Very very different to 2020 and 2021.
Very very much a development year or two or even three.
What I've noticed so far this season:
Game style:
Team Defence:
Hopeful we can pinch a flag 24 - 25, without Pendles, Sides, Howe and Roughy
Very very much a development year or two or even three.
What I've noticed so far this season:
Game style:
- Evidently very different, a manic style that relies on pressure around the ball / contest. You'll notice we close space on the oppo ball carrier and then have outside space to transition ball. It denies opposition clean disposal, we literally suffocate the opposition into submission. Sound familiar? Hint. Us 2017- 18 and tuggers in their dynasty. Note there are differences.......... I'll get to that later
- This is a very difficult game style to defeat, yet equally taxing, requires a lot and I mean a lot of two way running. It's why you'll see our players between the arcs in both i50 and d50 in perpetuity. Haven't seen Sides cover that much ground since 2018, he was the finals player of the year that year - for good reason
- Role play - or at least building toward it. We're heavily rotating players through centre bounces, note Billy and TheGoey rotating mid forward, Pendles and Crisp doing similar from half back. This is not like set players for set positions for most teams. My guess is this is a compensation for lack of personnel - in a balanced sense.
Team Defence:
- Linked with the above, the instruction is clear, guard your space to disallow the opposition clear and easy transition. We don't see this on the TV but we guard space, this allows us to close space at the contest. You would've noticed this in the game last night when bris had ball and had to slowly and carefully transition through our 'team defence'
- If they couldn't do that they'd be forced to kick down the line to a contest or basically play phone box footy with us. Then it's even contest, the intent we have is outnumber in that contest AND have outnumber on the outside of the contest to allow us uncontested transition. Swarm and spread. Sound familiar?
- Again linked to both of the above, while this game style we use is very difficult to defeat it is equally taxing to execute. This is likely the cause of our last qtr fade outs because of the taxing factor of our game. Because it requires two way running all game to outnumber in the phone box and on the outside.
- You would've noticed that in all the games previous to last night that we forced the opposition to play game on our terms - the difference being we run out of petrol tickets and they beat us at our own game.
- Most glaringly the cats game, Madge being caught out guarding space, cats win contest and have numbers on the ball win and easy transition to Cameron, coz we run outta fuel, he wasn't able to close space like earlier in the game or like Moore could've.
- For the first time we managed to slow the game down when the opposition had momentum last night, and it worked. IF we can do this going forward it will alleviate (somewhat) our last qtr fade outs. We did not fade out in the last last night.
- This is key, managing our manic game when it's not on our terms. We failed this in the cats game, they beat us at our own game i:e we kept pressure up and they applied their own but had fuel - we run out of.
- This is a big problem, we went tall with Cox / Cameron against a formidable Adams / Andrews, was never going to work. But it was forced and shows our lack of depth, yeah Freddy's return was a highlight but he is not yet ready to enforce pain on such opposition
- The wc game last week it showed without the grunt of TheGoey and Tay in the phone box we were always up against it. Regardless of rotating mids until we get 50 plus games into our hopefuls then we really can only rely on system. Which by all accounts is standing up pretty well considering.
- Also another big big problem, we have blue chip players that matches any league wide, the problem is our key position and age demographic. It's imbalanced as any AND the fact that we're last to hop on the rebuild train.
- In saying that it does give Fly and the panel freedom to mould it how they see fit, the pressure on the coaching panel is pretty much nil AND gives them time to find the strengths of each individual player.
- Good news is system wise this is cannot fail, it's a fait accompli and it is not personnel reliant, it needs tweaking i:e tempo the game and find balance in it when needed but the rebuild is positive
- The bad news is, if someone with the list of like the dees or dogs or cats employ the same we won't match it on the back of our imbalanced
inferiorlist.
Hopeful we can pinch a flag 24 - 25, without Pendles, Sides, Howe and Roughy
