Strategy Trade and List management Thread Part 5 (opposition supporters - READ posting rules before posting)
- Thread starter Norm De Guerre
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- Dec 2, 2011
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Doubt he’d ever pull on another jumper. Most likely a coaching role of some type. That I’m itself used appealing. Does Maddocks make way? No idea on him but assume Varcoe handy with indigenous background. Selwood looks perfect for player development as a starter unless someone offers an assistant role
- Dec 2, 2011
- 1,181
- 1,434
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
_Cerberus_
Club Legend
- Sep 30, 2022
- 2,077
- 3,900
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
Hi all 
Long time reader, and used to post regularly years ago. But had to take a hiatus when Mum became sick, and then got diagnosed with a degenerative condition myself, so I needed a break from everything. But decided to rejoin and chip in again. Of course 2022 was a very up and down season, and bought out the best and worst of our emotions.
Don't get me wrong. This team is very capable of winning a flag. But in the same breath I feel we have overrated the squad just a fraction, and we have a few holes we need to fill in to gel the team together. Good teams consistently hang around the top four over a few year period, something we are yet to do. Though late last year we were in prime position to win our first ever minor premiership, with a very winnable run home. We know how that panned out. But at least we stood up in finals, with pulling another crazy finals campaign out of our asses. Anyways, I thought I'd run my own thoughts across the lines of our list.
Forward Line: Honestly, if you could pick a young forward line in this league to work with long term, you'd have to say the Bulldogs are well placed. Naughton, Darcy, Ugle-Hagan, Weightman. The talent is there to work with. The main problem I have had with our forward line over the years, is that it had often been dumped with ex defenders, midfielders and non natural forwards, and it showed with the goal kicking and inability to create some magic. However, we have improved heaps in that regard in bringing in Ugle Hagan, Darcy and Weightman. Players who have actually spent most of their youth development in the pocket.
The main problem has been chemistry. I remember when I first watched football in the late 2000's. And just watching our forward line operate so efficiently, working for one another and creating space, so many marks inside 50. It was enjoyable to watch. Granted we did have a forward line of veteran players, Gia, Johnson, Hahn, Aker, Hall etc. And then we look at the mess that is the current crop. It has actually been an ongoing issue for years now, if not the majority of Bevo's tenure. That we have to ask, why has it not been addressed all this time? We often smash the inside 50 totals in our games, but we have been smashed despite a near plus 20 inside 50 differential.
I think chemistry will fix itself over time with more experience. But coaching structure and delivery itself needs some work, as well as the forwards playing their roles. Need to become more team centric and less selfish. Create space and block for each other more, and stop trying to be "that guy" by taking out team mates who have a clean mark. Smalls need to keep their feet to crumb and pressure.
Overall, the forward line is in good hands We could do with drafting another small forward, and perhaps a medium marking/half forward flanker with natural forward craft what can play into the middle. A Stevie J, Chapman style player.
Midfield: Probably the unit that took the biggest backwards step this season, and the main reason we have been inconsistent. On paper, the names read A grade midfield. But the reality is, I feel it has been our most overrated unit. For some reasons unknown, the kicking skills and decision making dropped drastically this season. We are still a solid clearance, stoppage and at times contested unit. But this season showed we are a very one way team and easily exposed on the back foot. Structures fell apart, teams figured us out. Which is very disappointing given all of our leaders are essentially in the middle of the park. Dunkley is going to be a huge loss, given his work rate and tackling is on the high end.
For all the talent in the middle, it is clear we stacked with to many inside midfielders and workhorse types, not enough impact players. We do not have any quick, natural wingers with good kicking skills on the wings which is required of in the modern game. We just stick whoever we have left over on the team sheet and stick them on the wings. As for the middle, we lack a strong physical player with burst speed that can hurt you in the way Petracca does each time he plays us. Need to cut out the poor kicking inside 50, kicking to a 1 on 3 situation, stop handballing to a guy who has an opponent on his ass, causing a turnover when caught with the ball.
Defensive structures need to be worked on in the offseason, improved ball use and decision making. We could look to draft natural wingers, and get some more speed in the centre. Could do with a burst midfielder. Bontempelli aside, and probably a pre 2022 Smith, we need more impact players. To many vanilla workhorse types.
Ruck: I am one of those people who believe hitouts are massively overrated in the game. Half the premiers in the past decade didn't exactly have an A grade ruckman. I feel the majority of the work comes from the midfielders around the ruckman, regardless who touches it first. Hitouts to advantage is the only relevant stat to me, and often its closer than you think. The best rucks to grace the league in recent years, their main weapon has been their ability to impact around the ground. Instead of vanishing after touching the leather, and having their team mates play as 17 on the field.
My biggest issue with English is not his ability, he has all the talent there. My issue is, outside of consistency, is he is to freaking nice. Grundy would just grab him, pull him aside, grab the ball, snap a goal, and English gave no physical fight. I feel the gap between hitouts and hitouts to advantage vs opponents, has gradually decreased. But the consistency is not there. I would like to see English drop the nice guy role, and start using his size to be nasty, physical, and wear his opponent down. When English is on fire around the ground, his impact is big for the team, but it fluctuates or does not sustain long enough. Whether its the head knocks hitting his confidence, who knows?
Sweet is only marginally better when it comes to hitouts, but barely touches the ball outside of that, has no impact around the ground. I feel his win loss ratio vs mostly lowly teams, as an excuse to keep persisting has been overstated, given in many of those wins, he played teams missing their first rucks, had no ruck. Or the midfield went crazy in a 10 goal smashing. Some of those wins masked Sweet getting demolished by Witts for example. If we play two Rucks, Sweet averages like 5 disposals. We cannot play one short on the field, purely for the sake of playing dual rucks. It negates any advantage. I would like to see Sweet spend more time in the VFL learning forward and defensive craft, so he becomes a more rounded ruckman. The problem is, we have no ruck depth what so ever. One of the trio is always injured, so even in the VFL, the ability to experiment and develop is hindered.
We really need to address ruck depth at some point, especially if Martin retires. But again, like key defenders, the cupboard is bare.
Defence: I think this one is very obvious for the world to see. It is very easy to blame the midfield not protecting the defence. But really, even when our midfield controls the play, it is just masking obvious issues and weaknesses. It its not the correct way to go about it. Good defences manage to hold up enough when the midfield get out played, just enough to minimize the damage. Ours just crumbles so easily. It is no secret that our one on one win rates amongst most of our players has been poor for years, and amongst the worst in the league. We no longer have a strong minded leaders like Woods, Boyd and Morris back there to provide leadership and stability. I have said for years now, we lack a Lake and Morris type down back, and often get abuse for it. And now here we are. We traded in Keath, who was a good intercept defender at Adelaide, to play against his strengths, and become a man on man defender, simply because he is big. We bought in O'Brien who was okay at the Hawks, to somehow play Woods old role, despite many low impact games. Outside of Doc, and potentially Richards, we have no defenders with the smarts and physical ability to win one on one contests enough.
When I play or coach sports. Given it has near always been defence for me. I always look for people who can physically keep up with their man, and give him a good honest contest, doesn't have to always win, but at least make it hard for their opponent. Its a bigger nightmare having an average honest opponent in your face each play, making you work to earn it, than simply having an elite player on you beating you every few plays. I get that we don't win many one on ones, but the fact we don't even make our opponents work hard for it is a worry. Almost ANYONE can play ZONE defence, its like the easiest type of defence to play.
If you can have a solid man on man back line, you will likely also have a solid zone backline, and can alternate between the two. I think that fact we are so poor man on man, we are forced to play pure zone. The rule with zones, is people think that it is just about guarding a patch of grass. But you still have to be honest to your opponent and play the man, on anyone that is within your zone. And position yourself to provide a contest when the ball comes your way. Zone is really about shifting the defence across to the attacking side of the opponent, and/or cutting off lanes for passes depending on the sport. Standing 5m behind your guy also negates the point of zone. Why give a 5m head start?
We have to many confidence players, and too many who ball watch, and those who think their team mate will just do it instead. Nothing worse than watching the game, seeing someone quit in a chase, or act dumbfounded when they pull out a marking contest thinking their team mate will get it, only for the opposition to mark it cleanly. The worst is from a center bounce where it is a 6 on 6. Yet there is still a loose player on his own with air around him for 15m, how that happens at this level beats me. I still feel personally Naughton is best for the team to be down the back, given the cupboard is bare, and we'd have to sell ourselves out of drafts to get anyone decent. Which is not worth it given the holes we have.
List Management/Development: I give the current and past recruiting teams a massive X when it comes to the defence. How do we have NO young defenders developing in the VFL squad? (Khamis aside) Our over obsession with drafting inside mids and half back flankers when we have plenty already, has left us with no defensive depth. Inexcusable really. But to be fair, our draft hands have been compromised the last two draft, lessening our ability to trade for quality, or draft more higher picks.
It is hard to judge the current list management team, given they have had free passes in landing Ugle-Hagan and Darcy. That has also reduced our hand when it comes to the draft. But he good thing is, we still seem to be drafting solid players with our late picks. I really rate Cleary and Bedendo. Arthur has something to work with if he learns to find the ball more.
But I feel our rookie list, and trading has seen more and more misses in recent times than what we are used to over the past decade. We need to drop our obsession with token Footscray picks each year, and would rather take a gamble on some unknown draftee which we seem to have a better hit rate. We also need to start drafting and recruiting players for their positions. Richards is a great example of a failure, when he was a gun half back flanker all his junior career, for some reason asked to play forward of the ball. Struggled, and surprise, plays well down the back line when played there. Our team is stacked with to many vanilla inside mid types, that we have some playing wing, forward and defence. Keath isnt being played to his best ability, he is playing a forced role. Our wingers are not natural wingers and non damaging. Treloar was a fortunate handout, O'Brien was a desperation move. If a player has spent years in the system on the fringes and are low impact, not sure why we assume they will improve with us.
With no more free handouts, this and next season we can get a better picture of our recruiting and list management teams with a full draft hand and a few outgoings. I will say this, if there is one particular person making the calls on the recent misses, they need to step back a wee bit, and stop holding us back, trust the recruiting team to do their job. If the calls are made as a collective, then I would be deeply concerned about how the team comes to their decisions.
Coaching: I remember watching a game late in the season, and a friend asked me. "what is your game plan exactly? Your team does not even have an identity" I asked myself the same thing right then. What is our identity as a team? Nothing screams out. What is our plan B?
When I was watching Geelong a few times. I noticed they seemed to have 3 different game plans in their forward half. One where they would have both Hawkins and Cameron sit in the pocket and try and stretch teams for height. Another where they will send either Hawkins or Cameron up the field, to isolate the other. Btw Hawkins is an absolute tank of a build, where Naughton still looks like a bean pole. The third seemed to be, like when they played us in Geelong, and just like Demons did at times. They would clear the forward pocket, and let their small forwards, mids and wingers play over the back of us, run us off our feet with leg speed and numbers after we nullified their talls.
I cant even figure out what our main game plan even is, given we are all over the place. Our defensive structures in the middle, and structures around the ground in general are poor. We do not play players in the right positions, and we wait to long to make adjustments when teams walk out of the middle and have a 6 or 7 goal term on us.
The lack of experience along the line coaches does not help. And the fact we seem to have neglected specialist coaches due to running a tight or low soft cap. Hawks during their 3 peat had one of the best kicking coaches in the league, and their goal kicking accuracy and general field kicking was much improved. Where we just seem to take a, "she'll fix herself approach". I think the debate on the man on the mark has been done enough. My theory is that by standing meters of the mark, you allow the kicker an extra run up to kick the ball an extra 20m plus. Where standing on the spot creates more pressure and no power up run.
I saw a post game interview from May from the Demons after the won a game. Where he said his team mates stick to their man, trust each other to do their job. And I rarely see the Demons break off their opponent, and let the one loose player they do have, take on the guy with the ball. Then I watch how we play, and we have 3 or 4 guys all chasing the player with the ball, leaving loose players all over the ground, allowing teams a fast transition. Whether its a coaching thing, poor game day IQ, or whether we do not trust one another, who knows? But that mind set, is why the Demons are the best defensive structured team in the league. We should be taking a page out of Melbourne and Geelongs books.
Scrap the standing off the mark. Come up with a new and fresh game plan. Start playing players in positions of strengths. Give debutants more than two games vs top 4 teams to settle. Where on the other end, stop giving a few games in a row to low impact turnover merchants. Work on fixing weaknesses and not mask them. Show the AFL world we have an identity. Have multiple game styles, and plans for when things go wrong instead of waiting until we are 5 goals behind.
Summary: As I said at the start, the team has the foundations to be a deep competing team, and we have set ourselves up for two potential windows in the next decade, if we can fill in the gaps right. I think our team whilst talented, is very vanilla and unbalanced. We have to many inside mid and role play types playing all over the ground, and not enough impact players. Structure, foot skills and game IQ need working on as a whole. Our defence needs a fair bit of help. Find a small forward, wingers, burst mid, ruck depth and defenders with man on man ability
Aside from Bontempelli, pre 2022 Smith and one of the forwards occasionally bobbing up, who exactly hurts and scares other teams? We need leadership in both the forward and back ends of the field to maintain confidence and structure of those around them. And we others to step up and lead the team when the going is tough. Bontempelli cannot keep carrying the burden. Game plan and coaching needs a refresher. Recruiting need to balance the team, both the best 22 and development 22. We cannot have 44 inside mids. The next two offseasons are going to be the most crucial in determining whether we make the most of the future, or piss away some of the talent we have.
Long time reader, and used to post regularly years ago. But had to take a hiatus when Mum became sick, and then got diagnosed with a degenerative condition myself, so I needed a break from everything. But decided to rejoin and chip in again. Of course 2022 was a very up and down season, and bought out the best and worst of our emotions.
Don't get me wrong. This team is very capable of winning a flag. But in the same breath I feel we have overrated the squad just a fraction, and we have a few holes we need to fill in to gel the team together. Good teams consistently hang around the top four over a few year period, something we are yet to do. Though late last year we were in prime position to win our first ever minor premiership, with a very winnable run home. We know how that panned out. But at least we stood up in finals, with pulling another crazy finals campaign out of our asses. Anyways, I thought I'd run my own thoughts across the lines of our list.
Forward Line: Honestly, if you could pick a young forward line in this league to work with long term, you'd have to say the Bulldogs are well placed. Naughton, Darcy, Ugle-Hagan, Weightman. The talent is there to work with. The main problem I have had with our forward line over the years, is that it had often been dumped with ex defenders, midfielders and non natural forwards, and it showed with the goal kicking and inability to create some magic. However, we have improved heaps in that regard in bringing in Ugle Hagan, Darcy and Weightman. Players who have actually spent most of their youth development in the pocket.
The main problem has been chemistry. I remember when I first watched football in the late 2000's. And just watching our forward line operate so efficiently, working for one another and creating space, so many marks inside 50. It was enjoyable to watch. Granted we did have a forward line of veteran players, Gia, Johnson, Hahn, Aker, Hall etc. And then we look at the mess that is the current crop. It has actually been an ongoing issue for years now, if not the majority of Bevo's tenure. That we have to ask, why has it not been addressed all this time? We often smash the inside 50 totals in our games, but we have been smashed despite a near plus 20 inside 50 differential.
I think chemistry will fix itself over time with more experience. But coaching structure and delivery itself needs some work, as well as the forwards playing their roles. Need to become more team centric and less selfish. Create space and block for each other more, and stop trying to be "that guy" by taking out team mates who have a clean mark. Smalls need to keep their feet to crumb and pressure.
Overall, the forward line is in good hands We could do with drafting another small forward, and perhaps a medium marking/half forward flanker with natural forward craft what can play into the middle. A Stevie J, Chapman style player.
Midfield: Probably the unit that took the biggest backwards step this season, and the main reason we have been inconsistent. On paper, the names read A grade midfield. But the reality is, I feel it has been our most overrated unit. For some reasons unknown, the kicking skills and decision making dropped drastically this season. We are still a solid clearance, stoppage and at times contested unit. But this season showed we are a very one way team and easily exposed on the back foot. Structures fell apart, teams figured us out. Which is very disappointing given all of our leaders are essentially in the middle of the park. Dunkley is going to be a huge loss, given his work rate and tackling is on the high end.
For all the talent in the middle, it is clear we stacked with to many inside midfielders and workhorse types, not enough impact players. We do not have any quick, natural wingers with good kicking skills on the wings which is required of in the modern game. We just stick whoever we have left over on the team sheet and stick them on the wings. As for the middle, we lack a strong physical player with burst speed that can hurt you in the way Petracca does each time he plays us. Need to cut out the poor kicking inside 50, kicking to a 1 on 3 situation, stop handballing to a guy who has an opponent on his ass, causing a turnover when caught with the ball.
Defensive structures need to be worked on in the offseason, improved ball use and decision making. We could look to draft natural wingers, and get some more speed in the centre. Could do with a burst midfielder. Bontempelli aside, and probably a pre 2022 Smith, we need more impact players. To many vanilla workhorse types.
Ruck: I am one of those people who believe hitouts are massively overrated in the game. Half the premiers in the past decade didn't exactly have an A grade ruckman. I feel the majority of the work comes from the midfielders around the ruckman, regardless who touches it first. Hitouts to advantage is the only relevant stat to me, and often its closer than you think. The best rucks to grace the league in recent years, their main weapon has been their ability to impact around the ground. Instead of vanishing after touching the leather, and having their team mates play as 17 on the field.
My biggest issue with English is not his ability, he has all the talent there. My issue is, outside of consistency, is he is to freaking nice. Grundy would just grab him, pull him aside, grab the ball, snap a goal, and English gave no physical fight. I feel the gap between hitouts and hitouts to advantage vs opponents, has gradually decreased. But the consistency is not there. I would like to see English drop the nice guy role, and start using his size to be nasty, physical, and wear his opponent down. When English is on fire around the ground, his impact is big for the team, but it fluctuates or does not sustain long enough. Whether its the head knocks hitting his confidence, who knows?
Sweet is only marginally better when it comes to hitouts, but barely touches the ball outside of that, has no impact around the ground. I feel his win loss ratio vs mostly lowly teams, as an excuse to keep persisting has been overstated, given in many of those wins, he played teams missing their first rucks, had no ruck. Or the midfield went crazy in a 10 goal smashing. Some of those wins masked Sweet getting demolished by Witts for example. If we play two Rucks, Sweet averages like 5 disposals. We cannot play one short on the field, purely for the sake of playing dual rucks. It negates any advantage. I would like to see Sweet spend more time in the VFL learning forward and defensive craft, so he becomes a more rounded ruckman. The problem is, we have no ruck depth what so ever. One of the trio is always injured, so even in the VFL, the ability to experiment and develop is hindered.
We really need to address ruck depth at some point, especially if Martin retires. But again, like key defenders, the cupboard is bare.
Defence: I think this one is very obvious for the world to see. It is very easy to blame the midfield not protecting the defence. But really, even when our midfield controls the play, it is just masking obvious issues and weaknesses. It its not the correct way to go about it. Good defences manage to hold up enough when the midfield get out played, just enough to minimize the damage. Ours just crumbles so easily. It is no secret that our one on one win rates amongst most of our players has been poor for years, and amongst the worst in the league. We no longer have a strong minded leaders like Woods, Boyd and Morris back there to provide leadership and stability. I have said for years now, we lack a Lake and Morris type down back, and often get abuse for it. And now here we are. We traded in Keath, who was a good intercept defender at Adelaide, to play against his strengths, and become a man on man defender, simply because he is big. We bought in O'Brien who was okay at the Hawks, to somehow play Woods old role, despite many low impact games. Outside of Doc, and potentially Richards, we have no defenders with the smarts and physical ability to win one on one contests enough.
When I play or coach sports. Given it has near always been defence for me. I always look for people who can physically keep up with their man, and give him a good honest contest, doesn't have to always win, but at least make it hard for their opponent. Its a bigger nightmare having an average honest opponent in your face each play, making you work to earn it, than simply having an elite player on you beating you every few plays. I get that we don't win many one on ones, but the fact we don't even make our opponents work hard for it is a worry. Almost ANYONE can play ZONE defence, its like the easiest type of defence to play.
If you can have a solid man on man back line, you will likely also have a solid zone backline, and can alternate between the two. I think that fact we are so poor man on man, we are forced to play pure zone. The rule with zones, is people think that it is just about guarding a patch of grass. But you still have to be honest to your opponent and play the man, on anyone that is within your zone. And position yourself to provide a contest when the ball comes your way. Zone is really about shifting the defence across to the attacking side of the opponent, and/or cutting off lanes for passes depending on the sport. Standing 5m behind your guy also negates the point of zone. Why give a 5m head start?
We have to many confidence players, and too many who ball watch, and those who think their team mate will just do it instead. Nothing worse than watching the game, seeing someone quit in a chase, or act dumbfounded when they pull out a marking contest thinking their team mate will get it, only for the opposition to mark it cleanly. The worst is from a center bounce where it is a 6 on 6. Yet there is still a loose player on his own with air around him for 15m, how that happens at this level beats me. I still feel personally Naughton is best for the team to be down the back, given the cupboard is bare, and we'd have to sell ourselves out of drafts to get anyone decent. Which is not worth it given the holes we have.
List Management/Development: I give the current and past recruiting teams a massive X when it comes to the defence. How do we have NO young defenders developing in the VFL squad? (Khamis aside) Our over obsession with drafting inside mids and half back flankers when we have plenty already, has left us with no defensive depth. Inexcusable really. But to be fair, our draft hands have been compromised the last two draft, lessening our ability to trade for quality, or draft more higher picks.
It is hard to judge the current list management team, given they have had free passes in landing Ugle-Hagan and Darcy. That has also reduced our hand when it comes to the draft. But he good thing is, we still seem to be drafting solid players with our late picks. I really rate Cleary and Bedendo. Arthur has something to work with if he learns to find the ball more.
But I feel our rookie list, and trading has seen more and more misses in recent times than what we are used to over the past decade. We need to drop our obsession with token Footscray picks each year, and would rather take a gamble on some unknown draftee which we seem to have a better hit rate. We also need to start drafting and recruiting players for their positions. Richards is a great example of a failure, when he was a gun half back flanker all his junior career, for some reason asked to play forward of the ball. Struggled, and surprise, plays well down the back line when played there. Our team is stacked with to many vanilla inside mid types, that we have some playing wing, forward and defence. Keath isnt being played to his best ability, he is playing a forced role. Our wingers are not natural wingers and non damaging. Treloar was a fortunate handout, O'Brien was a desperation move. If a player has spent years in the system on the fringes and are low impact, not sure why we assume they will improve with us.
With no more free handouts, this and next season we can get a better picture of our recruiting and list management teams with a full draft hand and a few outgoings. I will say this, if there is one particular person making the calls on the recent misses, they need to step back a wee bit, and stop holding us back, trust the recruiting team to do their job. If the calls are made as a collective, then I would be deeply concerned about how the team comes to their decisions.
Coaching: I remember watching a game late in the season, and a friend asked me. "what is your game plan exactly? Your team does not even have an identity" I asked myself the same thing right then. What is our identity as a team? Nothing screams out. What is our plan B?
When I was watching Geelong a few times. I noticed they seemed to have 3 different game plans in their forward half. One where they would have both Hawkins and Cameron sit in the pocket and try and stretch teams for height. Another where they will send either Hawkins or Cameron up the field, to isolate the other. Btw Hawkins is an absolute tank of a build, where Naughton still looks like a bean pole. The third seemed to be, like when they played us in Geelong, and just like Demons did at times. They would clear the forward pocket, and let their small forwards, mids and wingers play over the back of us, run us off our feet with leg speed and numbers after we nullified their talls.
I cant even figure out what our main game plan even is, given we are all over the place. Our defensive structures in the middle, and structures around the ground in general are poor. We do not play players in the right positions, and we wait to long to make adjustments when teams walk out of the middle and have a 6 or 7 goal term on us.
The lack of experience along the line coaches does not help. And the fact we seem to have neglected specialist coaches due to running a tight or low soft cap. Hawks during their 3 peat had one of the best kicking coaches in the league, and their goal kicking accuracy and general field kicking was much improved. Where we just seem to take a, "she'll fix herself approach". I think the debate on the man on the mark has been done enough. My theory is that by standing meters of the mark, you allow the kicker an extra run up to kick the ball an extra 20m plus. Where standing on the spot creates more pressure and no power up run.
I saw a post game interview from May from the Demons after the won a game. Where he said his team mates stick to their man, trust each other to do their job. And I rarely see the Demons break off their opponent, and let the one loose player they do have, take on the guy with the ball. Then I watch how we play, and we have 3 or 4 guys all chasing the player with the ball, leaving loose players all over the ground, allowing teams a fast transition. Whether its a coaching thing, poor game day IQ, or whether we do not trust one another, who knows? But that mind set, is why the Demons are the best defensive structured team in the league. We should be taking a page out of Melbourne and Geelongs books.
Scrap the standing off the mark. Come up with a new and fresh game plan. Start playing players in positions of strengths. Give debutants more than two games vs top 4 teams to settle. Where on the other end, stop giving a few games in a row to low impact turnover merchants. Work on fixing weaknesses and not mask them. Show the AFL world we have an identity. Have multiple game styles, and plans for when things go wrong instead of waiting until we are 5 goals behind.
Summary: As I said at the start, the team has the foundations to be a deep competing team, and we have set ourselves up for two potential windows in the next decade, if we can fill in the gaps right. I think our team whilst talented, is very vanilla and unbalanced. We have to many inside mid and role play types playing all over the ground, and not enough impact players. Structure, foot skills and game IQ need working on as a whole. Our defence needs a fair bit of help. Find a small forward, wingers, burst mid, ruck depth and defenders with man on man ability
Aside from Bontempelli, pre 2022 Smith and one of the forwards occasionally bobbing up, who exactly hurts and scares other teams? We need leadership in both the forward and back ends of the field to maintain confidence and structure of those around them. And we others to step up and lead the team when the going is tough. Bontempelli cannot keep carrying the burden. Game plan and coaching needs a refresher. Recruiting need to balance the team, both the best 22 and development 22. We cannot have 44 inside mids. The next two offseasons are going to be the most crucial in determining whether we make the most of the future, or piss away some of the talent we have.
Last edited:
- May 23, 2019
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Why would he come to us?
Hope you and your Mum are doing well. I'm personally relieved that there was a summary section at the bottomHi all
Long time reader, and used to post regularly years ago. But had to take a hiatus when Mum became sick, and then got diagnosed with a degenerative condition myself, so I needed a break from everything. But decided to rejoin and chip in again. Of course 2022 was a very up and down season, and bought out the best and worst of our emotions.
Don't get me wrong. This team is very capable of winning a flag. But in the same breath I feel we have overrated the squad just a fraction, and that blindness has led us to neglecting some areas. We have a few holes we need to fill in to gel the team together. Good teams consistently hang around the top four over a few year period, something we are yet to do. Though last year we were in prime position to win our first ever minor premiership, with a very winnable run home. We know how that panned out. But at least we stood up in finals, but we cannot keep relying on pulling crazy finals campaign out of our asses. Anyways, I thought I'd run my own thoughts across the lines of our list.
Forward Line: Honestly, if you could pick a young forward line in this league to work with long term, you'd have to say the Bulldogs are well placed. Naughton, Darcy, Ugle-Hagan, Weightman. The talent is there to work with. The main problem I have had with our forward line over the years, is that it had often been dumped with ex defenders, midfielders and non natural forwards, and it showed with the goal kicking and inability to create some magic. However, we have improved heaps in that regard in bringing in Ugle Hagan, Darcy and Weightman. Players who have actually spent most of their youth development in the pocket.
The main problem has been chemistry. I remember when I first watched football in the late 2000's. And just watching our forward line operate so efficiently, working for one another and creating space, so many marks inside 50. It was enjoyable to watch. Granted we did have a forward line of veteran players, Gia, Johnson, Hahn, Aker, Hall etc. And then we look at the mess that is the current crop. It has actually been an ongoing issue for years now, if not the majority of Bevo's tenure. That we have to ask, why has it not been addressed all this time?
Part of the problem has been not having a settled forward line to build natural chemistry, given we are always chopping and changing the unit. The other part is clearly a football IQ and coaching aspect of it. Poor kicking from the midfield doesn't help, slowing down the play to much that we allow teams to get back and flood does not help. And nor does the kicking it blindly and high, in a league with elite interceptors. But the forwards themselves have a role as well. Everyone going for the same ball, getting in way of one another, smalls not keeping their feet etc.
For a team that often dominates the inside 50 numbers each game, it needs to reflect more on the scoreboard. Have seen games where we get smashed, yet had 20 more inside 50's. We need to start playing the team game more, instead of everyone trying to be "the guy" down there, start creating space, less selfish football. Need to be less Naughton centric and, Naughton needs to stop taking out his team mates who are about to get a clean mark.
Overall, the forward line is in good hands. Just needs better structure, smarts, cleaner ball use from the middel, and chemistry. We could do with drafting another small forward, and perhaps a medium marking/half forward flanker with natural forward craft what can play into the middle. A Stevie J, Chapman style player.
Midfield: Probably the unit that took the biggest backwards step this season, and the main reason we have been inconsistent. On paper, the names read A grade midfield. But the reality is, I feel it has been our most overrated unit. For some reasons unknown, the kicking skills and decision making dropped drastically this season. We are still a solid clearance, stoppage and at times contested unit. But this season showed we are a very one way team and easily exposed on the back foot. Structures fell apart, teams figured us out. Which is very disappointing given all of our leaders are essentially in the middle of the park. Dunkley is going to be a huge loss, given his work rate and tackling is on the high end. For all the talent in the middle, it is clear we stacked with too many inside midfielders and workhorse types, not enough impact players. We do not have any quick, natural wingers with good kicking skills on the wings which is required of in the modern game. We just stick whoever we can find on the wings. As for the middle, we lack a strong physical player with burst speed that can hurt you in the way Petracca does each time he plays us. Poor kicking inside 50, kicking to a 1 on 3 situation, stop handballing to a guy who has an opponent on his ass, causing a turnover when caught with the ball.
Defensive structures need to be worked on in the offseason, improved ball use and decision making. We could look to draft natural wingers, and get some more speed in the centre. Could do with a burst midfielder. Bontempelli aside, and probably a pre 2022 Smith, we need more impact players. To many vanilla workhorse types.
Ruck: I am one of those people who believe hitouts are massively overrated in the game. Half the premiers in the past decade didn't exactly have an A grade ruckman. I feel the majority of the work comes from the midfielders around the ruckman, regardless who touches it first. Hitouts to advantage is the only relevant stat to me, and often its closer than you think. The best rucks to grace the league in recent years, their main weapon has been their ability to impact around the ground. Instead of vanishing after touching the leather, and having their team mates play as 17 on the field.
My biggest issue with English is not his ability, he has all the talent there. My issue is, outside of consistency, is he is to freaking nice. Grundy would just grab him, pull him aside, grab the ball, snap a goal, and English gave no physical fight. I feel the gap between hitouts and hitouts to advantage vs opponents, has gradually decreased. But the consistency is not there. I would like to see English drop the nice guy role, and start using his size to be nasty, physical, and wear his opponent down. When English is on fire around the ground, his impact is big for the team, but it fluctuates or does not sustain long enough. Whether its the head knocks hitting his confidence, who knows?
Sweet is only marginally better when it comes to hitouts, but barely touches the ball outside of that, has no impact around the ground. I feel his win loss ratio as an excuse to keep persisting has been overstated, given in many of those wins, he played teams missing their first rucks, had no ruck. Or the midfield went crazy in a 10 goal smashing. Some of those wins masked Sweet getting demolished by Witts for example. If we play two Rucks, Sweet averages like 5 disposals. We cannot play one short on the field, purely for the sake of playing dual rucks. It negates any advantage. I would like to see Sweet spend more time in the VFL learning forward and defensive craft, so he becomes a more rounded ruckman. The problem is, we have no ruck depth what so ever. One of the trio is always injured, so even in the VFL, the ability to experiment and develop is hindered.
We really need to address ruck depth at some point, especially if Martin retires. But again, like key defenders, the cupboard is bare.
Defence: I think this one is very obvious for the world to see. It is very easy to blame the midfield not protecting the defence. But really, even when our midfield controls the play, it is just masking obvious issues and weaknesses. It its not the correct way to go about it. Good defences manage to hold up enough when the midfield get out played, just enough to minimize the damage. Ours just crumbles so easily. It is no secret that our one on one win rates amongst most of our players has been poor for years, and amongst the worst in the league. We no longer have a strong minded leaders like Woods, Boyd and Morris back there to provide leadership and stability. I blame the coaches and list management for neglecting the defence for to long, and allowing it to reach this point. I have said for years now, we lack a Lake and Morris type down back, and often get abuse for it. And now here we are. We traded in Keath, who was a good intercept defender at Adelaide, to play against his strengths, and become a man on man defender, simply because he is big. We bought in O'Brien who was ordinary at the Hawks, to somehow play Woods old role, despite low impact at the Hawks. Outside of Doc, and potentially Richards, we have no defenders with the smarts and physical ability to win one on one contests enough.
When I play or coach sports. Given it has near always been defence for me. I always look for people who can physically keep up with their man, and give him a good honest contest, doesn't have to always win, but at least make it hard for their opponent. I get that we don't win many one on ones, but the fact we don't even make our opponents work hard for it is a worry. Almost ANYONE can play ZONE defence, its like the easiest type of defence to play, thought you do need some element of a decent IQ to read the play.
But not everyone can play man on man, if you can have a solid man on man back line, you will likely also have a solid zone backline, and can alternate between the two. I think we are so poor man on man, that we are forced to play pure zone. The rule with zones, is people think that it is just about guarding a patch of grass. But you still have to be honest to your opponent and play the man, on anyone that is within your zone. Zone is really about shifting the defence across to the attacking side of the opponent, and/or cutting off lanes for passes depending on the sport. But what annoys me, is that we are also so poor at that as well. Zone requires communication, knowing where and who everyone is around you. Or we stand 5m behind our man, which defeats the purpose of the zone, as it allows them to lead unopposed.
When I watch us play, I see to many of our guys ball watching and not paying attention to where their man is, the biggest sin when defending is ball watching. Then someone else shifts to cover someone else mistakes, and the zone structure crumbles. We look like a defence of confidence players, who pull out of contests, and quit chasing when our opponent gets on the lead, and when they start to have a bad day, they HAVE a bad day. The cannot seem to bounce back from being beat. We are not strong in the air, and not confident in one another. Hence we play the jump up and punch the ball away style. When every defender jumps for it, ball spills out the back, the opponents are off to the races, so not always effective. With the defence always under putting themselves pressure, usual clean ball users like Dale end up struggling on the rebound and hand the ball straight back to our opponents through wild kicks outside the defensive 50. Sucks watching Stewart and May get like a dozen intercept marks a game, where we just prefer to punch it around and hope someone cleans it up.
The modern game also requires players with a booming kick to hit it over 60m and over the packs at kick outs when no one is free to pass it to, which is why I don't want to see players with a limited kicking range taking the kick ins. I think everyone knows who that is.
My biggest pet hate is seeing opposing teams forwards on their own with no one on them, opposing teams players getting an easy mark with three Dogs players around him, AND players who pull out of contests and quit when they think they are beat instead of giving it 100 percent to the end.
Our defence has help up pretty well vs tall players for the most part I will give that acknowledgement. But its the smalls that rip us open when the game opens up. Lack of leg speed doesn't help. My pet peeve, is when we have a stoppage or centre bounce where we have loads of time to set up in defence, or it its purely 6 on 6, yet the opposing team still has a guy inside 50 own his own with 15m of space. There is no excuse for those ones when the numbers are even.
Defence needs a lot of help and restructuring in the next couple of off seasons. Sadly it will not be an overnight fix, and we may not see significant changes immediately enough to make a huge impact. Naughton is genuinely our only bet for getting a decent man on man, intecept type player down the back, and I feel for the sake of team balance, he is our best option. The market is bare, and anyone we draft will not be ready for years. We will have to sell our soul out of multiple drafts to land a lone decent defender, and given the few holes we do have, I am not sure its worth that when we already have someone capable.
List Management/Development: I give the current and past recruiting teams a massive F when it comes to the defence. How do we have NO young defenders developing in the VFL squad? (Khamis aside) Our over obsession with drafting inside mids and half back flankers when we have plenty already, has left us with no defensive depth. Inexcusable really.
Hard to judge the current list management team, given they have had free passes in landing Ugle-Hagan and Darcy. That has also reduced our hand when it comes to the draft. But he good thing is, we still seem to be drafting solid players with our late picks. I really rate Cleary and Bedendo. Arthur has something to work with if he learns to find the ball more.
But I feel our rookie list, and trading has seen more and more misses in recent times than what we are used to over the past decade. We need to drop our obsession with token Footscray picks each year, and rather take a gamble on some unknown draftee which we seem to have a better hit rate. We also need to start drafting and recruiting players for their positions. Richards is a great example of a failure, when he was a gun half back flanker all his junior career, for some reason asked to play forward of the ball. Struggled, and surprise, plays well down the back line when played there. Our team is stacked with to many vanilla inside mid types, that we have some playing wing, forward and defence. Keath isnt being played to his best ability, he is playing a forced role. Our wingers are not natural wingers and non damaging. Treloar was a fortunate handout, O'Brien was a desperation move. If a player has spent years in the system on the fringes and low impact, not sure why we assume they will improve with us.
With no more free handouts, this and next season we can get a better picture of our recruiting and list management teams with a full draft hand and a few outgoings. I will say this, if there is one particular person making the calls on the Footscray and O'Brien types, they need to step back a wee bit, and stop holding us back, trust the recruiting team to do their job. If the calls are made as a collective, then I would be deeply concerned about how the team comes to their decisions.
Coaching: I remember watching a game late in the season, and a friend asked me. "what is your game plan exactly? Your team does not even have an identity" I asked myself the same thing right then. What is our identity as a team? Nothing screams out. What is our plan B?
When I was watching Geelong a few times. I noticed they seemed to have 3 different game plans in their forward half. One where they would have both Hawkins and Cameron sit in the pocket and try and stretch teams for height. Another where they will send either Hawkins or Cameron up the field, to isolate the other. Btw Hawkins is an absolute tank of a build, where Naughton still looks like a bean pole. The third seemed to be, like when they played us in Geelong, and just like Demons did at times. They would clear the forward pocket, and let their small forwards, mids and wingers play over the back of us, run us off our feet with leg speed and numbers after we nullified their talls.
I cant even figure out what our main game plan even is, given we are all over the place. Our defensive structures in the middle, and structures around the ground in general are poor. We do not play players in the right positions, and we wait to long to make adjustments when teams walk out of the middle and have a 6 or 7 goal term on us.
The lack of experience along the line coaches does not help. And the fact we seem to have neglected specialist coaches due to running a tight or low soft cap. Hawks during their 3 peat had one of the best kicking coaches in the league, and their goal kicking accuracy and general field kicking was much improved. Where we just seem to take a, "she'll fix herself approach". I think the debate on the man on the mark has been done enough. My theory is that by standing metres of the mark, you allow the kicker an extra run up to kick the ball an extra 20m plus. Where standing on the spot creates more pressure and no power up run.
I saw a post game interview from May from the Demons after the won a game. Where he said his team mates stick to their man, trust each other to do their job. And I rarely see the Demons break off their opponent, and let the one loose player they do have, take on the guy with the ball. Then I watch how we play, and we have 3 or 4 guys all chasing the player with the ball, leaving loose players all over the ground, allowing teams a fast transition. Whether its a coaching thing, or whether we do not trust one another, who knows. But that mind set is why the Demons are the best defensive structured team in the league. We should be taking a page out of Melbourne and Geelongs books.
Scrap the standing off the mark. Come up with a new and fresh game plan. Start playing players in positions of strengths. Give debutants more than two games vs top 4 teams to settle, where on the other end, stop giving a few games in a row to low impact turnover merchants. Work on fixing weaknesses and not mask them. Show the AFL world we have an identity. Have multiple game styles, and plans for when things go wrong instead of waiting until we are 5 goals behind.
Summary: As I said at the start, the team has the foundations to be a deep competing team, and we have set ourselves up for two potential windows in the next decade, if we can fill in the gaps right. I think our team whilst talented, is very vanilla and unbalanced. We have to many inside mid types playing all over the ground. Structure, foot skills and game IQ need working on as a whole. Our defence needs a fair bit of help. Find a small forward, wingers, burst mid, ruck depth and defenders with man on man ability
We have to many work horse types and not enough impact players. Aside from Bontempelli, pre 2022 Smith and one of the forwards occasionally bobbing up, who exactly hurts and scares other teams? We need leadership in both the forward and back ends of the field. And we others to step up and lead the team when the going is tough. Bontempelli cannot keep carrying the burden. Game plan and coaching needs a refresher. Recruiting need to balance the team, both the best 22 and development 22, we cannot have 44 inside mids. The next two offseasons are going to be the most crucial in determining whether we make the most of the future, or piss away some of the talent we have.
- Jun 20, 2012
- 1,691
- 5,496
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
Senior assistant I believe
- Nov 16, 2015
- 5,482
- 8,996
- AFL Club
- Western Bulldogs
Hi all
Long time reader, and used to post regularly years ago. But had to take a hiatus when Mum became sick, and then got diagnosed with a degenerative condition myself, so I needed a break from everything. But decided to rejoin and chip in again. Of course 2022 was a very up and down season, and bought out the best and worst of our emotions.
Don't get me wrong. This team is very capable of winning a flag. But in the same breath I feel we have overrated the squad just a fraction, and that blindness has led us to neglecting some areas. We have a few holes we need to fill in to gel the team together. Good teams consistently hang around the top four over a few year period, something we are yet to do. Though last year we were in prime position to win our first ever minor premiership, with a very winnable run home. We know how that panned out. But at least we stood up in finals, but we cannot keep relying on pulling crazy finals campaign out of our asses. Anyways, I thought I'd run my own thoughts across the lines of our list.
Forward Line: Honestly, if you could pick a young forward line in this league to work with long term, you'd have to say the Bulldogs are well placed. Naughton, Darcy, Ugle-Hagan, Weightman. The talent is there to work with. The main problem I have had with our forward line over the years, is that it had often been dumped with ex defenders, midfielders and non natural forwards, and it showed with the goal kicking and inability to create some magic. However, we have improved heaps in that regard in bringing in Ugle Hagan, Darcy and Weightman. Players who have actually spent most of their youth development in the pocket.
The main problem has been chemistry. I remember when I first watched football in the late 2000's. And just watching our forward line operate so efficiently, working for one another and creating space, so many marks inside 50. It was enjoyable to watch. Granted we did have a forward line of veteran players, Gia, Johnson, Hahn, Aker, Hall etc. And then we look at the mess that is the current crop. It has actually been an ongoing issue for years now, if not the majority of Bevo's tenure. That we have to ask, why has it not been addressed all this time?
Part of the problem has been not having a settled forward line to build natural chemistry, given we are always chopping and changing the unit. The other part is clearly a football IQ and coaching aspect of it. Poor kicking from the midfield doesn't help, slowing down the play to much that we allow teams to get back and flood does not help. And nor does the kicking it blindly and high, in a league with elite interceptors. But the forwards themselves have a role as well. Everyone going for the same ball, getting in way of one another, smalls not keeping their feet etc.
For a team that often dominates the inside 50 numbers each game, it needs to reflect more on the scoreboard. Have seen games where we get smashed, yet had 20 more inside 50's. We need to start playing the team game more, instead of everyone trying to be "the guy" down there, start creating space, less selfish football. Need to be less Naughton centric and, Naughton needs to stop taking out his team mates who are about to get a clean mark.
Overall, the forward line is in good hands. Just needs better structure, smarts, cleaner ball use from the middel, and chemistry. We could do with drafting another small forward, and perhaps a medium marking/half forward flanker with natural forward craft what can play into the middle. A Stevie J, Chapman style player.
Midfield: Probably the unit that took the biggest backwards step this season, and the main reason we have been inconsistent. On paper, the names read A grade midfield. But the reality is, I feel it has been our most overrated unit. For some reasons unknown, the kicking skills and decision making dropped drastically this season. We are still a solid clearance, stoppage and at times contested unit. But this season showed we are a very one way team and easily exposed on the back foot. Structures fell apart, teams figured us out. Which is very disappointing given all of our leaders are essentially in the middle of the park. Dunkley is going to be a huge loss, given his work rate and tackling is on the high end. For all the talent in the middle, it is clear we stacked with too many inside midfielders and workhorse types, not enough impact players. We do not have any quick, natural wingers with good kicking skills on the wings which is required of in the modern game. We just stick whoever we can find on the wings. As for the middle, we lack a strong physical player with burst speed that can hurt you in the way Petracca does each time he plays us. Poor kicking inside 50, kicking to a 1 on 3 situation, stop handballing to a guy who has an opponent on his ass, causing a turnover when caught with the ball.
Defensive structures need to be worked on in the offseason, improved ball use and decision making. We could look to draft natural wingers, and get some more speed in the centre. Could do with a burst midfielder. Bontempelli aside, and probably a pre 2022 Smith, we need more impact players. To many vanilla workhorse types.
Ruck: I am one of those people who believe hitouts are massively overrated in the game. Half the premiers in the past decade didn't exactly have an A grade ruckman. I feel the majority of the work comes from the midfielders around the ruckman, regardless who touches it first. Hitouts to advantage is the only relevant stat to me, and often its closer than you think. The best rucks to grace the league in recent years, their main weapon has been their ability to impact around the ground. Instead of vanishing after touching the leather, and having their team mates play as 17 on the field.
My biggest issue with English is not his ability, he has all the talent there. My issue is, outside of consistency, is he is to freaking nice. Grundy would just grab him, pull him aside, grab the ball, snap a goal, and English gave no physical fight. I feel the gap between hitouts and hitouts to advantage vs opponents, has gradually decreased. But the consistency is not there. I would like to see English drop the nice guy role, and start using his size to be nasty, physical, and wear his opponent down. When English is on fire around the ground, his impact is big for the team, but it fluctuates or does not sustain long enough. Whether its the head knocks hitting his confidence, who knows?
Sweet is only marginally better when it comes to hitouts, but barely touches the ball outside of that, has no impact around the ground. I feel his win loss ratio as an excuse to keep persisting has been overstated, given in many of those wins, he played teams missing their first rucks, had no ruck. Or the midfield went crazy in a 10 goal smashing. Some of those wins masked Sweet getting demolished by Witts for example. If we play two Rucks, Sweet averages like 5 disposals. We cannot play one short on the field, purely for the sake of playing dual rucks. It negates any advantage. I would like to see Sweet spend more time in the VFL learning forward and defensive craft, so he becomes a more rounded ruckman. The problem is, we have no ruck depth what so ever. One of the trio is always injured, so even in the VFL, the ability to experiment and develop is hindered.
We really need to address ruck depth at some point, especially if Martin retires. But again, like key defenders, the cupboard is bare.
Defence: I think this one is very obvious for the world to see. It is very easy to blame the midfield not protecting the defence. But really, even when our midfield controls the play, it is just masking obvious issues and weaknesses. It its not the correct way to go about it. Good defences manage to hold up enough when the midfield get out played, just enough to minimize the damage. Ours just crumbles so easily. It is no secret that our one on one win rates amongst most of our players has been poor for years, and amongst the worst in the league. We no longer have a strong minded leaders like Woods, Boyd and Morris back there to provide leadership and stability. I blame the coaches and list management for neglecting the defence for to long, and allowing it to reach this point. I have said for years now, we lack a Lake and Morris type down back, and often get abuse for it. And now here we are. We traded in Keath, who was a good intercept defender at Adelaide, to play against his strengths, and become a man on man defender, simply because he is big. We bought in O'Brien who was ordinary at the Hawks, to somehow play Woods old role, despite low impact at the Hawks. Outside of Doc, and potentially Richards, we have no defenders with the smarts and physical ability to win one on one contests enough.
When I play or coach sports. Given it has near always been defence for me. I always look for people who can physically keep up with their man, and give him a good honest contest, doesn't have to always win, but at least make it hard for their opponent. I get that we don't win many one on ones, but the fact we don't even make our opponents work hard for it is a worry. Almost ANYONE can play ZONE defence, its like the easiest type of defence to play, thought you do need some element of a decent IQ to read the play.
But not everyone can play man on man, if you can have a solid man on man back line, you will likely also have a solid zone backline, and can alternate between the two. I think we are so poor man on man, that we are forced to play pure zone. The rule with zones, is people think that it is just about guarding a patch of grass. But you still have to be honest to your opponent and play the man, on anyone that is within your zone. Zone is really about shifting the defence across to the attacking side of the opponent, and/or cutting off lanes for passes depending on the sport. But what annoys me, is that we are also so poor at that as well. Zone requires communication, knowing where and who everyone is around you. Or we stand 5m behind our man, which defeats the purpose of the zone, as it allows them to lead unopposed.
When I watch us play, I see to many of our guys ball watching and not paying attention to where their man is, the biggest sin when defending is ball watching. Then someone else shifts to cover someone else mistakes, and the zone structure crumbles. We look like a defence of confidence players, who pull out of contests, and quit chasing when our opponent gets on the lead, and when they start to have a bad day, they HAVE a bad day. The cannot seem to bounce back from being beat. We are not strong in the air, and not confident in one another. Hence we play the jump up and punch the ball away style. When every defender jumps for it, ball spills out the back, the opponents are off to the races, so not always effective. With the defence always under putting themselves pressure, usual clean ball users like Dale end up struggling on the rebound and hand the ball straight back to our opponents through wild kicks outside the defensive 50. Sucks watching Stewart and May get like a dozen intercept marks a game, where we just prefer to punch it around and hope someone cleans it up.
The modern game also requires players with a booming kick to hit it over 60m and over the packs at kick outs when no one is free to pass it to, which is why I don't want to see players with a limited kicking range taking the kick ins. I think everyone knows who that is.
My biggest pet hate is seeing opposing teams forwards on their own with no one on them, opposing teams players getting an easy mark with three Dogs players around him, AND players who pull out of contests and quit when they think they are beat instead of giving it 100 percent to the end.
Our defence has help up pretty well vs tall players for the most part I will give that acknowledgement. But its the smalls that rip us open when the game opens up. Lack of leg speed doesn't help. My pet peeve, is when we have a stoppage or centre bounce where we have loads of time to set up in defence, or it its purely 6 on 6, yet the opposing team still has a guy inside 50 own his own with 15m of space. There is no excuse for those ones when the numbers are even.
Defence needs a lot of help and restructuring in the next couple of off seasons. Sadly it will not be an overnight fix, and we may not see significant changes immediately enough to make a huge impact. Naughton is genuinely our only bet for getting a decent man on man, intecept type player down the back, and I feel for the sake of team balance, he is our best option. The market is bare, and anyone we draft will not be ready for years. We will have to sell our soul out of multiple drafts to land a lone decent defender, and given the few holes we do have, I am not sure its worth that when we already have someone capable.
List Management/Development: I give the current and past recruiting teams a massive F when it comes to the defence. How do we have NO young defenders developing in the VFL squad? (Khamis aside) Our over obsession with drafting inside mids and half back flankers when we have plenty already, has left us with no defensive depth. Inexcusable really.
Hard to judge the current list management team, given they have had free passes in landing Ugle-Hagan and Darcy. That has also reduced our hand when it comes to the draft. But he good thing is, we still seem to be drafting solid players with our late picks. I really rate Cleary and Bedendo. Arthur has something to work with if he learns to find the ball more.
But I feel our rookie list, and trading has seen more and more misses in recent times than what we are used to over the past decade. We need to drop our obsession with token Footscray picks each year, and rather take a gamble on some unknown draftee which we seem to have a better hit rate. We also need to start drafting and recruiting players for their positions. Richards is a great example of a failure, when he was a gun half back flanker all his junior career, for some reason asked to play forward of the ball. Struggled, and surprise, plays well down the back line when played there. Our team is stacked with to many vanilla inside mid types, that we have some playing wing, forward and defence. Keath isnt being played to his best ability, he is playing a forced role. Our wingers are not natural wingers and non damaging. Treloar was a fortunate handout, O'Brien was a desperation move. If a player has spent years in the system on the fringes and low impact, not sure why we assume they will improve with us.
With no more free handouts, this and next season we can get a better picture of our recruiting and list management teams with a full draft hand and a few outgoings. I will say this, if there is one particular person making the calls on the Footscray and O'Brien types, they need to step back a wee bit, and stop holding us back, trust the recruiting team to do their job. If the calls are made as a collective, then I would be deeply concerned about how the team comes to their decisions.
Coaching: I remember watching a game late in the season, and a friend asked me. "what is your game plan exactly? Your team does not even have an identity" I asked myself the same thing right then. What is our identity as a team? Nothing screams out. What is our plan B?
When I was watching Geelong a few times. I noticed they seemed to have 3 different game plans in their forward half. One where they would have both Hawkins and Cameron sit in the pocket and try and stretch teams for height. Another where they will send either Hawkins or Cameron up the field, to isolate the other. Btw Hawkins is an absolute tank of a build, where Naughton still looks like a bean pole. The third seemed to be, like when they played us in Geelong, and just like Demons did at times. They would clear the forward pocket, and let their small forwards, mids and wingers play over the back of us, run us off our feet with leg speed and numbers after we nullified their talls.
I cant even figure out what our main game plan even is, given we are all over the place. Our defensive structures in the middle, and structures around the ground in general are poor. We do not play players in the right positions, and we wait to long to make adjustments when teams walk out of the middle and have a 6 or 7 goal term on us.
The lack of experience along the line coaches does not help. And the fact we seem to have neglected specialist coaches due to running a tight or low soft cap. Hawks during their 3 peat had one of the best kicking coaches in the league, and their goal kicking accuracy and general field kicking was much improved. Where we just seem to take a, "she'll fix herself approach". I think the debate on the man on the mark has been done enough. My theory is that by standing metres of the mark, you allow the kicker an extra run up to kick the ball an extra 20m plus. Where standing on the spot creates more pressure and no power up run.
I saw a post game interview from May from the Demons after the won a game. Where he said his team mates stick to their man, trust each other to do their job. And I rarely see the Demons break off their opponent, and let the one loose player they do have, take on the guy with the ball. Then I watch how we play, and we have 3 or 4 guys all chasing the player with the ball, leaving loose players all over the ground, allowing teams a fast transition. Whether its a coaching thing, or whether we do not trust one another, who knows. But that mind set is why the Demons are the best defensive structured team in the league. We should be taking a page out of Melbourne and Geelongs books.
Scrap the standing off the mark. Come up with a new and fresh game plan. Start playing players in positions of strengths. Give debutants more than two games vs top 4 teams to settle, where on the other end, stop giving a few games in a row to low impact turnover merchants. Work on fixing weaknesses and not mask them. Show the AFL world we have an identity. Have multiple game styles, and plans for when things go wrong instead of waiting until we are 5 goals behind.
Summary: As I said at the start, the team has the foundations to be a deep competing team, and we have set ourselves up for two potential windows in the next decade, if we can fill in the gaps right. I think our team whilst talented, is very vanilla and unbalanced. We have to many inside mid types playing all over the ground. Structure, foot skills and game IQ need working on as a whole. Our defence needs a fair bit of help. Find a small forward, wingers, burst mid, ruck depth and defenders with man on man ability
We have to many work horse types and not enough impact players. Aside from Bontempelli, pre 2022 Smith and one of the forwards occasionally bobbing up, who exactly hurts and scares other teams? We need leadership in both the forward and back ends of the field. And we others to step up and lead the team when the going is tough. Bontempelli cannot keep carrying the burden. Game plan and coaching needs a refresher. Recruiting need to balance the team, both the best 22 and development 22, we cannot have 44 inside mids. The next two offseasons are going to be the most crucial in determining whether we make the most of the future, or piss away some of the talent we have.
I see us sticking with the 5 metre mark stance. When defended well, it becomes a weapon the other way when teams aren’t set up right. It creates fast movement from opposition teams, once turned over, set ups are usually lacking and it can be a real offensive weapon on the rebound. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the defending the ball once disposed off well enough and we’ve seen the result.
Us and Collingwood were on the right track in implementing it, we just bottled an important part. Quick ball movement, if not part of a teams system, can be more difficult to attack with than it is to defend. Even teams that use sling shot footy as a means to transition tend to struggle to defend the ball on the rebound. Essendon a few years ago the perfect example.
With tighter defensive structure, with better performing defenders coming in, I reckon we’ll see a real improvement on the back of it.
I’m all for encouraging teams to move the ball quickly and directly, we just need to get the end product right. Saying that, I’d also be ok with it being dumped, as long as we structure up better in the back half.
Or we could add young talent like Jhye Clark who has the take no prisoner attitude, we could definitely use more like it
- Nov 16, 2015
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Worlds biggest s**t stain.
Dog 36
Norm Smith Medallist
Senior assistant in charge midfield
Webb goes stoppages
That is what I thought could be wrong
_Cerberus_
Club Legend
- Sep 30, 2022
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Thank you
Yeah we are both well now. I'm just starting to get back into playing sport and looking for work now, after a year and half off.
Yeah it was a long one haha. Did not mean for it to be as long as it ended up. But too tired to chop it down. At least my posts can only get shorter now xD
Essendon reportedly shopping Jake Stringer around.... Has water gone under the bridge for him to return to the kennel? I'm sure there will be a few supporters open to it.
Pick 27 would get the job done.........pffft
- Oct 11, 2014
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As much chance as Jake coming back to the bulldogs as Bevo going out for dinner with Barrett and Tom Morris.
If it was one or two you could possibly believe it was lifestyle related. Human nature says that it's not possible to maintain that kind of buy in. Unless there is something else happening in the background, you mightn't get the money while playing but it will find you down the track after retirement.
Dunks is an example that $$ talk and BS can run the marathon
- Sep 22, 2008
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NGL Jake would be dynamite besides Naughty, Lobb, Marra etc rotating through the middle. Has he grown up?
Wouldn’t give anything up for him tho but * throw in Cody, West and another lightning pressure forward. That forward line is nuts
Wouldn’t give anything up for him tho but * throw in Cody, West and another lightning pressure forward. That forward line is nuts
Yeah he's grown up in some regards I think. But he's still lazy with his preparation which showed this year being injured for the majority. He wont even get an interview with the club anyways.
Heard some word we’re very keen on Connor McKenna who’s recently expressed his desire to return to AFL
Not a bad get on the cheap I reckon
Not a bad get on the cheap I reckon
- Sep 27, 2005
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Watch him go to Geelong...
- Dec 2, 2011
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Assuming he’d look at another club prior to rejoining cats. Demographically he wouldn’t need to uproot family.
Cos I want it
?
- Apr 5, 2016
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I believe so.
- Status
