Autopsy vs * - Rd 6, 2020

[Val Keating]

Brown has copped a lot of s**t this year but man they’ve made it hard for him.

 

[Val Keating]

Something funny Halftimehero ?

 

[Ether]

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.

Hall was named in the bests on the club website. FMD. He did try but his ball use was diabolical.

 

[Val Keating]

Hall was named in the bests on the club website. FMD. He did try but his ball use was diabolical.

Does the work experience kid do those votes?

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he won’t get a coaches vote for the game.

 

[koshari]

Brown has copped a lot of sh*t this year but man they’ve made it hard for him.

its their job.

 

[Val Keating]

its their job.

There’s people who’s job is to make it hard for Brown? I think they call them fluffers. Our midfield are fluffers. No wonder the season is rooted

 

[giantroo]

Shaw: I want to address the Luke McDonald and Conor McKenna incident from the weekend. It’s not on, and not something that we stand for. Luke has called Conor and apologised.

 

[SMaturin]

Yeah yeah yeah

 

[giantroo]

Shaw: Luke was disappointed with himself after that game and we had a good chat about it. Conor was really good about it and respected the phone call from Luke.

 

[DesertRoo]

Shaw: I want to address the Luke McDonald and Conor McKenna incident from the weekend. It’s not on, and not something that we stand for. Luke has called Conor and apologised.

Geez no wonder Connor wants to leave OZ if that’s the state of banter acceptably available..

 

[Heaps of fun]

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.

Mods, can we get this s**t cleaned up? I come to BF for race baiting, updates on breakthroughs in epidemiology and inflammatory remarks about 21 year old sportsmen, not whatever this is.

 

[tales129]

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.

Is it structure or cattle then?

Taylor, Zurhaar, Thomas all have ability in the air and are tasked with going for their grabs. They all have ability to pressure at ground level too.

Too many going up at once? Didn’t see it that often - so where are they at the fall of the ball? Pushing too far up the ground? Didn’t see too many times them being honoured on a lead either? Does it come down to ball use i50? It was absolutely shithouse on the weekend but again was there movement and space for the blokes to work into to get great looks? Don’t think so.

Combination of young lads, haven’t gelled at getting in and out of each other’s space yet, with shithouse ball movement upfield and horrible f50 kicking. Larkey back in and another 10-15 games of Taylor Zurhaar and Thomas together and look out

 

[The Dingrel]

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.
on another note, I never realy noticed Hibberd last night for *, but just saw he had 19 p’s.
Was he actually any good?

Couldn't have been worse than having to listen to the * flogs in the crowd, and what's more probably mostly gold coast based ferals with no clue of the actual rules as well. (No disrespect to any GC based NMFC supporters of course!)

 

[The Dingrel]

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

You forgot Billy don't you lose my number Hartung........ Campbell is insurance only I feel sorry for the guy but it is what it is. Play Wood, or just keep getting dev games into X.

 

[Oraaaaazio]

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.

Apologies if this is a thread I'm not meant to post in

What a stinker of a game, conditions made things hard but I don't think either team would be too happy with their performance. You guys slightly worse than us in adapting to the conditions but I don't think it's as bad as everyone seems to be thinking on here and there's plenty of upside. I know you have to lower expectations in conditions like that but it was still incredibly frustrating.

We aren't that good but you aren't that bad. Arguably should've put things away earlier with some really simple misses but never really looked safe. Positives being that IMO outside of Goldstein (huge), Zurhaar, Simpkin (flies under the radar but he's a huge talent - saw a redraft in the off season that didn't have him top 20) & maybe McDonald/Tarrant, nobody really played to their level and you have a few to come back in coming weeks that could really turn things around. Add 2/3 of Cunnington, Ziebell, Anderson & LDU and you'd get a much different result.

I agree with what you pointed out re: inside 50 entries really letting you down. Our backline is solid, particularly when the ball is bombed in like that, Hooker & Ridley will pick it off all day and just can't afford to allow that, the couple of times your forwards had space and the ball was put out in front, you looked fine and no team has an answer for that (remember a couple going well over Brown's head - think you have to forgive his performance with the runs he has on the board). Every team is guilty of it the long bomb to nobody at times and don't think there's anything more frustrating for a fan. For years for Essendon it was Alwyn Davey and recently it's been AMT, sit the long ball on their head and hope for the best, FFS. Your backline looked pretty solid aside from a few errors from Hayden (I think?), we didn't really have anyone look threatening as a target when we were coming out of defence and relied on run to clear it rather than a bail out option, seemed all of our long kicks out of the backline were handled pretty easily and that's where a little bit of poise on re-entry would've made a big difference, there's usually a bit of space open up and guys out of position after that clearing kick out of D50. Lower the eyes, sit it out in front and make someone run on to it.

One out of the box from Zaharakis, one of the most finished players in the comp, was probably the difference in the end. Talk of finishing bottom 4 for the best pick seems overly pessimistic, a long way to go yet and only 1 good win out of 8th spot. A big game this week vs a depleted tigers side that looked very ordinary against Sydney and things could look very different next week.

 

[Devington]

Is it structure or cattle then?

Taylor, Zurhaar, Thomas all have ability in the air and are tasked with going for their grabs. They all have ability to pressure at ground level too.

Too many going up at once? Didn’t see it that often - so where are they at the fall of the ball? Pushing too far up the ground? Didn’t see too many times them being honoured on a lead either? Does it come down to ball use i50? It was absolutely shithouse on the weekend but again was there movement and space for the blokes to work into to get great looks? Don’t think so.

Combination of young lads, haven’t gelled at getting in and out of each other’s space yet, with shithouse ball movement upfield and horrible f50 kicking. Larkey back in and another 10-15 games of Taylor Zurhaar and Thomas together and look out

Structure AND cattle.

Honestly, we simply didn't seem to often have players at the drop of the ball. And I do think a big part of it is the general inexperience of our forwards. Without a second tall effectively drawing players and enabling a tall to almost constantly be playing further up the ground, our structure and quality/speed of ball movement for the I50 was generally awful which just exacerbated the fact that no forwards had faith in eachother nor was playing to a more tangible system (two things that are a lot easier to do if you have 50 games under your belt, most gained playing with the blokes around you). End result is we end up looking like headless chooks.

I was fine with most of Campbell's game, he is what he is, but the few times I got angry was when he was competing for the same ball as Brown. That should have never happened, they should have been 30+ meters away from eachother at almost all times. Brown though, I just feel sad for. He looks ******* miserable. The quality of ball aimed at him has generally been worse than usual, but man he isn't playing to any of his strengths and still doesn't seem to compete hard/often enough when it's a bad ball.

Larkey and Cunners are missed so much. Larkey's effects on our structure are (at this point) revolutionary, as well as being a genuinely decent forward with great future prospects himself, and Cunnington's ability to extract the ball cleanly so that the receiver has decent time and space to execute a disposal simply isn't matched by anyone else in the team.

In general I'm finding it hard to be as upset with the team and Shaw as a lot of other people. I really do think that we've spent so long being able to *occasionally* match it with the best teams that we've come to think our list is perennially not that far off of genuinely competing. And while this shortened bizarro season left the door open for any team to compete for the premiership, the truth is that key injuries have suddenly and seriously exposed the dearth of talent on our list (and gluts of same same but with X awful weakness) at a time when supporters are crying out for a shining light in this currently very shitty non football world. Yeah there are questions to be had over selection decisions and the gameplan, but to me it seems like at this stage we're trying to keep things as close to how we would ideally play with a Larkey infused structure as possible for the few weeks until he returns. Might be the wrong choice, but considering how much experience/leadership we've shed (Jack and now Cunners) and how many inexperienced players (especially forwards) we have playing then there's probably additional benefit to trying to keep the gameplan as samey as possible.[/QUOTE]

 

[King Corey]

Shaw: I want to address the Luke McDonald and Conor McKenna incident from the weekend. It’s not on, and not something that we stand for. Luke has called Conor and apologised.

Oh no.

2.0.

Maybe Luke can send him a Chrisco hamper too just to really emphasise his sincerity.

 

[chubbspeterson]

What an awful game that was. Both average teams imo.
We're clearly not good enough and need to finish bottom 5 and grab two top 5 picks hopefully.
Bit harsh the criticism of TT, he was concussed last week, I wouldn't have played him this week and looked to have rolled his ankle so he battled on, looked like he couldn't really run on it. One of the few players who actually switched the ball to the fat side to a leading Ben Brown, who then hit up a leading forward. Next year for sure he might need the "go to another level conversation" that Curtis had but this year its tough to judge him when the supply has been awful into that forward line. I think he's dropped off his tackling pressure a little this year though.
The gameplan is very predictable. Maybe they are keeping it simple so the young guys coming into the side can understand where to be or perhaps they can't really work on ball movement if they have to train in individual groups? How do you coach a team gameplan if you can't work as a group of 22?
Bombers and Port have had 2-3 years of learning their system so its most likely easier for them having most of their players know their gameplan.
That's why this year is a bit of a write-off imo. Also probably tough mentally for these young guys as well.
There's definitely some hard calls that need to made at the end of the year, but its been good seeing some young guys get some games who wouldn't have if some senior guys weren't injured.
I'm prepared to accept Kyron making some mistakes because unless EVW or Murphy are up and about then who replaces him?
Also having Kyron in their means LMac can be a tagger in the middle so I'd persist with it. And has Kyron really made more errors than LMac or Atley at that stage? I think not. As others have said, we just have to take the short term pain and reload next year.

 

[giantroo]

Coaches votes

10 David Zaharakis (ESS)
6 Jordan Ridley (ESS)
4 Darcy Parish (ESS)
4 Todd Goldstein (NMFC)
2 Jy Simpkin (NMFC)
2 Andrew McGrath (ESS)
1 Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti (ESS)
1 Adam Saad (ESS)

 

[Luke72]

Zaharakis BOG from both coaches but we couldn’t man him up during the game!

 

[Ischenko]

Glad we could get Zaka his last ever coaches votes. FMD.

 

[legz11]

Time for a forensic review I reckon. That worked well for Brad.

Our kicks into fw line are deplorable & we don't seem to have enough guys willing to pressure and keep the ball in there.

Richmond set to get played back into form this week.

 

[dus]

Biggest disappointment of the year to date has been Shaw.

Don’t think he has what it takes. Hope he only got a 2 year deal.

The rest of the crap, poor skills ect, we already knew about. Nothing’s has changed. I’ve become desensitised to it.

 

[Mav]

Coaches votes

10 David Zaharakis (ESS)
6 Jordan Ridley (ESS)
4 Darcy Parish (ESS)
4 Todd Goldstein (NMFC)
2 Jy Simpkin (NMFC)
2 Andrew McGrath (ESS)
1 Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti (ESS)
1 Adam Saad (ESS)

only one coach gave Goldy votes? Which coach is the moron?

 

[spurs]

Biggest disappointment of the year to date has been Shaw.

Don’t think he has what it takes. Hope he only got a 2 year deal.

The rest of the crap, poor skills ect, we already knew about. Nothing’s has changed. I’ve become desensitised to it.

C'mon dus, give Shaw a chance. Other than the past month, we have been referring him to Clarko mark 2.0. I think he will be a great coach, but he is still learning. I think he will be a 10 year+ coach for us.