Butters Made Me Do It
Drinking tea
This post is limited to actual tactical shit on field, and criticisms of our coaches pertaining to that. I haven’t forgotten the regular failures of our selection committee as another key part of our Hinkley-led coaching unit failing, but that’s not what this is about. I can do one of those if people want, but I’m nominating tribey for that, because his grudge holding is far more detailed and specific than mine.
Better Use Of Players Down The Length Of The Ground
At one point the Hinkley plan was to get the ball to half forward and force a stoppage, so our players could move up and take control of the front 3/4 of the field instead of the back 3/4. We’d then use forward pressure to try and keep the ball in the front part.
Heavily reliance on forward pressure works great against teams that rattle easily, but it wore our guys out when we did it every single game all game, and ultimately the composed teams would always cut through it when it mattered. When you are great at breaking down weak and rattleable teams, but struggle against well coached sides, your ceiling is definitively mid-table. You need something better.
Composed players would ignore the frantic approach of a Neade or similar, and continue what they were doing with little hindrance, because most of the pressure placed on them was mental but not actual. That’s great play (and coaching) by those opponents to draw the man and still get good disposal away, and we’ll get to that in the next section.
Since we recruited Charlie Dixon, our plan shifted a bit and then largely became about getting the ball past the halfway mark and hoofing it forward, out wide usually, maybe to Charlie or to Sam Gray or to space, and hope that that would give us time to move our whole team up to the front 3/4 instead of the back 3/4. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. We didn’t really solve our problem with this change though, because our forwards were still being run ragged to do all the work.
Neither method has brought success, and the failures of the second method in particular were visible when Bassett was in charge of our defence and for some reason we allowed our defence the luxury of always having extra men back there, robbing us even more of structure and options down the field.
What we don’t do anywhere near often enough is demand that our defenders carry the ball forward UP TO THE POINT OF CONTEST, with the team moving ahead of them. Classic Port Adelaide teams of years past did this, you could watch them moving up the field in waves. Instead we get to a point, hoof and hope, often while the nearest opponent is a fair way away from the man carrying the ball. More on this failure of defenders later.
Another inefficient use of manpower, that precedes Hinkley and continues to this day, is when players take a mark, and handball backwards to a running player, who kicks from further behind than the man on the mark would’ve if he’d taken his time. What is the value of this. Handpassing to a running player should be reserved for when the running player is running past the mark and can exploit a zone collapse, not just because its easy.
And in this scenario, when the marking player has handballed off, they need to be looking at how they’ll next get involved in the play. Too often all they do is drop behind the play, instead of pushing/blocking forward to allow more space for the new ball carrier, or running forward to provide an option in case the new carrier runs into trouble. They just stop, and maybe go back to their direct opponent. I hate this so much.
Still happening under Hinkley. Saw Ryder do it just last week. Baffling.
Make The Opposition Work Harder Than You
Josh Carr was my favorite player for a lot of reasons, but one thing I enjoyed about him was when he had the ball in the defensive half (not after a mark, just holding it), and he’d Just. Stop. And wait until he could see he’d made an opponent run towards him to contest. Then because he had a cool head, he’d be disposing of the ball just before the opponent could tackle or smother, forcing them to waste their tank (and sometimes stretching the zone too)
Jarrad Schofield wasn’t always my favorite player, but I always enjoyed how reliable his baulking was, where he’d make a defender commit to stopping him, trick them into committing further to an action, and chance his own. Fans could see it coming, and maybe defenders could too, but they had to respect that Jarrad could go either way. They’d put in effort that Jarrad was ready for, and he’d usually coolly slot the ball to a leading forward or maybe jag a goal. Nice.
In both cases, they could do this because a) they had been coached to dispose just in time, and b) their teammates nearby presented options for them. Not just behind them or 30m sideways, but upfield.
This also ties into the previous point, of not being shitscared of the proximity of another player because you have something resembling composure. Making the opposition work harder than you requires bravery, confidence, and things that actual motivational coaches can instil into their players.
Guess Hinkley’s not a motivational coach, or ran out of motivation after 2014
Coordination downfield, only possible by having players consistently downfield to coordinate
Our forwards, few as they are allowed to be, don’t make coordinated leads to provide multiple options, because instead our coaches’ system largely has them responding to randomball delivery into the forward line, or running down to the wing to take marks because our inefficient and unambitious ball movement means there’s too many players left behind the play, and someone has to present.
When someone is running down the wing, a good team has a couple of options for the player with the ball to take. Ours is Charlie Dixon (now Frampton), or Bung It On The Boot, or both. We don’t have multiple options leading towards the ball (the easiest marks for any forward to take), because to do that you need to have more forwards further downfield than we usually position them.
Instead we see every game the ball kicked ahead of or on top of players running up from midfield. Great as a trick now and then, all teams do that sometimes, but too often its our only route to goal. Its why Sam Gray is in the side, he’s learned to roll with this shitty strategy. And its why he gets regularly shut down against good sides, because it’s a low percentage player, requiring high fitness, and excellent marking skill that usually requires working out the fall of the ball by looking over your shoulder. Park footballers dislike when they regularly have to do that, and AFL players would have similar concerns.
These are not easy marks. Its no wonder we can’t consistently take them, nor is it a surprise that a lot of the time the mistargeting of hoof and hope, & degree of difficulty in positioning to mark, require our players to chase an errant ball at ground level that overshot them - or to watch as the opponent’s loose man in defence effortlessly takes another intercept mark, as we’ve seen so so many times.
Having forwards allowed to watch midfield play develop and intelligently lead towards the ball (or at a useful contrary angle to the ball, if you have *gasp* more than one leading forward) isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It conserves fitness and mental focus. The best teams in any year have forwards doing this, and they can do this because their coaches can structure a forward line.
Ours can’t.
If you genuinely have to kick to a contest, kick to a big bloke
Unlike a sport like soccer, there is a clear advantage to height in AFL, mostly granted by the height standard with a punt kick, and by the high value of the security given to a successful mark.
We give away height in the forward line too often, and rarely have players with blistering speed enough to lead to an uncontested mark (or at least not to one that doesn’t require them diminishing the real meterage gained…unless they’re running forward towards goal, which as previous mentioned, is the hard way to do it).
And even when we do bung it to a Dixon or Frampton, sadly Robbie Gray is our only guy who crumbs intelligently on a regular basis, still. But when delivery in the forward line is so often hack kicks, players have to choose between positioning to crumb, or positioning to run onto the ball. It’d be great if there was predictability in how the ball was coming in, or if our forwards (again) had the ability to see play unfold instead of relying on half glances over their shoulders when they can. Oh well.
Aidyn Johnson ahead of Frampton though, great thinking boss man. And countless others, as I have delegated tribey or someone else to provide.
Defenders must take the game on, by showing composure when attacking, not just when the opposition has taken the ball upfield
Our defenders don’t run with the ball to the point of contest; they give off early so they can reset for what they presumably believe will be ****ups earlier up the field. When Jasper Pittard was good, he was the guy who would not just take the ball forward, but also take on the contest before disposing, effectively removing an opponent from the play. Smart play, and responsible for damaging disposal at times.
He used to do this, and it was why he had fan defenders even when his attempts exploded in his face (though quite often that happened because no one upfield was moving). In 2017 he did not try to do this any more. Bye Jas.
Instead we kept all the guys that give off the ball too early, disposing downfield just because they can either move the ball diagonally forward around 15m (10m actually forward) or hoof it long, and fall back, meaning we run out of ball carriers and forward options by the time we get just ahead of the centre square, meaning if/when we secure a mark in the area, we have to wait for runners from midfield to now stream forward, expending more energy and letting opposition defenders do what they do best – reset.
This is a defensive coach failure, and the failure of the person responsible for coordinating the different lines to act in concern. Gotta presume that’s Hinkley.
Outside mids are not a dirty word; why don’t ours make an impact?
We win hitouts. We win clearances. Yet our ball use and delivery forward is shocking. It feels like we’re a team of Simon Goodwins, concerned only with winning the ball, hoofing it, and not caring what happens next.
Jared Polec was far from a perfect player, but it’d be hard to argue that we used him well around our midfield. What happened to Hitout -> Extractor -> Outsider -> Forward? Other teams manage it. For a team with the density of draft picks and trades we’ve dedicated to ruck and midfield we should have the resources for it. Why doesn’t it happen with any reliability, not even against poor teams?
Again, Robbie Gray being the supergenius has been our only real ace in the hole. It’s a shame our only reliable option is someone who should’ve won a Brownlow by now, and who will retire in the next three years.
We’ve had a few options for outside players over the years, but the focus of our inside mids on playing hot potato, and not on the thing the best sides have done over the years (I always think of mid-2000s West Coast here) - creating space for other mids to clear intelligently, not just desperately.
Six years, no improvement, just increasingly more focus on hot potato ballhandling and rushed kicks into the forward 50. Coaching fail. Going backwards if anything.
SUMMARY (or TL;DR)
Under Ken Hinkley:
- We don’t have a reliable plan for bringing the ball from end to end, other than randomness & Robbie Gray
- We overwork our midfield, and particularly our forward players, when good teams work out how to reduce the load through team play.
- We don’t play intelligent football at clearances, and can’t manage outside players because of it
- We don’t give our forwards prime opportunities to secure positionally useful marks and kick goals
- Defenders are allowed to coast behind unambitious counterattacks
- Robbie Gray has played some ****ing stellar football to drag us to midtable and he’s gone soon
- All our players (after a couple years in Hinkley system, draftees degrade) lack the composure to play smarter, not harder. YES THIS INCLUDES SENIOR PLAYERS.
And as very briefly mentioned at the start, there are other morale, form, and development ****ups by our Hinkley led Selection Panel and Player Trade Out Team that affect our onfield too.
SACK. HIM.
Better Use Of Players Down The Length Of The Ground
At one point the Hinkley plan was to get the ball to half forward and force a stoppage, so our players could move up and take control of the front 3/4 of the field instead of the back 3/4. We’d then use forward pressure to try and keep the ball in the front part.
Heavily reliance on forward pressure works great against teams that rattle easily, but it wore our guys out when we did it every single game all game, and ultimately the composed teams would always cut through it when it mattered. When you are great at breaking down weak and rattleable teams, but struggle against well coached sides, your ceiling is definitively mid-table. You need something better.
Composed players would ignore the frantic approach of a Neade or similar, and continue what they were doing with little hindrance, because most of the pressure placed on them was mental but not actual. That’s great play (and coaching) by those opponents to draw the man and still get good disposal away, and we’ll get to that in the next section.
Since we recruited Charlie Dixon, our plan shifted a bit and then largely became about getting the ball past the halfway mark and hoofing it forward, out wide usually, maybe to Charlie or to Sam Gray or to space, and hope that that would give us time to move our whole team up to the front 3/4 instead of the back 3/4. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. We didn’t really solve our problem with this change though, because our forwards were still being run ragged to do all the work.
Neither method has brought success, and the failures of the second method in particular were visible when Bassett was in charge of our defence and for some reason we allowed our defence the luxury of always having extra men back there, robbing us even more of structure and options down the field.
What we don’t do anywhere near often enough is demand that our defenders carry the ball forward UP TO THE POINT OF CONTEST, with the team moving ahead of them. Classic Port Adelaide teams of years past did this, you could watch them moving up the field in waves. Instead we get to a point, hoof and hope, often while the nearest opponent is a fair way away from the man carrying the ball. More on this failure of defenders later.
Another inefficient use of manpower, that precedes Hinkley and continues to this day, is when players take a mark, and handball backwards to a running player, who kicks from further behind than the man on the mark would’ve if he’d taken his time. What is the value of this. Handpassing to a running player should be reserved for when the running player is running past the mark and can exploit a zone collapse, not just because its easy.
And in this scenario, when the marking player has handballed off, they need to be looking at how they’ll next get involved in the play. Too often all they do is drop behind the play, instead of pushing/blocking forward to allow more space for the new ball carrier, or running forward to provide an option in case the new carrier runs into trouble. They just stop, and maybe go back to their direct opponent. I hate this so much.
Still happening under Hinkley. Saw Ryder do it just last week. Baffling.
Make The Opposition Work Harder Than You
Josh Carr was my favorite player for a lot of reasons, but one thing I enjoyed about him was when he had the ball in the defensive half (not after a mark, just holding it), and he’d Just. Stop. And wait until he could see he’d made an opponent run towards him to contest. Then because he had a cool head, he’d be disposing of the ball just before the opponent could tackle or smother, forcing them to waste their tank (and sometimes stretching the zone too)
Jarrad Schofield wasn’t always my favorite player, but I always enjoyed how reliable his baulking was, where he’d make a defender commit to stopping him, trick them into committing further to an action, and chance his own. Fans could see it coming, and maybe defenders could too, but they had to respect that Jarrad could go either way. They’d put in effort that Jarrad was ready for, and he’d usually coolly slot the ball to a leading forward or maybe jag a goal. Nice.
In both cases, they could do this because a) they had been coached to dispose just in time, and b) their teammates nearby presented options for them. Not just behind them or 30m sideways, but upfield.
This also ties into the previous point, of not being shitscared of the proximity of another player because you have something resembling composure. Making the opposition work harder than you requires bravery, confidence, and things that actual motivational coaches can instil into their players.
Guess Hinkley’s not a motivational coach, or ran out of motivation after 2014
Coordination downfield, only possible by having players consistently downfield to coordinate
Our forwards, few as they are allowed to be, don’t make coordinated leads to provide multiple options, because instead our coaches’ system largely has them responding to randomball delivery into the forward line, or running down to the wing to take marks because our inefficient and unambitious ball movement means there’s too many players left behind the play, and someone has to present.
When someone is running down the wing, a good team has a couple of options for the player with the ball to take. Ours is Charlie Dixon (now Frampton), or Bung It On The Boot, or both. We don’t have multiple options leading towards the ball (the easiest marks for any forward to take), because to do that you need to have more forwards further downfield than we usually position them.
Instead we see every game the ball kicked ahead of or on top of players running up from midfield. Great as a trick now and then, all teams do that sometimes, but too often its our only route to goal. Its why Sam Gray is in the side, he’s learned to roll with this shitty strategy. And its why he gets regularly shut down against good sides, because it’s a low percentage player, requiring high fitness, and excellent marking skill that usually requires working out the fall of the ball by looking over your shoulder. Park footballers dislike when they regularly have to do that, and AFL players would have similar concerns.
These are not easy marks. Its no wonder we can’t consistently take them, nor is it a surprise that a lot of the time the mistargeting of hoof and hope, & degree of difficulty in positioning to mark, require our players to chase an errant ball at ground level that overshot them - or to watch as the opponent’s loose man in defence effortlessly takes another intercept mark, as we’ve seen so so many times.
Having forwards allowed to watch midfield play develop and intelligently lead towards the ball (or at a useful contrary angle to the ball, if you have *gasp* more than one leading forward) isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It conserves fitness and mental focus. The best teams in any year have forwards doing this, and they can do this because their coaches can structure a forward line.
Ours can’t.
If you genuinely have to kick to a contest, kick to a big bloke
Unlike a sport like soccer, there is a clear advantage to height in AFL, mostly granted by the height standard with a punt kick, and by the high value of the security given to a successful mark.
We give away height in the forward line too often, and rarely have players with blistering speed enough to lead to an uncontested mark (or at least not to one that doesn’t require them diminishing the real meterage gained…unless they’re running forward towards goal, which as previous mentioned, is the hard way to do it).
And even when we do bung it to a Dixon or Frampton, sadly Robbie Gray is our only guy who crumbs intelligently on a regular basis, still. But when delivery in the forward line is so often hack kicks, players have to choose between positioning to crumb, or positioning to run onto the ball. It’d be great if there was predictability in how the ball was coming in, or if our forwards (again) had the ability to see play unfold instead of relying on half glances over their shoulders when they can. Oh well.
Aidyn Johnson ahead of Frampton though, great thinking boss man. And countless others, as I have delegated tribey or someone else to provide.
Defenders must take the game on, by showing composure when attacking, not just when the opposition has taken the ball upfield
Our defenders don’t run with the ball to the point of contest; they give off early so they can reset for what they presumably believe will be ****ups earlier up the field. When Jasper Pittard was good, he was the guy who would not just take the ball forward, but also take on the contest before disposing, effectively removing an opponent from the play. Smart play, and responsible for damaging disposal at times.
He used to do this, and it was why he had fan defenders even when his attempts exploded in his face (though quite often that happened because no one upfield was moving). In 2017 he did not try to do this any more. Bye Jas.
Instead we kept all the guys that give off the ball too early, disposing downfield just because they can either move the ball diagonally forward around 15m (10m actually forward) or hoof it long, and fall back, meaning we run out of ball carriers and forward options by the time we get just ahead of the centre square, meaning if/when we secure a mark in the area, we have to wait for runners from midfield to now stream forward, expending more energy and letting opposition defenders do what they do best – reset.
This is a defensive coach failure, and the failure of the person responsible for coordinating the different lines to act in concern. Gotta presume that’s Hinkley.
Outside mids are not a dirty word; why don’t ours make an impact?
We win hitouts. We win clearances. Yet our ball use and delivery forward is shocking. It feels like we’re a team of Simon Goodwins, concerned only with winning the ball, hoofing it, and not caring what happens next.
Jared Polec was far from a perfect player, but it’d be hard to argue that we used him well around our midfield. What happened to Hitout -> Extractor -> Outsider -> Forward? Other teams manage it. For a team with the density of draft picks and trades we’ve dedicated to ruck and midfield we should have the resources for it. Why doesn’t it happen with any reliability, not even against poor teams?
Again, Robbie Gray being the supergenius has been our only real ace in the hole. It’s a shame our only reliable option is someone who should’ve won a Brownlow by now, and who will retire in the next three years.
We’ve had a few options for outside players over the years, but the focus of our inside mids on playing hot potato, and not on the thing the best sides have done over the years (I always think of mid-2000s West Coast here) - creating space for other mids to clear intelligently, not just desperately.
Six years, no improvement, just increasingly more focus on hot potato ballhandling and rushed kicks into the forward 50. Coaching fail. Going backwards if anything.
SUMMARY (or TL;DR)
Under Ken Hinkley:
- We don’t have a reliable plan for bringing the ball from end to end, other than randomness & Robbie Gray
- We overwork our midfield, and particularly our forward players, when good teams work out how to reduce the load through team play.
- We don’t play intelligent football at clearances, and can’t manage outside players because of it
- We don’t give our forwards prime opportunities to secure positionally useful marks and kick goals
- Defenders are allowed to coast behind unambitious counterattacks
- Robbie Gray has played some ****ing stellar football to drag us to midtable and he’s gone soon
- All our players (after a couple years in Hinkley system, draftees degrade) lack the composure to play smarter, not harder. YES THIS INCLUDES SENIOR PLAYERS.
And as very briefly mentioned at the start, there are other morale, form, and development ****ups by our Hinkley led Selection Panel and Player Trade Out Team that affect our onfield too.
SACK. HIM.
