I've read numerous times coaches say that it can take a long time to react to a team whose game plan is superior. When Freo dominated years back they dominated most of the year. Clubs didn't know how to stop them. By half time scores were 80-15.
Your example of Freo (presumably in 2015, when they were leading WC 89 to 15 at half-time) does not prove your claim "Clubs didn't know how to stop them." After half-time WC managed to significantly outscore Freo to lose by only 31 points. Worse, when the 2 teams met later in the year (in round 20) WC won by 4 goals after leading all day. So much for not knowing how to be stopped.
I have never heard a coach (whilst still a coach) admit the opposition's game plan was superior. Usually the coach blames the effort, or injuries, or the talent in the team ("we are rebuilding"). The closest a coach would get to admitting their game plan was inferior is to say "It is taking a long time to get the players to play the way we want them to", which is not the same thing you are saying at all.
A coach who has not bedded in a game plan in year 1 shouldn't get a year 2. Sure, yr 2 will have changes to the game plan, but so will year 10. Clarkson has reinvented his game plan for the players available and is clearly on track to do so again minus Mitchell and Lewis.Clubs train all summer under new coaches but still don't completely bed in new games plans til year 2 sometime.
So stands to reason it is smart to keep clubs guessing as long as possible.
Even if all you have written before reaching this conclusion could be agreed with, the conclusion does not follow, and particularly not in our case. We are at the start of Year 2 of our rebuild. We have no target to play finals this year, let alone win a flag. Any club that can't beat us sight unseen should have no pretensions to being a top 4 Club. Winning this year does NOT matter for our ambition to win a Flag in the future. It only really matters for us fans.
What does follow is that when winning does matter, perhaps in 2017 if McKay, SOJ and Charlie each become the forwards we hope them to be and do so at a precociously young age, other Clubs will have an enormous body of games to pick over to determine our "game plan". And Carlton intra-club games would be about as uninteresting a source of knowledge as could be imagined.
St Kilda, after several years of rebuild, have hopes of playing finals this year. Their intra club game played this year is available to watch for free. IMO St Kilda rightly take the view they have no future if they can't beat clubs when it matters because the game plan as seen from the intra club has been picked apart by the opposition.
IMO not letting the fans (and opposition spies) see the intra club games is mindless secrecy for secrecy's sake and very poor promotion of the Club.
It stems from the same idiocy that leads to injured players being picked when the Club knows full well the player's foot is in a moon boot. It is an insult to the supporters and, perhaps more importantly, an insult to the players.
I agree to the extent that what would surprise me is if any club actually plays their proper game. It looks like St Kilda has picked a team which contains its best 22 (from among the 26 picked) but I doubt the best 22 will get the game time they would get if it was for real.Wouldn't even surprise to see a club NOT play their proper game in preseason Comp. "just kick it long this weekend".