Autopsy vs * - Rd 6, 2020

SonofSamsquanch

Enjoy decent coffee but don't dunk yer biscuits
Mar 31, 2016
19,250
44,951
Victoria
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North Melbourne
May 8, 2003
20,855
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Hamish Paradise
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Islanders, Nuggets
All good points, Ferbs, and I don’t necessarily disagree with any of it. My point is that it’s a bit rich from a coach to bring those blokes in then 6 months later claim we need a rebuild.
Yeah I agree.

If he'd said he hadn't finished then it would be fair enough cos really 17, 18, 19 and 20 is what's needed. We're just seeing Jy come on now. Hopefully LDU next year to go with Larkey, Zurhaar and the 2018 kids up forward.

I still think our situation is better than it seems list wise. If we follow the path we have the last few years it should improve. But we need to get some things sorted out quick smart. Mostly to do with forward structure imo.
 

BTRAIN2

Team Captain
Aug 26, 2014
324
807
AFL Club
North Melbourne
We’re paying for an era of drafting slow footballers and now we’re running like a hamster on a wheel to catch up. Not going anywhere!
It’s blatantly obvious when watching North week in week out that the majority of the tricks come from the kids.
Zaharakis who hasn’t had a kick all year has bloody four shots at goal in the first half on McMillan. God help us all seriously.
 

Dirty_11

Norm Smith Medallist
Jan 28, 2014
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Beneath the Blue & White
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Even so, just having some momentum when taking possession of the ball makes it much more difficult to be tackled. So many times our blokes handball to the current position of the player. Cunnington usually puts the ball out in front to allow the receiver to run onto the ball. Now I’m no footballer, but that is what the coaches taught us when I was playing as well.

Referring to another post you made - that tackle on Cam Zurhaar, where he was headlocked and slung while not having the ball - not paid a free and no comment from the commentators. State of the game is in shambles.

EDIT: Fixed an error as pointed out by others below.
They didn't comment on no free kick being paid to CT after the Sheil bump though.

On SM-G950F using BigFooty.com mobile app
 
One of the most insipid North loses to * for a long time. Just no fight or shinboner spirit.

Positives.
Simpkin, Goldstein, Dumont and McDonald.
Another game into Mahoney, Scott, Thomas and Taylor.
Josh Walker has been a great pickup.

Negatives.
1. Campbell. Good guy. Not a good footballer.
2. Hall. 23 touches but everytime we need to hit a target forward of centre, he just can't.
3. Brown. Just so out of form. That last dropped mark with no one around him summed up his season. Would trade for a first rounder to end up with 3 first round picks.
4. No plan B. Why didn't he throw Tarrant or Walker forward when we need the game to be won? or even Brown in the ruck and Goldy up forward?
5. Why is Marley Williams in the side? Can't hit a target to save his life.
6. Ahern has lost all his spark.
7. I know Hayden is young but would you want to carry him into a big final with his backline kicking? Has a go but doesn't know his limitations.
8. Thomas. I feel like he will be a 10-12 player for most of his career. Needs to develop his tank.
9. Atley, McMillian and Pittard. Have a go but would they get a go at any other club?
10. fu** the *

You, obviously, didn’t see or have forgotten what we dished up against the Bombers on Good Friday last year. Last night was much better than that - bad and all as it was.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app
 

franjon

Premiership Player
Oct 27, 2004
3,272
2,582
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DuckYepost: 65822209 said:
yes. Umpires have too much influence in the result of a game. More so in the shorter quarters as a couple of goals due to bad decisions are hard to make up.
Poor disposal has a much greater influence on our game. I think we should be more concerned about that. There was nothing wrong with the umpiring last night. We had more than enough chances to win it. We just stuffed it up.
 

Ischenko

Premiership Player
Jun 1, 2012
3,112
10,811
AFL Club
North Melbourne
De
Decent shout. Shall we start up the bring back Brad thread? He's only working at the AFL, surely he could be coaxed out of retirement. What's Cam Joyce up to? Maybe we could get the band back together?

I reckon Farren Ray off half back and Hrovat at Campbell’s feet up forward might just sort us out.
 

discodaddy

All Australian
Jun 13, 2011
638
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The absolute worst year to have early draft picks

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
I was thinking it might be good if there were a carnival late this year/early next year to showcase the talent, followed immediately by the draft.

Unfortunately a short carnival would make it easy to manipulate. I.e individual tanking to ensure players get to their club of choice.
 
North players didn’t seem to make any option easy when their team-mate had the ball - no leads, no spread. Exits from the backline were almost always a kick to a contest, or worse, a second option handball to a bloke already in more trouble than the Kelly gang. When there was a chance, I’m sure some of our blokes looked to the forward line and saw absolutely nobody in a position to kick it to - forcing them to second guess the best option, and that was usually worse than the first.

I can’t get over the fact that our blokes see a team-mate take a mark and they all put their hands on their hips and kind of wander around like they are sending the message to kick it to somebody else. They just don’t give an option, a pressure release or anything.

Yep.

Tonight we didn't have much overlapping run, and were forced to kick to a contest too many times.

And yep.

As far as the tale of last night goes - no leads, no spread, no overlap run.

Instead of jumping on here and reading through everyone's undoubtedly calm and balanced reactions to the loss, I decided to take the less painful approach of watching the replay to try to understand why there was so little of the aforementioned run and spread, and so much of that kicking down the line crap. I actually watched the replay twice. The first time to analyse the above and take a really close look at our I50's, the second time to track every one of Hall's possessions. (Stay tuned!) But yeah, no-one can begin to fathom the pain I put myself through last night. Three sittings of the game, back-to-back. I am officially scarred.

Anyway, here's some thoughts on what I saw....

And let me preface the below by saying that it was ****ing slippery conditions last night. People should keep that in mind. Both teams fumbled. Sure, they handled the conditions a little better than us and were more precise in their execution but, ffs, some people need to lower their expectations on skill levels and clean use around contested ground balls on a greasy as **** night like that.

As usual, nothing of a structural nature in footy happens in isolation. Everything bleeds into other things. Including the mental state of the players. In the case of last night's game, assuming they weren't acting on Shaw's instructions (man, I hope not), I reckon there were a few things that led to our abject lack of creativity. In a nutshell, my thinking is that what we saw was basically the product of an overly defensive mindset. We were s**t-scared of their speed and didn't want to be opened up, so we naturally gravitated towards the safety of the line.

Confidence would have taken a bit of a hit coming off three losses, and the fear of being opened up against a quick side like * most probably led to players being less creative, taking safer options, and being less willing to run off their opponents for fear of getting caught out on the slingshot. (Particularly with a defensively-minded coach in charge.) Easier to contain the counter-attacks if they're not launched from the corridor. And every time we headed boundary-ward, a perfect storm of slow, safe ball movement, slippery conditions, players not working hard enough to provide options, and * doing a good job of hemming us in and guarding the corridor, all led to what we saw unfold last night.

Of course, for the most part it worked for us on the defensive end of things. They didn't really get off the chain a whole lot. As Rick18 mentioned in his typically excellent summary, it was the sporadic lapses that really hurt us. And it wasn't just one player in particular, all the defenders had their moments where they let their concentration slip and it cost us. To *'s credit, they took their opportunities.

But yeah, it's on the offensive side of the ledger where we sucked the most. Just too predictable, and that included our I50's.

Just for interest's sake, here's our top few I50-ers for the night....

Hall - 7
Simpkin - 6
Brown - 5
Higgins - 4
Goldy - 4
Dumont - 4

All of the above, and others - Pittard, Polec, Tarrant, and more - were guilty of unimaginative, long-bomb I50 entries, kicked to contested, pack situations. As a zillion people have pointed out, more often than not these entries involved a kick being dropped on Brown's head. They weren't necessarily rushed entries either. In many cases it was a considered decision where the player in question had time and space.

But again, in defense of those that were responsible for some of the incredibly dull and predictable I50's we saw, there consistently seemed to be very few other options available to them. No-one leading into the corridor, no-one leading to the ball carrier. No-one running past for the sneaky handball for a long goal. Just a distinct lack of work off the ball to create options. I can understand that reticence in the back half, but there has to be more movement when we're on the attack with the ball just outside 50.

As has been said ad infinitum, we need another tall marking target. But with Larkey still out, and Campbell not providing much, it was incredibly disappointing to see such an uncreative approach to ball use going inside 50. When a player (Atley) did finally lower their eyes and someone got on their bike to provide an open, leading option (Scott), we goaled. Clearly, Campbell isn't the person to be giving Browny a chop out. I thought the logic behind his selection was reasonably sound, but it didn't work out. Couldn't clunk them. He brought the ball to ground on occasion, but at other times - bizarrely - he was pushed off the ball with ridiculous ease. A couple of times he and Browny just got in each other's way. Experiment didn't work.

But of course, regardless, here's the greatest flaw in the plan - bringing the ball to ground is only really useful if you have a handful of talented crumbers ready to feast on that s**t. (Spoiler alert - we don't.) On multiple occasions we brought the ball to the ground only for it to whisked back out by the more-adept-at-ground-level * defenders. Despite our defensive mindset on the night, our Forward line defensive pressure was almost non-existent. We just lacked any semblance of Forward structure both when the ball was coming in, and when it was going back out again.

Moving forward we simply MUST be more creative and less predictable going inside 50.

Not sure any of the above helps much now in hindsight, but hopefully we don't see an encore performance of the same thing next week.


Tl; dr?
Don't blame you. It was a ****ing long post.
 
So following The Other Dean and his pre- motivational post to hang tough and find the positive, I'll put in my two cents beginning on that theme:

Ha, you're a brave soul.

We're talking 'Captain Willard jumping on a boat and heading upstream' level brave.

1. McDonald as a tagger is a step forward - further to the excellent post by Pykie some time ago that we have too many ordinary HFB flankers, finding a constructive role for one of them on another line is a big plus

Luke has been excellent this year. Full credit to him.

Yet another player who in the past has copped everything from 'has already shown us all he has to offer' through to 'not up to AFL level'.

Hopefully his success this season may prompt some posters to stop and have a lightbulb moment re what they post about a few other whipping boy types.

The truth is, most of these blokes don't lack for talent. The importance of how they're used cannot be stressed enough.
 
I watched the game with no sound on last night.....couldn’t listen to JB fellate another side all night again. Take a long hard look at yourself JB, you are undoing all the good work you did and sound like a f*n flog.

45WW0wy.gif



****ing painful to listen to.
 

Passmore

Brownlow Medallist
May 22, 2001
23,595
75,866
The Gasometer Wing
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Other Teams
Norf
Yep.



And yep.

As far as the tale of last night goes - no leads, no spread, no overlap run.

Instead of jumping on here and reading through everyone's undoubtedly calm and balanced reactions to the loss, I decided to take the less painful approach of watching the replay to try to understand why there was so little of the aforementioned run and spread, and so much of that kicking down the line crap. I actually watched the replay twice. The first time to analyse the above and take a really close look at our I50's, the second time to track every one of Hall's possessions. (Stay tuned!) But yeah, no-one can begin to fathom the pain I put myself through last night. Three sittings of the game, back-to-back. I am officially scarred.

Anyway, here's some thoughts on what I saw....

And let me preface the below by saying that it was ****ing slippery conditions last night. People should keep that in mind. Both teams fumbled. Sure, they handled the conditions a little better than us and were more precise in their execution but, ffs, some people need to lower their expectations on skill levels and clean use around contested ground balls on a greasy as **** night like that.

As usual, nothing of a structural nature in footy happens in isolation. Everything bleeds into other things. Including the mental state of the players. In the case of last night's game, assuming they weren't acting on Shaw's instructions (man, I hope not), I reckon there were a few things that led to our abject lack of creativity. In a nutshell, my thinking is that what we saw was basically the product of an overly defensive mindset. We were sh*t-scared of their speed and didn't want to be opened up, so we naturally gravitated towards the safety of the line.

Confidence would have taken a bit of a hit coming off three losses, and the fear of being opened up against a quick side like * most probably led to players being less creative, taking safer options, and being less willing to run off their opponents for fear of getting caught out on the slingshot. (Particularly with a defensively-minded coach in charge.) Easier to contain the counter-attacks if they're not launched from the corridor. And every time we headed boundary-ward, a perfect storm of slow, safe ball movement, slippery conditions, players not working hard enough to provide options, and * doing a good job of hemming us in and guarding the corridor, all led to what we saw unfold last night.

Of course, for the most part it worked for us on the defensive end of things. They didn't really get off the chain a whole lot. As Rick18 mentioned in his typically excellent summary, it was the sporadic lapses that really hurt us. And it wasn't just one player in particular, all the defenders had their moments where they let their concentration slip and it cost us. To *'s credit, they took their opportunities.

But yeah, it's on the offensive side of the ledger where we sucked the most. Just too predictable, and that included our I50's.

Just for interest's sake, here's our top few I50-ers for the night....

Hall - 7
Simpkin - 6
Brown - 5
Higgins - 4
Goldy - 4
Dumont - 4

All of the above, and others - Pittard, Polec, Tarrant, and more - were guilty of unimaginative, long-bomb I50 entries, kicked to contested, pack situations. As a zillion people have pointed out, more often than not these entries involved a kick being dropped on Brown's head. They weren't necessarily rushed entries either. In many cases it was a considered decision where the player in question had time and space.

But again, in defense of those that were responsible for some of the incredibly dull and predictable I50's we saw, there consistently seemed to be very few other options available to them. No-one leading into the corridor, no-one leading to the ball carrier. No-one running past for the sneaky handball for a long goal. Just a distinct lack of work off the ball to create options. I can understand that reticence in the back half, but there has to be more movement when we're on the attack with the ball just outside 50.

As has been said ad infinitum, we need another tall marking target. But with Larkey still out, and Campbell not providing much, it was incredibly disappointing to see such an uncreative approach to ball use going inside 50. When a player (Atley) did finally lower their eyes and someone got on their bike to provide an open, leading option (Scott), we goaled. Clearly, Campbell isn't the person to be giving Browny a chop out. I thought the logic behind his selection was reasonably sound, but it didn't work out. Couldn't clunk them. He brought the ball to ground on occasion, but at other times - bizarrely - he was pushed off the ball with ridiculous ease. A couple of times he and Browny just got in each other's way. Experiment didn't work.

But of course, regardless, here's the greatest flaw in the plan - bringing the ball to ground is only really useful if you have a handful of talented crumbers ready to feast on that sh*t. (Spoiler alert - we don't.) On multiple occasions we brought the ball to the ground only for it to whisked back out by the more-adept-at-ground-level * defenders. Despite our defensive mindset on the night, our Forward line defensive pressure was almost non-existent. We just lacked any semblance of Forward structure both when the ball was coming in, and when it was going back out again.

Moving forward we simply MUST be more creative and less predictable going inside 50.

Not sure any of the above helps much now in hindsight, but hopefully we don't see an encore performance of the same thing next week.


Tl; dr?
Don't blame you. It was a ****ing long post.
Crikey, you watched that twice on replay. Not sure whether to dips my lid to ya, or check the yellow pages for a shrink on your behalf.

In all seriousness TODles, great summary. Maybe you and Rick18 should go into business together.

Sent from my SM-A908B using Tapatalk
 
Dec 27, 2017
24,210
53,342
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Yep.



And yep.

As far as the tale of last night goes - no leads, no spread, no overlap run.

Instead of jumping on here and reading through everyone's undoubtedly calm and balanced reactions to the loss, I decided to take the less painful approach of watching the replay to try to understand why there was so little of the aforementioned run and spread, and so much of that kicking down the line crap. I actually watched the replay twice. The first time to analyse the above and take a really close look at our I50's, the second time to track every one of Hall's possessions. (Stay tuned!) But yeah, no-one can begin to fathom the pain I put myself through last night. Three sittings of the game, back-to-back. I am officially scarred.

Anyway, here's some thoughts on what I saw....

And let me preface the below by saying that it was ****ing slippery conditions last night. People should keep that in mind. Both teams fumbled. Sure, they handled the conditions a little better than us and were more precise in their execution but, ffs, some people need to lower their expectations on skill levels and clean use around contested ground balls on a greasy as **** night like that.

As usual, nothing of a structural nature in footy happens in isolation. Everything bleeds into other things. Including the mental state of the players. In the case of last night's game, assuming they weren't acting on Shaw's instructions (man, I hope not), I reckon there were a few things that led to our abject lack of creativity. In a nutshell, my thinking is that what we saw was basically the product of an overly defensive mindset. We were sh*t-scared of their speed and didn't want to be opened up, so we naturally gravitated towards the safety of the line.

Confidence would have taken a bit of a hit coming off three losses, and the fear of being opened up against a quick side like * most probably led to players being less creative, taking safer options, and being less willing to run off their opponents for fear of getting caught out on the slingshot. (Particularly with a defensively-minded coach in charge.) Easier to contain the counter-attacks if they're not launched from the corridor. And every time we headed boundary-ward, a perfect storm of slow, safe ball movement, slippery conditions, players not working hard enough to provide options, and * doing a good job of hemming us in and guarding the corridor, all led to what we saw unfold last night.

Of course, for the most part it worked for us on the defensive end of things. They didn't really get off the chain a whole lot. As Rick18 mentioned in his typically excellent summary, it was the sporadic lapses that really hurt us. And it wasn't just one player in particular, all the defenders had their moments where they let their concentration slip and it cost us. To *'s credit, they took their opportunities.

But yeah, it's on the offensive side of the ledger where we sucked the most. Just too predictable, and that included our I50's.

Just for interest's sake, here's our top few I50-ers for the night....

Hall - 7
Simpkin - 6
Brown - 5
Higgins - 4
Goldy - 4
Dumont - 4

All of the above, and others - Pittard, Polec, Tarrant, and more - were guilty of unimaginative, long-bomb I50 entries, kicked to contested, pack situations. As a zillion people have pointed out, more often than not these entries involved a kick being dropped on Brown's head. They weren't necessarily rushed entries either. In many cases it was a considered decision where the player in question had time and space.

But again, in defense of those that were responsible for some of the incredibly dull and predictable I50's we saw, there consistently seemed to be very few other options available to them. No-one leading into the corridor, no-one leading to the ball carrier. No-one running past for the sneaky handball for a long goal. Just a distinct lack of work off the ball to create options. I can understand that reticence in the back half, but there has to be more movement when we're on the attack with the ball just outside 50.

As has been said ad infinitum, we need another tall marking target. But with Larkey still out, and Campbell not providing much, it was incredibly disappointing to see such an uncreative approach to ball use going inside 50. When a player (Atley) did finally lower their eyes and someone got on their bike to provide an open, leading option (Scott), we goaled. Clearly, Campbell isn't the person to be giving Browny a chop out. I thought the logic behind his selection was reasonably sound, but it didn't work out. Couldn't clunk them. He brought the ball to ground on occasion, but at other times - bizarrely - he was pushed off the ball with ridiculous ease. A couple of times he and Browny just got in each other's way. Experiment didn't work.

But of course, regardless, here's the greatest flaw in the plan - bringing the ball to ground is only really useful if you have a handful of talented crumbers ready to feast on that sh*t. (Spoiler alert - we don't.) On multiple occasions we brought the ball to the ground only for it to whisked back out by the more-adept-at-ground-level * defenders. Despite our defensive mindset on the night, our Forward line defensive pressure was almost non-existent. We just lacked any semblance of Forward structure both when the ball was coming in, and when it was going back out again.

Moving forward we simply MUST be more creative and less predictable going inside 50.

Not sure any of the above helps much now in hindsight, but hopefully we don't see an encore performance of the same thing next week.


Tl; dr?
Don't blame you. It was a ****ing long post.

Halls kicking inside 50 has been killing us all year. Against the bombers he had 7 and 0 assists. When he doesn’t have a ping at the goals, only because he’s out of range he never kicks to the forwards advantage.

I also think our half forwards are either lazy or not fit enough because they’re not pushing forward enough to provide pressure to lock the ball in.

Bad kicking inside 50 + poor forward pressure will always cost games.

Ball goes in, the oppo intercept and we have 15-16 blokes from about the centre to the 50 arc, leaving plenty of time and space for the oppo defenders to aggressively bring the ball out.
 
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