As to Grant not laying any tackles.. I find that hard to believe because I did make a comment during the game about how well he was pressuring the opposition.
I will concede I was down the scoreboard end with not a very elevated view, so Grant could have been doing some good pressuring up the other end. Just didn't see much of it at my end.
As for this simplistic nonsense about "if you lay more tackles your opponent must have more of the ball" ... let's just take one example from the 3rd quarter of last week's game against Melb. You will probably remember it because Hill got a goal from the subsequent WB possession. What happened was Harbrow laid
three successive tackles in the space of about 20 seconds, each one resulting in the ball spilling free. If Harbrow hadn't bothered we would have had three
fewer tackles while Melbourne would have had
more possessions. More to the point, we wouldn't have kicked the goal and arguably would have lost the match. Have a look at the replay if you don't believe me.
The "more tackles = less possession" argument is so obviously spurious I won't bother going into other reasons. The above example should illustrate it well enough.
If anyone has time try going through the match stats for all games played this year. It would be an interesting exercise. I reckon there's a good chance that the winning side actually lays
more tackles in most of the games.
I just did it for Round 8 and found that of the eight winning teams:
- 6 laid more tackles than the losing side
- 3 had more possessions and more tackles than the losing side
Obviously that's not conclusive but it does support the argument that strong tackling and defensive pressure is a feature of winning sides. (In fact, it may force opposing teams to handball around in circles, thereby increasing their possession count, without gaining any metres or tactical advantage.)