

00VicWard001 - love the deep dive nature of this post.

Every flag is a product of collective effort on and off the field - popular opinion which is easy to agree with is that the Club needs to be committed and connected at every level to have a chance . We saw that with our fabulous dynasty 2007 - 2011. Costa/Cook/Balme/Thompson/Players.

I also think each Premier brings something different which leads to success - Cats 2007 - 2009 ( fast , flowing ball movement starting deep in defence) Bulldogs ( midfield dominance) Tigers ( chaos footy and relentless pressure) and Demons ( burst footy but with a high skill level and quality delivery)
A bit simplified but hopefully you get my drift.

I feel this could be our year and I think it is on the basis of nullifying the opposition plus high quality ball movement and efficiency inside 50 by scoring off turnover. We have been acknowledged as being hard to play against in the past but I think our opposition intel is next level now. That's down to the coaching group and kudos to them.
The other paradigm change is replacing line coaches with a ball movement and a number of development coaches. We seem much better connected on the field now and we are so exciting when we dial up fast ball mode into F50.
Statistically we should beat Collingwood but Finals Footy is a different season so we all wait to see how it will pan out.
Win the QF and I'm booking air tickets .....Go Catters

 

[Live in hope]

Shout out to our fitness and medical staff -

Miers, Duncan, Selwood, Holmes, Cuthrie, Menegola, Parfitt, Henry, Celgar (and others?) have all had nasty injuries and/or delayed seasons and the medical team etc * have got them back in a way that they’re contributed immediately.

Injuries to Cameron, Stanley, Danger’s chronic challenges etc mean the medical team are hugely vital also to our finals chances.

* Edit - believe Harry T heads the department, so kudos to him!

 

[Live in hope]

Should be a massive final series - IMO not just the top four but all of the top eight have teams and sufficient ‘weapons’ to conceivably beat any other team on their day. Fitness, form, peaking’ and belief is going to be crucial.

 

[Mr Meow]

I was just thinking about how our mids have less game-time than other mids and we rotate a deeper midfield to create great burst play.

It's just really interesting coaching and analysis to change this up to what other teams are doing as standard.

Surely one of the unheralded architects of this has to be our new football analyst Jason Lappin?

We discuss and analyse coaching and players on here a fair bit, but we never really consider the true depth of what goes on within tactics and coaching.

This includes opposition analysis and identifying trends to follow and counter, then finding the right players to fill the spots and training them to do the right things within the game.

We see dominant rucks come up against Stanley and Blicavs, yet we win the clearances... there would be significant analysis and training about players like Gawn and their hit-zones, players like Oliver and their patterns within stoppages. And for any team to do well, they actually have to have regular patterns so that they are predictable to each other. Gawn may have 5 different things he does exceptionally well and he relies on Oliver/Petracca or Viney to be in certain positions to make that happen. Gawn would need to be facing a certain way for some of these 5 taps to occur. Likewise, Oliver needs to be in a certain spot, running a certain way for this to become a clearance in their favour. So you can predict it pretty well.

And when you look at a player like Oliver, who I've read is a running machine who needs very little rest in a quarter, there would be patterns/tells on when he is getting towards needing a rest. In turn a good tactical team can exploit these behaviours - for example, for the majority of Oliver's time on ground before rest, when he is feeling good and running hard, you'd put Atkins or Blicavs (one an elite tackler, the other elite with pressure acts) on him, purely to disrupt him and get in his way as he runs to one of Gawns hit-zones. Then when Oliver is reaching 90-95% of his average time on ground before rest, that's when you'd rotate a fresh Dangerfield or Guthrie on him to attack hard and take the clearance away.

While all this is happening, the opposition team are doing the same thing to us.

For supporters, we just see free-flowing action, but really, it's alot of set pieces that are thought out to the nth degree.

Would love to hear opinions on this or even insight if anyone else has it.

You've actually hit the nail on the head there. I play 9 a side (6 on the bench) Aussie Rules footy in a foreign league. One of the grand finalists had a dominant 1-2 combo like Petracca and Oliver, but not much else in the middle rotation wise. The other rotated 5 or 6 good work horses through there with quick bursts. The latter ran all over them as quarters and the match wore on.

It's a viable strategy to overcome what could be considered an unstoppable force. In past finals series the opposite has been true - an aging Danger and Sel have had to play too many mid minutes/too much responsibility and it was too much to ask. Depth and balance of midfield talents is so important, and I feel like we finally have that this season.

 

[Lana]

I was just thinking about how our mids have less game-time than other mids and we rotate a deeper midfield to create great burst play.

It's just really interesting coaching and analysis to change this up to what other teams are doing as standard.

Surely one of the unheralded architects of this has to be our new football analyst Jason Lappin?

We discuss and analyse coaching and players on here a fair bit, but we never really consider the true depth of what goes on within tactics and coaching.

This includes opposition analysis and identifying trends to follow and counter, then finding the right players to fill the spots and training them to do the right things within the game.

We see dominant rucks come up against Stanley and Blicavs, yet we win the clearances... there would be significant analysis and training about players like Gawn and their hit-zones, players like Oliver and their patterns within stoppages. And for any team to do well, they actually have to have regular patterns so that they are predictable to each other. Gawn may have 5 different things he does exceptionally well and he relies on Oliver/Petracca or Viney to be in certain positions to make that happen. Gawn would need to be facing a certain way for some of these 5 taps to occur. Likewise, Oliver needs to be in a certain spot, running a certain way for this to become a clearance in their favour. So you can predict it pretty well.

And when you look at a player like Oliver, who I've read is a running machine who needs very little rest in a quarter, there would be patterns/tells on when he is getting towards needing a rest. In turn a good tactical team can exploit these behaviours - for example, for the majority of Oliver's time on ground before rest, when he is feeling good and running hard, you'd put Atkins or Blicavs (one an elite tackler, the other elite with pressure acts) on him, purely to disrupt him and get in his way as he runs to one of Gawns hit-zones. Then when Oliver is reaching 90-95% of his average time on ground before rest, that's when you'd rotate a fresh Dangerfield or Guthrie on him to attack hard and take the clearance away.

While all this is happening, the opposition team are doing the same thing to us.

For supporters, we just see free-flowing action, but really, it's alot of set pieces that are thought out to the nth degree.

Would love to hear opinions on this or even insight if anyone else has it.

The difference is that in past years our mids would spend time resting forward, now the go to the bench. Another cause of their reduced game time is that our 2nd ruck is often a part of the inside midfield rotations himself.

This week more than any other any others will be filled with the set pieces. As teams have the extra week for analysis and preperation with all of incentive to use the time to its fullest.

Teams can go completely off their own pattern in a grand final

In 2013, Hawthorn placed Mitchell in preferred Sandilands hit zones, in 2020 we played Stewart as a +1 in defence, when we hadn't done so all year.

Given our team's flexibility it is hard to see what we will throw away, trading the disruption of their plan from our in the yea practice.

The data side of things probably does require a thread of it's own. The whole trend of sport data analysis really started around 1994. The Qld Shield Team used an app written by the brother of one of the coaches who happened to be a mathematician who worked in IT to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of both their players and the opposition. That year they won their first Sheffield Shield. That app was then adapted for AFL and Champion Data used it prior to writing their own version. The likes of Damian Drum had a lot of input into what was captured and the amount of data collected was exponentially greater than the old days of manual recording. Once video was linked to each stat it became more powerful again.

I'm guessing that with all the video today you could create data sets of player movement and then tools like Splunk are very good at finding patterns or pattern matching. The hard part would be creating the data sets tracking movement and actions. The tools to do the analysis would do the work from there.

In addition to getting the data, the challenge is adapting it into information that can be quickly communicated to player who can converted to action on the field. A benefit of our older squad is that we should be able to absorb new tactical information more quickly.

 

[Mr Meow]

The difference is that in past years our mids would spend time resting forward, now the go to the bench. Another cause of their reduced game time is that our 2nd ruck is often a part of the inside midfield rotations himself.

This week more than any other any others will be filled with the set pieces. As teams have the extra week for analysis and preperation with all of incentive to use the time to its fullest.

Teams can go completely off their own pattern in a grand final

In 2013, Hawthorn placed Mitchell in preferred Sandilands hit zones, in 2020 we played Stewart as a +1 in defence, when we hadn't done so all year.

Given our team's flexibility it is hard to see what we will throw away, trading the disruption of their plan from our in the yea practice.



In addition to getting the data, the challenge is adapting it into information that can be quickly communicated to player who can converted to action on the field. A benefit of our older squad is that we should be able to absorb new tactical information more quickly.

Good point in the first paragraph.

In finals losses Geelong have had a surprising number of wins (or its been very close) in clearances and contested possessions. However the quality of them and what they've lead to has been questionable and our forward line has been a mess. So yes, resting mids there who have little influence and don't actually rest. Fully fit Cameron, Stengle's addition, Miers and Close's improvement and (hopefully) Rohan not injured changes that.

The other area is high pressure style and fast ball movement meaning we now score a lot from opposition turnovers like in the good old days. In theory, that approach will be more translatable to finals than a conservative approach where opposition actually hunt us.

 

[00VicWard001]

The difference is that in past years our mids would spend time resting forward, now the go to the bench. Another cause of their reduced game time is that our 2nd ruck is often a part of the inside midfield rotations himself.

This week more than any other any others will be filled with the set pieces. As teams have the extra week for analysis and preperation with all of incentive to use the time to its fullest.

Teams can go completely off their own pattern in a grand final

In 2013, Hawthorn placed Mitchell in preferred Sandilands hit zones, in 2020 we played Stewart as a +1 in defence, when we hadn't done so all year.

Given our team's flexibility it is hard to see what we will throw away, trading the disruption of their plan from our in the yea practice.



In addition to getting the data, the challenge is adapting it into information that can be quickly communicated to player who can converted to action on the field. A benefit of our older squad is that we should be able to absorb new tactical information more quickly.

This last part is also what I was thinking. That rhetoric of “we facilitate the playing group” or “Joel/Tom act as coaches on the ground” actually makes alot of sense.

Too often we hear the bleating of “Geelong is a team full of geriatric players”, yet there’s no real acknowledgement of the money ball aspect of this recruiting. Cheaper, and able to understand and implement tactics much faster because they are experienced and have maturity.

 

[00VicWard001]

Good point in the first paragraph.

In finals losses Geelong have had a surprising number of wins (or its been very close) in clearances and contested possessions. However the quality of them and what they've lead to has been questionable and our forward line has been a mess. So yes, resting mids there who have little influence and don't actually rest. Fully fit Cameron, Stengle's addition, Miers and Close's improvement and (hopefully) Rohan not injured changes that.

The other area is high pressure style and fast ball movement meaning we now score a lot from opposition turnovers like in the good old days. In theory, that approach will be more translatable to finals than a conservative approach where opposition actually hunt us.

And somehow we have also found the secret sauce to preventing scores when we turn it over. This could be a combination of having the right players pressuring in the right part of the ground and the right players intercepting when a kick is not perfect.

 

[00VicWard001]

It's an all-round Blitz: Stats show Cat's amazing versatility

After mastering every position on the ground Mark Blicavs should be in All-Australian contention

www.afl.com.au

Not sure if you guys read this great article about Blicavs (authored in June). He is such an unbelievable asset to our team.

 

[00VicWard001]

You've actually hit the nail on the head there. I play 9 a side (6 on the bench) Aussie Rules footy in a foreign league. One of the grand finalists had a dominant 1-2 combo like Petracca and Oliver, but not much else in the middle rotation wise. The other rotated 5 or 6 good work horses through there with quick bursts. The latter ran all over them as quarters and the match wore on.

It's a viable strategy to overcome what could be considered an unstoppable force. In past finals series the opposite has been true - an aging Danger and Sel have had to play too many mid minutes/too much responsibility and it was too much to ask. Depth and balance of midfield talents is so important, and I feel like we finally have that this season.

Even commentators try and make it about X vs Y (Danger vs Petracca).

This will not work in our favour - so why would we do it?

 

[cats_09]

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Geelong water boy headed to his own grand final

Sam Moorfoot, who has been the water boy at Geelong Football Club for the past seven years, will play at his own grand final for the first time on Sunday.

www.theage.com.au

 

[dazbroncos]

Geelong water boy headed to his own grand final

Sam Moorfoot, who has been the water boy at Geelong Football Club for the past seven years, will play at his own grand final for the first time on Sunday.

www.theage.com.au

Quality stuff this…
The club and players - and Sammy - deserve a lot of credit for the inclusion here.
Well done to all and good luck in the Granny Sam!

Go Catters

 

[Spearman]

Quality stuff this…
The club and players - and Sammy - deserve a lot of credit for the inclusion here.
Well done to all and good luck in the Granny Sam!

Go Catters

Sometimes you wish that the news would be forced to have at least 50% of this kind of content.

 

[cats_09]

 

[cats_09]

 

[00VicWard001]

If you could pick one AFL player (past or present at their peak) to play a one on one (first to 10 goals) AFL game, who would you pick?

Dangerfield, Carey, Goodes and Ablett Snr come to mid.

 

[Kobe Gryant]

If you could pick one AFL player (past or present at their peak) to play a one on one (first to 10 goals) AFL game, who would you pick?

Dangerfield, Carey, Goodes and Ablett Snr come to mid.

Danger might need 55 attempts is the only problem

 

[00VicWard001]

Danger might need 55 attempts is the only problem

Yes he would.

I was just thinking about Fyfe and how he was such a beast of a player and he's just been crueled by injury. It just occurred to me - who would win most contests one on one time and time again.

Selwood is hard as a Cats head, but Danger/Fyfe/Dusty/Petracca would just torch him even at his very best.

 

[Art Vandelay_]

Off season collective project. Create our own reaction.

 

[00VicWard001]

Okay, I'm getting confused with holding the ball.

Last game, Blicavs was tackled, had one arm pinned landed on the ground with the ball. It appeared that he didnt even have time to get rid of the ball, and he couldnt even make an attempt. He got pinged. Shouldnt this be a bounce?

 

[Kitcat]

Wallabies playing the All Blacks at Marvel in 15 minutes. On channel 9.

 

[catscratchfever]

A few years ago I was the only white guy walking amongst a sea of black dudes in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Suddenly, I saw a young couple walking towards me from the opposite direction - the Ethiopian guy was wearing a Geelong scarf! I tried to ask him about the scarf but he couldn't speak English.

Seems like the Cats have admirers everywhere

 

[fpm84]

Has anyone done the 100 question 'super quiz' on the Geelong Addy website today to try to win a signed guernsey?

I got halfway through and have already spotted three incorrect answers. Lyon turned down a job with us (not Buckley), Ceglar never played in a flag and Betts played in Carlton's round 3, 2020 win at GHMBA.

Bizarre!?